Artificially Sweetened

I had a witty post planned but instead you get whining

I couldn’t get the pictures for it off Pili’s camera.

Witty will come later, my friends, later.

In the meantime, does anyone know where I can make, steal, or adapt a snarky ticker?

I want one that says: number of MONTHS since our agency has sent out medical reports. 

It really really irritates me that GAL sends us emails saying “please confirm receipt of this email” and then ignores the part of our emails where we very gently ask if we can get an update on his measurements so that we can make sure we bring clothes that fit when we go to visit him. 

Also, opinions from experienced Guatemala hands are requested: given the option of spending eight days with your baby in Antigua (albeit with the caveat that you can only leave the hotel to go around the city with baby accompanied by an armed guard agency representative) or spending five/six days with baby and than a couple of days travelling – which would you do? We plan to return fairly regularly once he’s a little older, but would probably travel a little more cautiously with child than without.  For what it’s worth, we speak decent if rusty Spanish and are both pretty savvy and experienced non-first-world travellers.

I can imagine not wanting to leave him and go off and travel. I can also imagine feeling sad that I spent all my time in a hotel room and not getting to know his home a little better.

Angst.

Envy. Regret. These emotions creep up and grip me around the back of the neck when I’m not expecting them. On of the adoption groups I read, a woman just posted that she received her referral two weeks before we got ours, with the other agency that we almost used.  She just got out of PGN.

We are not even in PGN yet. We don’t have pre-approval yet. Her baby will be coming home when she is four months old.  We will be going to visit our son when he’s four months old.  And even though I know that every case is different, and I know that if we had chosen that agency, we wouldn’t be going to visit that incredible smile of the previous post, I can’t help wondering and questioning and second-guessing.  I’m surrounded by people whose babies are due in August.  And I don’t even know if my son will be home by August.  If there had been a fetus in that sac, we’d have a baby already.  I’m feeling not at all like my best self tonight.

BUT. I am taking a big step and checking off the DNA match on the sidebar, because GAL assures me that if it weren’t a match, we would have heard by now.  I’d feel better if I had that paper in my hot little hand. But. But. But. But.

I was going to try and segue from this into Photo Friday, but I think that deserves a post of its own.