An afternoon flight

Today as I was fixing dinner Juliana started pretending that she was flying in a plane. She does this occasionally, where she puts our little blue clothes basket on her head and zips through the house on various adventures. The sweet thing today was that she told me she was flying to Ethiopia to pick up a baby. She would put one of her baby dolls in the living room so that she could go pick it up after "flying" there from the kitchen. When she got back to the kitchen she would be very excited to show me her new baby. It was really sweet b/c I did not prompt her at all to play like this :) I am thankful that she is so excited about the adoption too.

We have started collecting garage sale items this week. Our extra bedrooms downstairs are coming in handy to sort and keep stuff out of the way. I am having so much fun going through my own stuff to get rid of it. I LOVE to be uncluttered and was inspired by my friend's house in Lincoln that I still need to get rid of much of the clutter in my home. My friends home is very simple, uncluttered and is so clean and comfy to be in (Yay brooke!). I thought I had done a good job going through things the first time, but I will be going through every room at least once more :) We got a call from Holt today that said they will send us the first bill for the adoption soon. It will be somewhere between $2,500-$3,000 if I remember right. That is good b/c it means we are to the homestudy stage. Yay!

Garage Sale plans

I totally forgot that i hadn't blogged this. The big day will be May 31st! I think most of you know, but just in case you didn't, now you do :)

Provision

It has already begun. We just received a call from a friend who owns a local grocery store offering to hold a fundraiser for us! They occasionally sell hamburgers and pop for a few hours out in front of their store to bring people in the door and have offered to donate all the proceeds of one of the lunches to us for the adoption! I, again, wish that there was more i could offer these amazing friends other than a simple thank you. They will be having the lunch on May 17th. I'm sure we will be there helping out and I will probably be crying all over everyone's burgers b/c I am already overwhelmed with their generosity (hee hee!). The challenge is on now to get a family picture. I will need to make some kind of sign to have up at the grocery store and at the garage sale. It is stinkin hard to get a good pic of both of the kids when they are together. I will have to find someone who is very patient to come and take a bunch in hopes of having one where we are all looking at the camera and smiling :) My group of girl friends from high school who now live in Lincoln are also gathering together stuff for our garage sale (You girls are GREAT!) and a friend is bringing stuff over tomorrow for the sale. Yay! We have an official adoption notebook that has been uber helpful so far to keep track of paperwork. We also went and applied for passports today. AAAUUGGHH!!! flying to Africa...scary, but I can't wait!!!

waiting

This week we are looking at passport information. Looks like to get a passport we will need to drive to the Culbertson Post Office - who knew? The info we found said it could take up to 12 weeks to process a passport so most likely we will just do that step now to ensure that it is done. Our last paper is in the mail on the way to Holt so we are also patiently awaiting a call from the social worker to schedule our homestudy. Paperwork is starting to pile up so Craig called for an official adoption filing system to be implemented :) While waiting for our homestudy to be completed we can begin assembling our Dossier. This is the paperwork that gets sent directly to the Ethiopian government. I will write more on what that entails later.

Movin' closer

Yay! It seems only half of us caught strep - me and Evan. We are both on antibiotics and doing well :) I called Holt today to check on the status of our paperwork and we are just waiting for a few papers to be processed before a home study can be scheduled. We have begun to again look at some pretty thick paperwork for a few grants that we will be applying for. I will be working tonight on making some postcards to send to friends to let them know about our garage sale. A lot of odds and ends, but those small things still keep us busy and moving forward!

What I love and what I hate

I love the mail. It brings good news this week. We received our birth certificates and marraige licenses all on the same day. Yay! They should be at the Holt office as of today as the final forms that needed to be in our file before a home study is done.

I hate strep throat. That is what I have as of Wednesday. Tonight I am feeling much better, though and am praying fervently that I did not pass it on to everyone else...not likely though. I spent the morning with the kids in the basement starting to sort garage sale stuff. I figure if this thing gets really big I had better stay on top of pricing and sorting so that we are not crunched at the last minute.

Adoption Adjustment

Back to info from our classes in Omaha. The social worker took us through a chart called "A Lifelong Model of Adoption Adjustment" that basically went through different ages and highlighted what the different concerns and developmental questions that the child will have and also the adoption specific parental roles in each life stage. I will write a little about each stage. Much of it was not surprising to me, but some of the information in the later ages did surprise me and I hope will also cause you to think.

From birth to 1 yr the main concern with adopted children (and any child actually) is attachment. The primary concerns of the child are - will i be fed, am i safe, am i nurtured? What we must do is be as purposeful as we can to ease that attachment to us as parents while remembering that we are literally complete strangers to them at first. The social worker talked a bit about how the primary component of attachment is not love, like you might expect, but is actually trust. If the baby has a need, cries, and is responded to by having his/her needs met then the child learns to respond to this healthy cycle be developing a trust that his/her needs will be met. In a less than ideal care environment, the child has a need, cries, and his/her needs are not consistently met (due to lack of enough care workers, negligent care, etc.) the child does not learn to trust and will learn that there is no benefit to expressing his/her needs. Obviously, the longer an unhealthy cycle occurs, the more difficult it is for the child to learn to trust. Since the main component of this attachment cycle seems to be trust, we find that if the baby has had caregivers that respond to the child's needs and he/she has learned to trust a caregiver, that it is not as hard as you might think for the child to transfer this trust to a new caregiver (us!). Holt understands that attachment is a big concern for the well-being of the adopted child and they actually have their own care centers in most of the countries that they adopt out of so that they can ensure that they children within their centers are getting care that fosters healthy attachment. In the countries that they do not have their own centers to care for orphans, they send workers to educate local staff on how to facilitate building trust, for example, having the same worker in the same rooms daily instead of switching all around to different rooms. That way the child can identify a routine or one person to begin to trust. Once we get the child the social worker encouraged us strongly that feeding time is mega-bonding time. We are not to let anyone but parents feed the child until it is obvious that they are learning we are the primary caregivers for them. We are also to have a predictable routine which won't be hard at all since i stay at home :) Every day is complete with a bland, yet wonderful, routine of stories, snacks, and imaginary games! I love it!

Mr. Postman...

It was a beautiful day today and the kids and I spent an hour and a half at the park today - Yay! It is so nice to have the windows open and to not have to bundle three of us up whenever we head outdoors. Juliana has a newfound fascination with roly-polys and Evan loves to throw sand - on himself! I guess if he doesn't mind it, I don't either :) As far as adoption paperwork goes we are waiting on the mail...i have a feeling we will be doing much of that in the coming months. We are waiting to receive the certified copies of our birth certificates and marraige license. Should be any day now. We have had a few friends tell us that they would like to contribute to our garage sale - what an encouragement that has been! THANKS to those of you who you know who you are! We had some friends surprise us with an amazing donation to go towards the adoption...another HUGE encouragement. Thanks isn't enough to express it...I pray that our child's beautiful ethiopian smile will begin to show you how much we appreciate your sacrifice in this! Another friend has also scheduled to have a Premier Designs jewelry show and to donate half her profits to us to be used for the adoption. Why am I so surprised to start seeing answers to my prayers for financial provision?!? Thank you Lord that your faithfulness is not dependent on my belief or lack of.

Injera

For those of you who are interested, here is a site I found with pictures of Ethiopian women making injera. I also found a place called Abyssinia Market where you can order teff to make your own injera or you can even order 10 frozen injera for 15.95...Who knew!?

http://www.carolynford.org/gallery/injera

Breakfast

The connection between Juliana's new taste for dry oatmeal and adoption you ask? Well, here it is: I did a little looking into what a traditional Ethiopian breakfast looks like. I had hoped through this blog to bring family and friends a little educational information about the Ethiopia as well as adoption in general, so this is my first attempt at looking into Ethiopian culture. I will be learning right with you :)

The staple of Ethiopian diet consists of wat and injera. Wat is a spicy stew that as far as I can tell is not usually eaten at breakfast. Injera would be comparable to what we call a pancake, however, it is grey and about 2 feet in diameter and is made with teff, salt, water, and oil. The following is a little information I have found on breakfast specifically:

"Firfir or fitfit, made from shredded injera with spices, is a typical breakfast dish. Another popular breakfast food is dulet, a spicy mixture of tripe, liver, beef, and peppers with injera. Fatira consists of a large fried pancake made with flour, often with a layer of egg, eaten with honey. Chechebsa (or kita firfir) resembles a pancake covered with berbere and kibbeh, or spices, and may be eaten with a spoon."

Kinche - boiled cracked wheat with spiced herb butter
Yequanta Firfir - Dried beef in mild chili-onion sauce fried with Injera
Kita Firfir - Pan fried wheat flakes tossed in spiced butter
Foll - Bowl of fava beans in savory sauce with chili, onion and butter, served with injera crepe

Hazardous to her health?

For the past two days for breakfast, Juliana has eaten an entire bowl (1/2 cup) of oatmeal mix...dry. She does this with cereal on a pretty regular basis, but never with oatmeal. When she started off I thought for sure she would take two bites and then gladly let me pour hot water and then milk in her bowl (I make an instant mix that we use...apparently it is so good that you don't need water, ha ha!). But, believe it or not, she held out through the whole bowl and even said that it was yummy. The whole time she politely refused my offers of water and milk at least every few minutes. It is a little painful for me to watch, assuming that her mouth would get crazy dry, however she doesn't appear to be in any kind of discomfort. She has a small glass of milk or juice with it. Hmmm...so far she seems to be digesting well and has actually been quite a delight to be around the past few days! Just wondering if anyone has had any experience digesting large quantities of dry instant oatmeal - HA! These little crumb-crunchers always keep me on my toes :)

I so wanted to post this and it didn't take me long to figure out how to bring it all back to Ethiopian adoption. Unfortunately for you this is all the time I have to blog tonight and I will fill you in on the connection in my next post!

Introductions

There was some conversation in our classes about how we are to introduce our new child to others (not family and close friends). Should we say, "This is our adopted child, Suzy," "This our child, Suzy" or does it really matter? In thinking through this question, it helps to know some general background of adoption history. In recent history, the 1940's and '50's even, adoption was still a very hushed event. Most adoptive families didn't want others to know that a child was adopted as it was not socially accepted. Thankfully, though still the culture in some Asian countries, in the US and much of the world this attitude is not the prevalent one anymore. There is now a priority placed on making much of the child's adoption "story" to them when they are young so that eventually they can connect their past to the feelings that they will have to process through as they get older. It helps them to have a stronger sense of who they are when it is inevitable that they will have times that they feel they don't "fit" anywhere despite the love we are giving them.

I don't want to seem that creating a record of our child's story is something we will not genuinely enjoy doing. What a unique and special work the Lord is doing in our family to bring this child to us. I pray that the He will overcome my disorganization and procrastination to help me create a good history of bringing this child home :) Anyway, back to introductions...

Our child will have their own unique adoption story that the agency encouraged us not to share liberally. It is their story, not ours. When I would introduce our children as "Juliana, Evan, and our adopted child, Suzy" (even if it is obvious that she/he will be adopted) I am making that story more readily available for anyone to ask. I certainly don't introduce Juliana and Evan as my "c-section daughter and c-section son." This is quite funny to think of, but the social worker warned us that for some reason people see adoption quite differently. They feel entitled to know exactly how this child ended up in our family and why and this conversation often happens in the produce aisle at the grocery store! Though I may want to boast of it to the world, I need to respect that perhaps they won't want the world to know the details of it all. Part of me says that well, maybe we are just making too big a deal over how we introduce our child, but another part of me can appreciate that it may be wise to err on the side of the child's privacy and to let them share their story when they are old enough. Again, just something to think about and possibly be more sensitive to when around adoptive families.

Tis the season!

After brainstorming together and bouncing a few ideas off of some friends Craig and I have decided on a few fundraising ideas. Since it is the season, we thought we would kick our fundraising off with a good old fashioned garage sale. This is not just any old garage sale...this is one where ALL proceeds go to the adoption AND we do all YOUR work! We are asking people to kindly give us their unwanted and no longer used stuff so that we might turn it into funds for the adoption. Just drop it off at our home and go relax in your easy chair, folks! I know that potentially this could be just a regular size garage sale or I pray that it would get really big! No matter what it will be a crazy amount of work, but so worth it. We are planning for mid-May and will be picking a specific weekend soon. For those of you reading this who would want to contribute, you have some time to start your spring cleaning and fill up some boxes for us :) Since starting to go through our boxes from the move we literally have one bedroom full of stuff collected for a sale - you can't see the floor. Our guidelines are if we haven't needed/used it in the last year and don't have immediate plans for it, it goes in the pile. If anyone has any great fundraising ideas we would be glad to hear them...i am guessing that we won't net $20,000 from the sale, but I suppose if the Lord would be pleased to do that He could!

Birth parents

We began the adoption classes by talking about the adoption triad. Yes, folks, this is a triangle with the child at the top and the birth parents and adoptive parents at each of the bottom corners. I would challenge you to look beyond the basics of it and think about the fact that this is essentially lives being knit together. It is often the tendency to minimize the birthparents contribution to the whole process of adoption, however, we need to remember that the birthparents are the start of everything. They are the ones who have chosen life for the child and that is no small matter in this day and age. Also, they are the ones who possibly have given some early care to the child and are the ones who give the child their cultural identity. What is our role then, as adoptive parents? To nurture all the things that this child is.

It is different by country, but I think that in Ethiopia it is mainly the case that birth parents have died and extended family has relinquished the children to orphanages for care. The social worker at Holt told us that they expect it to be fairly common that we will be able to meet extended family of the child and/or to be given pictures of family. I am purposing to pray specifically that this will be the case for us. I would love to be able to have this connection for our child as they grow up. What a privilege it would be to personally thank our child's extended family for entrusting the child to our care. Hmmm...that would be a very big moment I am sure. It is hard enough for me to think that we will actually be given a child, a beautiful little soul, that wasn't ours to begin with! I can give you a million reasons why I don't deserve such a thing! But to also be able to show my gratitude to the ones who made the ultimate decision to make that child available to us would be amazing.

Moving forward

Making phone calls, addressing envelopes, writing checks...I never thought it would feel so good! We have a few things to complete before the homestudy is to be done. The Holt office has been so patient and prompt with answering my questions! I learned how to order certified copies of our marraige license today and also looked into certified birth certificates. We will need to fax some info for that so I couldn't cross that one off my list today. I had planned on doing some blogging about what we learned in our classes in Omaha so I hope you enjoy some food for thought on adoption.

I know there are at least a few of you out there that are adopted and are reading this blog. I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on some of these topics in the comments section. I have much to learn from you who have experienced adoption in your own families :)

Yay!

As of Friday I am officially medically cleared for the adoption - WOOOHOOO! I will go tomorrow morning to pick up the papers from the clinic and will hopefully have them in the mail tomorrow as well. Since that is final we will also be sending our fingerprints in for our background checks. We had waited to send them b/c it costs about $60 to have those checks done. I need to call the Holt office in Omaha with questions about when our home study can be started as we hope to get going on that soon. Though as you can tell I have not spent much time at the computer (ha ha) we have been busy. Evan is eating his birthday cake and playing peekaboo with his cake on his first birthday. Juliana is at the McCook National Bank Easter Candy Hunt at a local park. If I remember right in the picture she is saying "Hi" to the bank's big fuzzy dog mascot named Sparky. She didn't want to get too close as you can probably tell :)

Ethiopian Orphans, Adoption, and Magnifying God