Homestudy? Check! Fingerprints? Check!

On November 10th, our final home study finally arrived from Angel Adoptions and James immediately rushed it off to FedEx along with our 600A form and documents for immigration. He made it just as the mail guy was leaving and he generously agreed to wait while James packaged it all up and sent it on its way. Wahoo! Unfortunately, the next day, after looking a little more closely at the home study, James noticed our address was slightly wrong. So we had to go through some logistics to get that changed, but it seems to be taken care of now and hopefully hasn't delayed the process. It did teach us to triple check everything though! While we wait for our 600A approval from immigration, James sent another copy of our home study to get state certified on November 18th. This, along with our USCIS approval will be part of the dossier (the ultimate collection of paperwork that goes to Holt and then Ethiopia).

Less than a week later, the home study was returned to us. We were surprised at the speedy turnaround, but when we opened it, realized that it had not been state certified but mailed back to us as the notarized documents within it were not done according to new Massachusetts standards. What?! We then had to figure out exactly what the new standards were and get the Power of Attorney document redone. We went to three different banks before finding a notary with the proper stamp that didn't expire within a year. Meanwhile, we received notice that our 600A was approved and we received an appointment to go to Cranston, RI for our FBI fingerprinting appointment. The appointment was for December 6th at 8:00 am and since James had to be chef at work that morning, making this appointment would be extremely challenging. We had read that couples sometimes went for their appointment early to gain some time in the whole process, so we decided to take a gamble and drive the two hours to Cranston in hopes they would squeeze us in a week early. We also decided to try to kill two birds with one stone and take our home study personally into Boston to get state certified to ensure we had done it correctly this time. We figured if it was incorrect, we could at least get clarification on what we needed to do properly and save time with going back and forth in the mail. So the day would involve five hours worth of driving with no guarantee that anything would get accomplished.

On Tuesday, November 30th, Grandma and Grandpa came to watch the girls for the day and James and I headed to work - James was chef and I was helping to serve and we were thankfully able to escape and be on the road for Rhode Island at 10:30am. We arrived at the fingerprinting office at 12:30 and were told we would need to come back for our originally scheduled appointment on Monday the 6th. We told the officer that we had driven all the way from Chatham in hopes they could squeeze us in and that the 6th would be very challenging with work committments. After speaking with his boss since he claimed it was a very busy day (though we were one of two parties there), he agreed to squeeze us in and we were to come back in an hour. Phew! We went out for a really good sushi lunch at "Uncle Sushi," a little hole in the wall James found online and returned at 1:30 at which point there were maybe three couples there and we were in and out in ten minutes. I have a feeling they tend to make it seem like it's a big deal to override your original appointment so not everyone does this, but with a little arm twisting, it's probably fairly easy to do unless they do actually have a really busy day. So one mission down, one to go. Off to Boston and once again, success! We had gotten the proper notary stamp and left the building with a state certified home study. Now all we have to do is wait for our fingerprinting approval to send off to Holt with our home study and once they approve it and send it off to Ethiopia, we will be on a wait list for our baby...then the countdown will really begin!

Tick Tock....

Boy am I eager to complete this home study step and move on already! It has taken ages to get the home study from our local agency over to Holt and I have to admit, we are getting a bit antsy. We realize we are going to have to deal with waiting throughout this process so we try not to get too worked up at each stage. It's just very hard to know that our baby may already be born and it is rough to wait to get our hands on our little guy or girl or at least know whether it is a boy or girl. I feel very lucky that we have two biological daughters keeping us busy and entertained while we wait. So many couples have already gone through years of infertility and now have to wait through a long journey of unknowns before they can bring their child home. I'm pretty sure I would go absolutely insane without the distraction of two toddlers to occupy my every waking moment.

I wonder what our baby's gender is and what his or her name is. I wonder the circumstances under which she came to be placed for adoption and the care she is in now. Is she even born? Does she have biological brothers or sisters? Does she have any family members alive? This is so different from my pregnancies during which I took every precaution possible - no walking through x-rays at airports, no eating raw meats or fish or cheese that wasn't pasteurized. No coffee. No wine. No standing too close to the microwave. It all seemed so controlled. But the truth is, whether I carry my child or someone else does the honors, we have little control over how our babies come to us. As diligent as I was with both my pregnancies, my first daughter was born 7 weeks premature and my second sent me on bed rest due to early labor. But they are fine now just as I suspect my third will be once he or she finally finds his way to our home. And until then, I'll just have to settle for wondering...

Shameless Solicitation

It looks like our homestudy is complete and we are now just waiting for approval before we get it in our hands and can move onto step two of this long process: submitting the homestudy and other paperwork to USCIS (Immigration) and getting an appointment for FBI fingerprinting in Boston. Despite the fact that we've already been fingerprinted at the local Chatham police station and cleared for anything criminally related, we must now have our backgrounds checked by the big guns. It'll be worth a trip into Boston at least and then - check! Another step toward getting our baby.

As we wait, we've been killing time reading other adoptive parents blogs, joining in the Yahoo group for Holt's Ethiopian adoptive parents, and seeking out African cultural events like the wine tasting we went to at St. Christopher's church in downtown Chatham where the proceeds benefited HIV victims in Kenya through Maseno Missions. In reading other blogs, we came across a few couples who set up fundraising efforts online to raise money to support their adoption. Initially I thought this was a tad tacky and not really my speed, but let's face it, adoption costs are steep and how many of us have friends who have solicited our support for marathon running, Breast Cancer walks, etc.? All of these are worthy causes and I realized that my hesitation to start a fund raiser stemmed from the fact that our goals were of a purely personal nature as opposed to a larger cause. At any rate, we stumbled upon a website that specializes in selling Ethiopian coffee and allows adoptive families to set up a link so a portion of any sales that come through their page are designated toward their fundraising efforts. This particular donation raising scheme seemed a little less "solicity" to us. Plus, who doesn't like a good cup of Ethipian java to get going in the morning? Win/win, right? Plus, our friends and family and any other random followers of my Ethiopian blog can taste one of our child's homeland's specialties. We appreciate any support - every little bit helps get us one step closer to bringing our baby home.

Click here to buy some Meyer Adoption fund Ethiopian coffee now!

Final Home Study

On Friday, October 1st, we had our third and final home study, this time at our house. I made sure to have Tab on hand for Deb (that's the innkeeper in me) which she was pretty stoked about and plenty of cookies from the inn which Hailey, her daughter seemed to enjoy. We showed Deb around the house and answered questions about our finances, where the new baby would sleep, etc. Since we own the inn and the mortgage for our house is included on the inn's books, our financial status looks really weird on paper. Deb said she might have a hard time explaining our lack of ownership or renting, but will figure something out. Hopefully this will not hold up the process.

After the hour or so visit, Deb told us that she had bumped us to the front of her homestudy piles since we had completed all the paperwork so quickly and had done our homework, so to speak. We are now just waiting for her to write up the homestudy in order to move forward with the process. She guesses she will be done in about two weeks so we are eagerly waiting for this piece and have all documents then ready to send off to immigration for approval so we can get an appointment to get our fingerprints done in Boston.

In the meantime, we have been reading others' blogs about their own process, we took an online adoption course which was one of five that we are required to take. It was called "Let's Talk Adoption" and to be honest, was mostly kind of lame, but gave a few good pieces of advice like the idea of telling the child's birth and homecoming story at each birthday as a tradition. James also surprised us all with a surprise that came in the mail - tee shirts for all of us with "Mom," "Dad," "Sister," and "Ethiopia" across the front. Abigail opened and distributed them all and we were all excited to "advertise" our plans. James has also been avidly investigating travel plans and following the Holt Ethiopia Adoption Yahoo group for tips and to learn about the timelines on others' progress. His enthusiasm is obvious and I'm so excited that he is so excited about the process.

And so we wait...

Burried in Paperwork

I have dubbed this James' pregnancy. He is the paperwork guy, the deadline guy, the spreadsheet guy...you get the picture. True to form, James has us on the fast path to paperwork completion. Since we officially began the process and submitted our application on August 30th, we have completed two of our three home study appointments and have our third scheduled for Friday. All our paperwork has been completed, notorized and submitted and believe me, there is a LOT of paperwork - birth certificates, marriage certificates, passports, medical records, finger prints, police clearance - you name it, the government needs it. It's kind of ironic considering anyone can just get pregnant, but I get it.

Our first home study appointment was on September 10th and we met with Deb Peckham of Angel Adoptions. Since Holt, the adoption agency we are using, does not have a Massachusetts office, we selected one of their sister agencies to do our homestudy and act as our social worker. There were four Massachusetts agencies from which to select and Deb's personal phone call and easy conversation led me to select her agency without a second thought. When we showed up at her doorstep in Canton, about a 90 minute drive from us, my decision was immediately solidified. Deb was the epitomy of eccentric Jewish social worker and I'm not saying this to be stereotypical. My mom is Jewish and would appreciate every word of what I just said. She was drinking a Tab and while I have a "thing" about not liking the idea of soda, I loved that this was her beverage of choice. We chatted in her living room, her two dogs, Lola and Sadie snuggled in our laps and occasionally jumping up to eat a piece of paper that dropped to the floor. During the hour and a half we were there, we covered everything from why we were choosing to adopt to our parenting style (um, ad lib?), to our reasons for specifically choosing Ethiopia. When we left I felt one step closer to bringing our baby home, but knew there was a lot of work and waiting ahead of us.

As I suspect many families adopting from abroad do, we have been emersing ourselves in learning about the Ethiopian culture. What better way to reinforce our learning than to experience an authentic Ethiopian meal? So we went a little out of our way after our home study appointment to Cambridge where ethnic restaurants line the streets near MIT. At a restaurant called Asmara, we enjoyed a chef combo for two which we ate at little round basket-like tables with our hands.

James even had his first Ethiopian beer, Hakim Stout.

With full bellies and spice scented fingers, we made our way home, dreaming up names and visions of our new baby along the way.

Our second home study (September 20th) was much the same, this time with individaul appointments and a lot of briefing on our own childhoods and our parents' philosophies about parenting, etc. As usual, Deb, Tab in hand, was easy to talk to and seemed genuinely impressed at the rapid speed with which we had submitted all our paperwork to her office.

We have scheduled our third home study for Friday, October 1st and have completed all the documentation Angel Adoptions requires. Until our home study is written up, there is little to do, but wait....

Expecting

Someplace in Ethiopia, a woman is walking around with a swollen belly where my baby is beginning his or her life. It is her baby too and though I may never meet her, this bond is one of the strongest I may share with another human being.

This “pregnancy” is different in so many ways from my first two. For starters, I can celebrate the announcement of our third baby with a glass of bubbly. And instead of waddling around with cankles in six months, I’ll be surrounded by a sea of paperwork and correspondence from a foreign government and adoption agencies. I will trade my round belly, clearly announcing my pregnancy for a conviction deep within that the baby meant for us will eventually come home.

I have wanted to adopt an international baby for as long as I can remember. My sister Emma, ten years my junior, was adopted from Hong Kong and came to our family when she was seventeen months. I was proud of the ethnically diverse family my parents had built and while I never gave much thought to the fact that Emma and I don’t share the same blood, I always considered her presence in our family special and enjoyed celebrating Chinese New Year and her “Coming Home Day.” Perhaps it was my personal experience as an adoptive family that prompted my longing to continue this tradition within my family as an adult.

Despite my desire to adopt, we were never quite certain whether to make the leap from two to three kids. I have my two girls, eighteen months apart and with just three bedrooms and many days when my fuse is so short I can barely see it, the size of our family seemed just about right. I was hesitant to add a third and being the instigator to start a family in the first place, decided not to be the one to push the envelope. So I was floored when James initiated the discussion and seemed fairly eager to expand our family with an adopted child. He had even done quite a bit of research and landed on Ethiopia as a good fit for our family for a number of reasons, one of which was the care offered at the orphanages and the strides the adoption agency takes to keep the children in their country by offering medical assistance and financial aid. We felt that we would be adopting a child truly in need of a home with no other options but to be adopted. And we knew we had the resources, but most of all the love, to offer this child.

Somewhere out there, my baby begins his or her life. This baby is a fighter, but beyond that I don’t know anything about him. I don’t even know if it’s a him. I do know that when people tell us we are doing such a wonderful deed, I will know better. I will know that it is our child who has brought so much more to our family than we could ever return. Families grow in many ways. I can’t wait to meet our next addition.