Moving on up...slowly

I just got off the phone with our adoption specialist. She emailed me this morning to find out if we're switching to adopting 2 rather than 1, as we had discussed this with her a couple weeks ago. I know we're crazy, but also in love with parenting and so touched by the number of orphans out there. As of now, we're sticking with 1. She gave me the news that a referral for a baby girl went out yesterday, so the list should be moving up sometime soon (not officially until the family accepts the referral, which they have 2 weeks to do). I'll post when we're officially moved up. Exciting, but everytime we rejoice in being 1 step closer to our baby, a birthmother and whole birth family mourn the loss of their little angel to a country and a family unknown. What a world and what a process! A part of me has wondered (probably the impatient part of me who's excited to see my new baby) if we should have stayed on the baby boy list, as we would be like #1 on that list now and I LOVE BOYS! The boy list is 9 long right now but typically moves faster, so I talked to our agency about adding us to that list too. I told her I would let her know next week, but she reminded me to really search my soul if I'm set on parenting a daughter next. I do think little Issa is already a part of our family, so we will probably just stay on the girl list. But oh how I love boys too! In this waiting time, we are getting new carpet and prepping the boys to move rooms. We were going to have them share a room, but after some additional research and talking to others, I think we'll wait until Kendall (our daughter from China) gets here to let them share. I'm not up for sleepless nights or nap times with them waking each other, so hopefully that won't happen so much if they're older. We're learning about Issa's culture, Melissa Fay Greene's There Is No Me Without You is great if you want to join in learning about Ethiopia with us. We have a cute book about China Adoption for children called I Love You Like Crazy Cakes which prompted Dylan to ask if we could bring Kendall's nannies home from China with us so she won't miss them. His empathy is touching and could also be the root of much anxiety in his future...another psychologist? :) Hope all of you are well and looking forward to the holidays.

Dossier in Ethiopia

I just got an email stating our dossier arrived in Ethiopia on Wednesday! It will now start the translation process.

Dossier to Ethiopia

Our dossier left the US for Ethiopia on Friday, October 17! I still haven't heard from USCIS about rescheduling our fingerprint appt. The waitlists are really increasing: there are now 8 people waiting for boys and 13 waiting for girls! We are still #8.

#8

Well, we are now #8 on the waiting list...one step closer to our little Issa. Unfortunately it was not due to a referral. One of the families decided they needed to put their adoption on hold because of the economy.

Sweet Baby Issa

Well, today has been exciting and frustrating. I got word last night that many people with my agency thought yesterday several referrals would come out (meaning several parents would see pictures of their children for the 1st time). But the agency had a power outage, so it closed yesterday. Then the thought was that SURELY today we would see some excitement. This afternoon I got an email from the agency, but it was not about referrals. It did say that our dossier was sent to Washington, DC today to be authenticated by the Ethiopian embassy, so that's cool. Maybe referrals tomorrow... Since I feel let down with no referrals to report today, I'll post some other exciting news from a couple weeks ago. :)

September 28, 2008
I loved the name Isa before we even decided to adopt from Ethiopia. I had talked about that name as a possibility for our second daughter after Kendall. After we decided to adopt from Ethiopia, Justin said he would like our daughter to have an African name. I liked that idea as well. After about a week of looking at Ethiopian/African names, today I saw for the first time that Issa (pronounced ee-SAH like Isa) is Swahili for “God is our salvation.” HOW PERFECT! Justin loves it too. We can’t wait to meet our darling daughter. Oh yes, I guess we’ve decided on a little girl.

USCIS & Timing until our daughter

A couple updates...

We got our fingerprint invitations from USCIS today, but they were scheduled for a time when we'll be out of town. So we'll have to reschedule, and I don't know how that will affect timing.

Now, as far as our wait for our little girl. Today I emailed with the wonderful woman from our agency. I was talking with her about the age of our baby when we get the referral. Right now we are listed for a baby girl under 12 months. If we want to decrease the age, this would increase the wait time. If we leave the age as is (which I think we're leaning towards, even though it kills me to think of missing over a year of her life), it is thought it will probably be 5-6 months until our referral and 3-4 months until we go to pick her up. So I am thinking maybe 10 months until we hold our little girl (August 2009) - a little longer than a pregnancy. We pray for her every night at dinner. It is touching to think each day that this might be the day my daughter is being born into the world. I pray for her and her birth parents. Tonight Dylan asked if I have his sisters in my tummy. I explained that we are adopting them and how Daddy and I will go on an airplane to pick them up. He said he thought his sister would be bigger than him. Then he said "she will be my friend." Justin and I melted.

My Womb has Expanded!

Yesterday I heard from our agency that there was one date issue on the homestudy, but other than that the dossier was complete. I was so happy to find out today that we will not have to redo the homestudy, sooooooo.........dossier is complete AND we are officially #9 on the waitlist for our baby girl. Now my womb is also in Ethiopia!

Dossier is Safe!

Our dossier is safe in Colorado at our agency! YAY!

Please sign this petition

Originally, families in-process to adopt were to be under the old rules prior to Hague Accreditation. Now there are some glitches that must be ironed out. This link is to a petition that is circulating for the purpose of putting pressure on the USCIS and Dept. of State to follow the law and NOT make current adoptive families that are in process/waiting to adopt (paperwork already in the system) transition to Hague adoption case format/requirements. Ethiopia is not a Hague country. However, this applies to our China adoption as we applied right before April 2008 and before Hague. Please send this petition link to anyone you know who is a registered voter and is willing to help. http://www.gopetition.com/online/22112.html

Dossier

It's off!!! :) After a frustrating week of having to redo a bunch of stuff due to notary dates, the dossier is in the mail! Max and I went to Kinko's to copy it this morning, and then we went to the post office. My agency should have it by noon Monday. If all is good (fingers crossed!), then we should officially be on the waiting list next week. When I talked to the agency yesterday, there were still 6 on the list waiting for baby girls and 3 on the list waiting for baby boys. No referrals lately, but supposedly the courts in Ethiopia reopen October 1st, and then we should see some movement. The director of our agency is currently in Ethiopia. We'll find out when she comes back next week if they're adding a 3rd orphanage to our agency. We plan to have a great weekend knowing the dossier is done, done, done (hopefully). :)

Check out this website

Everything came really easy for this dossier collection! I hope the rest of the process goes this smoothly. Tomorrow I will go to my county to get documents certified. Wednesday I plan to get my homestudy, get it certified in another county, get everything certified at the Secretary of State, then it's off to the post office!!! I will let everyone know when we get our number on the waiting list! :) Check out the following website. It's such a cool creation and very close to my heart since this is 1 of the 2 orphanages our baby will come from. http://www.change4orphans.com/

LID!!!

Yesterday I got the news!!! Our offical LID (the date we got onto China's waiting list for a child match) is 9-10-08. September 10, 2008 - I have to say it again to believe it - a date I've been waiting for forever!

We are also diligently working on our dossier for our son or daughter from Ethiopia! :) I got our dossier packet from our agency Monday night and stayed up until midnight (even though I had to work Tuesday) working on stuff. I tried to stop several times, but I just couldn't. My excitement had me all geared up. Everything is almost ready - it's very different now that it's my second time around because it feels a little less overwhelming. It doesn't hurt that we're able to use our physicals and stuff from our China adoption since the physical was less than a year ago. Plus the Ethiopia dossier is much less intense! I'm just waiting on: my wonderful references to notarize their letters (you 3 are awesome - thank you!), my doctor to notarize his letter (which he said would be done Monday or Tuesday), the CPA to finish our employment verification letters (should be done this week), and the bank to provide their letter (which should be done the end of this week). Our agency got our homestudy yesterday. They will review it by next week. So, hopefully we'll be sending in the complete dossier within a couple weeks. The great thing is that we can be on the waitlist for Ethiopia before the 171-H (called I-797 in GA) comes. For those of you not in adoption lingo...this is the form from US Immigration which often takes a long time to get in GA (took over 4 months for them to give us for China adoption). In order to get the referral for our Ethiopian child, we need the I-797, but we can send in our dossier and move up on the waitlist without it. This could make a big difference in time until our referral. Right now there are 6 people on the waiting list for girls and 3 people on the list for boys. My agency said if we continue to leave our application open to either sex, it will likely be a baby boy. We planned to let God decide the sex again, but hmmmm.......I would really like to buy some girl clothes (or borrow them from all of you with girls). :) We'll see..... :) Here is the link to my agency's blog with some great pictures of some of the new babies who are already home!!! http://ianfamily.blogspot.com/ (How could I NOT want a girl looking at that?!) :) This is a link to a video that inspired me and got us looking into Ethiopia - I'm SO glad I saw it! http://www.allgodschildren.org/about/videos/ (Click on the 4th video down that says "AGCI - Hannah's Hope Ethiopia")

My womb is in China

We have had an exciting day in our adoption journey! Here are some highlights so far:

February 15, 2007 - Information Seminar with our agency
August 29, 2007 – Agency application approved!
November 10, 2007 – Agency orientation (learn about how to complete our dossier)
November 19, 2007 – 1st meeting with our social worker for our home study
December 13, 2007 – 2nd meeting with our social worker
January 17 & 18, 2008 – got our blood work done
April 10, 2008 – Fingerprints taken with USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services)
August 16, 2008 – Got I-797 (approval to adopt from China) from USCIS!
August 29, 2008 – Dossier sent to main agency office for translation
September 5, 2008 – Dossier mailed to China!
September 8, 2008 – Our agency representative in China hand delivered our dossier to CCAA (the China Center of Adoption Affairs)!!!

YAY!!! It is SO exciting to think that our dossier (all of our family photos & all of the papers I’ve been gathering for the past year, filled with the hopes of our future daughter) is now in China, across the world. It is thrilling. I just told Justin my womb is in China!