Lessons Learned

Here are a few of the many lessons learned from our homestudy process:

1. Coffee, small bladder, cold fan blowing, 3 hour intense interview/conversation are a combo not to be recommended.

2. It is ok with our social worker if our child is slightly fluffy due to floating dog hair that just cannot be erased from our home. Despite much vaccuuming and mopping prior to her arrival 2 giant dog hair..what to call them?... mating dustballs? rolled right across our living room floor during our interview. What can you do...

3. Jeremy may cry (and when I say cry in reference to J he wants me to clarify that these would be silent, very subtle, manly tears, not to be counted in several - probably just one or two) when we meet our child (or after since I know we are not supposed to cry and terrify the child during the first meeting.) I was claiming that he would be the rock of calm when we first meet him/her and then he admitted he might fall apart. (insert small awww)

4. We didn't need the process to validate this but we sure do love and care for and respect each other. It was fun to talk about it. It was fun to talk about why we'd be good parents. Why we think we are funny and flexible. Maybe every family should do the homestudy process. It is good for the heart.

So in case you haven't deduced this, we finished the homestudy.

And we are done with the majority of the paperwork.

We have dossier authentication left and then the wait for the I600a approval.

I am leaving for Africa (for work) in September and building in a stop over in Addis Ababa at the end of the trip (sometime in October.) It is very optimistic. It is very glass is half-full type of planning... (if you are reading this for the first time please remember that we are matching with a waiting child and hopefully not waiting a long time for referral.)

Many factors are out of our control. But if for no other reason to stop over I will get to spend time with this little guy - our sponsored child - and all of the other CHE kids again.

And of course I can continue on my quest to learn to not just eat, but enjoy, injera. We went out to dinner with some new adoption friends this week and I did pretty well! Definitely getting better with the Ethiopian food. Have I mentioned that Jeremy loves it, would like to wrap up the entire thing and eat it like a giant burrito and is planning to have daddy/child dinners out without me? Sometimes even someone you've known half a lifetime can surprise you.

I keep wanting to post this link but haven't had the perfect opportunity to do it. Here is a link to an article about orphan care in Tanzania. Some of you may like it, others may not. But I think it is an awesome demonstration of the power of creativity in the face of overwhelmingly bad odds and statistics.

~A