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.

It's a messy job, but somebody has to do it!

And we're off...

Our file was sent off to Ethiopia today! YIPPEE!!!!!!! We are thrilled and can’t wait to receive notice that it has arrived safely and the real waiting can begin.

With our file leaving Canada, this means that our domestic file has officially been closed (don't even get me started on the "why can't it stay open until you get the referral" and the "that doesn't seem fair" - it's LAW and it's just the way it is - whether it makes sense or not).

I am having trouble describing the feelings associated with our domestic file closing. Of course, we are so excited to be on this Ethiopian adventure; however, domestic adoption is all we have known for so many years, including all the good (the miracle of Sara, our open adoption experience) and the not so good (the endless waiting, the close calls). We have been in a constant "waiting" mode for so long now, the thought of this whole infertility/adoption journey ending and our family finally being complete is kind of unfathomable – I only know how to wait.

Also, the unknown about an international adoption is also fairly new for us including all the added "worries" like potential politics within Ethiopia (ex. civil war), natural disasters (ex. the recent drought sweeping the country), Ethiopian courts approving the adoption, applying for citizenship/visa, baby medicals before we can take him/her home, etc...

I will be sure to check in once our file has arrived in Ethiopia and we can officially announce that we are “expecting”.

Why Ethiopia?

A question we get almost every time we share our news...

Our choices for selecting Ethiopia for our international adoption are multiple and I can't really say that one reason was more significant then the other. The reasons just all seemed to add up together and made sense for our family. So, in no particular order, our reasons for selecting Ethiopia are:

* Children receive exceptional care in the orphanages and are generally very healthy.

* On the international adoption scale, Ethiopia is one of the least expensive country to adopt from (not that we would ever want to put a price on this journey - but the reality is that the money has to come from somewhere).

* Canada/Manitoba has a very established adoption program in Ethiopia - the process is next to seamless and very well organized.

* There is a large network of families in Manitoba who have adopted from Ethiopia to connect with.

* Ethiopia has one of the shortest waiting times for being matched with a child and bringing a child home (about 12 months in total).

* Ethiopia has the youngest children available for adoption (as young as a couple months).

* The race of our child was not important to us (well, it is important, but you know what I mean) - being parents and completing our family is (and always has been) our priority.

Bitter Sweet

Bitter...We have found out that referral times have increased for all child(ren) requests. For us, the wait will now be "at least 6 months" (we were originally told 2-4 months) for an infant either gender referral. And this could change again without any notice...we are now looking at 2009 before our referral comes in. Regardless, we are committed to this journey and (as best we can) prepared for all the bumps that come along the way!

Sweet...We have had contact with Imagine and it feels like such a relief to have connected with them finally. Our situation was bit different then others - we did not have any contact with IA until our local agency sent our completed approved homestudy to them, along with all the other documents including our retainer. Our contact with IA has been nothing but positive. They have answered EVERY question I have thrown at them...and there have been many in just this short time. Looks like our Dossier should be traveling by the end of June (fingers crossed)...then the real count down begins.