Jamaican Contact

I started calling Jamaica on Wednesday to find out if there was a match possible for us. Wednesday I was given another number to call either Thursday or Friday. I called the new number on Thursday and was told my contact was out all day, try again Friday. I called again today (Friday) and was able to speak to my contact! I confirmed we are interested in a child age 2 to 8, no older than 8, we have no preference on gender and that my email address was in our Pre-Approval Application. She said she will look into our case then email me if there is a potential match. I figure I will still need to call weekly until we do get a match as the matching process can take months. Only God knows who our child is and when we will find out about him/her.

One of my co-workers had a dream we adopted a tiny Jamaican infant which I brought to work every day and we all took turns caring for it for an hour. Ha! Ha! Mike and I agree - no babies. There may be some truth, though, in that dream. Our child may be a small Jamaican baby now, but we may not be matched until the child is older. Our child may be a petite Jamaican child. We do not know. We will not know until we are matched either through Jamaica or through DSHS.

I am contemplating buying some school supplies this month now that they are on sale just because all elementary school-aged children need a backpack, paper, pencils, crayons, erasors, tissues, lunch box, pencil box, calculator and peechees/folders. These can be stored until needed next year or the year after or the year after and we can purchase some a little at a time. I will be attending the school's back-to-school BBQ the day before school begins to meet other parents and some of the teachers. I want to become a familiar face before we even have children.

I am working to touch bases with more adoptive mothers to get information, find support, laugh, cry and find commraderie. Parenthood is not easy, but adoption tends to through some extra twists into the crazy ride and it helps to have others who know how to survive those twists.

The coming twelve months is going to be full of surprises, frustrations, joys and sorrows; just as the past twelves months contained all these.