Paperwork Pregnant :)

We are FINALLY there! All our paperwork is now in Russia! According to our adoption 'internet chat world' we will go through four stages as follows:
*Hunting & Gathering (the stage where you are gathering all the paperwork to make up your dossier)
*Paperwork Pregnant (paperwork done, registered in region and waiting for a referral)
*Something Related to Starbucks (have travel dates to meet child(ren), or are in between trips)
*Graduate/Gottcha (court done and you have your child(ren))

It feels like we were 'hunting & gathering' forever, and I am tickled to be moving on to the next category. Now we wait for 'the call' telling us we have an appointment in Russia. When people say they waited 6 months for a referral, that means that they waited 6 months from when they were registered in region. We have friends who also are adopting from Russia (different region than us) who just waited only two months... I only hope things will go like that for us, but not likely.

Again, I think this stage...actually all stages, are tough. A telemarketer called the other day and the phone showed 'Ontario' as the caller and my first thought was "maybe its our agency calling to tell us we have a date to be in Russia". And this only a few days after being registered - I can only imagine how crazy I'll be in 9 months! Anyways, finally being registered is GOOD NEWS! I am certainly happy not to have paperwork to do at present, or to be waiting 'endlessly' for documents from the AB gov't. Now we wait for Russia, and that's one step closer than where we were a week ago!