Introducing the numbers seven, ten and eleven...

It sounds like a Sesame Street episode, but unfortunately not.

Seven months since referral.
Ten months old.
Eleven weeks since court.

Today our sweet girls turn 10 months half a world away from us. It has now been eleven weeks since we saw them and went to court. From the updates we've received they have changed so much since we were there. They look so much older, they are probably crawling by now since they were firmly on all fours a few weeks ago, and are pulling up to standing in their cribs. My heart aches with not being able to love them, hug them, rock them etc. When we accepted the referral the day after they were 3 months old I would never have expected not to have them home by now. Tomorrow is 7 months from our referral day. 7 months. Most days I have been able to shove all this sadness, disappointment, worry and concern somewhere into a box where I still know it's there, but life goes on. Every couple of weeks I have a really bad day. Usually triggered by a new update, which I love to get, but it does bring home how much I miss them, or some other event, then the day is a struggle and I have to 2:30pm to get it together and suck it up so when I pick the Bean up from school she is unaware of any upset so as not to upset and worry her because this is not her burden to carry. That is really important to me. It is so hard for her if she ever sees me upset.

So today when the girls are 10 months old and so far away I can only hope they are healthy, happy and feel loved. I hope their birth family knows we cannot pick them up, it's not that we wouldn't be there in a heartbeat if we could be. Their nursery is almost done, but it's really hard to go in to finish it right now because it seems so empty in there without them and who knows how much longer it'll be. When we left for court we never imagined they wouldn't be home by now. We thought we'd be watching them crawl for the first time, pull up for the first time, and though I remind myself over again that we'll have so much more time with them than we're missing, today I want to hug my babies and be able to tell them how big they are and how loved they are.

This week we found out we have to start renewing our visa which expires mid-June. This means redoing our home study so fingerprints have to be re-done, medical exams, blood work and all the paperwork. The cost about $1,000+. Had this wait not gone so long that would be money that would have been spent on our travel costs, or put towards the girls college fund etc etc. When I woke up this morning I was mad. Yup, I'm being honest. I'm tired of hearing there is no news. Tired of hearing nothing we can do. Tired of hearing we just have to wait. Tired of hearing potentially bad news in the last couple of weeks and not knowing how badly it could affect us or whether it even has validity. Tired of worrying if there is a chance we might not see our girls again. To also put into perspective what renewing our visa means is this: in June we still wouldn't have them home. They would be 13+months old, it would be 10 months since we accepted our referral (almost a year,) we would have missed their 1st birthday by a long shot (despite them being barely 3 months old at referral.) A reality that we have to look at this point since we need to do this renewal. That's hard to look at and keep our chin up.

Sorry this isn't a happier, uplifting, positive post, but today I'm also tired of trying to look on the bright side. 11 weeks is so long. Perhaps I'll have a happier blog later in the week, probably on a different subject than adoption.