The End of a Very Long Chapter

We started the adoption roller-coaster ride the summer of 2007, almost five years ago. After months of research, we picked a country and agency. Then we spent 9 long months putting together our dossier. When our paperwork finally made it to China we feared that we might be waiting 8 years before we met our daughter. We certainly hoped it would be sooner, much sooner, but we wanted to be realistic.  We spent our wait time reading books and watching TV specials about China.  We bought books for the boys about China and enrolled them in a Mandarin language class.  We took trips to Chinatown and soaked in the sights, sounds and smells.

After a year and a half of officially waiting, we knew that that we shouldn't wait much longer.  Waiting took a toll on Scott and I...reading adoption rumors, keeping track of others' referrals, reading official Chinese adoption news, trying to determine when it would be our time for a referral.  The longer we waited, our possible referral date managed to get further away.  How was it that our wait was actually getting longer as time passed?  We knew that it would be years and years...in fact, though the officials in China won't say how long a wait it would be, there are mathematical calculations that say we wouldn't see our daughter's face until 2018.

So, Scott and I did some soul-searching and some more adoption and cultural research.  We realized that though we had invested a lot of time and a lot of emotion and some money into adopting from China, that was not where our daughter was from.  We turned our attention and hearts to Ethiopia and added two beautiful daughters to our family.

And now it's officially time to close our dossier in China.  Waiting for a child that is years from even being conceived felt more and more ridiculous as time has gone on.  It is bittersweet though.  For years I imagined what our family would look like...Scott and I, Jack and Logan and a daughter of Chinese heritage.

Do I regret getting in line for China?  Absolutely not.  It was the first of many steps that led us to Ethiopia and our two amazing daughters.

A New Christmas Tradition

For the first time, I let Jack and Logan go to the store and pick one new Christmas ornament each. I showed Logan a retro wooden space ship. He said, "That's mine!" and that was the end of his search for the perfect ornament (which lasted a whole 3 seconds). Jack, on the other hand, looked and looked and deliberated. (He has some trouble making decisions.) He easily spent 20 minutes trying to choose (all the while Logan looked on with amusement while he clutched his ornament). In the end, Jack choose a little glass pig.

I think that the boys picking out a Christmas ornament each year could become a new tradition.

And though I wasn't planning on getting anything myself, these are the two ornaments were calling my name.

You can clearly see where my head is at...in China and Ethiopia.

The Slow Boat to China Takes a Detour

Imagine my family on a boat. A boat moving very, very slowly. A boat headed to China very, very slowly. In fact, this boat could easily take 8 years to reach China where we are adopting our daughter. So we've decided to take a bit of a detour...to Ethiopia.

It has always been our plan to grow our family through biological and adopted children, specifically two each. After Jack was born, we got pregnant very quickly with Logan and realized that we would be putting off our adoption plans for a bit. About a year after Logan was born we started researching our adoption options. At the time, adopting our daughter from China seemed like the best fit for our family. We became "paper pregnant" on 8/13/08 and estimated an 8 year wait before we'd met our daughter.

Though we knew, intellectually, that the wait was long, we could not guess what the wait would actually feel like. After a year, it was wearing on us and we felt, since we have always planned on adopting two daughters, that maybe we should focus on starting a second adoption.

Two months ago, Scott and I began researching other countries from which we could do an adoption while still “staying in line” for China. We quickly realized that we also had a daughter in Ethiopia. After picking an agency we started compiling our dossier. This time around it only took us 5 weeks (as opposed to the China dossier that took more than 9 months).

Yesterday, 12/16/09, we officially became a waiting family...again! If all goes as planned, we should be matched with our daughter from Ethiopia in 6-9 months. Approximately, 8 weeks after that our paperwork will go to court and approximately 8 weeks after that we should travel to pick up our daughter. So, hopefully, in a year we will have our family of five home! We are thrilled to be starting on another journey to grow our family.

This slow boat is picking up steam to Ethiopia...

The Girl Effect

Considering that we are adopting our daughters from a Second and a Third World country (or a Developing and an Under-Developed country), I am very interested in learning more about girls that live in poverty. And I'm open to finding ways to help them that will, in turn, help those around them.

Take a look at this very powerful video, The Girl Effect, to see what I'm taking about.

I've read Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time and am currently reading Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Now it's time for me to act. And I think women, especially moms in America can make a huge difference. Interested in joining me?

50 Rocks

A year has come and gone since we began the wait for our daughter.

When we sent our dossier (a 3 inch stack of papers that took us a year to compile) to China, the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) logged it in as recieved on August 13, 2008. Adoptions in China are primarily handled first-come/first-serve based on a family's log in date (LID).

On our actual LID the CCAA had matched perspective adoptive families who had LIDs before January 31, 2006 to their children. Yep, that’s right...the CCAA had a backlog of 2 ½ years. 925 days to be exact.

The boys are too young to understand any of this now but I wanted to have a visual to get the kids excited when we finally (one day far, far in the future) would get close to recieving our referral. I decided to fill a vase with 925 rocks. Every month as the CCAA would match families and children I would take out the number of rocks for the number of LIDs they had gotten through. The boys would be able to see the level of rocks drop and drop each month as we got closer to being matched to our daughter.

This is what 925 rocks looks like.

In the past 365 days, the CCAA has only gotten through 50 LIDs. This is what the vase looks like with 50 rocks removed.

Notice the difference? Yeah, I didn't think so. ;)

The CCAA might have only gotten through 50 LIDs in the past year. But our family has gone on living life and so far while waiting for our daughter:

• Jack turned 4
• Logan turned 3
• Scott and I both got...older
• I started a blog
• The boys visited Disneyland for the first (and last?) time
• Logan started preschool
• We went to Monterey three times
• Jack finally let us cut his hair (yea!)
• Scott & I celebrated our 6 year wedding anniversary
• I ditched my diaper bag (woohoo!)
• The boys tried ice skating for the first (and last?) time
• We spent a lot of family time at the beach
• The boys went fishing for their first and second (and not last) time

I can only imagine what milestones our family will encounter before we meet our daughter in 5? / 7? / 10? years.

One year down...

Today was our one year LID* anniversary. And I wanted to be more in the moment and dwell on it. I wanted to dream about our daughter-to-be and read a novel set in China and have Chinese take-out. I wanted to have something profound to say about the year that has passed.

But life got in the way. And I'm tired. Really, really tired.

Maybe tomorrow...

* LID stands for log-in-date. This is the date that the governmental adoption agency in China receives your adoption paperwork. Adoptions are handled on a first-come, first serve basis based on this date.

What to do while riding the slow boat to China?

Usually my blog is a place where I strive to entertain or at least document my motherhood experiences in hopes that other mamas might be able to relate or commiserate.

Today, though, I'm feeling low and looking for an outlet.

I didn't think the adoption process from China could get any slower. (Though, realistically, it hasn't gotten slower...I'm just "feeling" the wait now.)

We logged in on August 13, 2008, a mere seven months ago. From the beginning I've been telling myself that we'd have an eight year wait. Occasionally, I'll let myself daydream about a shorter wait but I'm trying to be realistic.

I used to read and post several times a day on the adoption forums. Now I stay off of them. And I try not to get too caught up in the monthly number of days referred anymore. With such a long wait, it does me no good to get optimistic or disappointed by a day or two.

To make matters more complicated, I have a bad case of baby fever. Well, not so much baby like an infant...more like 1 year old fever. I have several friends from my sons' co-op preschool that have daughters that age and I am lucky enough to get to see them every weekday. Their curiosity and unbridled excitement and exploration of the world around them...oh, I want another baby. (And Scott, for better or worse, has a constant case of baby fever.)


So Scott and I sit here on this slow, slow boat to China. And now I'm wondering what, if anything, we should do. I had thought we might adopt a daughter from another country while still "in line" for our daughter born in China. A sort of boat detour, if you will. But with the current economic situation, I'm rethinking that plan.

Sorry for the babbling...I really didn't have a thought-out cohesive post. Just a bunch of rambling while sitting on this slow boat...

The girl in the photo is holding a red thread while standing upon The Great Wall. And the quote reads:
When a child is born, an invisible red thread extends from the child's spirit and connects her to all the significant people who will be a part of the child's life. As the child grows, the thread shortens, drawing closer those people who are destined to be together. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break.

Why adoption? Why China?

Shortly after my husband and I were married we sat in a small cozy booth of a nearby restaurant and wrote down what our goals, hopes, dreams were for our life together. A big part of the equation was kids. We both knew that we wanted kids and, while dating, had been surprised to find out that we were both interested in adoption. We thought we would have our first child the old-fashioned way and adopt our second child. After that we hoped to have another biological child and adopted child in no particular order.

A short while later, Jack was born.
And a very short time after that (6 months to be exact), we were pregnant with Logan. The boys are 15 months apart to the day.
So it's not exactly what we thought would happen. But a very good start none the less.

About a year after Logan was born, we started doing some very basic adoption research. I've always loved to travel...to meet new people, experience new cultures with all their unique food, music, language, dress. To me, it always seemed natural that we would adopt internationally. We looked at several countries...in my usual form I made charts and thoroughly compared every last detail. After all was said and done, China was the clear winner. And then I began my research into China. And the more I found out, the more I liked what I was learning about China and adoption from China.

Now, we can’t imagine not adopting our daughter from China. We want a daughter and our sons need a sister. There will be a little girl in China who needs a family. Though initially separated by thousands of miles, she will belong to us and we will belong to her.

Unfortunately, it took me a lot longer to put together our dossier (the 3 inch set of documents sent to China to notify them that we are interested in adopting from their country) than I anticipated. And the longer it took me, the longer the wait grew to adopt from China.

When we started researching the current wait for a NSN (non-special needs) referral from China was approximately 21 months. I arbitrarily added some time (9 months) thinking between the paperchase and the increasing wait time it would probably be 2 1/2 years before we had our daughter at home. That timing seemed perfect for our family. However, it took me a lot longer to put our dossier together and I hadn't taken into account the serious backlog. At this point it could very well be 8 years before our daughter is home.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says, “An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break.” We have a long (and probably tangled) wait until we find our child on the other end of the red thread but we know she'll be worth it.