Real digital camera (inexpensive or one you’re retiring)
Doll clothes and accessories (we have 12″ dolls right now) – accessories: diapers, hairbrushes, etc.
I have added several books and fun learning games to our amazon wish list recently, some of them I wish I could buy right now! The link for our list is: http://amzn.com/w/3NVX7KJPZPAAA (I add to the list regularly when we get great books from the library. If you look at the Brian Quest games, we already have the preschool one and love it!)
Winter dresses – any size! Anna has never had enough dresses good for wintertime. Therefore Maggie doesn’t either. Anna is wearing size 4T right now and Maggie is in between size 12 month and size 18 month currently.
Big progress! Our homestudy update is COMPLETE. I will be driving to Portland today to pick up four official copies (and a couple other dossier documents). Our USCIS (immigration) I800A (application to adopt internationally) will be mailed TODAY. The wait to get permission is about 12 weeks, but we’re praying for shorter. Once we get that application, we hope to be ready in every other way to mail off our dossier to Eastern Europe! Honestly, after that I don’t know the time frame.
As Brian is fond of saying, everything is written in jello. We try to be flexible.
About the quandary. If you hadn’t noticed, Brian helped me update our sidebar a bit. It has a link to Reece’s Rainbow, will soon have a link to “our” page on Reece’s Rainbow and there’s also a summary of the expenses associated with our adoption. It costs around $23K to adopt (I’m hoping for closer to $20K, but planning for $23). We’ll get a tax refund in 2012 when we file our taxes of about 13K if we are able to complete this adoption before 2011 is over. That seems a very reasonable ransom to very probably save the life of a child or at the least, change their life radically for the better. To adopt a second child at the same time, the cost is $0-$4000 more. That’s it. And you get the $13K tax refund for them too, which puts you in a much better financial position for your future.
So how do you balance what you feel capable of doing against saving the life of a child, but going farther out of your comfort zone? Right now, our rational side feels much more comfortable with adopting one, not two. It definitely is safer…. in the sense of feeling like we can provide emotionally and physically. But it breaks my heart to leave behind another one that has need and that we are prepared to bring home. Pray for us. Pray that God’s will would be clear to us and that we would trust Him, WHATEVER His will for us is.
This video speaks eloquently of the drive behind adoptive parents. It speaks to the heart of adoption. Honestly, it doesn’t have to be speaking about adoption at all, certainly not exclusively… it speaks of the heart response to the plight of orphans. Not all are called to adopt. All are called to care for the orphan. Support the orphans in your lives. Support the adoptive families in your lives. Opening my heart to the need of others has grown me even as it broke my heart. God didn’t make me to remain hidden in a safe, wealthy land. He called me to be a part of his Church. How incredibly awesome is that!!!!
I never blogged here, but I crashed our van (with the entire family in it!!!) last Sunday. Totaled. Bummer. We’ll have to buy our new van out of pocket. Our insurance will pay for the other car involved, though. I also lost the cloth multi-purpose bag that my sister-in-law Hollye made me. And it had a $20 cloth diaper, my favorite wet bag and a cloth wipe in it. Yep. Diaper bag. And somebody found it and kept it.
The wreck and ensuing shopping and craigslisting and insurance has caused me some stress. Working on keeping stress low and God’s grace visible here.
The loss of the bag actually made me sad. I really liked my polka-dot wet bag and I used that tote CONSTANTLY. I dont’ know what to do without it.
If you don’t know what to get me for Christmas…. new tote/bag, bag, diaper, wipe
Unashamed to use your sympathy to talk you into more presents for me.
We read a blog by a sweet mother named Adeye this summer (read here or here) who brought home two little angels from Eastern Europe. Hailee was five years old when they brought her home and she weighed just 16 lbs. We also “met” the Cornish family via their blog and saw some of the beautiful children they adopted. See here or here. We learned how children with special needs (mental or physical) in some countries struggle and die due to neglect after they are transferred to mental institutions.
We were introduced to Reece’s Rainbow that helps to find children families with Down Syndrome and other special needs. We’ve heard God calling to adopt before. We’ve TRIED to adopt before. This time we believe God is ready to bring a child into our home. We are eagerly anticipating the blessing of a little one with Down Syndrome sometime in 2011. We are really excited to have our own link with Reece’s Rainbow as we wait to find our who our new child will be.
Meanwhile, we are doing three main things:
1. Living our life and loving our girls
2. Researching and learning about the special parenting needs our child(ren) will have
3. Chasing adoption paperwork stacks
Here are the stages of our adoption:
Complete homestudy (almost done)
FBI background checks – take about 12 weeks (about 5 weeks in to that)
USCIS (immigration approval) – takes about 12 weeks, but praying it’s shorter – will submit this application soon
THEN it gets a bit fuzzy for me. While we’re waiting for the USCIS to come back, we’re gathering a large stack of paperwork that has to be notarized and apostilled (another type of certification) called a dossier. The dossier will be sent to the country we’re adopting from (which I won’t mention on this public blog). The dossier includes things like medicals, taxes, homestudy, etc.
We don’t know when we’ll know who we’re adopting. It could be any day, really. If we don’t have a referral when we submit our dossier, then we will have a waiting period after submitting the dossier while the find a child’s file for us. We know the children are there waiting, but due to the way their file system works, only one agency gets a child’s file at a time and our agency doesn’t have OUR child yet. 🙂 All we know about our new baby is that they will be under age 3 at the time of referral and have a diagnosis of Down Syndrome. We can’t wait to meet them and hold them!
Meanwhile, we are also working on creating a ministry with our church that supports adoption and other orphan ministries. We’re trying to be the gathering point for the other (many) adoptive families in our church body and are hoping to encourage and help each other and families who are wanting to know more about adoption.
Ok, that was probably clear as mud, but my lunch is getting cold on the table and it’s time for me to go! Feel free to email us!
P.s. Brian will soon have an email link and a couple other links for you on the sidebar
Now for pictures!
Watching movies from when Anna was a toddler with Grandpa.
My dad and his oldest grandchildren:
Maggie is seeing Christmas for the “first” time (she was two months old last year):
We got our Christmas tree! Brian put lights up on Friday night and on Saturday morning Anna’s friend came over and Great Grandma and Grandpa Davis! We had SO much fun! The girls were precious. It was so GOOD for us to watch Christmas through their young eyes. We had yummy food and baked cookies too.
Maggie and Gran:
Choosing a tree:
Having SO MUCH FUN putting ornaments on the tree. The tree looked like it might fall over from all of them being in one spot. Anna hasn’t stopped rearranging them since.
Maggie went to nap with no tree and came out to a decorated wonder!
Cookies:
Finding hidden pictures in the “Where’s Santa?” book for a full hour:
