Some of this is old news but it’s still worth mentioning. There have been some positive steps in showing adoption on children’s television. Yesterday I was at the Minnesota Children’s Museum and saw the Sesame Street exhibit. One of the signs mentioned Susan and Gordon’s son Miles, who on the show, was adopted domestically. I also found this blog archive of “Gina” (another main character on Sesame Street) adopted a son from Guatemala on the show’s past season.

Arthur also aired an episode featuring a Chinese adoption.

I’m a big fan of kid’s programming dealing with issues as important as adoption but one thing that I wish the shows would talk about is the birthparents. I think without meaning to, the writers portray the adoptive parents as the only people who love the adopted child…if you were six and adopted, how would that make you feel?

Here are 30 ways to celebrate National Adoption Month.

I’ve started reading a book called “There is No Me Without You: One woman’s odyssey, to rescue her country’s children.” by Melissa Fay Greene. I’m only four chapters in but so far I am really liking this book. I tend to gravitate towards books in the “social justice” genre. Books that are written by journalists who live the life of the subject they are writing about such as “There are No Children Here“, “Ordinary Resurrections“, and “Among School Children“. This book is one of those.

The problem with reading those books is I usually read them and get frustrated, angry, sad, and fed-up with “The Man“. What ever the issue is in the book I want to be able to help. I end up slamming the book shut on the last page and start thinking, “how can I fix this?” and then get more frustrated because I can’t.

This book has lots of statistics in it that show the plight of Ethiopia and it’s people. And this while reading, I feel the sense of urgency that this is a country in need and for once, I am actually doing something to help.

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Here are a couple of interesting blogs on adoption:

San Fransico to Ghana - These 4 people went to Ghana to start an orphanage.

Steppin’ Heavenward - A family of 9 kids. 5 are biological, 4 are adopted from Ethiopia and they are waiting for 2 more to come home from Ghana (the orphanage from the first link).

Bringing Desta Home - a couple adopts a girl from Ethiopia who is HIV positive.

Happy Reading.

Kevin has blogged a lot about the common-place-ness (is that a word?) of adoption. Once we started this journey I felt like I was seeing and hearing about adoption everywhere. And international adoption seemed to pop up all over the place. I feel like I can’t go anywhere without seeing a set of parents pushing kids in strollers, carrying babies in slings, etc and it’s very obvious that the children are not biological. I don’t know if it’s just a common thing here in Twin Cities or if it’s all over, but it’s very reassuring to know that when I go to the mall or out to eat our kids will see other families that look like ours.

Kevin mentioned that we got a bill from Children’s Home Society today. One of the many questions we get is “how much does it cost?” I’ll talk about the costs but in all honesty asking how much does it cost is like asking a pregnant woman “So, was this an accident?” At least that’s how I feel.

Anyway, here’s a breakdown of the costs:
$45 - registration with the agency
$500 - application fee
$2300 - pre-adoption class (2 day seminar required of every person wanting to adopt)
$30 - fingerprinting for the background check
$4600 - for the home study
$670 - processing fee (from the government) for the I-600A form (Immigration paperwork, I think this is the baby’s visa)
$160 - fingerprints (again) for Homeland Security
$67 - renewing Abby’s passport
$97 - a new passport for Kevin
$82 - a new passport for Lexi
$8700 - Country Fees (this pays for all the care our child has received from the orphanage)
$189.60 - filing fees from the Ethiopian Embassy
$14 - Department of State (filing fee - the government really likes their “filing fees”)
$50 - Ethiopian Courier Service (for the baby’s passport, birth certificate, immigration papers, etc)
$385 - travel fees for Kevin and I to go to Hosanna - the region of Ethiopia our child will most likely be from. Traveling this extra few hundred miles will give us a chance at meeting our child’s birth family, seeing where they were born, possibly meeting sibblings, etc)

And add in plane tickets to Africa and that’s where all the money goes. Children’s Home Society tries very hard to make it clear that nobody is “buying” a child. They also make it clear that money does not go towards paying staff salaries, or the mortgage on their new building. The money goes towards counciling services for birth mothers, it goes to the care of the children overseas, it goes towards international aide relief, it goes towards training nannies for the various care centers and as you can see, it goes towards the government for filing and processing. They also request that you don’t donate any money to the agency or it’s affiliates until the adoption is finalized so that there isn’t any way you can be accused of bribing the agency.

So that’s the money trail. It varies from agency to agency, from international to domestic adoptions and from country to country, but this is what it is for us.

Edit: I think part of the money does go to staff salaries as well as to pay the Nannies who work at the Care Center in Ethiopia.

November is Adoption Awareness Month and if you haven’t heard the news, we’re adopting! For the month of November Kevin and I will be blogging about adoption. We are doing this for several purposes. First, to keep you updated on the process of our adoption, how we are doing/feeling about and to answer any questions you may have about our adoption. Second, we do want to raise awareness about adoption.

Some things you should know about our adoption - we want you to ask questions. If we think it’s too personal, we will simply tell you that - but really, there’s not much we don’t want to talk about. We are adopting from Ethiopia through Children’s Home Society. We have been talking to Lexi about a new baby coming from Ehtiopia but she has no clue what is going on. Our adoption will be as “open” as possible, meaning we may get a chance to meet some of our child’s birth family and they may or may not want on-going contact.

And just a note about these blogs. Kevin’s blogs will be well thought out, probably pretty educational and gramatically correct. Mine, well, mine won’t be. Mine will probably be typed with Lexi climbing all over me, kindgarteners resting on their mats and my blogs tend to ramble and follow my train of thought - which derailed a long time a go.

Kevin and I were in the car taking Lexi to get her hair cut (pictures of said haircut can be seen here) and we saw the on-comming traffic on a very busy street swerve slightly and slow down - then we saw the puppy (a minature pinscher for you dog people) dragging it’s leash across the road and the 5 or 6 year old girl standing on the other side of the street with her hands covering her face in terror. Kevin pulled over and I jumped out of the car and ran across the street. Luckily the puppy was all about meeting and greeting new people so he came right to me. I scooped him up and as I stood waiting for the traffic to clear so I could cross I hollered to the girl that the puppy was okay. When I got across the street the girl’s older brother (?) had come running and thanked me and the little girl was shaking and just kept saying “I don’t know how I dropped the leash.”

This little dog totally lucked out. Smith Ave is a pretty busy street, with a steady stream of traffic. And being a dark, small dog on dark colored pavement, he was tough to see.

Anyway, it was a happy ending so it’s all good.

When Lexi was born we got a whole bunch of coupons for various free offers. One of them was for a series of pictures at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. It was at “professional” photo studio (as opposed to JC Penny’s or Babies R Us). The deal at this place was if we came in for all 4 sessions they give us 1 picture from each session for free. The sittings are also free. Basically, they are hoping that we will buy a package of pictures for family and friends at each session. But their prices are really high (I think a 5×7 runs about $40 - sorry, I can get 10 pictures and 24 wallets from JC Penny for $30) so obviously we didn’t buy anything.

Today when we went in for the last photo shoot the photographer asked us how many outfits we brought. We only brought one. He made a comment a long the lines of “so this is only for the panel of pictures then?” It was in sort of a “thanks for wasting my time” tone. He took about 15 pictures of Lexi standing up - not really putting much effort into getting her to smile or making sure she was posed right for the picture. At one point I made the comment that she was leaning over sort of far and so he stopped and suggested we move her closer to the stool. He shot that one pose and then said, “well I think we got one you can use” and went to get the appointment book to schedule a time to pick a picture. Kevin asked if we could try some of her sitting. He let us, but didn’t tell us how to pose her, basically told us it wouldn’t look very good, and grudginly took about 5 pictures of her, again making the comment about thinking we got one good one. I know we didn’t get any good ones of her sitting since she was sitting funny and barely smiling in those.

Alright, so I know that we weren’t dream customers because we only came for the free stuff and had no intent of buying anything, but he still should have treated us like we were going to buy a huge photo package. He doesn’t know if I’m going to recommend him to my friends or come back for a family photo.

If you are looking for a photo studio in the twin cities, go to JC Penny’s in the Rosedale Mall. The actual sitting is fast, they let you change outfits 2 or 3 times, they take suggestions from the parents on poses, props, etc, and you can pick/order your pictures on the same day. On top of all that they are completely affordable. You can go to the website and get coupons for $3.99/picture sheet.

Don’t go to Ron Burg Photography.

About 2 years ago I went to Rapid City, South Dakota. At the pow-wow the dancers sang and danced to an Honor Song for our group. It’s basically their way of saying thank you. At the time is realized the significance of it, but didn’t realize how long those emotions would stick with me.

The 4th, 5th and 6th graders at my school have been studying Native Americans and today students from Heart of the Earth (a Native American charter school) came and danced for our whole school. The girls were fancy scarf dancers and jingle dress dancers and the boys were grass dancers - same as in South Dakota - when the first dance started, I almost cried. The songs, the sound of the bells on the dresses, the sight of the scarf dancers all came flooding back and brought back the memories of the Pow-wow in Rapid City.

It was also powerful to watch our kids who have had little exposure to anything outside the Somali/Muslim culture sit and watch the dancers, completely fascinated. There was even a point when they invited 4 of our boys and 4 girls up front to dance. Dancing is pretty much a not okay thing for our kids (especially boys and girls dancing together) so I was amazed that our kids danced, but even more amazing was when the girls used their hiijabs to copy the scarf dancers.

But the highlight of the assembly (at least for the kids) was when they made all the teachers get up and dance. One of my boys was giggling so hard he could barely breathe. After the assembly was over the kids danced their way back to the room (their choice, not mine) danced as they got coats and backpacks on and I had to let them have a mini pow-wow before we left for the busses, just to get it out of their systems. I have a feeling there will be quite a bit of dancing for the next few days.