Still Waiting

If you want to know why I don't write in this very often, it is because writing in this is a little painful. It makes me miss our baby even more than I usually do. I think about our baby all day long, whether it is a conscious thought or just in the back of my mind. I always know that I am waiting to go get her and make this real. My plan to keep myself busy is working really well. I started a new project for the orphanage our daughter is at now. We found out that there are 45 children living the orphanage (aged 7-18)who are not able to be adopted for one reason or another. I was given a list of names and ages of the children and asked the MOM's Club that I am in to help me out. I asked people to volunteer to fill two gallon ziploc bags with things for each child. I wrote a list of suppestions for the different age groups and emailed the members of the MOM's Club. I sent out the email two days ago and already ten people have volunteered to fill a bag for a one of the children. We went shopping to fill two of the bags the other day and had a great time. It was fun wandering up and down the aisles trying to figure out the best things to send. Practical things and fun things.
I am excited about doing this project. It's a great cause especially since we will be able to personally be able to hand carry the bags to the orphanage. I hope we are able to have someone take pictures of the children getting their bags too. That would be great for the people who filled the bags to see. Especially since a lot of the families who are doing it have children who are helping to fill the bags. I plan on doing this for other orphanages as well once we have filled bags for each of the children in this orphanage. I won't be able to hand carry the bags after this trip, but I know at least one of the caseworkers for our adoption agency goes over there four times a year and can bring them for us.
We are sponsoring a 15 year old girl from the orphanage. We received her name, birth date and a picture. She is a beautiful girl! My teenage daughter and I went out and bought her a bunch of things last week. It was really, really fun. We found a pretty traveling bag to fill with things. We were planning to send the bag with another family who is traveling to her orphanage next weekend. Once we got home we realized we had bought too much because the bag was really heavy! We decided to bring the bigger, heavier one with us and filled a smaller bag and sent it to the other family who is traveling. I sent a small purse from Victoria Secret and filled it with a small, really soft, stuffed bear, two pair of cute underwear, a few candy flavored lip glosses, a small eyeshadow kit, sparkly lip gloss, several hair accesories, a necklace, a pretty container with mints, a couple packs of gum, tic tacs, a candy necklace and deodorant. Thank you for bringing it for us, Charisa!
It's been 6 and a half weeks since we got our referral. Of course I asked my caseworker when we would travel seconds after she gave us our referral. She told us we don't talk about travel until ten weeks after referral. The next time I talked with her I asked again and she said that the orphanage our little girl is at moves more slowly than the others. It takes longer before travel and longer once we are in the country. I looked over the list of how long people who have adopted from the same orphanage have been there in the past and 30 days is not unusual. I never would have thought I could adopt from Vietnam if I would have known I would have to be away from my children for a month! How is that even possible?! I don't really know. I'm getting myself mentally prepared to be in Vietnam for 30 days so I won't be going crazy if it happens, but I know it will be amazingly hard to be away from my children for that long. Especially my younger ones. They change so much and so quickly!