We Said Yes

After conferring with our dr and dropping off his medicals at Ella's pediatrician, too, we're feeling like there's not a lot left to think about. So, on Wednesday, we checked the "approved" box and Fed Ex'ed our yes away to Children's Hope International. :) So exciting! Is this real!?

They received it on Friday the 30th and said we're a go. Next steps are that the Ethiopian office of CHI starts to translate our dossier and petition the court for a court date. Toni (our consultant) said our court date will probably be in early April. We've signed a power of attorney that gives our agency rep there the right to go to court on our behalf and legally adopt our son for us. Then, once he's adopted and ours, we wait about 3 weeks to get his visa for him to travel home with us. We travel over a few days before he gets his visa and then leave with him a few days after, when we're ready. We only have to stay there about 6-7 days. It'll probably be towards the end of April or in early May, if we're doing the math correctly. Woo Hoo!

What the Doc Said

Our first order of biz today was to get to our doctor and share all of our son's medical records with her and get her to tell us what it all means. Our referral information came with pictures, all of the basics about where he was found, on what date, his (estimated) birthday, his habits so far, and three pages of medical tests. Our "job" between now and when we decide to "accept" the match is to do all of our homework on him based on everything they know and that we now have.

He's negative for HIV, Hepatatis, and all the other big chronic diseases we'd be super concerned about (which is why he was even referred to us in the first place - we only requested a healthy boy) and all of his bloodwork looked good. His white blood cell count was high, so that's one key thing we had questions about.

Well, our doctor said that everything looks great, and that white blood cell counts that are high are very common, are basically a sign that he either had or has or is getting an infection. She said there's no direct correlations between elevated WBC counts and any chronic diseases. She also said that drinking cow's milk (which is his diet right now) can elevate a baby's WBC. Our agency already told us they are going to re-check him anyway, but this definitely made us feel better.

I asked a million questions to our dr, in my classic information-hungry fashion, and Radames just kind of sat there and stared at both of us. We got perscriptions for a bunch of immunizations we should get before going to Africa (Malaria, Typhoid, Hep A, Hep B, Yellow Fever and i can't even remember what else). We then left and went out side to process it all. I asked Radames how he was feeling about what she said and if he was feeling like we should approve the referral and make it a done deal. He just sort of looked at me innocently and semi-confused and said, "I don't even know what you people were talking about in there...he was already my son before we came here." That's why I love him! And he's right...sometimes facts aren't the best way to a make a decision. :)

January 26th, 2009 - The Call We've Been Waiting For

It's about 3:30PM when our business phone rings. I dont pay too much attention because I am thinking Wynne or Terrance will answer it. Wynne answers it and calls for me telling me it's Toni. I'm thinkng, "Who is Toni?" Wynne comes down to the basement with the phone and it's Toni, our adoption representative. She asks us how we are doing and beigins by saying, " Before I tell you anything, I have to get some legal stuff out of the way." She tells us the legal junk before she finally says, "Congratulations. You have a three and a half month old, healthy, baby boy waiting for you." Wynne and I just look t each other with a look of absolute confusion. Is this really happening? I am expecting this call to come on a Friday, not on a Monday afternoon. 3 boys had been referred on Friday, so we were up to bat. But we were not expecting it to come so soon. we thought we had to wait at least another month. If you would have seen us, all you would have seen was smiles as wide as they could humanly be on Wynne's and my face.

OMG! We're #1 Now!

So, on our weekly update yesterday, we found out that three healthy infant boys were matched this week! Unless our math skills are slipping...YIKES!...that means we're next on the list of families waiting for a boy! Woo Hoo! Oh my goodness, that means we could literally get a call any day now. As soon as the next healthy infant boy needs a family, we'd be next on the list! Stay tuned...

They Found It!

We got an email from our agency today that they forwarded from Ethiopia. They have our Visa 37 afterall! This is SO major. We had 4 days of inordinate stress, while trying to be professional at a conference in FL, only for them to say, "oh, we found it" as if it were no big deal. This is the biggest relief! Just the thought of how we would even begin to replicate the process made me want to start injecting IVF drugs asap.

My friend Stephanie told me to tell them to hurry up and give us our son before they misplace him. It made us laugh. Goodness knows we needed it. It is kind of hiliarous thinking about it. Especially when we got an email that said the wait time from match to travel is now looking like 4 months, because there only 2 judges in the entire country that hear adoption cases and that they are getting backlogged. Crazy!

Devastating News

So on the weekly update from our agency today, we not only heard that this is the fourth week that there were no referrals, but we also got an email from our program leader that said our Visa 37 wasn't at the consulate in Addis Ababa. Okay, so in regular people's lingo, that basically means that our dossier that we worked almost a year to complete and get every piece of paperwork approved (and that they'll open when we finally get matched)...that should have been sitting in Ethiopia for quite a while...is not even in the country!!! I got the email after 5pm while driving home from Ella's school that said "Ethiopia does not show you have a file there". By the time I got home, Radames was on hold with the National Visa Center already. We both just looked at each other and didn't say a word and almost burst into tears in each other's arms. All we could think about it is how we're 2 year in and the rug has been pulled out from under us and that we might have to start over again b/c some fool lost our dossier as it got cabled from DC to Ethiopia.

Radames had to leave to take Ella to her karate testing for a new belt. I stayed at home on hold only be told by the NVC that our file had been sent to the Ethiopian consulate months ago and that it wasn't their problem if they didn't have it...and if it weren't there that we'd have to have our agency call USCIS (which is the US citizenship and immigration service; the former INS) and that they would have to "re-request the visas be cabled to Ethiopia." CIS then has the NVC send it to Ethiopia. Now i have no idea what the hell a cable even is...let alone how you re-cable something that's an original, but whatever. All I knew is that there was nothing we could do about it until at least Tuesday (b/c Monday was MLK day) and we had to stew on this with no info for three days!

I missed Ella's karate testing, which devastated me, and we just spent the night sort of speechless and depressed. Then I started to think optimistically about it and realized that (1) the only reason they even know that it's not there is because our agency knows we're on deck and is now doubling checking that everything is where it should be and (2) at least we are finding this out now, rather than once we get our referral and are delayed while we get it resolved. If we can get to the root of it, we can get it resolved before the match even happens.

To make myself feel better, I wrote an email back to our agency and said, PLEASE tell the consulate to look under another name...Tyree or Rodriguez or Radames...or Tommie Tyree...any and all iterations of our name...and that maybe they've just overlooked it and PLEASE call CIS first thing on Tuesday morning to get it re-sent.

Please let our file re-appear! It's too much to handle.

No Referrals for Three Weeks :(

This week's update (from our adoption agency) was a bummer. For the third week in a row, there have been no referrals. :( We were hoping that we'd hear something, but no such luck. We're fine about it though, because we know it'll happen at the right time. And we're just being patient and using this chance to tell people and talk more to Ella about it. The past week we've spent a lot of time explaining that her little bother will be black. She's been pretty disillusioned about it, b/c she thinks her new baby brother should look like her, mommy or daddy. We're whipping out all the 4-year-old appropriate explanations of some pretty deep stuff - the concept of adoption, the concept of interracial adoption, and...well, we haven't gotten to the international/Ethiopian thing yet, bc her concept of geography is about as sophisticated as "I live in Tennessee...in the Ridges." She doesn't even know she lives in the US. And honestly, the geography lesson is a little less important than helping her understand we're still gonna love her even if she's not our only child and that some babies come from their mommy's tummy and some don't. Anyhoo...we've got plenty to do - from learning Amharic in our "spare time" to reading our cultural sensitivity manuals to continuing the dialogue with Ella to telling all our friends to getting a bunch of vaccinations and on and on. We're sure there will be more referals soon. The drought tends to be followed by a deluge, so it'll happen soon. The wait time for a boy referral is 6-9 months after being put on the list and we've already been on the list 6 1/2 months.

We Told Radames' Family

We went to New York last week, and we had a great time. We told Radames' parents and extended family and they couldn't have been happier for us. They were so sweet and congratulatory about the news. We also got to meet up with a lot of friends and tell them about our adoption plans. Everyone that we had time to tell was super sweet to us. It felt good to start to tell people, b/c it's making it seem more real. We'd just love to have people know before we send out a picture of kid and say "hey, here's our new baby!" That's kinda funny thinking about. :)