Joy and Grief

I couldn't be happier to announce that we received a referral for a 7 month old boy last Tuesday, on March 30th. It was late in the afternoon. Daniel and I had just returned home from a walk, and I went upstairs to finish my work. I had been having problems with my work phone earlier in the morning, so was running behind and still had lots of patients to contact. I remember looking at my cell phone and it was almost 4pm, and thought to myself... 'I guess they won't be calling us today'. Maybe 5 or 10 minutes later, my phone is ringing and who is on the caller ID, but Holt. I couldn't believe it.

I answered the phone, and our social worker says hi to me, but then a pause. Gosh, they shouldn't even use a standard greeting. When the phone is answered they should just blurt out 'we have a referral for you'. The few seconds of suspense is mind boggling. I asked her if she had news for us and she said something like is " Yes, is Daniel around?" My response, something like "Who...what?". "Daniel", she says. I think, oh yeah Daniel, my husband, and say, "He is downstairs, let me go down there". As I announce down the stairs and hallway, "You'll never believe who is on the phone!". He kind of already knew, as he had just checked his messages and had a message from our social worker to call her back. He was actually on hold with the front desk, waiting for our social worker, while I was on the phone with her.

We were breathless as we listened to the information she had to give us, and heart broken to hear the details of his life so far. I had read/heard from other parents, that they had not been prepared for the grief they felt upon receiving a referral. So, I had been trying to prepare myself, but to no avail. The grief hit me harder then I expected. We were, and still are, very sad to think of what our boy has had to lose, and what he will continue to lose in the coming months. (And we know there are millions of children with similar stories around the world.) But he will gain...he will gain a loving family, lots of nutrition, health care, a good education, and lots of opportunities...and did I already say lots and lots of love and nurturing.

After all of this, which took a couple hours to process and be able to function again mildly. I had to go back to work. I couldn't see how I would ever be able to concentrate on work again. But this week, I think I have my concentration back. It's back to work, back to the gym, back to cleaning out the closets in the baby room, back to cleaning out and organizing our nest, and back to waiting.

Now we wait for a court date in Ethiopia, and hope and pray that everything is in order for this date, so we can pass court on the first time. We are not legally his parents until the case gets approved in the Ethiopian court system.

Another Mini Milestone

Today we received our appointments to get fingerprinted for immigration. It might not seem that exciting to most of the world, but if you're in the process of adopting internationally, or have adopted before, it's exciting to check these types of things off the list and get closer to being able to bring a child home. These fingerprints are used by immigration services in the department of homeland security, to approve our application to bring a child into the country .

Adding to our Family!!!!!

Daniel and I have been in the process of adopting a child from Ethiopia for several months. Well, sometimes it seems like a few years. It was about two years ago, April 2008, that we seriously started looking into international adoption and having conversations with adoption agency's. That summer, as we were contemplating international adoption, we had the opportunity to buy my great grandmothers house in another city and decided to move about 3 hours away and buy our first house. We spent the summer, fall, and winter buying the house and working on fixing the house up. In the Spring of 2009, we started thinking about adopting from Ethiopia again (we never really stopped thinking about it), and again started talking with adoption agency's.

We finally decided to work with Holt International Children's Services, which is the agency that Daniel's parents used to adopt their daughter, my wonderful sister-in-law. We applied to Holt's Ethiopia Program on August 28, 2009. September 5th we got an introduction call from Holt and a few days later the first packet full of paperwork we had to start filling out.

It took us a few months to get all the homestudy requirements together, as I was distracted in the fall by taking a statistics class at PSU. Plus, it was all a little overwhelming. We were able to turn in all our paperwork at the start of 2010, and got our homestudy completed in February. A few days after our homestudy was approved, we turned in our dossier to Holt on March 9th, which was approved and sent on to Washington D.C. for further processing.

A few days after being officially placed on the waitlist for a child referral, there were rumors and news that Ethiopia was going to start requiring two trips to the country for adoptions. Previously Ethiopia had been a "one trip country", only requiring travel after the official court process. The trip is to, of course, meet your child and bring them home, but also to be at the Embassy in Ethiopia for the child's visa appt. This two trip talk from the Ethiopian High Court, is to have prospective adoptive parents come to Ethiopia and meet their child prior to the court processing, and state that they do indeed want to adopt the child. Then, the parents would return a couple months later for the visa appointment with the embassy and to bring the child home. There are many other countries that require parents to make two trips to the country for adoption, so it's not unusual. But, it was definitely shocking news. This would/will add, probably, $5,000 onto the cost of our already very expensive adoption process.

But, things are still up in the air regarding this new adoption rule. And in the mean time, our agency is working very hard to process as many children and families that are ready before the new rule is instituted. When we first went on the list for a referral, I was not very hopeful that our case would be submitted to the courts in time. In the last week, though, Holt has referred many children to waiting families, and we have moved further and further down the list of waiting families. If we are offered a child referral and accept the referral, and if our dossier makes it from Washington D.C to Ethiopia in the next week to two weeks, we might just make this deadline for one trip to Ethiopia.

However it works out though, we are thrilled to be expecting a little boy!!!!!!!

Hallelujah!

They say we can pick another color for the blinds. That was such a relief to hear, as I was trying to talk myself out of strongly disliking the ones we have. Back to the drawing board...or at least to holding little two inch samples in front of the window and trying to imagine.

And, our kitchen has grown. It's amazing with the fridge out of the way! Now on to the dry wall.

Privacy

We got some bottom up, top down blinds for the big front window. We are very excited to have some privacy after a year and a half of being watched through our large front window (and, I am not one to be paranoid about this kind of thing). They were installed today. I am trying to come to terms with the color. Which is different then it was on a tiny 2 inch swatch...

Sun and Sand

Yesterday was sooo beautiful at the coast. Daniel and I had such a great day over there enjoying the sun and great views. We heard it was going to be in the mid 60's and all sunshine, so we headed on the 1 hour and 20 minute drive to Ecola State Park for a hike. We hiked from Ecola State Park Picnic Area to Indian Beach and then from Indian Beach up towards Tillamook Head. We didn't make it to Tillamook head, because we had to turn back. We had been to Tillamook Head before, but on a very foggy overcast day, when you couldn't see the view. We hiked about 4 miles around trip, not too far. Per usual lately, while at the coast we stopped at Ecola Seafood Market for some crab and clam chowder. Then we met some friends at Arcadia Beach for a camp fire and to watch the sunset.

Under Construction, 3 Weeks

I think it's been about 3 weeks, 3 1/2 weeks since Daniel starting working on the kitchen project to take half the closet from the room next door and push the fridge back into it. I am very excited to get that big fridge out of the way and into a spot of it's own. It will really open up a nice walk way through the kitchen to the back door. Daniel was sure it was going to take about a week, but I knew better. I just hope it's done sometime this summer.

Inside the closet in the computer room.

From in the kitchen..a peek into the closet.

He took down the lath and plaster in the closet first and then the other side of the wall in the kitchen. The dust was fairly well contained with the plastic.

The reinforcement...not just the wood beam, the instructor Art, too.

From the computer room into the kitchen.
It's nice to have more then one way in and out of the kitchen.

From the kitchen. You can see the door on the right (back behind the fridge) that goes into the computer room, and of course the door on the left that goes into the hall and the computer room.