finally.

We’re a family of five.

Last night, I got back from 6 days in Alaska.

I left on Thursday to meet my daughter.

Kevin blogged all the details here.

Long story short, this adoption fell into our laps. We were preparing to adopt an older child but we thought it would be next summer before we welcomed a child home. But a friend was talking to a social worker who mentioned that a girl from Ethiopia needed a new home. The friend contacted me and told me to contact the social worker. I did.

A flurry of paperwork, phone calls, meetings with lawyers, social workers, home-studies, more paperwork and 7 weeks later the call came to book plane tickets.

Her name is Yeshumnesh – she’s smart, funny, talkative and pretty much all around a great kid.

Our Newest Addition: It’s a Girl!

We haven’t talked about it much but we started down the paper trail of adoption this spring.

We figured we’d be bringing home our kid(s) next summer.

Plans changed. A lot. And it’s really exciting.

She’s an 11-year-old girl going into 6th grade and she’ll be joining our family this summer.

Due to the sensitive nature of this whole process, we won’t be sharing a lot of details.

But we can tell you that she’s almost as tall as me, her smile is amazing, she likes to ice skate and color.

It’s been a crazy week of checking paperwork, making “to do” lists and getting things ready.

And yes, it’s slowly sinking in that I am now the mom of a pre-teen. A middle-schooler.

This is going to be an adventure.

A Letter to Rahimeto’s Mom.

Today is Mother’s Day.

I thought about you a lot today.

Are you wondering how your little boy is doing?

Are you wondering if he looks or acts like you?

I know you think about him as often as I think about you.

He’s doing great. Actually, he’s doing better than great, he’s amazing.

He can walk and talk (a little bit). He likes balls and trucks and bubbles and throwing things.

He’s got a big sister that he is crazy about. They run and laugh and argue and play and sometimes drive Mom and Dad up a wall.

He likes to hide and then pop out and surprise people.

Your baby boy is so sweet and affectionate. He loves to sit in our laps and cuddle.

He still sucks his thumb.

Everyone comments on his eyes and his smile.

I talked to him about you today. I’m not sure how much he understood. But I promise I won’t let him forget about you.

I will make sure he knows how much you love him.

And how grateful I am to be his mother.

How can I thank you?

You are 7000 miles away, wondering how your baby boy is doing.

You are 7000 miles away but you are and will be forever connected to our family.

“Thank you” doesn’t even begin to express how I feel.

Amesegnalehu.

Links on Adoption and World AIDS Orphan Day, Plus Random Updates

Several blogs I follow have posted very interesting articles or links to topics surrounding parenting, adoption, AIDS and a few others. I’m not going to try and rewrite what they have already stated much better than I ever could. Instead, I’m just going to link like crazy and give credit where credit is due.

Yesterday was World AIDS Orphan Day. I have mixed feelings about this day. It’s an important day. The world needs to know how serious this issue is but it can’t be summed up in one day. The kids are around and need our help the rest of the year. It’s an overwhelming task to try and help them all. Start small. Help one.

In the year 2000 there were 12 million orphans in Africa and more than twenty-five percent of those lived in NIgeria and Ethiopia. Eleven percent of all children in Ethiopia were orphans.

By 2010, between twenty-five million and fifty million African children, from newborn to age fifteen, would be orphans. In a dozen countries, up to a quarter of the nation’s children. The numbers were completely ridiculous.

Twelve million, fourteen million, eighteen million-how could numbers so high be answers to anything other than “How many stars are in the universe?” or “How many light-years from the Milky Way is the Virgo Supercluster?”

Who was going to raise 12 million children? Who was teaching 12 million children how to swim? Who was going to sign 12 million permission slips for school field trips and pack 12 million school lunches? Who was going to by 12 million sneakers that light up when you jump? Backpacks? Toothbrushes? 12 million pairs of socks? Who will tell 12 million bedtimes stories? Who will quiz 12 million children on Thursday night for their Friday morning spelling test? 12 million trips to the dentist? 12 million birthday parties? Who will offer grief counseling to twelve, fifteen, eighteen, thirty-six million children?

(Except from There is No Me Without You by Melissa Faye Greene)
note: Not all of the orphans she is referring to are orphans because of AIDS but even if it’s only 12 children instead of 12 million, it’s still 12 too many.

An excellent post by Erin of Full House, Full Hands, Full Hearts on World AIDS Orphan Day

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If you are considering adoption, you have adopted, you know someone who adopted or any combination of the above, please read this post on love and adoption by Tonggu Momma.

And another post on adoption from Fugitivus (If you can’t handle swearing, skip this one.)

These aren’t the typical sunshine and roses articiles about adoption. They are very real. Adoption is not perfect and is never the ideal situation for a child. It is the last resort. And yes, it can go wrong. And it’s important that people know all sides of adoption. I can’t stress this enough:  All adoptions come with grief and loss that is very real.

If you have an afternoon, read Yoon’s Blur. She’s an adult adoptee, who, in my opinion, does an excellent job discussing the good, the bad and the ugly points of adoption.

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And a few random updates.

• You can still throw your name into the hat to win Kevin’s awesome book.  I’m giving away 2 copies and so far there are only 10 entries so if you are one of those people who never wins anything, you’ve got a really good shot of winning this time around.
• My school did a fundraiser for charity:water last month. Pretty proud of the elementary school, they brought in almost $400.
• There are less than 20 days left of school. That is such a nice feeling.
• Fun things I have planned for my class: An ice cream party (because they brought in over $60 for charity:water), making our own playdough, making rainbow crayons from the broken bits of crayon, making one of those paper chains for counting down the days in school, cleaning out the classroom (cleaning isn’t that much fun, but if you say it the right way, you can convince a kindergarten student anything is fun).
• Went to Feed My Starving Children tonight. My group packed up 34 boxes of food. The entire group packed 194 boxes (or something close to that). It works out to enough meals for 114 children to have one meal a day for a year. If you want a fun family activity, go check it out.

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I think we’ll call that good for the randomness tonight. I really don’t think I should be allowed to blog after about 9:30 at night. I’ll try and make a little more sense next time around.

By the way, Happy Mother’s Day. If you haven’t called your mom yet, go do that.

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Some Dork Turned His Tweets Into A Book (and you could win the book)

And the winners are: The Schroeders and Jessica. Congrats.

The dork is my husband and the book is a collection of tweets about adoption, the kids, water, and life. And I’ve got 2 books to give away.

And the best part for every book that is purchased $2 will be donated to charity:water to build a well in Ethiopia.

Here’s how to win a copy of the book:

1. Leave a comment. Yep. That’s it.
2. If you tweet/facebook/blog about the give away, leave a second comment (with a link to where you posted it) and you get a second entry.
3. Donate to charity:water. For every dollar you donate, you’ll get another entry ($5=5 entries). Come back here and let me know you donated – we’re going on the honor system here people. If you don’t want to share how much you donated just e-mail me abbyhendricks at gmail dot com and I’ll put the appropriate number of entries in the hat.

Entries close on May 10th at 5 pm CST. Winners will be drawn by Lexi and Milo.

Good Luck!

Adoption Updates

We’re moving ahead with adoption #2.

It’s exciting and a much different process then Milo’s adoption.
Milo’s adoption went like this:

1. Attend informational meeting
2. Fill out application
3. Fill out longer application
4. Attend Pre-Adoption (PAC) classes
5. Fill out homestudy homework
6. Meet with Social Worker
7. Meet with Social Worker (round #2)
8. Get Home Study Written and Approved
9. Collect paper work (birth & marriage certificates, fingerprints, letters from bank/police department, etc, etc, etc)
10. Complete dossier
11. Get on the waiting list
12. Get fingerprinted for homeland security
13. Wait.
14. Get a referral
15. Get a court date
16. Get birth certificate
17. Get a travel date
18. Travel to Ethiopia
19. Come home and fill out more paperwork
20. Finalize Milo’s adoption

Yeah. That’s a lot of steps.

This time around we are going through the Minnesota Waiting Child Program. Most of the children are at least 6 years old and many of them are a part of a sibling group so it’s very likely we will be adopting an older child (probably over 8 ) and it’s also likely that child will have an older sibling. The process is a little simpler.

1. Attend informational meeting
2. Attend foster to adopt training
3. Fill out application
4. Fill out long application
5. Meet with social worker (I know there are several meeting but I’m not sure how many)
6. Wait for a match
7. Review child’s paperwork
8. Meet with people close to the child (teachers, pastor, coaches, therapists, etc)
9. Start visits with the child
10. Set a date for the child(ren) to move in
11. Finalize the adoption

We’ve finished up the classes, we’re waiting for the big packet to arrive in the mail. Sorry, this post is just the facts. I’m still processing all the information we learned this past weekend and trying to decide how much should be public knowledge. Don’t worry. I’ll keep you updated. I know you’re on pins and needles.

We Are the Truth

What happened to Artyem Saveliev is terrible. And it’s important that his story be told. It’s also important for the world to know there are adoptions – international adoptions, domestic adoptions, infant adoptions, toddler adoptions, siblings adoptions,  older child adoptions, waiting children adoptions – that will end beautifully.

The best bits of our adoption story can be found here and here.

5 months old, in Ethiopia, 3 days before we came home.

17 months old, in Minnesota, 1 year after we came home.

And our story isn’t over.

Do you have an adoption story?

Would you like a few stories to read?

Here’s one.

And another.

And another.

And another.

And another.

And another.

We are the truth.

A quick adoption update

I think we are now at Step 4? of the adoption process. I talked about Step 1 & 2 here.

Step 3 happened on Thursday. We attended an informational meeting regarding the Minnesota Waiting Child Program. After the meeting we felt like it was a good fit for our family. We’re still deciding but we’ve moved on to Step 4, which is signing up and attending the foster parent training at the end of April. Once we’re done with the training we’ll hopefully be more firm in our decision.

For those that are unfamiliar, the MN Waiting Child Program is children who are waiting to be adopted. Usually a sibling group or older (about 8 and up). The process is typically a faster one than international adoption. We were told a “quick” adoption from start to finish is about a year. That’s from the point we sign on until the adoption is finalized. In contrast our adoption with Milo took 26 months from the time we signed on until the adoption was finalized.

After the training, I’ll be able to give you more thrilling details of this whole process.

Meeting Milo – Day 6

Monday, March 23

After Sunday’s emotionally exhausting trip, Monday was a calmer day. After breakfast we went to the Care Center and got to bring the kids back to the guest house with us. It was nice to have him “home” and to take pictures. And yeah, we took a couple hundred that day.

Riding back on the bus.

Hangin’ with Dad. (yeah, he was wearing size 18 months shorts. Right now, he wears size 18 month pants.)

First family picture

Hangin’ with Mom (we changed his clothes…he’s now wearing size newborn)

True to form – he’s asleep.

After lunch we had to bring the kids back to the Care Center. This was probably the hardest drop off. It was one thing to play with him in the living room of the care center and then walk him back upstairs but to take him out and back “home” and then have to bring him back….that was hard.

Later that day we visited a few different places. We went to the National Museum. It was interesting but as one mom said while we were there, “this stuff is nice to look at but really, I just want my baby.” Yeah. Me too.

We visited a hospital. It’s actually the hospital that takes care of any of the sick children from the Care Center.

We visited a school. That part of the day I enjoyed. We got the general tour. The arena. The court yard. The classrooms. And then I started talking to the finance director and he was showing me their storage room, asking me about curriculum, telling me about class sizes…it was a very interesting conversation. Remember how I talked about wanting to teach for a year in Ethiopia.

This is where I picture myself working – Children’s Home Academy

The arena.

The court yard surrounded by classrooms.

A kindergarten classroom. (It’s about a 1/3 of the size of my current classroom but has about 25 kids.)

Going to check out the supply room.

The supply room. This was the supply room for the entire school.

After that we headed home for dinner and to relax.

Meeting Milo – Day 1 & 2

March 20th is the day we met our son for the first time and March 27th marks 1 year home as a family of four. I don’t think I really blogged about our trip – in detail. So here it is. Day by day.

March 18th and 19th were spent on a plane. We left our house around 10:30 in the moring to catch a flight from Minneapolis to Washington, D.C. I actually thought leaving Lexi would be tough (and it was a little sad to say good-bye) but I think because at that point she had zero concept of time and we had given her a present she was pretty much “Bye. See you later.” And off we went.

We landed in DC around dinner time and waited for our flight to Ethiopia. We took a “direct” flight. We flew from DC to Ethiopia with one stop in Rome to refuel the plane. They don’t let anyone off the plane because it’s only about 45 minutes or so before you’re back in the air.

We landed in Ethiopia Thursday night around 8ish. Honestly, I have no idea what time it was. It was dark. And we got back to the guest house around 11? That’s about all I remember.

The airport was probably the worst part of the trip. There are guys who work at the airport and will offer to carry luggage for a tip. Not a big deal. Except the guy who tried to help us was completely trying to rip us off. I had gone through customs before Kevin (he was exchanging money) and while I waited for him, I was gathering up our luggage. Between the two of us, we had four huge suitcases, two backpacks and a small carryon suitcase. Anyway, the guy saw me waiting with the luggage and started loading it on a cart. I told him no because my husband was coming and he basically pretended not to hear/understand me. I finally found Kevin and the guy tried to tell us the tip was $5 (american) per bag. Um. No. Luckily we found our guide who works for CHSFS and he told us how much to tip the guy and then told the guy to go away. But it wasn’t a very fun way to start the trip.

Things got much better after that. We headed out to the bus with the rest of our group. Most of us were exhausted from the flight but everyone was still pretty excited because tomorrow morning we were meeting our kids. When we got back to the guest house they had packets of information for us. Itineraries for the week, name tags for at the care center, and updates on our kids.

It was a really good thing that I was completely exhausted because otherwise I would not have been able to sleep. At all.