What's so frustrating about the tax credit?

Let me clarify before I start my rant. I am BEYOND grateful for the first time homebuyer's tax credit...especially since we're buying a house this year!!! The problem comes in because it's almost a tease. In less than a year, we'll receive $8000. But we can't have it now.
We found a house that I think is perfect. It has the potential to be a house we live in forever. All the other houses we've found in our price range we will grow out of in a couple of years. This house could grow with us. It has a loft that we could make into a 4th bedroom if we needed. It has a huge backyard and it's in a great neighborhood. I truly feel our family would have a great life in this house.
Here's the problem. We made an offer last night and they countered today at 157. The highest we can go, according to our mortgage guy, is 152. I don't think they'll come down that far. I want (soooo badly) to go back with even just 154. Just 2-3K more than what we can do. That's where the tax credit teases us. We WILL HAVE 8K more dollars in less than a year. But we could use it more NOW!
We can't borrow a couple thousand dollars from the bank because that would then make less we could afford in the mortgage. But the money is RIGHT THERE, dangling in front of me. We just can't have it yet. Why can't I have some really rich relative that would loan us the money? We're good for it...you know next spring we'll get the 8K! Heck, I'd pay them interest if we could just have it NOW.
Yes, I know, I'm horrible at waiting. I am probably the most impatient person I know, so this isn't helping. I just emailed our mortgage guy to find out if we put down 6500 instead of the mandatory 3.5%, would that help us much? I doubt it will but I figured it was worth finding out.
Next month I also get the last installment of my sign-bonus. (I know, can you believe I've been working in the real world for almost a year now!!! Time flies!) But I don't want to count on that too much because taxes kill those bonuses. This will be a bigger installment, but the last couple have seemed pretty small after taxes so I don't want to get my hopes up.
What makes everything worse is being shot down. You start to invision yourself in the house...walking the dog at night and meeting neighbors and all of that. Looking out the window into the backyard yesterday I swear I saw my kids chasing the dog around. Like my brother said tonight, you can't help but do it. And you want to be thinking positively, but it makes it hurt even worse when it doesn't happen.
That'll be the end of my rant tonight. In the meantime, if you find a couple thousand dollars on the sidewalk, please keep us in mind. :-)