Bringing Home Baby Norton!

     So sorry for the lack of updates on the site.  Once we hit the "waiting" mark I think we both needed a breather from all things adoption for a while.  We have now been officially waiting over two months!  Yeah!  Two down, 10-16 to go!  Some good news has come through our agency.  Last week alone they referred 29 children, that is more than what the monthly average had been  Apparently they are now taking in children from several southern regions who because of certain paperwork issues (I think...) had not been able to be processed into any orphanages.  This is now increasing referrals, at least for the moment, and hopefully will continue to do so which would decrease our total wait time.  Math = more babies, more referrals, less wait.  In the meantime, we have been trying to mark our monthly milestones with different activities.  For our month one mark on June 15th, we went to the Melting Pot for dinner.  This was supposed to be our celebration once our dossier was complete and we got our official wait date, but things kept coming up.  This month we celebrated at a restaurant downtown called Kuba Kuba, which was really good.  They specialized in Cuban food and it was yummy.  

      I have also taken to buying the Kohl's books and stuffed animals each month on the 15th.  So far I have two books and three stuffed animals.  I plan to keep doing this each month to mark the time that passes, and to have gifts to give the baby which show what we did while we were waiting.  Books seem to be my purchase object of choice.  We recently went to Washington DC for the weekend and searched out the Museum of African American Art.  It was beautiful, and in the gift shop I found a great book called "On a Road in Africa" all about oprhaned animals.  I thought it was perfect.  It even has translations for all the animals in one of the African languages (not Amheric which is the predominant language in Ethiopia).  I was read to all the time as a child and am sure it is why i love to read so much today.  I plan to do the same when we bring our baby home.  Now if only I could find a copy of "Stop That Ball!"

Here are the animals and the book I bought at Kohl's this month.

So suddenly it is over a month since I last updated this site.  In the course of that month we have completed our home study and are two papers away from our dossier being completed and sent to our agency, at which point we will hopefully be approved and officially waiting.  The process has literally been like a part time job.  There have been days off from work to go to the office of Secretary of State for certifications, so many visits to notaries that I think we have given some hand cramps from signing so much for us, and now the news that our Ethiopian case manager at our adoption agency has had her job restructured and is no longer with the agency.  This is worrisome news as we get ready to send our dossier in to someone to review who has previously only worked with China.  We are confident everything will work out.  Soon will begin the now 12-18 month wait (when we started this process in February it was a 12 month wait) to a referral.  I am hoping that with as quickly as time has gone by during the last three months of this process that wait will pass quickly for us as well.  Thanks to everyone for your kind words, encouragement, thoughts and prayers.  They have certainly helped us keep our sanity during this stressful and busy time.  I will work harder at keeping the site updated now that our paperchase is almost over!

This morning started out not looking too promising.  We kept hitting snooze on the alarm, and woke up only when Jason realized his phone had rung and it was Kim who was outside!  That got us up and moving.  We got ready and headed out with Kim and Andy over to the Police Headquarters to park.  There were people everywhere!  Now I am not a runner by any means, unless I am being chased for some reason, and it was so odd to me to see people running before the race even started.  It was a cold and rainy morning, not ideal I am sure for the runners.  Jason met up with his old partner Patterson so that they could run together, at least to start.  Kim, Andy and I left them to head to the starting area and we went to find Taylor and Micah, our niece and nephew.  There were over 32,000 people participating in the race, so it was incredibly crowded.  We managed to find them, and then set out to find a place to walk.  We got to the finish line just as the first runners came through.  It was very exciting to me when they announced that 5 out of the six top place runners both male and female were from Ethiopia!  We found a spot to watch and settled in for the long haul.  There were waves or runners/walkers beginning with A and running through ZZ.  Each wave started about 2 minutes apart.  The race began at 8:30, but Jason was in group VA which did not even begin until 9:32.  We saw lots of great costumes that runners were dressed up in, including "Octo-dad" (with 8 dolls in a homemade stroller), the Love Guru, and a man hauling a huge boulder I can only imagine meant ball and chain.  It wasn't too long before Tammy (Jason's sister) came through.  She was in group F and is basically a competition runner, and she did amazingly well.  She left alot of men in the dust!  Next came Brian, Tammy's husband, with another great time.  They were both in group F, so we knew we had a while to wait for Jason.  In the meantime, we were hugely amused by the hysterical guys beside us who kept up a steady color commentary (mind you, they had run the race, then come back and stood on the sidelines to wait for their mom) to encourage all of the runners.  Some comments:   "No passing out, the finish line is right there!"  "Way to go really fast guy"  "Nice job cute people that I don't know what your costumes are supposed to be".  We were keeping an eye on the time, because Jason had given us an idea about how long he thought it would take him.  When we saw Patterson run by we figured he couldn't be too far behind since they started together.  Sure enough, not far behind, and way ahead of the time he thought he would make, came Jason.  I took  my pictures, and he stopped to give eveyone with us a hug and a kiss, and then he turned and headed on to the finish line, sprinting down through the finish.  He did an amazing job and we are all so proud of him.  It was a great accomplishment, his first 10K and a super time for himself.  

One of Richmond's most popular annual races, The Monument 10K which is sponsered by Ukrops, will be taking place this Saturday.  Jason will be running to raise money for our adoption costs, and through our amazing friends and family we have now raised almost $1200.  

Above you will see the t-shirts we designed for race day.  Jason will be wearing the yellow t-shirt.  On the front it says "Adoption Rocks" on a red flag of Africa, with a star marking the location of Ethiopia.  On the back it says "Running Towards Ethiopia..." with a flag of Ethiopia below it.  I am afraid I may have made a gramatical mistake...should it be Running Toward Ethiopia?  No "s" on toward(s)?  Wasn't I an English major?  Oh well, hopefully no one will notice.  I will be wearing the sideline friendly red t-shirt with the same picture on the front.  Jason should be easy to watch for and spot in that color I hope.  If you happen to be going to the race give him a cheer!  

I found a great site called zazzle javascript:mox(); where you can design your own t-shirt using any graphics on the web, and they will then print them in two hours and mail them the next day.  They are by no means professional, but we like them and it will be fun to wear them on race day.  

We will be taking lots of pictures to post, so hopefully after the race when Jason is resting up I will be posting an update!

Thanks for all the well wishes for Jason as he prepares to run!

So Finally, we have received our letter telling us that we have been cleared by the FBI!  That was a nail biter.  Thought maybe my past was catching up with me....or maybe it did which is why I am totally cleared!  It was great to finally get that news.  I guess the month and a half wait for something that should have taken a week or two is really just a precurser to what we have in store for us.  They are now quoting us 12-18 months from the time your dossier hits Ethiopia before you get a referral for your child.  

We finally have our first homestudy visit scheduled for Monday, March 30th.  We will meet for about 3 hours to discuss anything and everything about our lives and to show that we are ready, willing and able to become successful parents.  I am hopeful things will go well.  I spoke with Diane, who will be our social worker, on the phone and we also met her at our original information session with our agency.  She seems really nice and very friendly and is incredibly reassuring about the process.  It is intimidating to be essentially interviewed about your ability to start a family, but in this situation it is a necessary step.  Once we finish there, she will go back and take a few weeks to write the incredibly long and arduous home study document.  On April 17th she will come to the house to look everything over, I assume to make sure it is a suitable environment in which to raise a child, and if all goes well, then mails off our homestudy.  From there we are assigned our "country specialist" through our agency (who we have also already met) and we receive a list of the documents we need for our dossier.  We collect those, make an appointment to get fingerprinted by the FBI (no washing hands for me beforehand!) and then apply for our 1-800a which allows us a visa to bring our baby into the US.  Then, it's off to Ethiopia with the paperwork and the really hard part begins, the wait!  For now we are celebrating small victories.  We will be having a "Dossier down!" party when we finally mail the documents off!  Date TBD!

In the meantime we returned to school two hours late today.  So we had basically half a day and then tomorrow and it's the weekend.  The kids were great, they were so exicted about the snow.  I have one student from Mexico, one from Guatamala, one from Florida and one from Texas and this is the first snow they have all seen.  I heard all kinds of stories about snowball fights and snow angels and sledding and hot cocoa.  They love everything at that age.  So we wound up getting about 7-8 inches, which shut the city down from Sunday through Thursday.  Of course it was 65 today and melted all of it, which I guess is what they were waiting for since they didn't plow.  Sunday is supposed to be almost 80.  I guess we're in for another round of colds and allergies with this crazy weather.  I am happy now, I got my snow days, now I am ready for spring!

Richmond Snowfall - March 1, 2009 - 5:30 PM

lol

I cannot believe what I have seen - snow outside my window!   In Richmond, Virginia!  I cannot recall snow falling here for about three years.  And I have hope deep in my heart that my county may actually cancel school tomorrow.  Now there are no guarantees, but I am hopeful.  Mind you it is not that I do not like my job, or that I particularly do not want to go to work tomorrow, but there is something so exciting about a snow day.  I suppose no other profession can fully understand, but those of us who have spent the last two days debating the snow/no snow question on facebook (hi Kim!) are all teachers and are desperate to see our school names or county names scroll across the bottom of the local stations when we excitedly awaken at 6 am.  So we will continue the snow dance/snow prayer and act like the six year olds we teach, and hopefully will spend our day tomorrow firmly ensconced in front of the TV.  To those of you who still have to go to work tomorrow- na na na boo boo.  Oops, sorry. There goes the six year old again.

A Teacher's Prayer For Snow

One night as I lay almost sleeping, I heard a voice, softly peeping. I saw my wife devoutly praying. This is the prayer I heard her saying:

Oh, Lord, Let it snow.
Let it drift and let it blow.
In the morning, no real fuss, 
Just enough to stop the bus.

Enough to make the County say:
"There will be no school today."
Let the radio report: "Snow is deep!"
And I'll roll over for more sleep.

Then later on, say maybe ten,
I'll turn the radio on again.
Just in time to hear them say:
"It's strange: the snow has gone away!"

And then I'll know you made it stop,
So I can go to the mall and shop.
Please Lord, just hear my plea,
And make it snow for the kids and me!

Amen

So, after staying home from school on Friday (mainly for the benefit of my students who could not solve my charades-like puzzles the way my friends and family have been able to), I am now four days into the laryingitis abyss but at least the fever has subsided.  I can force myself to be heard in a gravelly I've smoked for 20 years (which could not be farther from the truth) voice, but I think it pains everyone else to hear as much as it does for me to speak.  I am hoping another day of rest and then (please, cross your fingers everyone) MAYBE a snow day on Monday will allow me to return to ruling the roost of room 506 next week.  You cannot imagine how frustrating not even being able to read a story to my students was, and I lost two full days of teaching purely because I could not speak.  Hopefully they will remember the difference between a wild and tame animal and what sound Y makes when we start back this week.  

I was able to go to my nephew Adam's sixth birthday party at Pump it Up on Friday night and I am still exhausted just from watching those kids.  They had a great time though and Kim and Chris did an awesome job with the party.  Today was a smaller family gathering at their house for Adam to open more presents and enjoy some more cake.  Happy Birthday Adam!  I hope year six is the best year ever for you.

On a side note, for anyone who reads this, please cross your fingers that my fingerprints are accepted by the FBI this time.  We will find out on Monday if they are or if we have to get them done again and start waiting all over again.  That, and do the snow dance for us Richmonders!

mad

So I know there are much more important things in life, but Jason and I have been anxiously awaiting the receipt of our fingerprint clearances by our agency so that we can begin the homestudy and then get our dossier sent to Ethiopia to become "officially waiting".  This morning when I got into work and had an email from the clearance person at CHSFS telling me that she had received Jason's clearances back but that mine had been rejected by the FBI.  When we got our prints done by some of Jason's co-workers, they had told me that my skin was very dry (due to my somewhat OCD handwashing) and that I had very shallow ridges on my fingers, so they did two sets and we sent both in.  I guess I had not even thought about the possibility that they would get rejected.  So our agency is going to send in only the second set and hope that they will be approved.  I am not confident of this so I have asked them to send me another card so that I can get them done again just in case.  This will set us back at least a couple of weeks now from even beginning our home study.  I am so frustrated and upset by this.  I know it cannot be helped and it is no one's fault, but we have been so anxiously awaiting our clearances to come back for over three weeks now and now we will have to wait another few weeks.  I guess we should get used to this as the entire process will be alot of waiting, but we are so ready to become official.  Not the kind of email you want first thing in the morning.  Now I have to put on my  happy face for my Kindergartners and go on with my day!