Adoption Chronicles, Vol 3, Chapter 1. . .

There is a lot to be said about the developments toward baby number 3 the past few months, and much of the tale is ongoing. (You didn't think we'd stop at two, did you?) So, I will deliver this saga in parts. I know that many adoption friends read this blog, so it will include specific information that some of you couldn't care less about, but others will find it helpful. So, here goes...

Where in the World IS Baby #3?????

Before the actual adoption process can begin, a family must choose a country and an agency that is certified to process adoptions in that country. Sound easy? Think again. Here are some of the issues involved:

Some countries require a family own a home, make a certain salary, or weigh a certain poundage (Korea).

Some countries have limits about how many children can already be in the home before adding another, or what gender a family is allowed to adopt (Nepal).

Some have various numbers for the amount of time between adoptions (The Philippines).

Others require papers to be certified and/or translated (Russia),

or Americans are only allowed to adopt children four years or older (India).

None favor harmonica players.

The biggest variance: wait times. Guatemala has babies available immediately, though the program was recently shut down by the US over very legitimate transparency concerns.

In other countries, like China, the wait for a healthy baby has exploded to somewhere between two and three years! (Note: if you're hoping to adopt an older child, or a child with moderate to severe medical needs, God Bless You! And your waits will be much shorter.)

Just when you think you've found a great program, like Haiti, where wait times are around three months or less and there is a HUGE need, you realize that the wait time to pick up your child AFTER referral may be a year or longer!

Then there's the fees. Some countries require two trips. That's a tremendous added expense. We only had to be in Manila for 5 days with Judah's adoption. Other countries require one or both parents be in country for a month or more, sometimes twice (Ukraine). The agency fees vary, the country fees vary, not all agencies work in every state so there's a homestudy agency fee, and then my favorite people: The United States Customs and Immigration Services who just saw it in the adoptive families' best interests to up their fees again from $500 something to nearly $800. Overall, including travel and USCIS fees, a family is looking at somewhere between $11,000 and $35,000 for the adoption of one child, with fees for a domestic adoption somewhere in the middle of those two figures. See? Big difference.

What am I leaving out? The internet searches, the calls to agencies, the calls to references, the hours on chat rooms with other families who have, or are currently, adopting from a country you're interested in to get "the real" story, and the issue of need. Tim and I have no desire to adopt a child where there are hundreds of families already waiting.

In summary, we spent a couple of months asking, "Where is there a need? From where do we qualify? Can we afford the fees? Is the program transparent? Are there children available that will fit well with our family? What are the wait times? What agencies represent this country? Do they return my phone calls? Do they have good references? Is the paperwork reasonable and bearable? What age of children are available?

Oh yes, and what is God's will?"

Baby number #3 is not in an incubator down the hall with a clearly labeled family name tag on him (or her). He or she is out there among 143 million other orphans, and it takes a lot of research to begin the journey to bring this child home.

I'm presenting a devotional tomorrow night on discovering God's will. After a few hours in my Bible, I've learned that God used to show His will to people by audibly speaking to them. "Moses, go to Egypt." "Samuel, get up." Wouldn't that be nice... "Tim and Tiffany, drop an application with Commonwealth Adoption Agency for Vietnam." Since this option isn't likely, God shows us His will through prayer, fasting, using our mind (as opposed to our sometimes wishy washy hearts) and his Word.

Tim and I spent a lot of time in prayer and study before he left, and eventually we chose....

Sorry, you'll have to wait until Chapter 2. Believe me, this journey gets more complicated than one might think.

We Miss You, Timmy!

Preschool Field Day

This post is a grandparent's delight...LOTS of pics of the boys! J.'s preschool class had its end of the year field day today at the park that we frequent. The boys were so excited. We're here three times a week at least when the weather is nice, and today I had a camera with me, so I took a lot of pictures. Enjoy!

J. with his teacher, Ms. Holly. She will be C.'s teacher next year.

The boys with their sticks on the way to the water. They carry them the whole way so that they can throw them in the water when we get there.

J.'s shirt says, "Kuya." That means, "Big brother" in Tagalog-his native Filipino language. The nuns called him Kuya at the orphanage because he was the oldest child there and was such a big helper. In fact, he responded to Kuya much more quickly than he did his birth name when we met! The nickname stuck, as we still call him Kuya at home, especially when he's being a big helper. Like, "Thanks for getting C.'s shoes, Kuya!" I saw that shirt online and had to get it for him. He wants to wear it all the time, and if you ask him what Kuya means he'll shout "Big Brother!" Since we don't plan on adopting any children older than him, he'll always be our Kuya.

My tree huggers!

They were exhausted by the end of the day, and are sleeping soundly now for a long nap. Now that school is wrapping up, we're packing up for our "midwest tour". We plan on heading out the 2nd or 3rd week of June and will be gone through July. They boys can't wait to see Lola, Papa, MiMi, Granny, Uncle Steve, Great Grandma and Great Grandpa. There's no one they'd rather see more than Daddy, though, but I think they understand that Daddy's long time away isn't done yet. I'm working on keeping them excited about the little trips between now and the time Tim comes home so that they won't dwell on it too much. Happy Memorial Day!

Summer Candy

OK, it isn't technically summer yet. But we're eating cottoncandy outdoors, J.'s school year ends next week; we're flipping in flops-or is it flopping in flips? We're going to our church's family camping retreat this weekend and getting invitations for summer weddings. In addition, to C. and J.'s severe disappointment, it is certainly still light outside when the boys go to bed, hence this Robert Louis Stevenson classic:

Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

Pacifism meets David

Q: Which of the following individuals is Ghandi, the assassinated Indian champion of civil disobedience who used peaceful means to free India from England?

A. OR

B.

Funny story: C.'s favorite book is David Goes to School. Yes, I'm working on turning him to more, well, enlightening literature, but for now-the past year or so actually-it's David or bust. He'll go to his bookcase and throw books over his shoulder, muttering, "No, Daba!" (No, David!)until he finds it. Then he laughs with glee, sits down, and reads every page. Every page is the same, mind you: "No, David! No chewing gum in school." "No, David! No hitting the girl next to you." No, David! No throwing food." I guess he can relate to this David character.

I went to Barnes and Noble to buy C. the above pictured book, another in the series, appropriately titled, "No, David!" but I just couldn't do it. We bought "God Bless the Child that Has His Own" complete with the Billie Holiday CD instead. Grandparents, please buy C. "No, David!" He LOVES it, and I just can't stoop to buying it when there is so much else out there. Well...on with the story...

I have a couple of tee-shirts with Ghandi's portrait on them. (Of course you do, Tiffany. . .) Yesterday, I'm wearing one of these shirts. Ghandi's face is big on the front and it reads his famous quote, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" underneath. I go to get C. up from his nap and reach for him when he mysteriously explodes into joy. He points, grabs at Ghandi on my shirt and starts right in with, "No, Daba! No, Daba!" I gasp. "He thinks Ghandi is David." My son thought Ghandi was David. It must be the hair.

Needless to say, we spent the day practicing saying, "Ghandi," and the little man finally got it during dinner. "Ghandi!" he said, clear as a bell. He also says, "God" and "Amen" when we pray, just so that you know my priorities are right. ;) Though despite my hard word, this morning C. pulled that same Ghandi shirt out of the dirty clothes, was carrying it around and proudly shouting, "No, Daba! No, Daba!" Well, at least I tried. We'll have to use Martin Luther King Jr. as our civil disobedience example, or Jesus, but I hoped to save him for rescuing the world from death and offering eternal life. Thankfully, either way, neither of them look anything at all like David.

By the way, in case the hair threw you too, the answer is A. Have a blessed week!

All We Need is 40 Acres and VW Van

Allow me to bring you into my communal part of life. I've talked a lot about friends, family, adoption, work, and daily life, but I've never written a post that glimpsed into the commune. Yes, commune. Someone used that term in reference to us years ago and it stuck. Now, when one of us says, "the commune," we know exactly which 8-9 couples we're talking about. Really, family is probably a more accurate term for what we are. This group is my foundation, and life would be terribly lonely without them.

It started when were all a part of a Newly married/Nearly married church small group 6 years ago that quickly evolved into a Newly parent/Nearly parent group. Some couples have come and gone during that time, as far as Italy even, but we're inseparable in heart.

So, what makes the commune any different from any other friends? That's hard to explain. It's such an intimate connection that I never wrote of it here before, like it was too sacred to expose. But without saying too much, here are just a few things that make us what we are:

1. I can look around my house and say, "Eli hung that light;" "Brian hung those curtains;" "R's Tim hung that fan and made those cabinet doors;" "J. tilled that ground,"etc... because the commune guys take care of the commune girls when one of the husbands is deployed. I know some of you commune girls have had some swing sets and ceiling fans that bring back the same memories for you in your houses! Ceiling fans....oh, funny times! ;)

2. We can call each other in times of trouble without a second thought and know that no repayment is due. I'm thinking of someone who mixed cleaning toxins to scrub her bathroom tiles while her husband was deployed and found herself terribly sick in the middle of the night and called me at 2:00am to come over in case she passed out and couldn't take care of her kids! No judgement, dear friend; you should read #3:

3. I left for SE Asia for 6 months, and the electric company told me to turn off the switches in the switch box to save electricity. So, I did. What I didn't do: empty the freezer/refridgerator because I was too distracted to make the connection that switches connected to anything other than lights. Two months or so later...Sara is calling other commune girls trying to figure out what died in my house and probably searching for a hazardous waste suit once she figured it out because she'd need it to clean out my fridge. Yes, she went in there, masked and gloved, and CLEANED my fridge. That is my #1 blonde moment in my life, and that is an amazing friend!

4. I've showed up at a commune girl's house in the middle of the night for a hug and a good cry.

5. We bonded over cinnamon rolls, meatballs, chicken enchiladas, fruit pizza, and any one of Mel's many kid friendly recipes.

6. We were there for each other when a husband's humvee blew up; when a husband hadn't been heard from in awhile, when a husband was deploying AGAIN just after the birth of a baby, and when husbands did all sorts of other-ahem-unpleantries. ;)

7. Has there been a birth where at least one of us wasn't IN the room or on the phone? You were there when I stepped off the plane with Judah and when we brought Caleb home. My fridge was stocked with food for a week, and there were balloons, signs and toys for Judah when he first walked into his forever home.

8. Husbands deployed together and watched out for eachother with a much deeper intensity than just any other soldier would have.

9. Wine and cheese parties at my house. I don't even need to elaborate on that one, do I girls?

10. There have been long heart to hearts in cars, on tailgates, on couches and hospital waiting rooms.

11. We ask each other to raise our children should we both die.

12. We worship and pray together-often.

13. We're all military, so we all move away at some point. Even so, whenever we're reunited it's like we were never apart.

We disagree, argue, make up, talk it out, ask favors, hang out, fix stuff, and celebrate. It's family. Commune, feel free to comment on your favorite memory. I know I'm leaving out some of the best stuff.

So, what's spurred this post on when I've kept these friends so private? The fact that this has been a terribly depressing week. The bad dream I thought I'd wake up from turns out to be reality and Sara and J. really are moving away. Far away. There have been moves before, of course, but none have been as sad as this one. We're separating from two very dear friends, a brother and a sister, and it honestly makes my heart hurt. The up side is that this move is a wonderful opportunity for their family to be together for a few years, deployment free, in a wonderful place. We really are happy for them, but sad to say, "good-bye." There are reunions planned, they'll move back to this side of the country in a few years, and as I said before, no number of miles can separate the love that "the commune" has for its members. If I can find a way to call you two with a crisis on an internet phone from the jungles of Cambodia, I can keep in touch from one side of America to the other! You will be deeply, DEEPLY missed by me and Tim and the boys. Even though you won't be 15 min. away anymore, you'll both be at the forefront of our hearts and lives forever.