One more to cry over....

My best buddy Aimee sent this video my way, telling me she cried through it. There is something so moving about watching the spirit of adoption in real tangible action. God took us in much the same way. He takes fatherless and lost children, and makes them His own. We only have to embrace Him. He's already embraced and chosen us.



I was so moved even by the workers in the orphanage, who obviously loved this little girl, saying goodbye to the little one they had cared for and nurtured until she went to her forever home.

Just a beautiful Story of Adoption

I watched this short video about a blind man and his wife who adopted a blind little boy from India. Check it out. So beautiful.


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And So We Wait....

Right now I am sitting in the office. Wes is sitting at the kitchen table working on client invoices for Nina Mullins Photography. Sati (cat number 1) is crying, dying to come into the kitchen to Wes, but too afraid of the dog to make the leap. Blue is intrigued by Sati's cry, and is dying to be friends with her, but alas, no cats in this house appreciate Blue's presence. The constant hissing is evidence of that. It is raining outside. It is warm and cozy inside this house. And all is well.

So many people keep asking me how long until we get our baby. Nearly every other day. If it were anything else, it would be extremely frustrating, but I can't fault people for asking me this. They are excited, just as we are. But the wait is long. It's funny. Even though we only started this process a little over a month ago, it seems like everyone is wondering why we don't have our baby yet, or they are thinking it will happen next month. But alas, it will probably be another 11 months. That is all I have to report. There is not much else to say about the time frame. Only, I hope that there is a fluke, and our dossier slips in ahead of everyone else's, and we are called in January with a referral. But this is probably what everyone hopes for (did I sound selfish for saying that?). So again, I am SO thankful for the peace God has given me for the timing of everything. I just KNOW it's going to be perfect! Yes my heart aches to have a child in our home, a son or a daughter (maybe both!), but I can wait.

I am thankful for this time with Wes. I am thankful for this time to enjoy our two cats and our sweet Blue. I couldn't ask for more (but I still do!). Life is good, and I thank God for it.

Dossier Completed! Well, pretty much.....

Okay, I sent out pretty much every important document that we own in the mail today. It has been a hectic week, and I know our agency's workers are probably sick of my calls, but it is done! All I have left to send in is one more bank statement (still waiting on this since we have only been at our bank 2 and a half months, and we need 3 for nepal), and of course our USCIS paperwork (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).

Speaking of which, we ran into our first roadblock yesterday. It's bound to happen, but it kind of sucks when you travel all the way to Louisville to hit it. Oh well. :) We went to Louisville to hand in our "Application for Advanced Processing of Orphan Petition", and to get fingerprinted. All of this paperwork is basically for the US government to say we are eligible to adopt internationally. Well, when we walked up to the window on time for our appointment that we had made just last week, the seriously unfriendly lady at the window said we could no longer apply in person. She said that our adoption agency should have known this. Yeah right! I asked her when she found out about it, and she said, "Oh, we only found out the day we received this memo." (a week ago from yesterday, which is when the new "rule" took affect!) So anyways, she offered to send it in for us (whoopi...yes, a little bit of sarcasm there), so we wrote out the check, handed it over, and now wait for them to send us an appointment for fingerprints, at which point we will have to return to Louisville. And so goes the adoption journey. :) We DID thank God for the parking spot right out front, though. That was nice!

So anyways, that put a possible delay on getting our dossier to Nepal, but we continue to believe that God's timing is so perfect, and we KNOW that the perfect baby will be in our arms at just the right time.

But now I can rest a little easy since I have put that stack of papers in the mail. It has consumed my mind this last week, and every morning I've awakened way too early with thoughts of whether or not I've done everything right, or whether or not the notaries have signed and dated everything correctly. It's been quite the ride, with only more to come.

Now we just wait.....wait....wait....

So What is a Dossier?

I've been asked this question a lot in the past few weeks. Okay, here's a pretty good definition:

"A Dossier, when used in the context of adoption, this term refers to a set of appropriately authenticated and translated legal documents which are used in international adoption cases to process the adoption of a child in its own country by the adoptive parents, or for the adoptive parents to obtain the legal custody or guardianship of the child in the foreign court, so the child can be brought by the adoptive parents to the United States for adoption."

What I tell people: "It's a boatload of documents involving every intimate detail of our lives and every single page has to be notarized. This includes bank statements, employment verification, physician forms....just to name a few....literally."

So that is what we are currently working on. We are moving pretty quickly on it too! It's so exciting! We are still waiting on background checks, child abuse & neglect checks, fingerprinting, immigration forms etc. And pray that we get Wes's birth certificate before Tuesday, when we have our appointment in Louisville to get fingerprinted and send in our I-600A (a document the government files with your homestudy and fingerprints and after 90 days they tell you that you are eligible to adopt...hopefully!).

It's a crazy process! Everything has to be PERFECT. The notary's commission can't expire too soon. The dates need to be written out completely. Half of the documents have to be on the signing party's letterhead. If anything gets crossed out or whiteout, it has to be done all over again. We even have to notarize pictures of ourselves! Yeah, weird. :)

And the entourage of comments and questions from friends and strangers alike has started. "How long will it take?" "Will you get a boy or a girl?" "What will his/her name be?" "How much does it cost?" "Where's Nepal (seriously! most people don't know where this tiny country is!)?" And then there are the comments. "I am SO excited for you!" (I LOVE that one, especially when it is followed by muffled screams and hugs) "You're going to be a mom soon!" "You'll be a great mom!" (also love that one) "It's just like being pregnant!" Okay....that one is probably my least favorite comment, and almost everyone says it. :) I guess the main reason I don't love this comment, is that I have never been pregnant, and would love to be pregnant, and have spent 4 years hoping to get pregnant, and have been told by doctors that it is medically impossible. This comment, of course, is usually made by women who have experienced pregnancy, and see the waiting for an adopted child to come home similar to waiting 9 months for your baby to be born from your own body. With adoption, though, you DON'T know when your baby is coming home. You don't know if it will be 6 months or 2 years. You don't know if it will be a boy or a girl. You don't know who it's parents are. You don't get to experience them growing within you. You don't get to see pictures of him/her before they are born. You have people going through every room and closet in your house to make sure it's safe. YOu have to be interviewed by a social worker to maker sure that you are fit to be a parent. You have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to have this baby. And you don't get to bond with your baby the day he/she is born. To me, it is VERY different. Yes, I believe there are some similarities between adoption and pregnancy. I won't deny that. And adoption is an absolutely joyful process, and well worth it, but it is VERY different. Believe me, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to be pregnant, and perhaps one day I will be (because I believe in miracles!), but definitely not the same. :)

But again, it is all worth it! I mean, can you believe that our little boy or girl could be growing in some beautiful Nepali girl's belly?! The child that will call us Mamma & Daddy may already have a heartbeat! Wow! That thought overwhelms me at times. It fills me with joy! I wonder what the biological mother is feeling now. Is she scared? Is she sad? Is she happy? Has she been to a doctor? Will she ever go to a doctor? Does the biological father know about the baby? If so, is he still around? Are they married? What circumstances have led them to choose adoption for their child? What part of Nepal do they live in? What kind of food do they eat? What songs does the mother have in her heart for her little one? Does she sing to the baby? So many questions. Question we many never get answers to. Wow.

There is much waiting to be done. In some ways, I feel like God has prepared us for the wait. But then again, waiting is waiting, and waiting is rarely easy.

Once again, I am excited!