One month down!

That was not so bad...I think I can do this for another 6 months or so?????

It is wonderful that there have been several referral announcements in the past week. This means a few steps closer for us! The recent referrals were for single infants - and the families had been waiting since Nov and Dec 07 and Jan 08 (yippee, we are in the 2008 referrals), so about 6.5-8.5 months. I think I can manage that wait...ask me that again in a few months :) Congrats to those families! I have added a referral tracker to the left column of my blog, so we can track timelines.

Thank you to all our family and friends that have wished us congratulations and have been supporting us through this journey. This experience is quite different then our domestic adoption; although everyone knew we were adopting, we did not know when (could have been days, months, years, never) and even after we received the call for Sara, the fear of reversal kept us from celebrating too loudly and sharing our news with anyone outside our inner circle. But this time, we have an estimated due date - an actual date we can anticipate and look forward to, plan for, and plan around. It is so wonderful being able to share this experience with others. I love answering all the questions and inquiries we are receiving - it makes it so real!

Guilty confession...

"Oh, that child is so lucky."
"What a wonderful thing you are doing."
"You are doing such a brave/courageous/noble thing."
"It is so great that you are giving a child a chance at life."

and so on and so on...while all these comments we have received in one form or another have validity - I must confess that our main decision to pursue an Ethiopian adoption is purely selfish...I JUST WANT ANOTHER BABY AND BE DONE! This mission is simply a means to an end.

At the same time, I sometimes feel quite guilty for sounding so egocentric - we are spending all this money for our own selfish desires to complete our family - I have often thought "why not send all the money we have put towards this adoption to help a family in Ethiopia?" Just writing that made my stomach turn with guilt. What if our future child could have thrived within his/her birth family if only they had been provided the resources. STOP - how timely, I just read a blog posted (and comments) this morning on this very topic - it is said more eloquently then I could have ever express, check it out http://rowanfamilytree.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/a-25000-question/ - Thanks Nicky.

My rationale - Bottomline is that adoption is the only way we can complete our family - so I need to think of it more as our reality then being selfish. I like to think of it this way:

"We are so blessed to have this child join our family."
"We are honoured that we were chosen to be parents for this child."

"We are the lucky ones."

I think I am kind of talking in circles and I don't even know if I have truely expressed my thoughts or even know exactly what I am trying to say in the first place. So take this post for whatever it is worth.

We are "EXPECTING"...and I am celebrating with a glass of wine!

Who can say that these days and still be politically correct...I can! We have just recieved confirmation (why did it take so long?...who knows? - at this point I don't even care!) that our dossier arrived safely in Ethiopia on June 30, 2008 and we are now officially "expecting" - let the count down begin! Our gestation may seem more like an elephant than a human, but at least the end is in sight :)

Just think, our beautiful babe could be somewhere across the ocean as we speak - how cool is that?

So now what...we wait (and as you have already read, we are experts at that; however, it never seems to get any easier). We hope by January/February 2009 (or maybe, if we are really lucky, an early Christmas present) that we will receive a child referral. So, we have about 6 months until referral and about another 3-6 months until travel - we are hoping to be in Ethiopia by next summer.

In the mean time, we begin the first part of the citzenship paper work for our babe.

GRRRRRR...still waiting for confirmation.

We just got back from a few days of camping and the first thing I did when we walked in the door was rush to the computer to check our email to see if we received our confirmation of our dossier arriving in Ethiopia. To my disappointment, no email. Our file left on June 26 - it has now been over three weeks - we are quite confident it has arrived (because it is only suppose to take a week for it arrive) but we don't want to officially celebrate until we know for sure. Hopefully this week we will hear...

A little bit about Sara's Adoption

This picture is from the first time we met Sara.

An Adoption Prayer

Not flesh of my flesh.
Nor bone of my bone.

But still miraculously my own.

Never forget for a single minute.

You didn't grow under my heart

But in it.

Sara was our first miracle. On August 23, 2004 I received the best phone call of my life (so far) - "Laura, are you somewhere you can talk, we have a birthmother that would like to meet you and Chad...and the baby is already born...and it is a girl...and her name is Sara" - words that changed our family forever. Eight days after that phone call Sara came home.

We have an open adoption with Sara's birthparents - something we cherish - we feel blessed that they are a part of our life. They are amazing people and we look forward to each visit with them. You can never have too many people who love you in your life!

Sara has always know how she was brought into our family - adoption is just the way we became a family. We have a special box that we keep all our adoption memories in for her and we read her lots of children's books about adoption - our favourite is "Tell Me Again About the Night I was Born" by Jamie Lee Curtis. We also celebrate Sara's "Gotcha Day" every year as a family.

Sara has brought more joy into our life than we ever thought possible - we are so blessed that we are on another amazing adoption adventure that will lead us to our second miracle.

Big sister in training...

Although, I do not think Sara realizes that our baby will not take direction as well as her new doll!!! Or that our baby will be crawling/walking, maybe talking, and most definitely will be getting into "stuff" - including Sara's "stuff" right away.

By the way, we are still waiting to hear confirmation that our file has arrived safely in Ethiopia - takes about one week to get there, but we just heard that IA does not receive confirmation until about 1-2 weeks after that...more waiting.