Please excuse the recent silence, and then please excuse the awkwardness

Our agency recently asked all families to be circumspect in what information we put out there on the internet.  I stayed silent until they could clarify exactly what information they meant.  I plan to continue blogging, but there are things I won't be able to share.  I plan on revealing a lot more once Z is home. 

We don't have Z in our arms but there is nothing that could convince us to jeopardise the child we hope will be our own.  I hope you can understand and I hope I still have interesting things to say!!!

With that said, on to the awkwardness.....

It is never easy to ask for help.  It is even harder to ask for monetary help (for me at least).  Doing so feels like we are failing.  We've had two yard sales and made moderate profits, tried to sell T shirts and not met our minimums.  We're cut back our spending and every extra penny we've made has gone towards our adoption.  But we need help.  

Please consider donating through paypal or our AdoptTogether page http://www.adopttogether.org/thebatesadopt/

Thank you to every last person who has donated thus far.  Your generosity has stunned us and we are more grateful that we can say. Every amount no matter how small helps immeasurably. 

~M

The loss of a mother

My father sold his house and is in the midst of moving out.  We had dinner with most of the family there last night and the movers are coming on Wednesday.  I looked around at the house that he and my mother build and realize that it felt like the last thing on earth I had of her.

I laid on the floor in the room where she died and I sobbed.   She built that house; she moved walls.  She picked all the colors.  She planned out the last house she every wanted to live in.  She did not know how quickly she would die.  Mommy planned the house for grandkids and family reunions.  She planned it for old age.  She died in our home, with her family around her- just like she wanted, 30 years to soon.

The house is too big, too much for my widowed father.  I don’t even like the house itself that much to be honest.  Somehow dad moving out feels like losing her all over again.   I laid on the floor last night, right where mommy’s death bed had been and sobbed.  I remembered her voice “I love you baby girl” and “goodnight, sweet dreams, God bless you, I love you.”   I could almost hear her telling me how proud she was of our family, the family we are building, the children she has never met.  I could almost feel her stroke my hair back and whisper to me “It’ll be ok baby girl.”

My mommy is dead, buried, gone.  She cannot hold me or comfort me.  She cannot move forward with us.  I believe I will see her again- but right now that is cold cold comfort for a child who just wants her mommy.

We drove home last night in the dark to our home.  The house we are filling with memories right now and building our family in right now.  The first house C will remember and hopefully the first house Z will remember. We drove home and my grief was still bubbling over and spilling out with random tear drops in the dark.

It hit me, like when you are swimming in the ocean and a wave tumbles you into the ocean floor so hard you think you’ll never know what way is up again and might actually drown.  Z will grow up with the grief I am feeling.  It doesn’t matter if we LOVE Z more than life and how much we want to make it all better.  Z has already lost her first mom.  I will be Z’s mommy, but I cannot heal that wound.

I hope our love, our family and time will bring Z the solace and the confidence Z will need to heal herself.  Loss and grief follow you though.  My mother’s death is NOT exactly like the loss of Z’s first mother, but I hope and pray that my loss will help me be the best mommy to Z I can be.

I don’t know what it is like to be an adopted child.  I do know what it is like to grieve your mother.  Please please Lord let that help me not hinder me in raising my newest child.

~M

Prayers and Good thoughts needed

I have some dear friends also adopting from DRC. They have gotten some hard news and need all the love and support they can get. If you're the praying type will you pray for them? If you're not the praying type will you think good thoughts? Knowing there are people out there pulling for them and their family would mean the world to them!

~M

Two PERFECT feet

We are not being taken for a ride folks.

Adoption is risky. All types of adoptions are risky; it seems lately that adoption from the DRC (which has always BEEN risky) is like standing on shifting sands of risk….

That does not mean that we are being taken for a ride.  Our agency African Adoption Services http://www.africaadoptions.org (formerly DRC Adoption Services) is run by phenomenal people who are ethical and working as hard as they can to ensure ethical adoptions. They are trying to keep our processing times down as short as they can within the requirements of both the US and DRC, but they have to work in the system.

I cannot discuss details –which I understand is very frustrating (it is frustrating to me too!!!) – because sharing those details could put our case and a multitude of other cases as risk.  So I can’t tell you about the little details that our agency knows that may help us in our process to adopt Z, or about the families in process right now ahead of us who are working through the morass of the changes to the DRC process.

I can tell you that DRC was and still is (at the moment) on of the fastest countries for international adoptions.  Adopting from Ethiopia would be a 2-3 year time frame, China likely longer than that.   We are still looking at 18 months-ish from start to finish. 

Last year our estimate was 6-9 months from referral to home, this year it is 9-12 months from referral to home.  Honestly it is looking like we should anticipate being at the longer end of our estimate and then we can just rejoice if it is any shorter. 

Yes, it SUCKS that Z will be cared for by others in one of the poorest countries of the world for 9-12 months after we said “Yes!” we want to adopt this child!  However we knew going in that things can change in the adoption process. We are not willing to try and push harder than the process right now allows- that is one of the things that leads to corruption and we will not be a part of adoption corruption.

So if you see on the blog that timelines have changed, if you speak to us and hear us complain about extended time frames or new procedures please know we are not being taken for a ride.  No one is cheating us out of a child and our money.  This is a messy process, a long process, and a changing process.

Things can still go wrong with Z’s case, and it would not be our Agency’s fault it would be that the court process or investigation process found that legally Z is not adoptable. Things can change more and it could take more than 12 months to get Z home.  None of that means we did anything wrong, our agency or agency’s in country staff did anything wrong.  It means that adoption is risky.

~M

Waiting......... waiting......... waiting

There is a lot of waiting in adoption, a long lengths of time where there is nothing you can do.  When I was pregnant with Charlie there were periods where I was waiting as well, but with pregnancy at least your daily actions have a bearing on your baby.  When I was pregnant with Charlie I took my vitamins everyday, tried to exercise, stopped drinking coffee and alcohol.  I made everyday little efforts for my child.  In adoption there are points where there is NOTHING you can do.  We are at one of those points.

Right now we are waiting :-(

All the while Z is growing.  Everyday Z grows and grows, across the world our child is growing and developing without us.  We know one amazing lady is caring for Z right now.  We even know her name and have seen one picture of her.  From what other adoptive parents have said she is an amazing woman who cares for the child in her care just like her own.  I am so very grateful Z is with this woman and not languishing in an overcrowded orphanage with too little love and too little food.  It makes me hopefully that Z won’t be too far behind developmentally when Z finally comes home.  Did you know that for every 3 months a child is in institutional care they fall behind 1 month developmentally?  Hopefully the love and attention Z is getting right now will help stave that off even though Z isn’t with us, with family.

So around here we live our lives much the same as we always have.  We get up, go to work, drink my coffee and alcohol, and I don’t remember to take my vitamins more days than not.  It is too early, to fragile to tell C about his sibling, if something went wrong we couldn’t explain it to him so he doesn’t even know.  It is too early and to fragile to start decorating a room or buying clothes.  We can’t even begin to predict what size clothing Z will be in upon arrival! It is to early and to delicate to post pictures, even ones with blurred out faces.

Just about the only think I can do and convince myself is for this paper pregnancy with Z is try to train for this run in October.  Even that has been stifled this week – all three of us have a pretty bad chest cold.

So for now we wait, and wait some more.   Nothing we can do can get Z home sooner.

~M

Book review: “King Leopold’s Ghost” by Adam Hochschild: A good read for a historical perspective on the Congo.

Please note I am NOT a frequent book reviewer and have not written a paper on a book in over 5 years.  The following is only my opinion!

“King Leopold’s Ghost” is a overwhelming and exhausting look at Congolese history.  This is not a light quick read, nor does it address current issues.  I enjoyed Hochschild’s writing style immensely.  He wove the facts presented into a fascinating whole without becoming dry.  The subject matter is what made for heavy reading that sometimes required a few days break just to escape the horror.

Thus far “King Leopold’s Ghost” is best look at the foundation for the current issues in DRC I have read.  While it starts with early accounts of European discovery of the Congo and hits most of the big points I’ve read about in other books it does skim over that part of history pretty quickly.  This book focuses (surprise, surprise) on Leopold, King of the Belgians part in Congolese history.

Hochschild does a good job of looking at Leopold’s life and his fanatical pursuit of a colony. Leopold was a master manipulator and grasping his part in the scramble for Africa and how Leopold’s maneuvering for Congo really pushed Europe into carving the continent up.

The book delves into forced labor, porterage and how the ivory and rubber trades created a slave state.  This is where the reading became difficult for me.   While the atrocities of Leopold’s reign in Congo and immediately after are far in the past reading accounts of torture, death, hopelessness, and cruelty was not easy for me.

The Rubber Terror in particular set the stage for current African socio-economic conditions. The systematic brutalization of the African people to collect wild rubber left millions dead, a dismal birth rate and tribal cultures all but dismantled. 

The timeline is integrated so the accounts from the Congo are in the same chapters as the information about the fight to remove the country from Leopold’s rule.   The details of the human rights movement associated with this time period are interesting.  The story of E. D. Morel in particular is pretty amazing. Morel was a simple clerk that deduced there was slave labor being used in the Congo just from the import/exports through the shipping company he was working for.  Morel was a cornerstone of the movement in Europe for reform in the Congo.

The last sections of the book are the most telling for me.  Hochschild discusses the state of affairs in other rubber producing areas located in central Africa.  While there was a huge human rights movement associated with the atrocities in the Congo the same terror was being inflicted by other countries for the same purposes.   He also mentions atrocities, genocides and other human rights violations in other areas of the world. 

“King Leopold’s Ghost” definitely put a context to the history of the Congo for me.

~M

A lot has happened!!

Well now, I just about fell of the face of the planet!!

Life got a wee bit busy and I became a bad bad blogger.  Well I'm back and I have a lot to share!!

We did get out completed home study early March and sent off our i600a later that week.  We let our Agency know we were ready for a referral!!  and early April we got THE CALL.

Amy called and asked if we wanted to accept a referral for Z.  It took us about 60 seconds of talking to say YES.  Unfortunately we cannot share any information for Z's safety. There are horrible people out there who steal and traffic children, especially if they proven to be adoptable.

I can tell you that Z is GORGEOUS and we are thrilled to be growing by two perfect feet!!

Once we pass court and are legally Z's parents in the eyes of the DRC government we will be able to share some information and maybe even post a picture!

So where does that leave us?  More waiting- that's where!!    While we would LOVE to be through court quickly I am not holding my breath.

After court we file our I600 which is the US process to declare Z a close relative.  After the I600 we have our 604 investigation and then after that we can get Z's visa and travel to pick Z up.

So we still have a loooong way to go.  Our estimated travel time is Jan-April 2014.  The changes in the process since we started has moved the estimated time from referral to travel from 6-9 month to the current estimate of 9-12 months.  We are hoping and praying there are no more changes that extend the time frame further.

In the meantime we are planning on having a awesome summer :-D  We have also started some fundraising and hope to have the Run for Baby Z details ironed out by July 1st.  If you want to come to New England and run with us get in touch and let me know!!

~M

Home Study NOT complete.

 We had hoped to have our home study in our hands at the end of January.  Alas it is not so.  B’s fingerprints were rejected and I believe that to be the very last thing we need.  Hopefully soon.   We could have gotten them taken sooner, but had a hard time finding a place that would take our fingerprints.  Our town will only taken them at certain times of the week, all when I am working!  And while we did find an alternate place to take them we’ve been pushed back by Burton’s prints being rejected.  We are just waiting for the H.S. to send in our i600a.  Our H.S. ALSO has the originals we need to get out dossier together.

Once our Dossier is together we have some decisions to make.  We can either let the lawyers and our agency (more on that below) know we are ready for a referral, or we can wait until our i600a is approved and then ask for our referral.  What’s the difference?  Time.   If we wait for the i600a then we will have all the paperwork we need through the DRC court hearings and our lawyer can just move through the process.  If we don’t wait for the i600a the lawyer can go through the first two steps of the process but must wait for our i600a to proceed to court.  So it is a gamble.  Will we be ready for court BEFORE the i600a? or will it all come together and we might have a referral earlier than we would have.  Of course there is the resources needed for each step.

We are not there, so we can’t even make the decision yet. We will see where all of it stands after our Dossier is done.

In VERY exciting news our facilitator, DRC Adoption Services, has become a licensed child placing agency!  This smoothes our process considerably and we still get to work with the two amazing women that we feel are the best chance in completing an entirely ethical adoption.

In other news we have a small committed team for running various race lengths on October 12^th.  We hope more of those who have expressed interest will be committing soon as they learn more about their fall schedules.   I’ve also started quilting again.  Hopefully if I can complete this first quilt and still enjoy it I’ll be opening an Etsy store to sell them for funding.  I’ll post some pictures once I have one done.

That is about it on the adoption front over here.  Hopefully I’ll get some more reading in soon and can post some book reviews. 

~M

Changing the goal posts

There has been big news in DRC adoptions over the past week.  The US embassy in Kinshasa has put in place a new procedure requiring a mandatory 3-6 month wait period after I600 approval.  Many adoptive families have been so very close to traveling to pick up their little ones and had the goal posts moved 3-6 months out.  It's heart wrenching.  However, this new process was put in place to ensure ETHICAL adoptions and to stop corruption and child trafficking.  All for a great cause, so hard for those who thought they were so so close.

What does that mean for us?  We don't know yet.  B and I are NOT reconsidering DRC as the country we're adopting from, yet.  It's possible things will change in the next few months / a year and the programs will change enough we cannot move forward, but I don't think it will get there.  I don't think the program will get shut down.  I believe things will get ironed out and adoptive families will start PUSHING their agencies and lawyers to MAKE SURE everything is ethical and documented prior to getting to the 3-6 month wait.  I'm choosing to have hope that this will mean great things for DRC adoptions.

It probably means that the time from referral to brining our new child home will be longer than 6 months.  It will be more like 9-12 months, and that sucks. We will have to see what happens to our time frame once we are ready for referral - and we're at least 2-3 months from that point.

More later :-)  off to work for me.

~M

YAY!!!!

K emailed today, our last state background check is IN!!!!!  We will indeed be done with our home study by the end of January!!!! Hopefully I'll be able to send our i600a  ASAP!

~M

Last home study visit complete!!!

We had our last home study visit today.  Usually there are only two visits, but we one a third!  K had certain questions she had to get through, and guess who talked too much on visit two for her to get to everything??  That’s right, both of us!!

K has almost everything she needs!  We are just waiting on our NY police checks and then she’ll have it all.  Oh and we need to send her some photos – we’re having trouble picking 8 photos to put in our home study.  They can be sent via email so they are not a huge deal.

HOPEFULLY our home study will be complete by the end of January.  And then it is time for our i600a.  Other than the home study I have everything ready to go for that.  The only thing we need to decide is if B or I will be the main petitioner.  The main petitioner MUST travel to DRC to apply for our new child’s exit letter.  We are both planning on traveling, but things do happen. I think I am going to be the main petitioner. I feel the NEED to go to DRC and see where our child has come from.  It also makes me super nervous to think of possibly going without B.  We shall see whose name is on the form first when we send it.

I have not read another book in the past two weeks.  I am in the middle of one….. and keep falling asleep.  It has been a very busy two weeks at work and we’ve been busy at home too.

We met an amazing DRC adoptive family this Sunday.  It was awesome to meet their Congo cutie!!!  She and C played so well and it was great to make connections to other families who are DRC adoptive families.  They are starting the process of their second adoption from DRC.  We’re using the same facilitator and only live about 90-100 minutes away from each other.  Hopefully we’ll be able to make even more Congo connections in the North East as we move forward.

It has been bitter cold! And my running has been non-existent.  I need to start training for October!  It looks like I may be the only one doing a full 26.2 miles, most of the others who want to be a part of our team are interested in the half marathon.  You know what?  That is ok!!!  I’m the mama, I CAN run a marathon, I was in labor with C for 48 hours, I can run for 4 or 5 for my next baby :-D   

A Marathon, really?

Well maybe a marathon or maybe a half marathon.  B will be walking a half marathon and I will be running either a half or a full marathon to fundraise for our adoption.  I figure I labored for 48 hours with C with no medication, I can run a marathon for the next Baby Bates.

The goal is to fundraise in a way that doesn’t feel – to us- like we’re just putting our hands out and begging.  We have tightened our belts and are looking into options to increase our income, but it looks like we will need some help.  What we don’t feel comfortable with is sending out letters just asking for donations.  We know that is a legitimate option and many people have great success with it.  We feel like we should be doing something on our end.  This, of course, is not to pass judgment on any other families who take a different path.  We feel like we’re showing our dedication by participating in a half, and possibly a full marathon.

Over the holidays multiple cousins expressed interest in running with us.  I am so overwhelmed with the generosity of spirit in my family.   We’re looking into all our options to make this happen.  I have this fantasy of a 10+ person team running for our child.  My heart just melts with the support we received over the holidays.

Initially we wanted to participate in the Chosen Marathon for Adoption.  However, it is in Texas, so getting down there would be a challenge for everyone.  It was pointed out that the finances involved in getting everyone down there could just go right to our adoption fund.   Now I’m looking into runs in both the late spring and fall here in the Northeast.  We will probably participate in a run up here and create a profile with Adopt Together to give donors the option of a tax deductable platform.

So it looks like I really need to start running regularly again, and figure out these logistics.   When I run regularly it really helps me to process and feel less anxious.  I get out all the nervous energy and have time to work through a lot of thoughts and emotions.  Sure sounds to me like it’ll be a great thing to be doing during this process :-D

~M

Happy New Year!!

Ahhh the holidays! Time for cold weather, lost of driving and of course spending time with family!

It was a family filled holiday season for us.  Christmas Eve was spent at my dad’s house with both my sister’s in-laws and my in-laws.  There were fourteen of us, and Mason our dog.  We drove out to B’s parents house that night and spend Christmas day with B’s family.

In my family, when we were little, my parent’s had us sing Happy Birthday to baby Jesus before we opened our presents.  It was a way, outside of church, to remind us that the real reason for Christmas was Jesus’ birth.  While I get made fun of quite heartily this is something we have done since C was born and will continue to do.  I remember so vividly the coffee cake mom made every year, and signing to baby Jesus.  While I didn’t make mom’s coffee cake this year we still sang and had a pretty darn good Boston coffee cake.

Santa filled our stockings and C made out like a bandit with presents from Mommy, Daddy, Nana, Haha and other family members.  My dad joined us for Christmas dinner at B’s parents place.

We drove back home late Christmas night and I had a few days of work before heading back to Dad’s on the 30^th.  The T clan descended on dad’s house for NYE starting on the 30^th and a few people trickled in on the 31^st.  There were 38 of us this year and we deeply missed those who could not make it!!!  We spent those three days catching up, staying up, eating up and chatting it up.  I think I stay up later with my relatives on NYE than most any other time over the year.  We’ve been getting together for NYE for the past 10 years.  I honestly cannot say I know any other family that is as close as we are.  I am so very blessed to have them in my life and can only hope that my generation can continue the work our parents started by creating such a solid family foundation. We’re expecting one marriage and two babies in 2013- so far!  Hopefully Baby Bates will be new baby # 3 in 2013.

Multiple cousins have expressed interest in running a half or full marathon to help raise funds for our adoption.  I think it is going to be an amazing experience for many of us to do together.  What a way to help bring our baby home- how loved will this child be?  I am looking into ways we can run a race up here in New England and make the donations tax deductable for people.  Both spring and fall races are being looked into.

On NYE dad had us take a field trip and revealed the waiting room dedicated to Mom and Aunt M in the new breast center.  Dad had the routine mammogram waiting room dedicated to the courageous and dedicated two women of our family who fought breast cancer and lost.  It was a really cathartic experience for me, and a lot of the family.

B and I celebrated four years of marriage on NYE!!!! I can’t believe it has been four years.  It seems both longer and shorter.  I really am one of the luckiest women on earth.  B is an amazing husband and my love for him grows everyday.

We came home late last night and I am so exhausted.  It is 2013 and it is a brand New Year filled with new hope and unknowns.  I am so excited (and a little trepidatious).   

Happy New Year everyone, May your 2013 be filled with wonderful things!

We're moving along.

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful holiday season!!!

I’ve been away too long, bad blogger, no cookie.  We had a computer incident – someone spilled water on our laptop and we were out a computer for about 2 weeks.

By the time we got out new computer in the house and up and running I had gotten out of the habit; so now I’m getting back into it.

We’ve been pretty busy as far as our home study is concerned.  It looks like we’re probably on track to have it completed by the end of January.  The biggest pain in the bum, by far, has been the state police checks- from every state we’ve lived in since we turned 18.  So that is four states for me and three for B.  Two of our state applications were bounced back to our social worker K due to paper work errors.   Not errors we made filling them out mind you!  One state has recently changed forms and we were given the wrong form, and another requires a notary seal on a letter – but there were no instructions to that effect.

There is still a question as to if I require a clearance from Ireland and at this point I’m really hoping not, since it could delay K having all the paperwork by WEEKS.   There seems to a question of if international checks are required if your stay was over five years prior vs. within the last 5 years.   DRC doesn’t require it, but our home study has to be up to CT standards.

We’ve gathered the vast majority of the paperwork and are all set for our home visits.  The first is on January 7^th.  Which means I’ll be a crazy person cleaning and organizing all next week.  Our second visit will be for a week later.  I’m a bit nervous for the visits…..  All we have left to finish is 5 hours of adoption training. 

After the home study is complete we then submit out I600a to USCIS.  The I600a is a pre-approval form the US government for our family to adopt a child internationally.   They make sure we meet US standards.  Once we have a referral for a child and go through the process in DRC we will submit a I600 to classify that child as an immediate relative.

You can kind of think of the I600a and the I600 as the US bookends to the DRC adoption process.  The I600a will take 6-12 weeks to be approved.  While we would love to go through all the steps as quickly as possible, honestly we wouldn’t mind the I600 taking the 12 weeks.  It will give us more time to save for our referral, and we have some major saving and fundraising to do!

So that is where we are in the adoption process.  I plan on a blog post catching you up on our lives since Thanksgiving and a Christmas re-cap tomorrow.  We’ve been reading books on adoptive parenting and the Congo from the Library as well and I’m planning on doing a book review a week as well.  Doing a review a week will not only give me some good subject matter for the blog but also give me a goal for my reading!

~M

Forms, forms and more forms

Today was my day off and so I sat down this morning all bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to fill out all my paperwork.  I planned on finishing the background check paper work and thought I could probably move onto other home study paperwork as well.  K recommends we do the background check documents first as they can take longest to come back (6-8 weeks).  Everything else can be done at our pace and we would love to have our home study done in 6-8 weeks!!!

Boy was I wrong.

My head is spinning.  I have four states to get background checks from and B has three.  At least I think we do.  Two of the states were relatively easy with three forms and very little to confuse a person.   The other two states have forms with little itty-bitty lines and ask for a lot of the same information in different formats.  Between those two states we’re required to list every residence we’ve each had since 1974 (we we’re born yet) in consecutive order making sure there are no missed dates and every person we’ve ever lived with.   Yes I am sure that is what the form asks for, every person we have ever resided with.   Oh by the way- I have to list full names and cannot use middle initials.  I’m not making this up folks.

So I spent the better part of an hour figuring out how to get the full names, and ages of all of B and my college dorm mates as well as the people I lived with in Ireland.   Phone calls made and emails sent I started filling in forms.     Our home study provider emailed me PDFs.  My handwriting is horrendous, and I cannot spell.  I had to toss out multiple sheets….. Then I got smart and tried to find the documents online.  I found both of the documents in formats I can type in.  YAY! But only after wasting time and paper.

This evening I chatted with another DRC mama.  During our conversation it came up that I might not even need a background check from one of these states!!!!  I only went to college there.  I never had a driver license, paid taxes, worked or lived outside the dorms.   So after all the struggling sat down and emailed K all of my questions, including clarification on which states I really need to do the paperwork for.

I know this is just the beginning.  There are hundreds more forms in front of me.  Today taught me something though.  I need to get organized.  Tomorrow I’m making a binder and a checklist.  And I am finishing those freaking background check forms!!!!

~M

Next steps

We met with K, a home study provider, yesterday morning.   It was just an informational meeting, and it went pretty darn well.

For those who don’t know, a home study is the state’s evaluation of if you can adopt (you also have to do one if you want to foster).  So our state has to say “Yep- those people will make ok parents and they have an ok house. We’re fine with them adopting.”  It involves a LOT of paperwork.  Background checks from every state we have lived in since we were 18, multiple references, previous taxes, birth certificates, marriage certificates, bank statements, letters of employments, we both have to write a life store, medical exams and forms for all of us and a metric ton of forms.   Then we sit down with the home study provider and answer a lot of personal questions, as well as ones that explore our mental preparedness for international adoption.  Somewhere in there the home study provider also comes to our house and does a home safety check.

The whole thing feels very judgy to me.  I do understand that the government wants to make sure that adoptive parents are not child abusers, and that they are prepared to adopt.  It is in everyone’s best interest for adoptions to be final and to minimize disruptions.  So don’t get me wrong, I think home studies are necessary.  I just don’t like feeling like I’m being scrutinized.

So we met with K yesterday morning.  She was very nice, professional, informative and calming.   We will be using her for our home study, which should take 6-8 weeks from when we sign up and start.

One of the things we loved about K was her LACK of judgyness.  I’ve been contacting a lot of home study providers over the past 6 weeks or so.  I’ve gotten varied responses to my inquiries.   Some have just not returned my contact email or call.  Some think we are very young to adopt, others have really been discouraging about international adoption and have tried to guide us to change our minds and go foster adopt or domestic infant.  And a few were just exorbitantly expensive, as in almost double the going rate.

K is totally comfortable with our ages and our decision to adopt from DRC.  She views her job as making sure we are prepared for the possibilities and to make sure we have evaluated our options and the possibilities.   That attitude was so refreshing.   So all in all yesterday was great!  And we’ve made one more baby step forward.

~M

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. ~Lao-tzu

We have begun!  Tonight we filled out the first forms, signed our contract with our facilitator and sent our first payment.  Goodbye to any hesitancy and onward with boldness.

The paper chase will start once we get a list from our facilitator and we have a tentative meeting set up with a home study provider on Monday.  I will let you know how the meeting goes.  Hopefully by Monday we will decide to go with the provider we are meeting with and we will start our home study as well.

There are thousands of miles ahead of us, for now my belly is aflutter with excitement and hope! To the next steps! May we appreciate the journey as we look  forward to the reward at the end.

~M

Shopping online this holiday season???

To help fundraise we’ve signed up as Amazon affiliates.  If you are planning on shopping online please consider shopping through our link.  Just empty your cart (or else the purchase does not count) click on the link on the blog or on my facebook page and then shop as normal.  A percentage of your purchase will go directly into our adoption fund.   Don’t worry, we can’t see who purchases what!

~M

P.S.  The link isn't very pretty.....  I guess I'll be learning new computer skills along the way too.  I've gotta figure out how to make this blog do what I want it to...

Moving forward?

Sort of.  This process, and we’re not even in the thick of it folks, is not easy.  What was easy was the decision to have another child join our family.  The decision to adopt was made years ago.  The decision to adopt NOW was made over the last six months in inches, an inevitable progression to this decision.  

I’d like to share a quote B and I used in our wedding guest book. W.H. Murray wrote this:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back – Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.  All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A while stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed wound have come his way.  Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

We are committed.  We feel it in our bones and we walk around noticing things we did not before, have conversations we did not before.  I am planning WAY ahead (I know, big surprise, right?) and very much putting the cart before the horse sometimes.

What is that final act of commitment? What is that last thing we need to do before the chase really starts? We need to commit financially.  

Can I just have a moment to admit I have a little bit of rage inside of me that it takes so much money to adopt?  That a little irrational piece of my mind thinks it is so freaking unfair that we will struggle with the finances to make this happen for us and our future child .  There I have said it.  Maybe that will be the last time I say it in this blog- maybe I can let it go.

I could detail our finances, our bills and my school debt and our mortgage, my income and B’s search for employment outside our home.  I could drag all that in here- but I don’t think it is really fair or relevant.  And honestly we make everything happen we need to each month and that is so blessed compared too many.  I do not want to complain about our situation- we are just fine.  I just wish, as I am sure many people on the adoption path (or other goals that require large amounts of money) that I had it ALL NOW and I wasn’t worried.

It looks like this is the month folks.  We’re about to send in our first check and start the paper chase as long as no emergency happens this month. I’ll tell you when we do.  Before I had some if-thens in the process.  If we had x amount in savings then, when B found a job then.  We’ve tossed all those hesitancies.  As long as we can meet our obligations we will keep moving forward.

B and I have been talking about, well a lot of things, and we are not going to be sharing the costs of this process in a public forum.  Suffice it to say it is a large amount for us.  We feel that putting a number on it implies a price tag on our future child and that to share that would be implying worth.  That just is not true and if our child ever reads this blog we never want there to be any doubt that his or her worth has NOTHING to do with money.   So please forgive us for being vague.

We are hoping and praying that Providence and hard work with start moving with this act of commitment.  So yeah, I guess we are moving forward.

~M