2 months!

well, here we are. 2 months on the waitlist. can i just say this waiting thing hasn't been too unbearable yet?

every other adoptive parent who has done this before is laughing at me right now. trust me, i know. it's going to get unbearable. but i'm pretty amazed at how we've kept busy this past month and have remained moderately sane considering everything that's going in ethiopia. recently, our case manager informed me that the wait for an infant boy is 9-12 months. the wait time has nearly doubled since december due to slow downs in the country. half of cwa's orphanages are tied up in a region of the country currently closed to adoptions. whenever that region opens back up, there should be an influx of children available for referral. cwa also had a lot of people get on the waitlist in may of last year, so they've been backed up for quite some time trying to get through all those families. thankfully, we received word that referrals have picked up again, and they're now making referrals to families who got onto the waitlist last june.

we hope and pray the wait is not 9-12 months. but i do know that God has sustained us these past 2 months, and he will continue to sustain us. we have been blessed by many weekend houseguests, dinner guests during the week, jobs (my job was just recently extended to june 30!), and even a new hobby (we are taking djembe lessons from our next door neighbor. more on that later). so here's to 2 months and however many more it will take to get us to our babies!

supported

can i offer a little advice?

i don't know who reads this blog, but i mostly assume i have only a few regular followers and a few stragglers who happen to get here from other blogs. but i want to hope that people read this blog with at least a small interest in adoption. so hear me when i say: if you're thinking about adoption, find a support system. now.

i'm not saying you should base your decision to adopt on whether you already know people who have adopted or are adopting. in fact, jamie and i decided to adopt without knowing how many adoptive families [and specifically african adoption families] live in the winston-salem area. but i am saying that when you step out on the journey to your children, find people who know what it's like to be where you are.

i say all this because i can tell you how we have been blessed by having a support network of other adoptive families. they know the difficulties of raising money. the stresses of doing paperwork perfectly. the emotions of waiting for a referral. the unique challenges of parenting children from hard places.

thank you, jesus, for our little adoption network, especially the ones who were crammed around our dinner table last night.

*this post was not meant to discount our family and other friends who have supported us and loved us well along this adoption journey :)

and...

i got rushed off my last post from earlier this evening because i forgot to put the onion in the casserole i was making for the dinner guests that showed up literally as i clicked to post. i did want to say a couple more things about today's news. i think what's most difficult is knowing that we will meet our kids and then have to leave them. once we find out more information about the timing of everything, we may try to figure out a way for me to stay in ethiopia between the court date and the embassy date [the embassy date is where our children actually receive visas into the united states and are cleared to leave ethiopia]. we will both have to be present for the pre-court or court date, and there's probably no way for me to juggle 2 kids and luggage by myself when it's time to come home, so jamie will have to come back [and probably our brother-in-law steve with him the second time]. but if we can figure out an economical way for me to stay in ethiopia in the interim [which could be a couple of months], that would be ideal, especially for bonding and attachment.

in general, i don't want this whole thing to sound like a huge downer. it's tough news for sure, but i'm trying to see how cool it is to be able to see ethiopia twice before my kids are even home [or perhaps to even live there for a couple of months]. i've been reading a travel guide i bought, and it just keeps striking me: my kids are ethiopian. i take a lot of pride in that. the country has so much history, so much beauty...i haven't even been there yet, but i know it's true. my friend becca says that when you adopt, your child's nationality becomes almost like your nationality. so why not, in some ways, rejoice that i will be able to take in the sights, sounds, and smells of ethiopia two times instead of one so that i'm better able to ground our family in its ethiopian roots as much as its american ones?

going to ethiopia...twice

well, we got some [yucky] news today.

the ethiopian government announced today that all prospective adoptive parents must travel twice to ethiopia -- once pre-court date or for the court date [i've heard different things] and another time to actually pick up their kids to bring them home. how are we feeling? well, cwa emailed us about a month ago to say this was a possibility. i didn't expect a decision this soon, but i'm glad we weren't completely blindsided by the news. what is very unfortunate about this news [besides the fact that many families will now be faced with a new financial burden of paying for 2 trips instead of one and the general of hassle of making 2 trips] is the circumstances which brought it about. the ethiopian goverment became [rightfully] concerned about the high number [41 to date] of families who passed court but then refused their child once they got to ethiopia. yes, i said refused their child. i'm not really sure what happened in these cases, but my guess is that people had no clue what they were getting into. the ethiopian government's aim with requiring 2 trips is to ensure that parents are aware of the culture and the circumstances from which their child comes.

i can't really blame the government for making this decision. it will be a hassle. for many families, it's just one more piece of bad news. and it's hard not to be mad at those 41 families. but, in the end, the children's best interest is of primary concern, and we're trying to see it that way. we haven't talked to our case manager yet, but we're going to ask her about whether we should wait for siblings. if we still pursue unrelated kids, there is a chance that their cases could get separated and we'd be looking at 2 different court dates [and thus the chance that one could pass court and be ready to come home, and the other not pass and have to wait for another date].

my new obsession

i've been to 2 houses in the last week with one of these:

that's a chalkboard paint wall. and i'm a little obsessed.

you can apparently buy chalkboard paint in a variety a colors. you can also make your own. we are a bit worried that having a chalkboard wall will only encourage our children to think they can color on walls that aren't chalkboard. but i think the fact that our nephews took permanent markers to their cream-colored leather sofa and basically destroyed it makes us a little paranoid. my plan as far as markers and crayons is to only let the kids use them when i'm supervising (and put them away in a cabinent when it's not craft time) until the kids are old enough to know what they can and can't draw on. perhaps parents are laughing at me for thinking i can do this, but all i can say is that you didn't see the purple and blue scribbles all over the cream sofa. i figure, though, that if our kids take chalk to something they shouldn't, it would be much easier to clean than permanent marker. this is just a guess -- somebody correct me if i'm wrong.

so, where to put the chalkboard wall? the sunroom on the back of our house is going to be our playroom, so i think it'll go in there. that room is already yellow, so i guess we'll choose a color that goes well with yellow since we're just going to tape off a section of the wall and paint it with the chalkboard paint. i'm hoping this is just one of many "nesting" projects i undertake while waiting for the kids. i'll post pictures...

1 month!

today i am rejoicing that we've been on the waitlist for 1 month. i know 1 month sounds a bit measly. but, in my mind, it's huge. it's 1 less month i have to wait to see my kids and know their stories.

we've kept ourselves busy this last month, so i haven't been too antsy waiting. i daydream a lot about what it will be like to get the referral call and how i will react when i first open the email containing pictures of our kids. i wonder what they'll look like, if they'll be 2 boys or 1 boy and 1 girl, how old they'll be...and what we'll finally decide to name them. i think i'll starting getting antsy when we reach that 4-6 month range (though, the wait may have gotten longer these days, so i guess we'll find out).

but i have to say -- i hope we don't miss out on the life that's happening around us while we're waiting. there are things for us to do now even as we are looking forward to our referral. i'm reminded of what james (the apostle, not the husband) says:

come now, you who say, ‘today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. what is your life? for you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. instead you ought to say, ‘if the lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’ as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin. (4:13-17)

and please -- be praying for our friends daniel and abby umlauf. they received a referral for their son, moses, in december, but have been unable to move forward with their adoption because of various problems in the region moses is from. my heart is so heavy for this family because i want them to be united, but what is preventing that is a bunch of red tape in ethiopia. even if you don't know them, you can pray. constantly. i think what paul meant by praying constantly for something is not even that we are requesting a certain thing 24/7, but that the person or situation or whatever is always on the lips of our heart. i find myself repeating moses' name over and over again to God, believing that christ is interceding on moses' behalf in ways that i cannot even imagine.