Best Book EVER!

Joel got me There Is No Me Without You for my birthday (yep its official I'm 32). I started reading it yesterday and about 5 hours later went to bed. If I were not sick I think I would have stayed up all night and finished it. I thought it was about adoption in Ethiopia. It is so much more. If you have not read it you should-even if you are not adopting.

Inter Country Adoption (IA): In a nutshell

I am stealing this from someone who posted it on an ethiopadopt group. I think this covers just about everything:

1. Fill out questionnaire.
2. Send check.
3. Fill out big questionnaire.
4. Send another check.
5. Get interviewed. (have a social worker inspect your home- panic)
6. Get fingerprinted twice.
7. Write check.
8. Apply for Visa.
9. Write big check.
10. Get more fingerprints.
11. Get copies of every official certified thing ever written about you
or files on your behalf.
12. Get your friends to write nice things about you.
13. Get them to write more and different nice things about you to put
into the file.
14. Wait forever for the INS to figure out you aren't a terrorist
training camp for toddlers.
15. Send another check with your completed file you've copied 9 times
because you want to be sure.
16. Send everything to the agency and hope that this is NOT the one
package they lose today.
17. Wait.
18. Wait some more.
19. Cruise the boards to find out who's getting referrals.
20. Worry that maybe you picked the wrong agency.
21. Wait some more.
22. Get Referral!
23. Send last check.
24. Wait
25. Wait.
26. Check prices for airline tickets.
27. Get shots.
28. Check Passports.
29. Check on Visas for Ethiopia.
30. Wait.
31. Get a court date!
32. Worry you won't pass court.
33. Blame everyone and everything for anyone not passing court.
34. Panic.
35. Pass Court (or not, skip back to 32).
36. Panic some more.
37. Finish the kid's room.
38. Buy more toys.
39. Panic some more.
40. Wait.
41. Get second round of shots.
42. Wonder why there are 6 pages of things you MUST pack for a 10 day
trip.
43. Wonder if ANYONE ever packed that much.
44. Wonder how anyone did and STILL brought things over to donate to the program (feel guilty you couldn't bring more).
45. Meet your child.
46. Joy, mixed with panic because all of the your fears and doubts and
everything else are staring you down and sizing you up.
47. More bureaucracy.
48. Travel back to the USA with a child that thinks he's just been
kidnapped.
49. Kick yourself for not test installing the car seat before you left.
50. Home. Sleep. Panic.
51. Read your child his first bedtime story (that he still can't
understand because he doesn't speak English).
52. Realize that it was all worth it.

I laughed until I cried after reading this.

(I would add one thing around #40: go to baby store and look at things you can't buy because you don't know the sex of your baby or their age/weight)

Simple.

3 Months

Not that I'm counting the days (hours and minutes) but today is 3 months that we have been waiting. This last month has been difficult. The first two months went really quick but this last month seemed like an eternity. At this point it looks like we will be getting our referral (with any luck) before the courts close for the rainy season . That means we'll have to wait for courts to reopen before we'll travel.

Thursday

We made even more friends! Ahdra and Greg have two beautiful children adopted from ET at the same time. We went out for Ethiopian food tonight at a place about a mile from our house. They gave us some very helpful advice.

Emily & Tim (also new friends from IFIF) leave on Saturday to pick up their THREE sons from Liberia. I can't even imagine. I hope they have a crew of people bringing them food and cleaning.

Too Cute

Kristen, my sister in law, emailed me tonight about some photos and such. Then she "said" that Kendyl (our insanely cute and crazy 4 year old niece) was upset the other night and shed a few tears because she has not got to see her baby cousin. Kristen assured her that we feel the same way.

I think it is great how excited she is. At first we tried to explain little things to her: the baby is coming from Africa, she (or he) will be brown, the baby is not in my belly (although it may look like it soon). She just wants to know how soon the baby is arriving. ME TOO! Kendyl has also made a few pictures for the baby. One is hanging above the changing table in the babies room-the rest I will add to the scrapbook (that I intend to start any day now).

Great Weekend

We allowed ourselves to take a bit of a break this weekend. Friday we had dinner with Emily and Tim. They adopted their beautiful little girl from Liberia and are awaiting THREE boys.

On Saturday we went to Paige & Albert's to take the perfect family photo. And as many of you know it is so easy to get that perfect family portrait when a two year old is involved (HA!). Astrid & Elliott have to be too of the cutest kids ever. Now if only Astrid would sit still and not eat her shoe (or pick her nose) we would be all set. The photos were a lot of fun. Afterwards they made us dinner (the grown ups did-not the kids). We stayed and played cards until midnight.

We are so lucky to have made some wonderful new friends. It is great to talk to other mom's about the process. Its hard for people to truly understand all that goes into inter country adoption unless you have been through it. Our husbands also seem to enjoy making fun of our insanity as we go through this journey.

Oh I forgot to mention

We got that final piece of paperwork in the mail (we had been waiting for over a month).

Great Meeting: IFIF

We attended our first IFIF (Interracial Families In Friendship) meeting on Saturday. It was great to meet so many wonderful people.

The families that we met had adopted from Ethiopia (yeah), Liberia (W. Africa), Guatemala, and many domestic adoptions. The kids ran around screaming and having a great time. I love the idea that we can get together with other families that have white mommies and/or daddies and brown babies. Hopefully our peanut will see our family as normal (well as normal as this family is going to get anyway).

What is IFIF? Just a group of interracial families that meet once a month for dinner. That's it. So simple but such a huge benefit. In the winter they meet at a church community room. In the summer they have different outings at parks etc...

Oh Happy Day!

I have had the song 'Oh happy Day' stuck in my head all day today or atleast the little bit of the song that I know from watching Sister Act as a kid. Well it has actually went back and forth from Oh Happy Day to Today (smashing pumpkins...today is the greatest day i've ever known, can't wait for tomorrow...) . I admit it is an odd mix of songs.

I am slightly in shock. I forgot that sometimes we actually know who the next president will be on election day. I am so glad we don't have to spend days waiting and recounting.

I am thrilled that we will bring our peanut home the same year that our first African-American president takes office. This gives me great hope and joy.

Just 45 more weeks!

I can't believe at this point we are still 45 weeks (roughly) away from receiving our referral. We're 7 weeks in and it is already making me crazy. I thought by the time we got on the wait list I would be fine. God knows we are so busy its not even funny but I am still going a little (ok a lot) crazy. I would like to by stuff for the baby. It is hard enough to do that when you don't know the sex of the baby but we don't event know how big he/she will be.

It occurred to me that I will be 32 on Christmas-can you believe it??? This was supposed to be my deadline for babies. Yep, by 32 we were to be done having children. This had been my plan since I was a teenager. The thought that I may be 33 by the time we bring home our first is hard to swallow. Part of my thinking as a teenager was that they would be out of the house by the time I was 50. Joel, in his great wisdom, joked 'we can just adopt older kids next time'. It made me laugh.

Next week we are going to an IFIF (Interracial families in friendship) meeting. It seems like many of the families are adoptive families (and some have adopted from Ethiopia). I am looking forward to it. One of the moms is a wedding planner at a church we have been to several time. What a small world.

Politics

It is frightening what has been happening at John McCain's rallies. I pulled this link off of another ethio mommy's blog. I think about Barack Obama's daughters seeing this.

http://www.colorofchange.org/united/?id=2149-305958


When will John McCain step up and do what is right? Allowing his supporters to chant Terrorist and Kill him when Barack Obama's name is mentioned is the worst thing I have ever seen in a political campaign.

I have sent an email and plan to send a letter as well asking McCain & Palin to speak up against this.

John McCain 2008
P.O. Box 16118
Arlington, VA 22215

info@johnmccain.com

I am bummed or annoyed-maybe both

Ok so we have one last piece of paperwork we are waiting on and it is not here. I know in the grand scheme of things this is probably not a big deal but it is starting to make me nuts. Where is it and why is it taking so long?

I want to get all of our paperwork in a.s.a.p. Plus I keep hearing there may be changes to Ethiopian adoption laws. This makes me nervous. I know that this is just how it goes in international adoption.

I expected little things to come up (and some big things too). Its just difficult to have so little control over something so important to us.

Wedding anniversary

Tomorrow is our 5 year wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe that our wedding was that long ago. Next year at this time we should have our referral and hopefully be on our way to ET (or back from).

Do you have a minute?

Do you have one minute to spend on the computer? If so, please go to thehungersite.com Click on the button to donate food. This does not cost you anything! Sponsors will donate food every day with your click. Then you will be able to click on other sites to support literacy, mammograms, rain forest etc...

To click all of the buttons it takes less than one minute. I just signed up to get a daily reminder so I don't forget to click. This is the easiest way I have found to give back.

Nursing an adopted child

Since we are nearly done with paperwork I thought it was time to look into breastfeeding an adopted child. I have done some research and it seems very doable.

I am nervous about taking the recommended prescription, domperidone. It seems to come with a lot of warnings. The last thing I want to do is take medication that could be harmful to our peanut. From what I have read domperidone is not a must. Has anyone else nursed their adopted child? I contacted the La Leche League and am waiting on their response.

Great quote

I am now reading The Whole Life Adoption Book. Chapter 4 has a quote/statement:
Natural Child: any child who is not artificial.
Real Parent: any parent who is not imaginary.
Your own child: any child who is not someone else's child.
Adopted child: a natural child, with a real parent, who is all my own.
(this is an interesting book, lots of examples/different perspectives, some things I disagree with but can still appreciate reading, some religion mentioned)

I can't wait to get a child of our own home from Ethiopia!

Good things

I just received a necklace I had order that says: Expecting from Africa on the back it says My Peanut. We also received a large donation from a friend of the family: Thank you!

I am finishing the book: Twenty things adopted kids wish their adoptive parents knew by Sherrie Eldridge. It is very insightful. It makes me realize how naive I was going into this. Of course our child , adopted as an infant, will have just as many questions if not more then a child adopted at an older age.

Power back on

After several days without power it finally came back on Thursday night. There are still about 70,000 people without power in Franklin County, OH. I have never seen such strong winds. It unbelievable that Ohio received so much damage from Hurricane Ike.

Now I have to get caught up on emails and such.

We're Waiting!!!

As of 9-10-08 we are officially waiting!

Free Photos for Adoptive Families

I wanted to mention this for any adoptive families that look at our blog. Celebratingadoption offers free family photos to anyone who has adopted in the last year. We have tried to add our photography business but they are not accepting new photographers at this time (due to personal issues?).
We would still like to offer a free family photo session to adoptive families in central Ohio. If you are interested you can look at our website: harcarphotography.com If you are not in Ohio make sure to look at: celebratingadoption.org It will list photographers in your area.

Wait Times

We received an email today from CHSFS that wait times may run a little longer than originally expected (now 1 year). They are hoping to update us in a month or so and give us a more accurate estimate once the courts open back up in Ethiopia (courts close for the rainy season). There isn't much we or they can do about it.

I am trying to be positive and think of the pro's to this: we will travel in the off season (for weddings) and will have more time to save for travel etc... But if it were up to me we would be on the plane tomorrow. IF only it were up to me...

Dossier News: Update

Ok, we heard back from our agency already. We can mail in what we have-tomorrow!!! Once it is reviewed and approved they will put us on the WAIT LIST! I have never been so excited to wait around.

I wrote out the single largest check I have ever written ($8700) to pay for a huge chunk of the fees. We appreciate the donations we have received and the zero interest loan we were given to help us cover this amount. The next big thing will be covering the travel. It will total around $5000.

I will let you all know when we are officially waiting.

Dossier News

We are almost ready to send our dossier. We had a tiny snag-Joel took our power of attorney documents to the Sec. of State and got them apostilled. Apparently apostilling does not work for Ethiopia. (our agency had told us that but he/we missed the memo). He went back down there today and they are now certified.

We need one more document (as far as I can tell) before our dossier is ready. Our homestudy agency's license expires on 9/30 so we have to wait for their new license. I don't want to wait two more weeks to send in our paperwork. We are hoping to send what we have to CHSFS and then send the license in a couple of weeks when we get it. I don't want to wait two weeks to send in our documents and then find out something is missing. I am impatient like that.

Democratic Conv.

I just had to add a note about how excited I am after seeing the convention. It gives me great hope!
I can't wait to see Obama take office.

YEAH 171h received

I just checked the mail and there it was- a letter from USCIS (immigration). I was so nervous to open it, but all is well. We received approval to bring home up to 2 children.
STILL PLANNING FOR ONE!

Ranting: Unfair Maternity leave and Disney

This is one of those time where I am really glad I am self employed (every once it a while it pays off). I have been reading other blogs and parents concerns about not being able to take time off of work for maternity/paternity leave.

Why can adoptive families not have the same rights as a bio family. Many of us travel across the world to bring our children home. Are people supposed to return to the U.S., drop their kid off in daycare, and head right back to work? Why can they not be allowed a few weeks to bond with their child? This is so upsetting. All mothers (and fathers too) should have this right. Some people have actually been told they are not allowed to take unpaid leave to get their children. Disgusting! www.equalityforadoptedchildren.org/

Just a note: Disney finally comes out with a African American princess. The best they could come up with is a 1920's African American girl named Maddy. Oh yeah: she is in New Orleans and practices VooDoo. No stereotyping there! I believe they are going back to the drawing board and trying to get this right (after lots of complaints).

links

I have added a few links. Please scroll to the bottom of the page to view them.

Random Updates

We have been fingerprinted for the I600A. It didn't take long at all.

We are waiting on two documents for our dossier and then we will be almost finished. Next we need to go to the Secretary of State to get some documents certified.

I600A

USCIS has received our documents. We go Saturday morning to get fingerprinted! That moved quicker than I expected. We should have our 171H in about 6 weeks(hopefully).

I600A Form

Tomorrow we send in our I600A form. (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition) In simple terms this is USCIS (immigration) saying it is ok for us to bring home an orphan.

There is no reason this should not go through, but I am slightly terrified! So please cross your fingers, say a prayer, whatever it is that you do and hope that this goes through with no problems. Relying on a government agency to take care of anything these days worries me. We expect it to take 1-3 months to receive our 171H (approval form).

FYI: We had to have our homestudy changed a little. There is a question on the I600A that is very important to an adoptive parent: Do you plan to adopt more than one child? If so, how many?

This seems simple, right. Wrong. If we say one child then that is it. We can not adopt another child on this first journey. So if we arrive in Africa and find out our child has a brother or sister up for adoption we can not bring them home. If we say yes then we have the right to bring home a sibling. We put yes and listed 2. At this point we are planning for one child. But the last thing I want to is leave Africa feeling like we have left one of our children there.

Postcard/Announcements

We have debated for awhile about who to send postcards to announcing our exciting news. We weren't sure who to send them to since there is a shameless request for donations. BUT we decided to send them to everyone.

This is our birth announcement. We want everyone to know how excited we are. We have requested an infant. Since this is our first child we do not get to specify gender. We expect to receive our referral in about 9 months. This will include a photo, medical report, and possibly a video of our baby!

We are working on our dossier now and hope to have it complete in a few weeks.

Homestudy Complete

Ok we were in Cabo photographing a wedding the day our homestudy was to be completed. Our adoption agency (CHSFS) emailed to say they received it. So it looks like we are ready to mail in application part 2 to CHSFS and move on to the dossier. Things seem to be moving along quickly.

I ordered a t-shirt before we left for Cabo that says, " Pregnant on Paper... Expecting from Ethiopia". It was here when we arrived home last night.

Ethio Meeting

On June 22 we were lucky enough to be able to meet with several families who are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia or who have already completed their adoptions. We had fantastic food at Blue Nile Ethiopian Restaurant in Columbus.

Our homestudy is to be presented in one week! It is so exciting and frightening. We are now starting to collect the documents for our dossier.

Homestudy-Interviews

Last night we met with our social worker, Kim, from Graceworks Lutheran in Springfield. We completed our interviews. It went very smoothly. Joel was a little nervous about this part (I was more nervous about her coming to our home). It feels great to have this portion of the process nearly complete!

In the beginning

We are Amy & Joel Harcar. We will be adopting from Ethiopia sometime in the next year (hopefully).

We were accepted on May 9, 2008 by CHSFS (our adoption agency). On May 14 we were accepted by Graceworks Lutheran in Springfield, OH to begin our homestudy. We passed our homestudy safety audit on Thursday, June 5th. Our interviews take place tomorrow and then I think we are nearly complete with our homestudy!