Court Date!

We just found out our court date is October 19! This will be a very short 3-4 day trip. We will meet our daughter and go to court to accept the referral and fly home. We are traveling with four other families so it will be fun to share the experience with them. If we pass court on the 19th then we will return a few weeks later to pick her up, process her visa and bring her home. That trip will be a little longer, probably about a week.

Last night we had the visit from our social worker to update our homestudy report. The best part of the evening was when she asked the boys if they are excited to have a baby sister. Nick responded with "yeah, now mom won't be the only one wearing a shirt at the dinner table." It's possible we've gotten a little lax with our dining dress code during the warmer summer months...

Next Steps

We can't believe it's been three weeks since we got our referral! With our referral we only received two pictures of our baby girl but yesterday we received nine more pictures. With each new picture we feel closer to her and like we can see more of her personality. This whole process can be very confusing so I will attempt to answer the question, what happens next?

The courts in Ethiopia close for the rainy season which is usually the beginning of August until the end of September. We do not anticipate receiving a court date before the courts close.

For the meantime, the baby is at the transition home run by our agency. We have asked other families who are traveling to pick up their children to take pictures for us.

Hopefully in the next month we will find out what our scheduled court date is for when the courts reopen in October.

Once we have our court date we will travel to Ethiopia, meet our daughter and go to court. We are only in Ethiopia for 3-4 days. Hopefully all goes well with court and the adoption is approved. If not, court gets rescheduled but we do not have to appear again.

A few weeks after we "pass court", we will travel back to Ethiopia to pick up our daughter, process her visa and bring her home! That trip will be approximately 7 days long.

So for now there isn't much we can do except for wait. We are also reading books about parenting adopted children and specifically on bonding. I just read the section on sleeping and how the bedtime routine is so important. We've always had a fairly consistent bedtime routine in our house and it makes me wonder what her bedtime routine has been? I can't wait to be able to hold her and read her stories and comfort her when she is upset. Basically to have those special little bonding moments that we have with our children every day.

Run! Father Run!

I'm a bit behind but obviously the unexpected call that we received our referral last week threw everything out of orbit!

For Father's Day Pete and Nick ran in a 5k event. Nick has run in several kids runs but this was his first 5k. We had done a few practice runs and he was very excited to run this event with his dad on Father's Day.

As Noah and I waited at the finish line, I was reminded about much I love this sport. It's hard to believe that running hasn't always been a part of our lives. Pete decided to run his first marathon in memory of Jack on the first anniversary of when we lost him and then a few years later I started running. Now to have our children be able to participate and get excited about running in events is so fun. I used to laugh that people would pay money to run in an event. I was confused on how there could be whole magazines about running. I mean really, put right foot in front of left, repeat, how hard is that? But now here we are, a family of runners, who would have guessed!

The Call!

We are finding out that adoption is similar to just about everything else having to do with creating and raising your family, there are often things that take you by suprise! As mentioned in my last post, we were #4 on the list. I was telling people we could get the call that day, in a week or in two months but really I was thinking at least a month or two. Since we were so close Pete and I talked about how we wanted to receive the call. We agreed that if I was at work that we would have a conference call to receive the news and then I would come home so we could see the picture together for the first time.

I was at work on Thursday and I saw Pete come on instant messenger and a second later my phone rings. I don't recognize the number and for a second I wondered if it could be "the call" but then dismissed the idea because it would be highly unlikely that they would have receive four more referrals after receiving five earlier in the week. Well, it was our adoption consultant and I practically yelled "Why are you calling me!?" She said she had Pete on the other line and I just lost it and started to cry. I kicked off my shoes (not sure why but couldn't handle my shoes at that moment) and was pacing around my office in total shock while she told us about our daughter. She is 15 1/2 months old and the reason we were offered the referral is because we recently increased our age from under 12 months to under 18 months.

After we got off the phone with our adoption consultant Pete called me right away and I told him I was about to head out the door. Well, he had a doctors appt in half an hour (as part of our immigraton paperwork renewal) and so I would have to wait until he got home. I told him I couldn't wait so I turned my computer back on and we waited for the email to come through and opened it at the same time. We only received two pictures but some other families are traveling soon so we can request for them to take more pictures for us.

Pete went off to his doctors appointment and was nervous when they took his blood pressure because he was so excited. When he got home we went to pick up the boys and we went out to dinner to celebrate and to tell them. When we told them that the agency had called and they had found our baby sister Noah got excited and said "Where!?" and was looking around the restaurant! Still a difficult concept for a three year old I guess. All night he kept saying "We have to go get our baby sister!" Believe me, we feel the same way. But, it's most likely that we will get a court date after the courts reopen in October. So, for now we are thrilled to have received our referral and we look forward to receiving more pictures. And while she can't be home with us we know she is at the transition home for our agency where from all accounts of previous travelers, the staff are wonderful and love the child dearly.

Waiting

Warning: Long post with no pictures


I love to read other adoption blogs. I love reading posts about the excitement of the referral calls and trips to Ethiopia but also appreciate when people share the challenges of attachment, feelings of post adoption depression or just challenges with adoption in general. Those posts help to keep us grounded that adoption is not just all sunshine and rainbows but in reality is a difficult journey but hopefully one that is very rewarding and fulfilling as well. I appreciate it when other adoptive parents can share their joys and challenges and "keep it real".

So, while I will do my best to keep it real, I must warn that I am actually overall a fairly positive person. I can usually "talk" myself into seeing the positive side of things.

So, where the heck is she going with this you may ask. Referrals. For the last month there haven't been any referrals and we have been stuck at #7. As much as we eagerly await the call to introduce us to our daughter, at least through a description and pictures, I can talk myself into being patient for a few reasons. First off, a few of our close friends are going through some big difficult life events. Seeing their struggles as we try to support them reminds us that waiting a few more days, weeks or even months is not such a bad thing in light of what they are experiencing. Another reason is that I always feel a little guilty "wishing" for referrals. In an ideal world the children would not be in orphanages waiting to be adopted but rather they would be raised by their parents who were healthy and able to care for them. For our wish to come true it means another family has to experience heartache and that's certainly not something I wish for. And lastly, whether or not we are patient it will happen when it happens and there's nothing we can do to change that.

So, all the jibber jabber above describes my head. My heart often has thoughts of its own but my head can usually convince my heart to settle down and be patient. Then yesterday there were three infant girl referrals making us #4 on the list! And yes, my heart took off racing with anticipation.

Introducing - Nick the First Grader!

Last week Nick finished up his first year of grade school and is now officially a first grader! The top picture is him on his first day of school last August and the bottom picture is him with his wonderful kindergarten teacher. I feel that we really got the best teacher of the group of kindergarten teachers so I can only hope we are so lucky next year.

Nick will continue at the extended day care on the school campus throughout the summer in their camp program. The new crop of kindergarteners have arrived at the summer program so he officially feels like a first grader now.