24 Months

We have reached the two year mark in our adoption journey...

We are happy to have two years behind us, knowing that we are that much closer to our Little One, however, we are sad, anxious and somewhat frustrated, we are now entering a different phase of our adoption journey... the unknown. We now have no idea how long it could take for us to receive our referral and the parameters that we once thought we had have been removed. As far as we know there haven't been any families who have passed 30 months. We are hopeful that we'll get the call soon-ish.

Here's a recap of the past month... I feel like I should warn you though, it's been a rough month...

The month started with the news from our agency that they project that it is likely that couples who are waiting to adopt will have to wait longer than the original 18-24 month wait time. This news sent me (Tammy) into a little bit of a tailspin... I was having trouble dealing with the news, I allowed myself to be sad for a couple of days.

The next setback came around the middle of the month. We've been having a pretty rainy fall... and on October 15 we had a particularly bad rain storm, we noticed that there was water in the house and after investigating we realized that we had a leak somewhere... the area of the house that was most effected by the leak... was mom's kitchen!! We had just finished laying the tile on the counter - all that was left was the backsplash and a couple of finishing touches. The cleaning company came in, and the insurance company came in and we're waiting for a building inspector to come and tell us where the water may be coming from. After the cleaning company came with their blowers to dry out the walls and the floors (we had 6 blowers and a dehumidifier going for 4 days and nights), they prepared a report for the insurance company - their recommendation is that we open the wall and the floor to find out how much water damage there was and to disinfect any wood that may have come into contact with the water. That means that the kitchen that I've been working on for 6 months...may need to be torn out and started over! The insurance will pay for the damage inside the house, but not the cost of repairing the foundation.

The third traumatic event of the month was our discovery that our heating wasn't working... we were able to have that fixed (for now) but we discovered that our bi-energy system is not working and it'll cost a pretty penny to replace the broken heat pump. Needless to say I could have done without all three of these events this month.

Not all was doom and gloom though this month, we went apple picking, which is always a fun fall family highlight. We had a big Thanksgiving dinner, Rachelle was home for Thanksgiving dinner for the first time in two years. We went shopping to buy some gear for our Little One. We helped with the Play it Forward Kids Champs game that pitted the winners of the Kingston tournament against the winners of Montreal. We got some cool media coverage from a local TV station (CTV) and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun.

While doing some blog reading today, I came across a post by one of my favorite "Mommy Bloggers" - The Meanest Mom - the post was entitled "we are where we are for a reason". I was encouraged by the fact that while it's no fun to be stuck where we don't want to be...we are where we are for a reason...and it was just what I needed to hear today...so thanks Meanest Mom for reminding me.