Ouch!

Shots are not so much fun.

Jeff got 5 and I got 4 but one of mine counted for all 5 of Jeffs...that nasty Tetnus shot. I can't wait to enjoy a week with a throbbing arm! Really I can't. It is going to be a sweet and constant, nagging reminder of my little boy and the trip I get to make to bring him home!

Jeff: Typhoid Fever, Yellow Fever, Hep A booster, Meningococal, Polio

Brooke: Tetnus, Typhoid Fever, Yellow Fever, Meningococal

I only made out with less shots becuase I had been to Africa before...and I had lifetime Hep A, B and Polio then. Unfortunately my Tetnus, Yellow Fever and Typhoid had all expired so I had to get them once again. And fortunately for Jeff when we traveled to Thailand in 07 he has his first Hep A booster and of course Tetnus!

Here's to one more step closer to our little man!

Stuff

Well, I knew this would be the hardest time. And it is.

The wait after seeing my little boy's face is excruciating. You cannot imagine unless you have lived through it. The only other thing that has come close was wondering if he was my son for 2 weeks.

I think about him constantly. Whether it is his name, what he is doing, what time of day it is for him (i.e. is he having his dinner bottle or is someone kissing him goodnight?), what shade of blue to paint his nursery, will he be home in time for the holidays, what will Tessa think of him, how will she handle being a big sister (and losing 100% of the attention all the time), will the pained expression on his face in his referral photo be gone the next time I see him, am I the only one who thinks his face looks distressed in the photo, what size clothes will I need to bring when we go get him, will he have gained enough weight to be in the size appropriate for his age by US standards by his first birthday, does he know that there is a family out there who loves him as he sleeps alone or with a crib full of other babies on the other side of the Earth, did I make the right choice buying the infant car seat or will he be too big for it by the time we go get him, is there any chance we will make it through court closing, is this wait going to get that much harder when court closes and we have not gotten a date, how many nipples should I bring with Avent bottles with disposable liners I have decided to bring, will he nurse, will I be able to produce milk again, will the supplementer work, will we have to miss a wedding to go get him, what does his giggle sound like, what will my boss say about maternity leave, when will he get to meet his cousins, does anyone else have any idea how it is possible to fall totally and completely in love with someone you have never met? I could write a novel with the things I think about him....and it has been less than a week since I have known he would be ours.

In any case, the one good thing is that there is so much STUFF to do during this part of the wait. The last part of the wait was so fast that it didn't really matter that there was nothing to do but wait. I am going crazy with the things I have to do. Reading books, picking paint colors, transitioning Tessa to a big girl room (and stocking that room with the big girl bed, etc), buying little boy clothes, etc. I thought it would be easier because I had done it before...but this is nothing like before. I have no idea when (i.e. no due date). I don't know how old or big he will be. I am going to try something that is not set up by nature (i.e. nursing without being pregnant before and/or with having him had a bottle this whole time) to be successful. His skin and haircare will be completely different. Attachment is a whole different story with a newborn than with a 6 or even 3 month old. We have to learn about that and work hard at it. PACKING...YIKES! Picking a name...crap...we should have really done that before we had a pic...it makes it so much harder. So many questions....like how many nipples to bring so I don't have to wash them since I may not be able to anyway. In any case, I am busy. Thankfully so. And thankfully I work full time so the business on top of that really doesn't give me much time to go totally crazy waiting. Because I think I could.

I want to kiss his little cheeks. I want to hold him and tell him I love him. I want to see the expression on Tessa's face when she see's him for the first time.

So this is the stuff of waiting to go pick up your son...in case you were wondering.

And another call!!!!!!

Not the call I was expecting on the Thursday before the holiday weekend. Eugene, OR...hmmm that is where our agency is. No way. They must be calling to let us know they got the document I sent (the 171H approval that finally came).

Nope. The message I got from Jenn at Holt said she had some "information" for us and was hoping to get in touch with us before the holiday weekend.

By the time I had called Jeff to tell him we needed to get on a conference call to call Holt back ASAP, he was already on the phone with Jenn (in the midst of shock, apparently my rational though process went out the window and I forgot that when they call you with a referral they try all numbers until they can get through to someone).


It was a referral!!!!


A 3 month old little boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I don't know what else to write but !!!!!!!!!!!. We are beyond excited! The shock of that day is still fresh in my memory...the trembling, the sweating, haha...I really couldn't believe it! No matter how fast we had been moving up the wait list, we really still weren't supposed to get a referral until the fall!


So, why has it taken my 2 weeks to post, to share this amazing info? Well, typically we would have almost immediately...once you get your referral info it needs to be reviewed, looked at by a physician, etc and then you have to formally accept the referral. Well, we weren't able to formally accept our referral until this week. Because of some errors in his paperwork, we had to wait (not so patiently) for almost 2 weeks for our agency to hear back from their staff in ET with correct information. It has been an excruciating 2 weeks but finally we know that the beautiful little boy in the 2 pictures we have is our new son!!!!!!! The second call came on Tuesday, the day he turned 3 months old, after weeks of me calling our agency daily, power and Internet outages in ET, court closure date announcements, sudden closing of the Ministry of Women's Affairs in ET, etc, etc.


This week we are on vacation at the MD shore where my family has gone every year since before I was born with a number of other families. What a great place to relish in the glow of a new life, a new addition to our family, a new son, grandparents and aunts for the 4th time, parents for the 2nd time, hope for a little (very little) 3 month old boy.


We are excited to share FINALLY this news!!! I will post more when we are home and have more access to Internet about next steps but know for now know that we are elated beyond words.


And that the wait continues...it will likely be another 3 to 5 months until we can go pick our munchkin up.

The call actually came!

So I did get a call from our local USCIS guy today and our I600A has been approved!! Thank the Lord! Our approval letter was apparently going out in the mail today. You can be sure I won't hold my breath until it is in my hands.
Happy 4th!

Do you really want to know?

Ahh the joys of bureaucracy! I love the US Govt!!!!

So do you really want to know the realities of all the hoops we jump through, paperwork, glitches, bureaucracy, etc, etc for adoption? I don't post alot of this stuff because, well, its boring and frustrating and who wants to rehash boring and frustrating? Not me! But, I thought this example was a good one of some of the things that plague adoptive families on a day to day basis throughout their journey. It should give you a better idea of what we have been and will continue to go thru.

So everyone knows we are finished with our paperwork and in the waiting phase. Waiting for a referral (i.e. to be matched with a child). We we really aren't "done" with all of our paperwork. One of the pieces to the puzzle involves filing a petition to classify an orphan as a US citizen with the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Dept). Well, we filed this very important form with USCIS back in Jan...yep, you heard me right, JANUARY! Once it is filed, we are scheduled to be fingerprinted. We were fingerprinted in February. Included in the application is a copy of your Homestudy (the document written by our social worked that includes who we are, where we come from, how we parent, finances, marriage, families, home, etc, etc...basically more information about myself than I know about myself!). Fortunately the USCIS allows you to file this application (called the I600A form) and get fingerprinted before your Homestudy is complete (i.e. you have met a bunch of times with your social worked and they have written this very long document). This allows the process to go much faster and to get approval in plenty of time for the adoption. Well in the state of RI, approval happens usually within a few weeks of recieving your completed homstudy. Ours went to USCIS about 3 months ago. So you can imagine that when I had still not recieved our approval letter 2 months later, I was getting a little worried. I knew all of our paperwork was in order, I had been down to the USCIS office in providence like 4 times already (for other hoops, bureaucracy, etc that I did not and will not get into), other famalies I know adopting in the area had heard back (multiple times) from USCIS who had filed after us. Ughhhh...what was going on?

Well, I would not have been as worried....except for the small fact that we are skyrocketing up the waiting list! And the reality is that we could get a referral as soon as July! We can't go to pick up our child if we do not have this approval letter. You can image why I was getting a little antsy.

So I called our Homestudy Agency (who is great by the way, they are so helpful and have been great to work with) and they finally did some digging since we were past the normal window to hear back. Well, for weeks, we were not hearing anything....they were putting in calls to their USCIS adoption contact in RI and hearing nothing back. Again and again. UGHHHH!!! Finally after a few weeks, they got someone on the line who informed them that their contact was no longer handling the adoption paperwork. They gave our case info and were told the new person would call back. Yeah right!!! Finally I decided to take matters into my own hands, make an appointment and head down to the USCIS office in Providence.

Ahh, my favorite place to be!

Not so much.

After waiting 30 minutes past my appointment time, I was told that the man I needed to speak with was not in and of course would not be in until the middle of the following week. Could I come back then? Umm hello, I work, I have a toddler... Well fortunately the adoption guys supervisor (this nice man's name was Mike) came out to try to help me (no I didn't pitch a fit...he just did this when he was asked about) . He admited that even as a supervisor, he was not trained on the I600A form and wasn't sure he would be able to help me today but offered to do some digging in case he might find something. Well he did...the first thing he found was that they didn't have our homestudy. Now you would think that we might get notified to this fact. But no, our file with approved fingerprints was just sitting in a file waiting for said homestudy to arrive.

UGHHH!! What? I had already jumped through like 6 hoops (including previous apptmnts at USCIS) to get my homestudy added to my file. As I went to call my agency, Mike went to do even more digging. As luck would have it (well luck for that moment I guess), before I could get my agency on the phone, Mike found our homestudy in a pile on some other desk. Misplaced in the switchover from the "old adoptoin guy to the new one." The new guy will be back in the office and apparently our file will be on the top of his desk and he is supposed to call us first thing on Tuesday to make let us know we are all set and to get it officially into the system and have an approval letter go out to us. I don't have a ton of faith that this will actually happen...I guess we will see next week.

So the moral of the story is...had I not gone in personally, talked to just the right person, or Mike not happened upon our misplaced homestudy, we would still have no idea what was going on. It is amazing that they tell you adoptions are their first priority at USCIS. If they are then how come they are losing the paperwork? Come on.

Welcome to the crazy world of adoption.

It is so worth it!

Or #9...

So we are officially sitting at number 9! Now that all the referrals that went out have been accepted it looks like we won't move up anymore for the time being. Just wanted to keep you all in the loop!

Yep!

Yep, we moved up! We are offically number 10!!!!! on the waitlist! I really am so shocked at how quickly we are moving up. 19 to 10?!?!?!?!?! And in just over a month!!!

So there is also the possibility that we will move up one or two more spots this week as our agency said that one or two of the referrals that went out had not been officially accepted yet. I know who one of those is and their acceptance should be on their desk by now. That means 9 or maybe even 8 by the end of the week!!!!

Oh my goodness...I really need to start preparing for being a parent for the second time. I really was not imagining having to even think of this till the end of the year...but now we could (possibly) have our baby home by the end of the year!!! YIKES!!! I am going to be a mom x2 before I know it! They say it is always an unknown in adoption. I just thought the unknown would mean a longer wait not a shorter one! It still could be though...we could wait here for another year if we are not the right family for the children that need homes. Well, I am trying to have faith in God's plan. He knows our baby and our hearts and is working in mysterious ways to bring them together at just the right time!

Speaking of referrals...

A number of referrals went out this week to other families in the Holt International Ethiopia program. Congrats to all families and the exciting news, but our hearts are especially warmed by the news of a referral of a little girl to our friends Bethany and Micah and their son Eli. Bethanyand I have gotten to know each other through the Holt Ethiopia Yahoo Group and our blogs and emails. Their family was (until this week) always one ahead of us on the wait list (i.e. when we were 19, they were 18). Because of some interesting circumstances, they recieved a referral much earlier than expected. We are so happy for them and hope they get to travel soon to bring the newest memeber of their family home. It is my solemn prayer that they will get a quick court date and not have to wait through court closing late this summer into the fall.

I do have to admit there is a slight sadness in my heart that we are no longer neck and neck in this journey...Bethany has been a great confidant and we are so similar in so many ways in how we are processing this journey...but this sadness is washed quickly away by a few things. The first of which is the joy of a growing family and God's grace more evident than ever in the uniqueness of their referral. The second is the reality that while we are not getting our referrals on the same day, we really are only a few months at most behind...and in the larger scheme of things, that still means we are sharing the journey side by side. Regardless, we are filled with joy (have I said that already)!! God is good!

So I will check with Holt officially on Monday, but we have definitely moved up on the waitlist. I am fairly certain that the highest number we could be would be number 13, but have a feeling we are more like 12 or 11!!! Yikes! I am so caught up in the anticipation of knowing who our next child will be and meeting them, that I sometimes forget just how quickly this is all happening. We will be a family of 4 before I know it! What happened to 9 months gestation? Haha...I am sure we will still have that. Unfortunately we will probably get caught in the twilight zone of court closure meaning that once we get a referral we will have to wait FOREVER before we can bring our baby home. In any case, I guess I really need to get down to business...double strollers to buy, more books to read, pumping my happen sooner than I can imagine (sorry for the straight forwardness...but if you know me, you know how I feel about this), etc, etc... God has plans for us and they are definately on His schedule. Nothing new about that...

6787.32 Miles

The distance from Providence, RI USA to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

What is a referral?

So as most of you know, we are waiting for a referral. Since one of the most common questions I get is "What exactly is a referral?" and/or "What exactly is it that you are waiting for/what is the next step?" I figured I would answer that question.

So a referral is basically when a family is matched with a child. i.e. A child comes into care that fits the profile that we have established with our adoption agency and they determine that we would be the best family for that child. When Holt matches us with a child, we will get a phone call (well probably a bunch since they try to reach you on like every different number they can) where they will tell us a bit about the child and then photos and more medical information will be emailed on to us. On average, from the time you get your paperwork in with our agency, the wait time to a referral is 6-9 months. However, when we got our paperwork in to our agency and offically got on their waiting list earlier this spring/late winter, our agencies waiting list was much smaller than it usually is (economy?). That being said, it still could take longer than 9 months for us to be matched with a child, but it could also take less time given how small the list is.

So what happens once we get the referral? Well, offically we will have to accept the referral (which is usually done within a week) after having the medical information reviewed by our pediatrician/international adoption physician.

And then of course, once we have accepted the referral, we wait again!

This time we are waiting for our paperwork to be submit to the Ethiopian courts and eventually for us to find out our "court date" for our adoption with the ET government. We do not have to be present for this date, but once we "pass" court, in the eyes of the ET government, the child is legally ours.

And then of course, once we have passed our court date, we wait again!

Ha. This time we are just waiting for an invitation to travel, which usually comes very quickly after you hear about passing court and travel to pick up the child happens within 3-6 weeks from passing court. This date is all dependant on and scheduled around a US Embassy aptmnt in ET that we have to be present for to get a visa for the baby to travel home with us. Actual US citizenship, formal adoption in the US, etc all happens once we are home with baby.

Any questions? Basically it all involves being matched with a child and waiting!

Here's to more waiting!