Today is September 13. That means our HIV waiver has now (hopefully!) been submitted as planned to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa. It means our final wait is finally ticking down. It means that Belane will finally be in our arms in the foreseeable future. Woo hoo!

I am excited and anxious. I take comfort (and keep myself busy!) by organizing and planning, so I have been doing lots of that sort of stuff.

I think it is the “not knowing” when this is all going to happen that is making me anxious. We were planning on the waiver taking about eight to nine weeks, and have tickets on hold (but not yet paid for) to travel in that time frame.

Then we heard from someone who just had an HIV waiver processed for his daughter, and he was told at the Embassy in June that they had hired someone new to work on nothing but the waivers (and that that woman had been adopted as a child and was on “our side”) and that they were working hard to lower the time frame on waiver processing for adoptions.

She told him he should expect his to be complete in TWO TO FOUR WEEKS! Now before you all go getting your hopes up for me, his ended up taking 10 weeks. Apparently the new woman, the only woman who could process his waiver in the final step, was out of the office for 4-5 weeks. And such is the roller coaster of international adoptions.

So, I am certainly not holding my breath, but it is sort of exciting to know that there is a possibility of shaving a month (or more??) off of our waiting time.

My thoughts go something like this… “Woo hoo! That waiver could actually be approved a whole month earlier than we are thinking!” “How awesome would it be to get Belane that much earlier?” “I wonder how fast we’ll be able to get out of here if we find out that the waiver is done early.” “There is a lot of planning to do.” “I am sick of waiting.” “I hate not knowing what to expect.” “I need to go clean something and re-write my packing list for the 12th time.”

Every where we go people ask when we are going to get Belane. I DON'T KNOW!!!!

I am going to email the embassy tonight and see if they will give me a “guesstimate” on when to expect the waiver to be done. I’ll let you know what we find out. :)

Oh, and we just got this picture. She is being held by a friend's daughter, who I have cut out of the picture for privacy. This was right before they re-shaved her sweet little head, and if you look carefully you can see her very first braids. So cute!!!