Almost Five

Good news and bad news

We were thrilled to have our homestudy written and ready for submission earlier this week. The homestudy process can be lengthy and we feel like we got through it this time fairly quickly. But then, our social worker called this morning to tell me that my fingerprints had been rejected and I need to redo them. This isn't uncommon, although it does make the process take that much longer. I wish the government agencies would switch to electronic fingerprinting, and then share that information between agencies. The paper fingerprinting takes a long time and is one of the many redundancies in adoption.

When I spoke with our social worker this morning, she also said that we should get to work on our dossier paperwork soon because the wait for toddler boys is "short." I don' know if that means that there are ten families waiting ahead of us or zero. Yikes! Our timeframe of coming home sometime near spring break might be significantly shortened. That news is exciting but certainly not expected.

When I was pregnant I signed up for a weekly update with information about each stage of my pregnancy (i.e. your baby now has ears or his/her lungs have formed etc). I couldn't wait for those updates and even though those updates kept me really distracted when I was at work, there was something reassuring about the certain path of development. Adoption is the opposite, if it were an email, it would say something like, "Your babies ears were there, but have now disappeared and you have to wait for new ones to grow and we don't know for sure how long that will take." The one thing that is growing is my ability to be patient.

Fun Weekend

Friday night we went to our friends' house for dinner (they have 6 kids, three bio and three adopted). Their house guests were a family we all met when we traveled to adopt our 4 year old. They have two bio kids and two adopted. Then there was our family. So 12 kids for three families! I love seeing the kids who we met and remember very clearly from our time in Ethiopia. One little guy, who was a baby is now a gorgeous three year old who was hugging and kissing everyone at the end of the night. All the kids were well behaved and excited to be together. I'm not sure if the kids remember each other 2 1/2 years later, but just the idea that they will grow up knowing each other and sharing a similar history is cool.

If we all get together again next year we will presumably have 16 kids altogether. That's one pregnancy and three more adoptions in the works. Sheesh!

We're not criminals!

Yay! I found out today that our fingerprints and backgrounds checks are all cleared and back with our agency social worker. This means that our homestudy paperwork is done. The clearances came back quickly, we have friends who waited three months for their clearances, ours took about 7 weeks.

After our homestudy report is written and approved by the agency director, we then have more fingerprints for the state department and we have to put our dossier together. The dossier goes to the Ethiopian government and once that is accepted we will officially be waiting for a referral.

So still a long way to go, but it's great to have progress!

cool news

We know of two families who are also considering adopting. There's a strong possibility that if they adopt, our kids will have been at the same care center in Ethiopia together and then will be growing up together in Colorado. Our 4 year old has friends who she knew when she was in Ethiopia and I hope we have the same experience for our son. This weekend a family we know from when we adopted our 4 year old is visiting with good friends of ours here in Colorado, who also adopted their son at the same time. It will be really cool to see all the kids together and see how much they've grown. This is one of the many unexpected joys of adopting - the families we now know who we would not have met if we hadn't adopted.

waiting

I've traded sleeping for lying awake thinking about our little guy. It's really cool to know that somewhere out there is a little boy and we're going to be his parents. If I see an Ethiopian man, I can't help but wonder if he resembles our little guy, and then picture him bringing home his laundry in 20 years. It's fun to daydream about, but scary at the same time. The only part I really worry about is going places with three kids, surely plenty of people have three or more kids and manage just fine, but I already feel like I spend a good amount of time saying, "Please, don't touch that!"

Right now, we're finished with the homestudy visits and we're just waiting for our background clearances to come back from the state. Once those are back (which should be any day) then our social worker will write our homestudy. After the homestudy is written, we submit our dossier to the Ethiopian government and then we wait for our federal background checks. After all that, we wait for our agency to call us with a referral.

I've had a few people ask if we have a choice when it comes to our referral, and the answer is no. The agency representative in Ethiopia reads the dossier and homestudy and then matches us to a child. Then the agency calls us with the information about the child (age, background, medical reports, and a photo). But we're still a long way away from this part and are still in paperwork limbo.

Homestudy meeting #2 today!

I'm really happy that we're making some progress! Today we have our second home study meeting and it looks like we've gathered all but one or two things we need for our paperwork. I'm hoping we can schedule another home study meeting for next week. Our fingerprints haven't come back from CBI or the FBI, so our social worker can't write the report until we have those clearances. Overall it seems like things are moving along and I have my fingers crossed that the government bureaucracy doesn't take too long.

Baby Showers

This post is not in reference to me, but to the people out there who know someone who is bringing home their first child through adoption.

People who are adopting like to have baby showers just like people who are giving birth! I know a few single adoptive moms who have friends, families and coworkers who never thought to throw them a baby shower. It might be because the timeline is an unknown in adoption, or people don't have the visual reminder of the big belly to let them know that this person is about to become a parent. The people I know who have been passed over for this celebration are usually hurt and feel that their adoption isn't as exciting to the people around them as maybe a sister or coworker's pregnancy.

Anyway, if you know someone who is becoming a parent through adoption, throw them a party!

Conspicuous Family

When our 4 year old first came home, I was acutely aware how we were more obvious as a family than we had been. I was used to running my errands or going to restaurants and the park without having people look at us. Sometimes the look was a positive smile as if to say, "Hey, I'm a liberal Boulder-ite, and your family make-up is acceptable to me." Sometimes there was the vacuous stare from a young adult as if they were trying to figure out how we all came together, and very rarely the look of disapproval from someone.

Over time I've gotten used to being more conspicuous and it never really bothers me anymore, with the exception of the dreaded park encounter. For some reason, people think that because my daughter looks different than the rest of our family, that they have an invitation to discuss and comment on her history and our adoption. This happens most often at the park. Someone might say something like, "Where is your daughter from?" which I like to answer with the incredibly obtuse, "Our house." Or the universal shut down, "Why do you ask?" I don't like to talk about her background and life to strangers, it's weird and she should feel that there is some measure of protection from me when others feel the need to pry into her life.

Yesterday, at the dentist, as I was lying with my jaw hung open in the can't answer what the dentist is asking position, my dentist said that she could never adopt internationally because she'd be afraid that the baby would have been, "Stolen from someone." Uhh, hello?! Do you know that I'm right here?! Are you implying that my daughter was stolen? Do I now have to defend our adoption and her life history by revealing her story, or do I keep my mouth *open* and just let her have her opinion?

In any case, it is now a part of our lives that others feel that they are entitled to know more about us because there's more that is apparent without ever talking to us. It is hard for a chatty person like me to keep her story private, but I think it is a story for her to decide when and how to share when she's older than 4.

Form VS. Function

My parents drove a variety of cars during the time I was growing up that were perfect for hauling kids around and driving carpool etc. My favorite was the VW bus, my mom took out the middle seat and we would sit on the floor, or pretend we were surfing while she tried to get air on the "bumpity-bumps." My parents also had the giant station wagon with a way back. The cool thing about the way back was that the rear window could go down, so if you sat back there you could inhale all the carbon monoxide you wanted and you were perfectly positioned to shoot out that window like a missile if you were rear-ended. We were in a carpool for a few years where parents would run outside and stack kids in each others cars without any thought of seatbelts or front row etc.

Anyway, fast forward to a more safety conscious era and the vehicle chioces are much more limited than the glory days of the 70's. Apparently there are two options:

1) Soulless, uninspiring minivan
2) Gas guzzling monstrosity designed for pulling horse trailers

I would like to be on an advisory panel for a company to design a car for parents who would like to cling to the hope that they might still be cool. The ideal car would look like a small SUV on the outside (Q5) and it would defy dimension and be like a small family room inside, like the bottle in "I Dream of Jeanie)." I cannot believe that self-vacuuming seats have not been invented yet. Also, All-wheel-drive and possibly a hybrid or TDI engine. The car should not be available in beige, seafoam green or white. It should also be affordable and have a sporty interior free of plastic burled walnut. I can't wait for this car to hit production, because in the meantime it looks like I'll be driving a minivan.

Homestudy and Other Digging

Part of adopting is the highly invasive part called the home study. With our last adoption, we already knew our social worker, so the part where she came to our house and checked out all of our stuff wasn't so bad. This time, we met our social worker as she arrived at our house on Saturday. People have different ideas of what is funny, but generally jokes about taking my kids away make me feel uncomfortable. Four hours also seems lengthy for our first visit, but I just kept smiling and hoping the kids would behave. I also didn't know that she would interview our kids without having us present, they seem a little young for this, but what am I going to do, say no? In the end, she was pleasant and the visit was fine, but having a person I've never met evaluate us, our home and our children ranks up there as top things I don't want to ever do again.

We then took a trip to the police department for fingerprinting and local background checks. It turns out neither of us is wanted criminal, at least not locally, we still have the FBI and CBI reports pending. Lucky for the kids, this is not the end of the fingerprinting, since going to places with police officers is really fun for them.