Shower of Blessings

The adoption shower last night was so much fun and we are so blessed by the friends and family that came. A HUGE thank you to Stacey for doing this for us. This is the second time she’s done such a shindig for me - she threw me a surprise shower when I was pregnant for Natalie. She’s had a crazy week with sick kids, dr. appts, and getting ready to go on the high school mission trip but she still found time to put this together. Her mom opened up their beautiful home for the night and we had a blast.

We ate yummy food and then quizzed all the ladies on their Ethiopian Trivia Knowledge. I was pretty impressed that both Grandmas got 6 out of 8 questions right! (Although MeeMaw cheated and asked Natalie the answer to one of them. Lucky for her Natalie is a good guesser.)

Jen’s surprise was AWESOME! There is an African tradition called Blessing Cards. She handed each of the ladies rwo 4×6 sized card w/ a hole punched in one corner and they each wrote a special prayer or verse or blessing - one for W-boy and one for B-girl. Then, for each child, they chose two matching beads. One bead is attached to the card and then the other bead is strung on a string for the child. How cool is that? There’s a picture in the video below.

The cake was beautiful and yummy as I knew it would be. I asked for chocolate and said “Can you work peanut butter in there somehow?” So Michelle did a peanut butter mousse in the middle and some peanut butter in the frosting. It was delicious! (Hm, I’m thinking I’ll head to the refrigerator for some leftovers after this.)

We were totally blessed by all the gifts we received - bikes, scooters and helmets for both kids, clothes, pajamas, socks, sheets, games and coloring stuff to do on the plane, books, CD players, hair stuff (yeah!), a Frog Pod, wallets for the boys and purses for the girls and tons of gift cards. I am amazed and forever grateful.

So here’s some pictures from our fun night.

Song “Swept Away” by Geoff Moore

One Step Closer

One more hurdle is down. I heard from our AWOP case manager today that our kids legal papers are all done. This means that once our dossier is finished in translation (which I’m hoping it is - you usually don’t hear but it’s been 3 weeks) then Hope can file for a court date for us.

Tonight my wonderful friend Stacey is throwing me an Adoption Shower which is bound to be amazing. I hear Jen’s got a surprise up her sleeve and I’m very curious. Also my friend Michelle is doing the cake and they are always amazing creations (like this and this that she did for my kids birthdays). Can’t wait!

Congrats Bruyns Family!

I am so excited to announce that our friends the Bruyns are the official parents of little Netsanet Grace. They had quite a time getting through court due to power outages in Ethiopia. Nettie is beautiful and will make a wonderful addition to their family along with Mason, Abigail and Judah.

Missing Them

It is difficult to explain, but sometimes I am overcome with waves of emotion when it comes to our new kids. Sunday morning we went off to church, got the kids checked in to their classes and came in to the service as worship was starting. I think the song we were singing was “Happy Day” and as I stood there singing and clapping I was suddenly overwhelmed with just the strongest wave of missing my kids and wanting them there for that moment.

It was a family day, they are our family and yet they are not here with us and at times it seems unbearable. My comfort comes in knowing that they are being well cared for and are with their grandmother and that our time will come soon enough.

We must

I just THOUGHT we were done with the paperwork

Found out this morning that apparently Ethiopia has changed their requirements for the Power of Attorney that is part of our dossier and gives Hope’s lawyers legal right to act on our behalf in court. When they first announced the change a few weeks ago, we thought we’d be grandfathered in but apparently not. So it is one new piece of paper that has to go all the way through the process - notary, state authentication, Washington authentication, Ethopian Embassy and then sent to Ethiopia. Another $150 in costs at least.

The good news is that nothing is held up because of this. As long as it is there by our court date we are good.

Why are kids available?

The first portion of our adoption training last week (after introductions) was talking about why kids in Ethiopia are available for adoption.

There are reasons like extreme poverty as we expected but we learned a couple interesting things about their culture and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Their culture (and I think this is prevalent in Africa, not just Ethiopia) believes that it is wrong for a husband to have s*x with his wife while she is pregnant. Therefore, it is deemed “acceptable” for him to go and satisfy his needs elsewhere and this is when he often contracts HIV/AIDS.

The child is born (HIV free, of course) and then the husband and wife resume s*exual relations and he, of course, passes the disease on to her. Months down the road he gets sick and the wife suddenly realizes that she too probably has HIV/AIDS and after her husband dies is left to find someone who will care for her children.

We got to watch an interview with two separate women who had come into the AWOP offices in Ethiopia in hopes that they would find someone to take their kids. It was heart wrenching to watch this mom’s despair and hope combined. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the place.

One mom brought in her 3 oldest (of 5) children - a 15 yr old boy and two siblings. She wanted homes for them and would keep the younger children with her. In a second meeting they told her they found a home for the two youngest kids but the family did not want the older boy. They boy said he would give up his chance for a life in America if it meant his siblings could go. But the mother held on and said that wasn’t acceptable. Luckily they found another family that would take all 3.

Another interesting cultural tradition that contributes to adoptable kids has to do with remarriage. If her husband dies and a woman finds a man to whom she can marry, he WILL NOT accept her kids and she has to give them up. In the opposite case, if it is the father who is widowed, he can bring the kids into a new marriage but most likely they will be severely abused by their stepmother because they are not her own.

I cannot imagine the anguish with which these parents (or in our case grandmother) struggle with as they love these children enough to try to help them find a better life.

Adoption Training Day 2

Another full day of training on Saturday. Now I’m trying to remember what we talked about - medical issues (lice, scabies and all manner of fun things), traveling (we feel pretty comfortable with all of that), tips for after you get home, etc.

Again we got to meet two different adoptive families. This really was my favorite part. One family was that of my caseworker. They have 3 bio children and 5 adoptive children (3 Ethiopian siblings and 2 from India). I just loved being able to ask them questions from their perspective - including the bio children. They were good sports. Two of the older kids are actually going to Tanzania for a couple of months this summer to do missions work - all money raised on their own.

It’s awesome to see what adopting has done for the family as a whole - broadened their worlds and given them huge hearts for the hurting. It is my prayer that it does the same for our family.

We also got to talk about hair care - whole ‘nother world for me. Noah has lived the last 8 years with a buzz cut that I give him about every 2 weeks. Natalie barely had hair until she was about 2 - her first “real” haircut at age 3 or something. She hates having anything in her hair - barrettes, ponytails, etc. Last September she came home from 2 weeks in Arkansas and declared she wanted to grow her hair out “long and beautiful” like her cousin Averee. I told her that was fine but that probably mean we’d go through some periods where we would have to put it up. So she’s gotten a little better and occasionally lets me do something fun with her hair.

But with B-girl hair time will actually have to be scheduled Some of the families there said it’s just an every Saturday night thing and can take a couple of hours. Our goal is to make it fun and not seem like torture. In the two pictures we have of B-girl, she has beautiful hairstyles. The first one has cornrows leading back into a little poof or bun in the back. Then the other two shots have her hair all in braids. It’s about shoulder length or so.

Two books on my amazon.com wish list are:

Wavy, Curly, Kinky : The African American Child’s Hair Care Guide and Kinki Kreations: A Parent’s Guide to Natural Black Hair Care for Kids

Both have gotten high marks from other adoptive parents. So much to learn!

Dossier has arrived in Ethiopia!

Saturday morning, as we were pulling up to the hotel where our training was, my phone chirped. It was DHL telling me that our dossier has arrived in Ethiopia and is awaiting pickup by our agency personnel. Yippee! Pretty quick trip there…and no side trip through Paris. Yippee!! Next step is translation and then filing for a court date. Pretty nice early birthday/mother’s day present.

Adoption Training - Day 1

Wow, I don’t even know where to start. So this is really going to be kind of a mind dump and then I will try to come back and do a new post on some of these things.

The very general topics that we went through today: why children are available for adoption, attachment and parenting, loss and grief issues, and education issues.

We got to here from several families who have adopted from Ethiopia. One, of course is Steve and Michelle Gardner. They have 3 bio children and 9 adopted children, covering China, Russia, India and Ethiopia. They kids range in age from 23 to 4. Wow! We got to meet the two youngest today - so cute. One of the other families was Glen and Melinda who brought home two kids last summer. The third was Patrick and his wife who have 7? kids - 5 of whom are adopted. They have had a REALLY rough time with one of the older boys - like we’re talking worst case scenario but it was awesome to see their commitment to him and their family and to hear that things are getting better.

Other stuff that jumped out at me:

• some cool parenting tricks that we can learn to help us and that you do not have to parent your adoptive kids the same way you parent your birth children (that may be hard for them to understand)
• disruption - it’s sad but it happens. That’s when an adoptive family decides at some point that they cannot or won’t keep the child that the adopted and brought home. At that point, if there is not an immediate family for them, then they are placed in the U.S. foster care system. I get that adoption is hard, but heck, parenting is hard. Would you do that to a biological child? No! Get help but I cannot imagine breaking that covenant - which is really what it is.
• subtractive bilingualism - as our kids are learning English it is highly likely that they will start to loose their Amharic. There comes a point in this process where they are actually without adequate language (in either language) to express themselves - very frustrating for them. More on this later. (It needs a diagram)
• language leveling - even if our kids retain their Amharic (because they have each other to talk to) it levels off at their current level and they will have to mix in English for words they don’t know (like “microwave”, etc.) The only way to overcome this is to keep them involved with learning Amharic either through a language program - adult mentors, etc.
• if they retain their language and use it regularly they will actually learn English slower - interesting trade off.
• Child Protective Services - interesting stories that have happened to adoptive families because their child does not look like them. Important tip: Put a family photo in your wallet so you can prove to the police that the child throwing a tantrum and being removed from the store (by you) is yours and you’re not kidnapping him/her. More later on this.

At the end of the day Patrick brought all of his kids in and we got to ask them questions - particularly the 3 older boys who range from 8-10 (2 are brothers). I asked them about names and if they liked having American names or wished they had kept their own (which are now their middle names). Patrick said they were excited about their American names when they first came home. One boy said he wished he was still “Yosef” they other two said they like both and use both. They all said their favorite thing about America was school and learning. Favorite foods - pizza, pasta, lasagna.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about hair and skin care (fun!), medical issues, travel and I’m not sure what else.

We also got a lot of fun goodies today - Ethiopian hats, scarves, necklaces, a prayer journal, stuffed lambs for the kids. We are tired!