We're back!

Our blog has been silent for over a month. We have been busy in summer and are just coming down from a busy vacation to Boston and camping with the Hoogstad family in Sandbanks. Life is starting to get a little more routine. We’re getting ready for school starting for Sara, planning activities for the year and gearing up for the busy schedule of September.

The summer has flown by, which has been nice. We’ve been waiting and waiting for our documents to be returned from the Ontario ministry. What was at first expected to be a six week process has been dragging on into its fourteenth week. We’ve heard that some have taken as long as eighteen weeks but that soon the process should speed up again.

The distractions of summer have been good. We’ve been packing, unpacking, repacking, wet packing, and back yard unpacking and packing. We’ve been beaching, sight seeing, splash padding, hiking, biking, wonderfully summering.

In all this, although the adoption process is always present, it has been further in the back of our mind. And that has been good. Now that we’re returning to normal though, it’s right back there at the front and particularly now I’m feeling the pain of separation from our baby.

What sparked this feeling? We just got an email from a couple who, after waiting for over a year have received a referral. Their new baby, Benjamin, whom they will meet in just 3 short weeks was born June 1^st. He weighed 7 lbs. On Sept. 9, he will officially be their little baby boy. Our hearts rejoice with this couple, whom we’ve met but hardly know, and yet our hearts also feel a little tender; when will we hear about our little boy. When will it be our turn?

It’s twenty after midnight as I type this, and I can’t sleep because I’m longing for contact. I miss feeling the kicks of expectation. I miss having to get up to pee three times in the night. Although these pregnancy inconveniences are frustrating, uncomfortable and irritating, they are contact. They are life inside you. I think of our son lying in his crib in the baby house, or even yet in the womb, and I long to feel his existence. His presence. His life. I want to touch his skin. I want to kiss his little forehead. I want to hold him tight against me.

We wait in hope and expectation and think of a time when dreams will become real and longing will become relationship.