Hopping on that bronco again...

Alright. It's time. I've been harassing my fellow adoptive families to provide me with blog addresses so that I can stalk them. For whatever reason when you get to this point in an adoption you NEED detailed information from other families to maintain your own sanity: dossier submission dates, referral dates, court dates, travel dates. The more info you get from other families going through the same agency, the closer your calculations can get to determining when the beloved "phone call of a lifetime" will come through for YOUR family.

So, I figure since I rely on others' blog posts that perhaps I should get off my duff and start posting again myself. Of course, in the end, the majestic phone call, when it finally does come, wipes out all need to check others' blogs and the whole wait goes up in a big poof of smoke as if it happened overnight in our memories.

Sigh.

All I have to report is a fun holiday. And we lost our passports. And Brian lost his wallet and his iphone in a snowbank somewhere in Oregon. Hopefully the passports won't mess us up too much, but we're already busting patooty to get the new ones so here's hopin'.

We're at 8 weeks waiting today and hopefully not more than 8 weeks left to go! Happy New Year!

Where we're at...

Yes, I must admit that this time around we're not being so great about posting to our blog. I suppose having a toddler already is excuse enough for that! We're about 1/3 of the way through this adoption at this point. All of our major paperwork is completed, and we're just waiting on our homestudy (the official document that the social worker writes) to be penned so that we can send everything off to immigration and then Ethiopia. We are still hopeful that we will travel as early as this fall to pick up our little baby girl! People in our community are getting referrals, and the kids are just so CUTE that it makes me crazy! I know there's a lively little one out there waiting for us, and I can't wait to meet her and bring her home!

In the meantime, our five year anniversary as well as Evan's 1st Gotcha Day have come and gone. Unfortunately I was VERY sick this weekend with the stomach flu, and so I missed both anniversaries... But we did manage to get a picture of Evan. Isn't there a huge difference between a year ago and now? It blows us away.

If you want to learn more about Ethiopia this week, I highly recommend visiting the site: http://thereisnomewithoutyou.com . The people whom this book is about are truly amazing!

Jen

How to Help... This Week: Go to The Gap

This week we should all head to The Gap to buy ourselves (or someone else) a little "Product (RED)". Profits from the (RED) campaign go to buy medications to treat AIDS, TB, and malaria, as well as provide support for the care of orphans in the poorest nations in the world. Picking yourself up a t-shirt at The Gap is an easy way to get involved and spread some of our hugely abundant American wealth to people who are starving and dying. So folks, put that American consumerism to good work and go get yourself a t-shirt! If you don't like logos, there are plenty of other clothing items that support this program that don't say "(RED)" on them!

http://www.gap.com/browse/category.do?cid=20856&pageID=-1

Jen

Why Ethiopia?

Hi everyone!

This blog will help to document our journey towards Ethiopia to adopt our second child, a daughter! We are just starting the process now, but the entire program only takes about 6 months to complete, so we expect to travel sometime in November/December to pick up our baby girl! Evan will be coming with us, and while we're not looking forward to the 30 hour flight with a 2 year old, we are very excited about being able to experience the country as a family. We are REALLY excited about both the journey and the addition of a new little munchkin to our family. Our experience with Evan was, overall, fantastic, but he was older than we had expected our child to be at placement. This time we are requesting a girl under 6 months of age, so we really will get that "baby" experience. I'm already out of control with the little girl clothes... I can't wait!

So, even though we're at the beginning of this relatively short process, we are starting to get questions from the peanut gallery. The most common of these (as with any foreign adoption) is "Why Ethiopia?" The reasons are complicated and many. With any adoption there are a multitude of risks, and a foreign adoption is no exception. Each country has its own criteria of the types of families it will consider adopting its children out to, each country has its own fees, each agency has its own fees, each country has different levels of care and need, each country has different ages of children who are available and different laws about when they become legally available, and each country has its own laws about length of stay in country. Phew, that was a lot to think about!

When we first started looking at adoption as an option for #2 we were particularly interested in countries that had a DIRE need, and in this case countries who were listed as areas with the highest level of undernourishment on the planet. Haiti is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that is listed in the most critical zone, but there are many countries in the Eastern Hemisphere that are, and Ethiopia is no exception (we are too young to adopt from Haiti, by the way). FORTY-SIX PERCENT of all Ethiopians are considered undernourished. This is a huge amount of the population. In addition to that, there are estimated to be roughly 4.8 MILLION orphans in Ethiopia, and 1 out of 4 children is not expected to reach their 4th birthday. Children are orphaned for many reasons, but the most prevalent of them is extreme poverty and AIDS ravaging their communities and literally killing their parents. In addition to this, being part of the Ethiopia Adopt Yahoo group for the past 6 months has been an inspiration, to put it lightly. It is full of people who are like us and are just looking for a way to help the world while growing our families, but also a lot of people doing very extraordinary things to help these orphans. It has been a real eye opener to be a part of this community and to meet regular folks who are doing truly remarkable things. It has inspired us to move forward with this adoption!

WE ARE STOKED!

We are so happy to be able to help a young child in need, to help a community in need, and to be given the great gift of a child so that we can grow our family further. We can't wait to get to Ethiopia to see what life is like there and to meet our little girl! Please join us on this ride!

Love, Jen, Brian and Evan