We are IN

Has it been 4 months already? I guess so. Want to know what has been happening???? Ok, I'll tell ya.

We were expecting our dossier to be sent down to Haiti in January. However, it did not end up getting to Haiti until February 26th.  Our agency and the creche (orphanage) director in Haiti wanted to time our dossier being submitted to Shaina's being submitted to IBESR to increase the likely of them matching us with her and decrease the chance of her getting matched with another family.

And then we waited. Sound familiar? According to our Facebook Adopting from Haiti group the average length of time for a dossier to get authenticated and then be submitted to IBESR was 4 weeks. The shortest was 1 week, longest was 7. Once we hit the 4 week mark I started getting antsy. You would think I would be better at waiting by now. I'm not. You would think I would learn to trust in God's timing more. Still a work in progress. At 8 weeks I emailed our agency to ask them if something was wrong and causing a delay. I got an email back saying we were already in IBESR.  What???!!!!! I had no idea if we had been in for a day or a month or what so I quickly emailed back to ask when we got in. And then I waited a couple of days for the answer. When I got it I almost fell out of my chair. We were submitted APRIL 1st!!!!!!! By the time we found out we had already been in for a month!!! Lots of squeals of delight happening at this point.

The reason we are so anxious to get submitted to IBESR (Haitian Social Services) is not only because that means we can bring Shaina home sooner. Of course that is the main goal. But we are not allowed to even visit her until our mandated 2 week bonding visit which happens at the tail end of the IBESR process. I am missing this girl something crazy, Ryan too, and my kids cannot wait to meet their little sister. I want to get back to Haiti and love on her already!!!!

Now we are back to waiting. We won't hear anything until our official referral comes through and once we accept that, the request for the bonding trip comes a week or two later. Average length of time from being submitted to getting official referral has been about 5 months. You would think I wouldn't obsess over averages anymore. You would think!!!