It's called waiting...

...as if that's all we're doing.  There's been no down time since we started this journey back in February.  Sure, it was pretty slow at the beginning, as we learned about the process and contemplated involvement.  But since the day we said yes, it's been a whirling dervish, so saying we're waiting is sort of a misnomer.

We're actually running, as fast as we can toward our son.  It's just that the road we're sprinting on is a long and winding one.  He's 7,500 miles away, and there's two long plane rides, a judge and two country's worth of immigration rules, and about $14,000 keeping us apart.

Although the waiting permeates our world, it's not like we're just standing around.  We’re filling out, and filing, papers with just about everyone; immigrations, State Dept., adoption-related foundations.  Thankfully, it feels like we’re writing fewer checks now.  There was a period of time where it felt like we're just going from place to place, getting in some long line, meeting someone new, and writing them a check.  It was almost likes you didn't really want to know exactly what it was for, just that it was done so you could move on to the next one.  But, we're all done with that now.

Now, we’re gathering resources, trying to get smarter on the medical side, and doing research on the education side.  We’re trying to figure out what our priorities should be, for him, and for all of us, once he gets here.  We’re trying to decide which language, and how much of it, we should learn to best communicate with Tommy; both when we meet him in Ethiopia, and when he comes home to us in America.  We're trying to figure out which "experts" we should listen to, about his medical condition, about his emotional condition, about his psychological condition.  We're trying to figure out priorities, because there's just soooooooo much to do.

.....oh, and we're waiting.