August 24, 2007

Another Fine Night

It's funny, I haven't posted in over two months and it just so happens that this post, much like the last, is being written while hubby is away for a few days on business so I (yet again) decided to bring the cats in to Brooklyn with me instead of staying in the country solo. I can't quite decide if I don't post as often when I'm in the country because there are other things to be thinking about, doing, etc... and when I'm in the city these things lack, or if the city actually just begs being creative whereas the country supports simplicity. If those two things even differ at all, not sure.

Anyhow, so much has happened this summer. We were accepted into Children's Hope International (CHI) Ethiopia adoption program! We have been gathering documents, getting them notarized, begging friends for reference letters that they have to notarize, sending marriage and birth certificates back to their originating states to be stamped by the Secretary of State, participating in home study meetings, and on and on and on. And throughout it all the only thing my husband and I can think about is the perfect beautiful little baby, our baby, who we will be traveling to pick up at some point within the next year. That is, if everything goes according to plan. I think inherent in the "adoption option" is a lack of plan - more of an implementation of patience. We responsibly gather and organize all of the official documentation and then we wait, and hope, that we will be notified to pick up our child before they spend too much time being abandoned, or even in the very well equipped orphanage that CHI runs.

CHI is an amazing organization who have dedicated so many resources to the millions of children in need of loving homes in Ethiopia. We're so glad we chose them as the adoption agency to help us with the adoption of our child. We just finished the last meeting of our home study. For now we wait until our social worker prepares the official home study document, then we send it along with several others papers to CIS for immigration approval. Once we receive our approval from CIS we can begin the county and state level certification of all of our documents - and then they're off to Ethiopia! It sounds like alot, but really its just a routine changing of hands of a stack of documents needing to be approved by multiple agencies prior to Ethiopia referring a child to be our first. So very worth the wait. Ethiopia is well known for their excellent coffee- can't wait till we bring home our little bean. Lyric? Layla? Avril? William? I'm so excited.