No news is good news?

Word has it from our adoption agency that we should be getting a referral any week now for our baby!!! We are very excited. Max is especially happy and concerned about the fact that the baby will be sleeping upstairs even though she won't be able to walk up and down the stairs yet. "I'm going to have to teach her," says a proud big brother. (He seems to know a lot more about "her" than we do but we're going with his intuition.)

I am excited as we creep along closer and closer to making our expanded family a reality but I notice I'm still holding my breath. I will breathe easier once we have a referral and our pediatrician gives us the green light that all looks good. I will breathe easier when we get our travel date for the very important Giving and Receiving Ceremony in Vietnam. I will breathe easier when our new baby passes the mandatory medical exam and I will breathe easier when the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi approves our adoption and a visa for Baby Gopala.

I pray I will breathe with ease when we board our flight home to Maryland but chances are, with a toddler and an infant in tow, that may be far-fetched. In fact, we're about to become parents of not one but TWO kids. From what I see of my friends around me with more than one child, there's no easy breathing except, if you're lucky, in a 45 minute yoga class and you're lucky to get that! I know, I know. What you get instead is also very enriching.

So, the bottom line is we don't know anything really. The adoption agency is saying our paperwork is being translated in Vietnam as I write, and in adoption speak, that is DTV (or dossier to Vietnam). The agency is imminently awaitng a new group of children to be matched with famlies and, at this time, doesn't seem to think there will be a waiting list. There was a chance of that as many families orginally adopting from China have jumped over to this Vietnam program because it's so fast.

From what I can gather from reading blogs and joining the Yahoo Vietnam Travel Talk group, we are doing just great. Some people have been waiting 6 months or more - even close to a year - for a referral though they are with different agencies. We seem to be moving right along which is why we intentionally signed up with World Child. But again, we don't know anything. My information comes from brief snippets in conversations that I try to piece together and incorporate in the bigger picture of how things work based on researching the many blogs and talking to others who go before us.

Like the first step of the famous Twelve Steps, we are completely powerless over this situation. The quicker we turn control over to our Higher Power (or the adoption agency, the various governments etc.) the more graceful this journey will be. We are at the mercy of the adoption agencies, the U.S. government and the Vietnamese goverment on all levels. What they say, by and large, goes. So, we can predict with accuracy what has already happened but cannot say with any degree of certainty what lies ahead. There are so many unknowns, so many variables, and so many possiblities. We pray we come out of this exercise, a meditation of sorts, with a happy, healthy and bright infant.

Did you know, for example, that it's not uncommon for the adoptive parents to meet the birth parents or birth grandparents at the highly emotional Giving and Receiving Ceremony?? That would be absolutely unheard of and nearly impossible in Korea. It doesn't always happen but it does happen. In fact, the family I've been following religiously in their blog lately (http://lucmaisie.blogspot.com) had such an experience. While it is scary, the opportunity to meet our new baby's family is incredible and one we bow to with honor and gratitude. I haven't heard anything about lasting relationships being formed (this whole program is so new) but to even be able to give our child a photograph and share the story - however small - of how we met is an unbelievable gift to anyone who doesn't know their birth parents. (Believe me, I know this from experience.)

So, now we wait. And wait. And wait. There's no shortage of things to do before the delicate balance of our contented nuclear family gets predictably knocked off kilter only to re-balance and right itself again. I read through these adoption blogs and people are so excited about becoming parents that they've had their nurseries set up and decorated a year before they even get their referral. That is blind faith and I admire them. Knowing us, Tom will be putting the crib together the night before we leave for Vietnam, probably mumbling something about "Can't this wait til we get home?" I suppose part of that can be attributed to the fact that this is Baby #2 and the vibe is more mellow than when Max arrived. Not because we aren't excited. It just seems like the time to be excited hasn't struck yet.

And while we wait, we are getting totally pumped up to hit the road again. We love to travel and the promise of going to Southeast Asia once again fills our travel-hungry souls with excitement. The smell of adventure and the unknown is just around the corner and we are psyched!