The Other Door

agggghhh! my kingdom for some time!

2010-01-26T21:00:00.000-06:00

You have emailed me. I haven't emailed you back. Yet.

All of you wonderful Gladney folk who have emailed me about taking packages and snapping pics of your babes, and anyone else who has emailed me about anything else! I'm going to email you back, I swear! In the next few days, its coming!

And I'm really going to try to get in a new blog before we leave. I'm having trouble fitting everything in right now, but I'm gonna try.

xoxo

travel

2010-01-04T20:56:00.000-06:00

We are traveling 2/15 - 2/22. Who else is going then???

Also, anyone who wants me to take a small package to their little ones or take pictures, please let me know. My email is tambmcbride@yahoo.com

Bereket at OneTrueMedia.com

2010-01-04T13:40:00.001-06:00

SHE IS OURS!!!!!!!!!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Sooooo,

2009-12-27T15:09:00.002-06:00

Maybe I made a huge mistake, tying the fate of my adoption to the fate of the Saints.
I would like to take it back now.

Not today.

2009-12-21T11:20:00.000-06:00

Sooooo,
MOWA decided to do a training today instead of issue an opinion on our case.

:-(

Good news:
Rescheduled for January 4!

:-)

maybe its our time

2009-12-15T21:14:00.000-06:00

So, I hate blogging.

Wait, what'd she say?
She said she hates blogging.
Oh no she didnt.

It's not true. I love my blog. When I first started this thing, it was just a way to keep friends and family up on the adoption process. I could not foresee what it would become. I could not foresee how it would be my connection to the most amazing, supportive group of women who are going through the same experiences as me. Truly, at times these women have been my lifeline.

But I hate blogging. No, I mean I hate writing. Like I told the beautiful, resilient Heidi, it makes me itch. When I sit down to write, I feel twitchy and itchy and fidgety. Like I want to crawl out of my skin. So I don't do it much. More often than not, I read the posts of my blog friends, and I live and breath through them. They say what I want to say, only so much better. But sometimes it all just wells up inside of me and if I don't write it down, I definitely will burst. I guess that's whats happening now. I know its bad when I don't remember a thing from the massage I just did because I was too busy composing in my head. It's time to sit in front of the computer and itch.

Yeah, all that was just exposition. Buckle your seatbelts, grab a cup of tea. It's gonna be a long one.

The last real post I did (I mean really real, with actual thoughts) was on September 26. One day before my 36th birthday, and almost exactly one month before our referral. It kinda seems like nine years ago. And it kinda seems like yesterday. What has happened in between then and now is so much. And yet I am still on the cusp of it all. My life really hasn't changed a bit. How do I explain it? How do I understand it, for myself? I still go to work with the same schedule I've always had. I still go out for a drink once a week with my buddies at the Sov. Matt and I are still living the life of a childless couple. We're kinda lazy. We let the dishes pile up. We should have gotten our stupid European washer/dryer repaired long ago. We should've already put the baby's room together. We should've gone to the dentist. But we're in our mid 30's, and though we wanted to start a family long ago, it still is as has always been. Just us living our lives.

So much is happening now. And I just don't really know what to do with it.

So ok, I'm gonna go metaphor now. Please bear with me.
I'm from New Orleans. I'm a Saints fan. If you are into NFL football, you know what I mean. If you are from New Orleans, you really know what I mean. If you are not a football fan, I apologize. I know you don't know what I am talking about, but just imagine how it is for me when people try to explain how exciting hockey is, or that New Moon thing. That's when you get the blank eyes from me.
Anyway, so I'm a Saints fan. The New Orleans Saints are losers. I mean, they always have been. From the beginning. Really, they're bad. There have been a couple of good seasons in there, but nothing that ever lasts. They have some of the worst luck of any professional sporting team. Is it because of Marie Laveau? Is it because the Superdome is built over a burial ground? We don't know. They've just always been that way. But oh, how the people of New Orleans love their Saints. The love is unending, undying, unflappable. Why do we love such a loser of a team? We love them for the dream. The hope. We've dreamt of it our whole lives. It's something we want so bad, it has at times been painful. The dream of seeing the team parade through the streets of New Orleans, Lombardi Trophy in hand. But really, that's for other towns. Not us. As much as we have wanted it, it has always been just out of reach.
But then, there's this year. The Saints are 13 and 0. They have yet to lose a game. They have played with so much talent, so much spirit, and so much good luck, it is insane. They are really, honestly, truly the complete team that we always dreamed of. They really seem like they are the ones to take us all the way. It seems like it is all really happening. Those dreams. They haven't come true yet. But it really seem like they are going to.

So I guess you can see where I am going. No, I don't think Matt and I are losers. But I have ALWAYS wanted to be a mom. From the beginning. I have dreamt of it. And then I was lucky enough to meet the love of my life. But we waited, because of course we were too young, too poor, lived in New York, we weren't ready. Then we moved to Chicago. We were ready, but there was nothin doin. We tried. Nothing happened. And yeah, there were times when I though, maybe that's for other people. Not me. Well, you know the rest.... It really is happening. I really am going to be a mom.

And its crazy that it is all happening at once. In any other year, this Saints thing, it would consume me. There is a part of me that is sad because I wish I could get more swept up in the frenzy. I wish I could be down there with my people, smiling at everyone you pass by on the street, and you all know why your smiling.

But there is this THING that is happening. I have seen the eyes of my daughter (and let me tell you, her eyes will blow you away.) This tiny little being, who has lost more in her 7 mos. than I have in my 36 years, is waiting for us to come swoop her up and be her loving forever family. She is depending on us. She need us. And I have no doubt in my mind that we can provide the love that she needs.

But I don't have her yet. And I don't know what to do with that. And the Saints haven't won anything yet. And I don't know what to do with that. And all of my best friends are going through some serious stuff right now, some of it great, some of it bad and some of it terrible, and I have not been very present in there lives because of the all-consuming nature of this. And I don't know what to do with that. And if I let myself, I would collapse into a puddle of tears and mush, but I am not ready. And I really don't know what to do with that.

So I just go about my life. On the cusp of everything about to change. Everything. Things I never really believed would happen. To be honest, I am still unsure if they will. It's hard to believe it sometimes. It really is.

The thing is, I'm ok. No, I'm great! I'm so excited I could pee my pants! But I'm also so frightened. I'm frightened of the normal "becoming a parent" stuff. And I'm frightened of going to Ethiopia. I'm frightened of the logistics of it all. And I'm frightened of what I will see, and how it will break my heart.

That's where I'm at. All over the place, and no idea what to do with it.

I love Drew Brees. He's the quarteback for the Saints. It's ok, Matt knows. He loves him too. Here's Drew speaking after the Saints completed a very improbable come-from-behind win over the Redskins. This is where I get the title of this post from. I really wanted to embed the video to the post but I just couldn't make it work, so I will quote and then provide a link to the video. Please watch it.

"I definitely believe in destiny, and I believe in karma and what goes around comes around," he says. "We have been on the other side of this deal probably too many times. Maybe it's our time that we start catching some of the breaks, and start being the team that wins them like this in the end."

http://www.wwltv.com/sports/football/Brees-I-believe-in-destiny-78649137.html

I don't know if I believe in destiny or fate. But it sure sounds good when he says it. And maybe it is our time. Me and Matt. The Saints. New Orleans. My sister. My friends, those that I have had in my life forever and my newfound blogging sisters. All of us.

Our court date on Monday. Hopefully Monday is our time.

Court Date!!

2009-12-02T08:20:00.000-06:00

We found out our court date yesterday!!!!

December 21.

Less than 3 weeks away.

Gulp.

BTW, I do realize I am the world's worst blogger. But you still love me anyway, right? Anyone? Is this thing on?

December 21. Me. Nervous wreck. It's gonna be a coo coo winter.

REFERRAL!!!!!!

2009-10-27T23:21:00.002-05:00

We got it!!!!!!!!
Baby girl, 5 months old, BEAUTIFUL!!!!!
More later, I promise!!!!

YAY!!!!!!!

panic time

2009-09-26T22:23:00.000-05:00

Ok, so here's what's happened in the past couple of days. Referrals. Lots of 'em. How happy am I for these amazing people? Words cannot express. It's kind of like a dam broke open. Really an exciting time for those of us in the Gladney waitlist world!!! It's so crazy how happy I am for people I have never met, but still feel so close to. These interwebs are a wild thing. Creating a family through a series of tubes. Whoda thunk?
But now it seems that we are very close to the top of the list. And I might be going out of my mind a little bit. See, This whole time I had been preparing myself for a November or December referral, if not later. Now, I don't know what to think. I keep telling myself, keep your mind set, don't alter your expectations. But its so hard! I keep letting it creep into my mind. Wait, did I say creep? What I mean is, its the ONLY thing I can think about. Seriously, there must be something else to think about! I mean, there are other things going on in the world, right? And let me tell you, my job doesn't help things. I know you all want to think that when you are getting a massage, your massage therapist is focused on nothing but you and your knots. And there are times when that is true. But when we have things on our mind, well lets just say I've been doing this a long time, my body can go on automatic pilot. Which provides me endless hours to think and obsess and do mathematical calculations about referrals and court dates and travel and AGHHHHH!! Help me!!!

Ok, no I'm okay. I'm still not expecting anything for a while. That's good, right?

So another awesome thing that happened in the past couple of days is that our awesome, amazing, wonderful, awesome friends bought us this:

I know, I say awesome too much. But isn't it so awesome?!?! Our friends are too good to us.

So now all we need is a baby to go in it. Yup. No rush though...

tagged!

2009-09-06T19:22:00.007-05:00

Heidi tagged me, errr, a while ago. And as you can tell, I'm not the most prolific blogger in the world, and I had a million visitors this summer and was working all the time and blah blah blah... so I'm just getting around to doing this.
For the uninitiated, its pretty simple. Someone tags you, you state 7 random (hopefully interesting) things about yourself, then tag 7 more people to do the same. And that's how we entertain ourselves while we wait for our babies ;-)

So here we have it.

1) I have lived in 9 different cities in 7 different states. I have lived in the south, the mid-west, the east-coast and the west-coast. I have lived in the 3 largest cities in the country. I don't know why I have lived in so many places. I hate to move. I fear change.

2) Following that same theme (and borrowing from Heidi a bit,) I have been present for, or closely involved in some of the most terrible things that have happened in our country in recent memory. I lived in LA during the Riots and the 6.9 Northridge earthquake. I lived in New York during 9/11. And I am from, and was considering moving back to New Orleans, when Katrina happened. My memories from each one of these events are some of my saddest and scariest. I remember fleeing south central Los Angeles as the area around my school (USC) burned to the ground and coming back to find a charred landscape. I remember a moment that seemed to last forever, huddled in the doorway of our 8th floor high rise, hugging my roommates, screaming how much we loved each other as we thought we were about to succumb to the "big one." I remember watching the streams of people on an otherwise perfect New York September day, walking past our apartment, looking like ghosts, covered in ash and soot. And the sadness I felt in me that day I thought could never be topped. Until I watched my home town drown, a city of people left to die, and wondering if everything my dad and step-mom owned was gone. These are things I carry with me every day.
On the bright side, Chicago seems good so far. Knock wood.

3) I have never worked in an office. That's not random thing #3. I wrote that in order to explain random thing #3, which is that I am fascinated by offices. I have no idea what goes on in them. Seriously, what do you do all day when you work in an office? I know what I do when I go to work. I show up, someone hands me a list of clients, I massage each one at the appointed time, then I go home. Open and shut. But what happens when you show up to an office? Is there a list of things you have to do? Who comes up with that list? Is it the same everyday or does it change? I realize the answers are probably dependent on the office you work in. Near as I can tell, everyone I know who works in an office just spends their whole day on Facebook. But what did they do before Facebook? (and don't say Myspace.) And seriously, most importantly, how in the world do you stay awake!?!? I know there are times I feel like I could almost fall asleep standing up doing a massage. If I worked in an office, I would have no chance. I'd be fired in about 2 seconds.
I know its weird, but office work is as mysterious to me as creating music or space exploration. I just don't get how it works.

4) I was blessed with so many amazingly good things in my life, it is embarrassing. Good skin, however, was not one of those things. It is, at times, the bane of my existence.

5) Left-side parallel parking is my nemesis.

6) I should have been a rock star. I know, its silly, we all have those fantasies. But every year I watch American Idol, and then I go into the shower and rock it out. Or in my car, yeah I'm that crazy person you see singing their guts out. Really I am pretty awesome. Except I can't sing. I mean, to me I can. When I am by myself, I sound so amazing I wonder how I am not signed already. But something strange happens when you throw other people into the mix. Apparently my voice is actually crap. It's too bad, because I would have been an awesome rock star.

7) I think the system of tipping is stupid. Customers shouldn't be responsible for paying the wages of workers. Employers should. That being said, it is the system we have here in this country. And it is how my husband and myself and millions of other people make their living. And I truly believe there is a special level of hell reserved for those that don't tip adequately or at all.

Yeah, so that's it. It really is hard to think of things about yourself. I had some others but I didn't think they were too interesting. I mean, who really wants to know what I think about my hair?

Should I tag other people? I don't know, Heidi tagged a bunch of people and no one did it. Guess everyone is as lazy as me :-) Maybe I'll just re-tag those people. That's pretty lazy right?

Ok
Selam and Love
Three Plus One
Tam and Kai
The Britt Family
Colin and Rebecca
Tales from Chi-town
and one new one for good measure
Our Little Buster
You've been tagged!

hey mammas!

2009-08-29T22:34:00.002-05:00

Does anyone have the Maclaren Quest stroller????
Is it good? Do you love it? Should we get it?

mycharity: water

2009-08-27T13:50:00.003-05:00

Hey, the video I posted before was apparently from last year's fund-raising event. This year's is bigger and better than ever!
Click here:
mycharity: water
to view my fund-raising page!

By the way, sooo excited that the referrals have started rolling again. Many congratulations to the families that have received their referrals in the last couple of days!!

Posted using ShareThis

i was born in september

2009-08-18T10:07:00.001-05:00

Please watch the video.
I'll be 36 this year :-)

The September Campaign Trailer - 2008 from charity: water on Vimeo.

thinking of the gladney families

2009-07-23T23:51:00.002-05:00

Many Gladney families were supposed to have court dates tomorrow (the 24th.) They have all been postponed. Just wanted to say I'm thinking of yall and hoping with everything in me they are rescheduled before the closures.

tall poppy syndrome

2009-07-20T21:50:00.004-05:00

Please, allow me to rant.

Most people who know me, know that I love talking about my adoption. It makes me happy. I'm excited and nervous and scared and excited and.... all of the things one might expect from anyone becoming a new parent. Conversations about my adoption will, many times lead to a wider conversation about adoption (in general.) I love having these conversations too. There is so much I have learned in the past year. So many things to consider. Such a broad world that I never gave much thought to before. Lets just say, to put it simply, my eyes have been opened. So, I have these conversations with people, and they might just be broad and general and quick. Sometimes they get a little deeper. It doesn't matter to me, I just like to talk about it.
But then, it happens. Not every time, but so many times. This person that I am speaking with, who is sharing in my joy for adoption and telling me how cool it is that we are doing this will get a little glint in their eye and, almost in the same breath, say to me, "(insert snide comment about Brad & Angelina and/or Madonna here.)" And they give me that look, you know, the one that says, "Right, my sister? Can I get a high-five?"

I'm sorry, what?

Ok, I know. We tear down celebrity in this society. Its just something we do. Is it because they are richer than us? Better looking? Is it simply because they are famous? All of the above, I'm sure. And frankly, I don't care. What I do care about, is how somebody can see this:

or this:

and not see simply what I see, which is parents loving their children. Instead they think; those assholes, who do they think they are? just trying to make themselves look good, that's all they're doing, they don't care about those children, its all for show, etc, etc...

Really? All for show? You really think that people adopt children for show? How interesting. I guess because they are famous, there is no way they could possibly have enough heart to love the children they have taken into their lives. Clearly it would be better for those children to have remained where they came from. In their orphanages. Where they would have the benefit and the privilege of living like this:

Well, at least until they are of adult age, upon which time they will be kicked out into the real world, where their emotional scars and lack of supportive upbringing will surly bring them a lifetime of lovely rewards, and then finally, may they find some peace when they die at the ripe old age of 45. If they're lucky. Yeah, that does sound better than having Madonna as a mom.

Ok listen, I don't lie awake at night worrying about how Madonna/Brad/Angie feel. I'm sure they're fine. What I worry about, and what this rambling is really all about, is how people view adoption. And I find it interesting that the strongest and loudest of opinions come from people who have never, and will never, consider adoption for themselves. And I say to you, honestly, I wish they would keep their uneducated, narrow minded opinions to themselves because they just don't know what the hell they're talking about. They don't think about how many orphans there are in the world. They don't think about the conditions these orphans live in. And they don't think about the children growing up in the foster care system in this country. But for some reason, they feel secure as they sit in judgment of those who do think about these things.

Do they really think that someone who does not care about and love children would go through the adoption process for show? And let me assure you, it is a process. My husband and I have been fingerprinted 3 times for various background checks. We have submitted 2 medicals forms for which we were assessed and tested for every possible communicable disease. We have been studied and grilled by 2 social workers, wherein we were asked questions about parenting that I guarantee you no parent who has given birth naturally has had to consider. Our home has been scrutinized. I have drawn a floor plan and written out our fire drill routine. We have filled out more paperwork than I ever could have imagined. Before our adoption is complete, a governing organization in Ethiopia will pour over every document and detail of our lives and issue an opinion of whether we are fit to parent a child of Ethiopia. And after that, a judge will make a final decision. Adoption is not easy. And you know what, its also not the answer to the orphan crisis. That is a whole other can of worms. But I know this. For every child adopted, that is one less child living in conditions we wouldn't wish upon our animals. For every child adopted, that is one more child loved, hugged, kissed, sung to at night, held when the bad dreams come, tickled, played with, educated and fed.

I'm not saying everyone should adopt. I'm not naive enough to think that this is a reasonable option for every family. And I'm certainly not disparaging having your family the old fashioned way. I think pregnancy and child-birth are beautiful, and there will always be a piece of me that hurts because I can't do this. What I am saying is this:

I have a problem with people who think celebrities shouldn't adopt.
And I have a problem with people that think gays shouldn't adopt.
And I have a problem with people who think singles shouldn't adopt.
And I have a problem with people who think you shouldn't adopt outside your race or ethnicity.
And I have a problem with 'people who don't adopt' that have judgmental opinions of 'people who do adopt.'

Why? Because adoption saves lives. No matter who is doing the adopting. And tell me exactly how it is that you could be against that?

Ok, thank you for reading and, of course agreeing with everything I have said :-)
Stepping off the soap box now. Please feel free to take a turn.

a month of anniversaries

2009-07-12T23:59:00.005-05:00

If you look over to the left at our timeline, you'll notice that it has officially been one year since we started this adoption journey. So crazy. Like most things, it has flown by, and yet it seems like it always was. Why is that? Looking back, I remember how excited we were to start this journey and how terrified I was at all of the work we had to do. I also remember thinking we would have a baby in about a year. Heh heh. You learn really fast in international adoption to have flexible expectations ;-)

This month, we also celebrated 6 years of marriage. Again, how could it possibly have gone by so fast? It seemed like just yesterday there was a bunch of us gathered in Connecticut on a sweltering evening to dance our butts off and celebrate this:

And then finally, this month we celebrated 12 years of being a couple. Holy cow. 12 years! I can scarcely remember who I was before I met Matt McBride. He is my husband, my best friend, my partner in crime, my everything. And soon... my baby daddy!
Here is a rough approximation of what we looked like back then:

Happy Anniversaries Baby! I love you!

FACE Act

2009-07-09T23:19:00.002-05:00

I saw this on a couple of other blogs, and thought I'd repost...

Bill Introduced to Provide Citizenship Rights

to Internationally Adopted Children

of American Families

June 29, 2009 (Washington, DC) -- The Families for Orphans Coalition announces its support for the Foreign Adopted Children Equality Act (FACE Act) which was introduced last week in the Senate and House of Representatives. The FACE Act will allow American families to bring their internationally adopted children home as American citizens instead of as immigrants. The bill is spearheaded by Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and James Inhofe (R-OK) and Representatives Diane Watson (D-CA) and John Boozman (R-AR). The FACE Act simplifies the acquisition of citizenship for internationally adopted children and removes these children of American citizens from the immigration process.The Foreign Adopted Children Equality Act addresses needed changes to the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA) which was enacted to provide automatic U.S. citizenship to internationally adopted children of American citizens. As it stands now, the internationally adopted child of a U.S. citizen receives U.S. citizenship once the child enters the U.S. to reside permanently. If enacted, the FACE Act would allow such children to acquire U.S. citizenship at the time their adoptions are finalized in the country of the child’s birth. The child would then enter the U.S. as a U.S. citizen with citizenship documentation in hand.

“Passage of the FACE Act will eliminate the need for an immigration visa for internationally adopted children and instead will treat these children as children of American citizens, not immigrants subject to immigration regulations,” said McLane Layton, President of Equality for Adopted Children (EACH) and a member of the Families for Orphans Coalition. “Additionally, the FACE Act classifies internationally adopted children as “citizens from birth” just like children born of Americans overseas, thus providing them with equal rights of citizenship, including the right to run for President of the United States.”

“Under current law, the type of immigration visa an adopted child is given to enter the United States determines whether the child receives U.S. citizenship upon entry. Those children who do not receive U.S. citizenship upon entry and whose parents overlook the bureaucratic steps necessary to secure citizenship for their children are often later denied scholarships, passports, and the right to serve in the U.S. military. Most tragically, some young adults who have lived in the United States with loving, American families their entire lives have been deported to their birth countries - places they have no knowledge or memory of – for committing minor juvenile offenses. Half the children adopted internationally each year currently enter the States on the visa that places them at risk,” said Chuck Johnson, a Coalition member and Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for the National Council for Adoption.

“The Face Act will resolve these issues and provide U.S. citizenship to all internationally adopted children of American citizens.”The FACE Act also provides older orphans the ability to be adopted – children who were overlooked in the Hague Treaty on Intercountry adoption. “Prior to the Hague’s passage, children age 16 to 18 whose younger siblings had been adopted by an American were able to be adopted by the same American family,” said Terry Baugh, President of Kidsave. “The Hague eliminated all adoption opportunities for children 16 and over. The FACE Act will fix this oversight and expand the opportunity of a permanent family to all children up to age 18.”

The Families for Orphans Coalition was established in 2008 to support both domestic and foreign efforts that ensure every child lives, grows and thrives in a safe, permanent and loving family.

alright alright already....

2009-06-14T19:25:00.004-05:00

Apparently I haven't blogged in a while. So says most of the free world. Or at least the .00000000000000000001% that read my blog :-) Ok, I get it! But most of the time its like, what should I blog about? Well, what have I been doing? Lets see, I went to work today. And I went to work yesterday. And I'll be going to work tomorrow.... Do you sense a pattern here? I'm boring folks! Really boring.
So let's talk about other people's lives, shall we? I don't know if you've been keeping up with the list (what? you don't look at it 500 times a day? oh that's just me?) It's very exciting because the referrals have been rolling and a lot of families have been getting through court, including one family (this family) who received their referral for their beautiful twins over a year ago and just finally got through court on Tuesday.
You spend a lot of time when you are on the waitlist studying and analyzing. You study how many families are listed before you and you analyze how long it is taking for the people at the top of the list to get their referrals. You wonder why it is taking so long and you hope and pray it doesn't get to be a longer wait by the time you get up there. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Here's the thing. I have to catch myself when I start thinking like this and remind myself that Ethiopia is not a factory assembly line. Nor is my adoption agency. This is where adoption gets tricky. In order for Matt and I to have the family we always wanted, a mother has to make a torturous decision. Or maybe its not a decision at all, maybe she has died. Maybe other families have to make a torturous decision. Any which way you slice it, its heartbreaking. It's not something you would hope for anyone. Period. It's weird sometimes. I know that people feel sorry for me and Matt. They feel sorry because we couldn't get pregnant. And I appreciate their feelings, I really do, but I really just want to scream, don't feel sorry for us! What we have been through is nothing, nothing, compared to what parents who must give their children up have gone through. Whether it is in Ethiopia, or here in America, or anywhere in the world, no person should have to endure that. Ok, rambling... what's my point. My point is, if it takes 8 months to get a referral, or 12 months, or more, its ok, because we are not on a waitlist for a finely crafted Italian handbag. We are waitng for a person. A real live person, who was loved by someone else, or many other people, but could not stay with them. That's big.

Oy, how'd I get off on such a serious tangent? Ok, I know what you've really been waiting for...

Kitty pictures!!

Here's where I fell asleep on the couch and the cats took over.

And here's where I woke up and realized my husband was taking embarrassing pictures of me and tried in vain to hide my double chin.

And here's where Matt and Bishop were posing in their ties.

Yes. Neck ties.

And here's where they were reading Black's Law Dictionary in their ties.

I would like it noted for the record that it was not me who bought a neck tie for my cat and made him wear it and pose for pictures in it. It was Matt. My husband. Future great dad. I'm just saying.

obsession

2009-05-17T23:26:00.009-05:00

So what's to do when you've been on the waitlist for two months? You're done with all the paperwork, but its way too early to start babyfying your home, cuz then you'll just sit and stare at all this baby stuff with no baby in it. Well I'll tell you what ya do. You obsess. Over the List. You read every last blog on the list. You feel like you know these people even though you've never met them. Hell, you even meet one of them (hi R, had a great time with you!)
So this is what I do with my time. I can't get enough of it. It's replaced my facebook obsession. I celebrate when someone gets a referral or learns of a court date or passes court. And my heart breaks when I read the blogs of families who have received their referrals over a year ago and are still waiting to pass court. And I'm a little nervous right now. Because let me just tell you that no less than 16 Gladney families have court dates between May 20 and May 25. I'm getting heart palpitations just thinking about it. I want this to go well. I need this to go well. Because they're my peeps, even though we don't know each other. And our personal experiences may be vastly different, but we're all on the same ride. So my adoption experience is colored by each and every one of them.

Anyway, if you need me, this is where you'll find me. In front of my computer, reveling in my new obsession.

yay spring and good times in the northwest

2009-04-30T15:04:00.004-05:00

Not a whole lot going on here these days (aside from working a lot.) We had a great trip to the Seattle area visiting with Matt's family and especially our little cousin Connor, who is 4 years old now, and we haven't seen him since he was just a little baby! Here are a few pics...

Connor!

Check out that hair

Matt and Connor looking suave at the Portland Zoo

Fun at the Mariners Game

Awesome family dinner

And finally... it seems to be spring here. So exciting! This is my favorite moment of the year, when brand new green starts emerging from those brown branches.

hello from waitsville

2009-04-09T12:27:00.006-05:00

Wow, three weeks on the waitlist already. I know its just the beginning and we have a long way to go, but I'm feeling very at peace with "the wait" right now. I think it is because this is the first time in this process that I feel very sure that we are actually going to have a baby. There were times during the paperchase when I would get very frustrated and think that it was too hard and it was just never going to happen. Actually, now that I think about it, we've been trying to have a baby since 2006. Three years of struggling. It takes its toll on you. So to be able to relax into the idea that the thing you always wanted is coming, its a very peaceful feeling.

I think there are some new readers now. For those not in the adoption world, let me explain. There's this thing called the FBI list. No, not *that* FBI. It doesn't involve fingerprints. It stands for "Forensic Blogging Initiative." Its a list, put together by a woman named Grace who adopted from Ethiopia last year. Her description of the list: "This is a little something I do in my spare time to track the progress of Gladney Ethiopia families, from the paperchase stage to their forever families." So I wrote to her and asked to be placed on the list. You can check the list out here
Anyway, to all of the new visitors, welcome! Thank you for sharing in our story. I have probably read your blog (if you have one) and anxiously await your good news just as much as mine :-)

As many of you know, I am from New Orleans. I write this because I am missing home somethin awful right about now. Don't get me wrong, things are getting better here in Chicago. The days are somewhat warmer. It doesn't snow (nearly as much ;-) But New Orleans in the spring, man, you cannot beat it. Its festival season. And crawfish season. Its all-around heaven. We usually get down there this time of year, but in order to save money for Baby McBride, the vacation budget has been slashed. Which is ok, I mean, it is totally worth it. You have to have priorities. But man, do I miss Nola in the springtime.

Bringing things down a little bit, there have been two recent passings that have affected me in one way or another. The first was a woman I did not know. Her name was Haregewoin Teferra. A book was written about this extraordinary woman's life by Melissa Fay Greene called "There is No Me Without You."

Most of us in the Ethiopia adoption world have read, or are reading, this book. In short, this woman took in hundreds of orphans in Ethiopia when no one else could or would. She gave all of herself to these children. She died on March 17 of unknown causes. Her story is greatly worth knowing about.

The second was a man I did know. This man.

His name was John Edw. Blankenchip. He was the heart and soul of the USC School of Theatre. He was crass and rude and irreverent. He somehow managed to cut you down, cuss you out, make you laugh, and empower you, all at the same time. And he cared more about his students than any teacher I have ever met. He made my experience at the USC School of Theatre worth it. He died on April 1 (april fools day, of course.) He was loved and will be missed by many. Including me.

Ok, enough with the sad stuff. Matt and I are very much looking forward to a trip to Seattle next week to see his family. I know I said our vacation budget had been slashed, but we made an exception, as this was supposed to be our Christmas vacation that never did happen. Hopefully we won't get snowed in this time. I probably just jinxed us. It will be nice to get away from work for a few days to recharge the batteries.

So until next time...
Happy spring yall!

does this make me a bad mom?

2009-03-28T00:16:00.002-05:00

Bishop's dream came true yesterday when I accidentally spilled a whole jar of catnip on the floor. I think it was the best day of his life. I did eventually sweep it up, but I had to let him roll around in it and eat as much as possible because he was so happy. And high.
Also, I was laughing way too hard to pick him up.

It's such a perfect day...

finally! (the post i promised :-)

2009-03-22T15:15:00.002-05:00

I got a little side tracked this week. Worked 6 days in a row and it kinda turned me into a zombie. Not the brain-eating kind. Just the don't-know-which-way-is-up-can't-work-up-the-energy-to-blog kind. But I'm better now.

So, yes, it finally happened! I had been somewhat impatiently waiting for about a week to hear word that we had been placed on the waitlist. Kate had sent our final documents (the budget worksheet and the CIS approval letter) off to be authenticated and it seemed like they were taking forever to get back to her. Our agency, Gladney, will place you on their waitlist once your entire dossier has been authenticated on the state level and then sent off to DC for final authentication. Every day I would check my email and phone messages, hoping to hear something. And then on Wednesday, I was at work, between massages, and checked my email (thank god for iPhones.) And there they were, two beautiful emails from Kate and Jessica. I was so excited I did a jig. Luckily I was in my massage room where no one can see me. Of course, then I did another jig in the office in front of about 3 people when I told Kirsten the news. I then texted Matt with a message that said "dude, we're on the waitlist!" He texted me back with, "sweet, dude!" I know, we're so eloquent.

So what does this mean? How Long? What do we do now? Well, quite frankly, we go about our business. Because nothing is going to happen for a while. Gladney is saying right now that the average wait for a referral is 6.5 months. But there a few families who have been waiting for 8 months. And by the time we get to the 6 or 8 month mark, who knows how long the waiting times will have increased to. And remember, folks, this is just for the referral. Add another 4-6 months (or more) on top of that to pass court and be allotted travel dates.

So what the heck do we talk about now? Well, we can talk about how our cat, Bishop has been diagnosed with asthma and now has to be given steroids to help breath right and not sound like he has a smoker's cough. Or we can talk about how Matt bought Shamwows. Apparently they won't make you say "Wow" every time. We can also talk about Ethiopia. It's a fascinating country with a rich culture and history and we want our child to know as much as possible about where he/she came from.

So, as you can see, my blogs might be a bit random now. It's so weird, after all this time always feeling like we needed to be doing something, to not have anything to to do but wait. But that's all we can do! So cheers to the wait and hears hoping its as short as possible.

finally!

2009-03-18T22:18:00.002-05:00

I will write more about this tomorrow, but I just wanted everybody to know that we have officially been placed on the waitlist!!!!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!

I-171H

2009-02-27T23:31:00.003-06:00

I seriously thought this would take months to come, but today we received our letter of approval from Immigration! I am so freaking excited! Now all we have to do is get notarizations for that and our budget worksheet and we are done with all of our paperwork! Then, as soon as Kate gets everything authenticated for us, we can be placed on the wait list. Oh happy day!

my practice baby is born!

2009-02-22T12:47:00.005-06:00

I am so excited to announce that our very good friends, John and Janet, have had a beautiful baby boy named Cole Bradley! Cole was born at 4:30 AM on Feb. 20, 6lb 9oz at Northwestern Hospital. We went to see him yesterday and he is so beautiful! Poor Cole has to spend 7 days in the NICU because they say he has an infection. It's really just an elevated white blood cell count, he seems totally fine. I got to hold him for a little bit, but I don't think it went very well. I was nervous because he is attached to monitors and an IV and I was so worried I was going to detach him! And he is so tiny! I think he was thinking, man this lady is not doing this right. Anyway, we are so excited for John and Janet and we are totally going to be practicing on little Cole. We clearly need all the practice we can get :-) And we can't wait for Baby McBride and Cole to be playmates!
Here are a couple of pics:

Look at this little face!

BTW, nothing has happened on the adoption front. Still just waiting for our CIS approval letter. Waiting and waiting and waiting.........

waiting to wait

2009-02-15T15:00:00.002-06:00

By my count, there are only two remaining pieces of our dossier to be handed in. One is our budget worksheet which has to be notarized, and the other is our I-171H from CIS. The first one will come quickly. We just have to get the form from KBS Dossiers in the mail, notarize, and send back. The other, well who knows when that is going to happen. Our homestudy has been sent to Immigration. But I just checked their website, and it seems that the Chicago field office is pretty far behind on processing these forms. I will try to keep an optimistic outlook, and hopefully we will receive it within the next two months (please oh please!)

So, as you can tell by reading so far, our homstudy is finally complete! It was a bit of a trial to make that happen. In order to understand why it took a while, let me explain a little bit about notarization as it pertains to international adoption. The personal notary stamp of the individual who is notarizing your document must not expire for at least a year and a half (and that is pushing it.) The reason for this, as explained to me best by my friend Catherine (who had it explained to her by our dossier service when she was getting a reference letter notarized for us) is that foreign governments view this expiration date as an expiration date for the document itself. So, if a document is notarized by someone who's stamp expires on say, 12/19/09, and our case has not passed court in Ethiopia at this point, that document will have expired. Such was the case of our homestudy. FRC sent out copies of our homestudy to us, Gladney and CIS, all notarized by an employee of FRC, whose notary stamp expires on said date. This was a wee bit upsetting because I just felt like, shouldn't you know this? You do homestudies for international adoptions, right? You have done this before, right? Anyway, to their credit, they were very quick in re-doing everything once I made them aware of the situation.

Another milestone we passed was finally getting approved to adopt by Gladney! (I sometimes secretly can't hardly believe that two agencies have approved us to adopt a baby. Really, us? I don't know, that seems so grown-up :-) With this approval, we have transitioned from our assistant case worker, Susanne, to our actual case-worker, Jessica. We had a conference call with Jessica last week. She is so nice and helpful (as everyone at Gladney has been, seriously, if you just stumbled upon this blog and are considering international adoption, these people are awesome and soooooo nice.) Jessica will be with us the rest of the way through this adoption process. She will be the one to call us with our referral and she will be the one to let us know if we have passed court. She gave us a rundown of the process from here on out. It seems that the average wait time for a referral right now is about 6.5 months. Once you have accepted your referral, its another 1 to 3 months just to get issued a court date, and another 10 weeks or so to have your first court date. She also made sure we understand that there are many different factors that go into passing court, and that it is a very challenging process that Gladney is not really in control of.

I can hardly believe we have already been on this adoption journey for about 6 months now. Looking back, I do wish that we had done some this differently. I wish that we had initiated the homestudy sooner, like right at the very beginning. And I wish we had been more vigilant about getting all of our documents and paperwork completed as fast as possible. But honestly, we had no idea what we were doing. And at least we will know better for the next time!

still here, still movin along

2009-01-25T13:54:00.003-06:00

Man, we are so close now. So close to being done with the paperchase I can taste it! Well, I hope we're close. I do panic when I read other adoptive family's blogs (yes I am a blog stalker, haven't quite worked up the nerve to "introduce" myself yet) and I see how they had to redo this document or that or many documents, for various different reasons. It's just not simple. None of this is simple. I find myself cursing that fact from time to time. But then I give myself a pep talk (yes, I actually do that) and I try to get over it. Eyes on the prize, as my very wise sister said.

So we have taken the remainder of our adoption classes that are required by our homestudy agency, FRC. Our favorite, by far, was a class called Race and Adoption. There was a panel of adoptive parents and adult adoptees and there was just so much perspective and so many things to learn and consider. We talked about so many different things that I couldn't possibly cover it all here, but let me tell you one of the most important things to consider if you are a white parent adopting a black child. I'm going to speak to the white folk reading this blog now. People, we do not know about the hair! And it's not trivial, it is in no way unimportant! Hair, especially for black women, is a source of pride and identity. And it cannot be cared for the way that white people care for their hair. So if I don't want to look like a neglectful momma, I better learn about the hair!
Anyway, we took two more classes after that, one of which was an on-line class about medical issues in international adoption (important because there can be so many unknowns when you are adopting from another country) and another class at FRC called Viewing Adoption from a Family Systems Perspective. It's a fancy, social worker-y name for a class that actually was pretty interesting. The idea is that the adopted child's birth family actually becomes a part of your extended family network, which I really liked. We have no idea if we will actually meet any of the birth family, but if we do, we are very interested in trying to keep contact with them, as much as possible.

Sooooo, the classes are done, what else is there? Well, our homestudy has been finalized and printed up. Very many things can hopefully move forward now. Our main agency, Gladney was waiting for copies of our criminal clearances obtained by FRC. They needed them for our application with them to be complete so they can approve us for adoption. But FRC didn't want to send the copies until our homestudy was complete. The homestudy couldn't be complete until we finished our classes. We couldn't finish our classes until FRC actually offered the classes we needed. (Do you see how this is a vicious cycle of waiting for things that are completely beyond your control?) We also are waiting on a couple of things that will complete our dossier. We just received our FBI clearances by FedEx (those dudes at the Bureau are quick! only took them 2 weeks!) so we have to get them notarized. We have to get our budget worksheet notarized, but our dossier service hasn't sent it to us yet because she needs to see the homestudy first (of course) and we have a couple more reference letters to come in. We also now have to wait for our I-171H which is our approval from CIS (immigration). This was also completely dependent on the homestudy. Is your head spinning? Are you even still reading this? If you are, kudos.

Sometimes I wish I could just live like this guy:

back in the saddle again

2009-01-08T17:09:00.002-06:00

Today was a Thursday of immense production. It's curaazy how much we got done today, and even more impressive is the fact that my poor husband managed to get through all of it without having a wink of sleep last night.

So what did we do? Oh you know, everything. No, not everything, but almost, I swear! We started out by stopping off at our State Farm office to get a notarized letter from them stating that we have life insurance. I tell ya, what a nice group of people this is. Not only were they so happy to do it for us, but Dave Fredrickson, the guy who owns and runs the agency came out of his office to offer any support he could possibly give us, including introducing us to a local Ethiopian businessman he knows from the chamber of commerce. That's just so nice.
Our second stop was the bank. I had spent a while this morning calling around to various Washington Mutuals to find out if any of them had a notary on site, which surprisingly few of them do. We finally found one and went off to get a letter from them stating that we have a checking account and are in good standing. I was kind of dreading this. I feel so awkward when I go into an establishment and start stammering about international adoption and company letterheads and notarizations. Sometimes they just stare back at me with blank faces, like I'm speaking another language. But luckily the guy completely understood what we needed and was happy to do it for us. He just asked for a little time to complete it, so we left it with him and went off do do more tasks.
Our next stop was downtown. We had to get fingerprints (yes more,) notarizations for a bunch of different documents and passport-sized photos. Driving in downtown Chicago sucks and parking is even worse. But sleepless Matt managed to do it without loosing his sanity entirely. We parked in a garage that cost almost as much as this adoption is going to cost and trotted off to this weird little store that performs all of these services. It was a mad house when we got there and the man who owns it was running around yelling "two hours ago, nothing, now lunch time, everybody is here!" When it was our turn, we got inked, fingerprinted, photographed, notarized and outa there!
Once we made it alive out of downtown, we drove back up to the bank to pick up our letter, back home to make copies of everything (an absolute must in the adoption process) and then back out to the FedEx to send everything off. We sent the fingerprints to the FBI and all of the rest of the documents we had compiled off to KBS Dossiers, who I am sooooo glad we hired to put all of this stuff together for us.

So now, our dossier is almost complete! We have a couple of things left to do, but not much and then we still have our classes to take. I can't believe we are nearing the end of this part of the process. I was looking back at my older posts and remembering how intimidated I was and how I thought there was no way we would be able to accomplish this. I'm pretty darn proud of us, if I do say so myself!

And now, my poor husband can get some sleep.

happy new year!

2009-01-01T14:01:00.002-06:00

Ok, I'm back! Time to stop moping about winter! I live in Chicago. Winter happens. Time to move on :-)
I hope everyone had a great holiday season. I have to admit, I'm glad that's all over. We had a pretty lame December. It was dreadfully slow at my work, I couldn't focus on anything important, and to top it off, we were supposed to go to Seattle to see Matt's family for Christmas but our flight got canceled so we just stayed home. And I got a cold.

But it's a new year! And it's time to get back to the business of adopting!

Soooooo, we still have paperwork, all of it for our dossier. And we have two more classes to take in person (on the 11th and 15th) and we have to do some online classes too. But that's it. Our goal is to be done by the end of January, or possibly even before. Then we just wait.

And that brings me to what I believe will be our theme this year: Waiting. Once all of this work is done, we will be placed on the waitlist with Gladney. And we wait for our referral. I believe we will be waiting about 6 months. Then we get our referral. Then we wait for our court date. 1 or 2 months. And in this time we will also be waiting through the rainy season (August and September) when the courts in Addis are closed. God willing, we will pass court on the first try. But I don't count on that. So we wait to pass court. For some families this takes months. Once we do pass court (hooray!) we wait 3 to 4 more weeks to travel. Oh Tom Petty, its true; the waiting IS the hardest part.

Patience has never been one of my strongest qualities. But in 2009, I will learn to be patient. I don't have a choice! I am looking at it like this: When we are put on the waitlist, I will consider us pregnant. Ok, so our gestation period will be a little longer than normal, but that will give us more time to save money and, of course, to buy baby stuff! I can't wait to buy baby stuff! Then, hopefully at the end of this year, there will be a baby to go along with all the baby stuff. I can't wait! Oops, I mean I can wait! I will wait! I loooove waiting!

Happy 2009 everybody!

sucking the life out of me

2008-12-09T21:48:00.002-06:00

That's what I feel like Chicago is doing right now. No, I'm not referring to today's delightful story of our Governor's "crime spree." I'm talking about winter in Chicago. It's not even technically winter yet, but it's freezing, snowing, disgusting, dark, and it blows right in your eye. Right in your eye, I tells ya! And it's sucking every bit of energy out of my body. So, I haven't blogged much lately. We haven't done much lately. We've been dragging.

Tonight we had to go to an adoption class. It was all we could do to force ourselves out into this mess of a night. The class was called Becoming an Adoptive Family. To be honest, we didn't love this class. I felt like it was a bit too broad, as it involved domestic and international families, and was a bit too heavy on the idea of psychoanalyzing adopted children. I know social workers have their structures and their boxes and their graphs that they work from, but I have a hard time fitting that stuff into real life. There was one thing we really liked about the class, though. At the beginning of it, she asked us to use words we felt were associated with "family." She wrote down the words on a dry erase board, and they included things like support, love, responsibility, identity, etc. After she wrote down all of the words, she asked us to look at them and think about whether any of these words had anything to do with being biologically related. It was a great point, because of course, they don't. I consider Matt and myself a family and we are not biologically related (that would be awkward :-) It was also nice that there were other couples there who already have adopted children. I really enjoyed their perspective.

So what do we have left? We still need 3 more adoption classes and we need to complete our dossier. Hopefully we will be able to overcome Old Man Winter enough to get this stuff done!

been a while...

2008-12-08T01:08:00.002-06:00

And this is not the real official blog update. But I just wanted to let everyone know I'm still here! We have another adoption class on Tuesday, so I have the day off and will have time to do a proper update.
In the meantime, I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving. I, myself am finally getting my arteries back down to pre-Thanksgiving levels of occlusion. Good times :-)

Tuesday, update, for reals.

classy

2008-11-20T13:20:00.003-06:00

So we went to our class the other night. We were worried about 2 things before we went. One, that there would only be like, 1 other couple there (awkward) and two, that their would be role-playing games (the most awkward.) Luckily neither of these fears came to pass. The room was packed, and their was only a brief period at the beginning where we were forced to converse with complete strangers :-)
So the class was Talking to Your Children about Adoption from the Adult Adoptee Perspective. That last part is the key. From the adult adoptee perspective. We had a panel of 3 adult people who were adopted as babies. Two of them were white women adopted by white families and one was a black man adopted by a white family.The biggest thing you take from this class is that you start talking to your child about their adoption from birth (or from when you first get them.) That way it is never strange, never a "gotcha" moment. It's just something they always knew. Side note: we were talking to a girl last night whose boyfriend found out he was adopted when he was 35! Can you imagine?
The other thing we took from this class is that, while it is important to talk to your children about adoption (and specifically in our case, to keep their Ethiopian heritage alive) you don't talk about it every day of their lives. I think that is something that gets a little lost in this adoption process. You're not going to spend every day considering how adoption has affected your life. You just live your life. For the people on this panel, they all said that yes, they knew they were adopted, but it wasn't like they sat around thinking about it all the time. It just is what it is. And to them, as children, it was no big deal.

Useful class, good information, no role-playing games. All in all a success.
Now we just have to take 4 more classes to complete our homestudy.

schooled

2008-11-18T15:54:00.001-06:00

We have our first adoption class tonight. Talking to Children About Adoption.
Should be interesting.

the homestudy....

2008-11-13T16:55:00.002-06:00

has happened! It's done. It was so short, we barely made it to 3 and a half hours. I guess we're easy :-)

The past few days have been a rush of cleaning and form-filling and a little bit of panic that for some reason she would walk into our apartment and say, what, you want to bring a baby into this incredibly unsafe unchildproofed home? Are yall crazy? Not that our home is unsafe. It's not childproofed yet, but we're still a year out from having a baby. It's just that, because we have to get this stupid foster-parenting license, we thought maybe our home was going to be judged a little more harshly than it was. In fact, the home inspection portion was literally just a walk through, much like I would give one of you who had not been to my home before. As in, here is our bedroom and here is the living room. That kind of thing. The only thing she wanted to make sure of is that we have a working smoke detector. Which we do.

The bulk of the homestudy was just the 3 of us sitting at the table while she asked us questions. These questions had to do with us, our backgounds and families, our ideas on child-rearing and adoption and parenting adopted children. It was very laid back and, for the most part, there were no wrong answers. She is an adoptive parent, herself, and let us know that she was not exactly fond of the process when she went through it.

So now, she has to write the homestudy, which I think she said takes about a month, and then she has to send it to FRC and Gladney and us for any changes or corrections. Then she will finalize it.

So, that's that. It's a great relief to have it done. Now we can just get to work on our dossier.

homestudy.....

2008-11-12T07:17:00.001-06:00

tomorrow!
wish us luck!

some thoughts on obama

2008-11-08T22:20:00.003-06:00

I know its been a while since I blogged, and truthfully, not much has happened. We were in Minneapolis last weekend visiting some friends and Matt had to work this past Thursday so I just ran about a million errands. Pretty lame.

But I wanted talk for a minute about what happened last week. This is not a political blog post. This is not about Right or Left, Red or Blue. This is about what I felt on Tuesday Nov. 4.
I wasn't thinking much about the implications of the day, to be quite honest. We had already voted a couple of weeks ago, so there would be no long line for me to stand in. I was more concerned with being deathly slow at work really. But when I got up and I got on the ol' internets, I began looking at the photographs. The pictures of the lines. And the pictures of the people in the lines. And the pictures of people shedding tears. They shed tears, because here they were, voting for a black man to be the president of the United States of America. And they never thought that day would come. And it made me cry too. In the ugliness of the last two months of this race, I guess I forgot what this would mean. It means that in this time, in this moment, a black man was given a job that no black man has ever been given before because we as a country felt that he was the right man for the job. It wasn't just black people and young people that elected Obama. It was blue collar people and it was rural people, city folk and country folk, Americans who maybe had to put their inner voice aside to do what they never thought they'd do. Vote for a black man as the President of the United States of America.
And I thought about what this means to me. Next year (hopefully) Matt and I are going to welcome a child into our lives. And this child will be black. And I will be able to say to him or her, when you were born, and when you came to this country, the President of the United States resembled you. And that means something to me.
I don't deify President-Elect Obama. I do not think he is a perfect man. He has a lot of work to do and many promises have been made. As Matt says, it starts now. Let's see what he can do.
I had an interesting conversation with a client the other day. A very nice man visiting from Fort Worth, TX. He said to me, well, he wasn't my guy, but he's my guy now. It gave me just a little bit of hope that this country does not have to be so divided, that we don't have to bow down to the politics of fear.
Maybe, when my children are adults, this won't seem so novel. I don't know. Racism isn't in danger of disappearing overnight or anytime soon. But I guess I am just a little more hopeful now. And that is what November 4, 2008 meant to me.

unproductive thursday

2008-10-30T14:00:00.002-05:00

It has come to my attention that Sarah B is impatiently awaiting a Thursday update. Baby sisters are so demanding :-)

Unfortunately Matt and I are both working today. Gotta cover shifts when you are embarking on a (let's just say) pricey adoption.

But, just to give you a few breadcrumbs, we mailed in the rest of our Gladney application last Friday, and I contacted Kate from KB Dossier Service today to get us started on our dossier.

Signing off for now. Gotta pay da bills.

productive thursdays

2008-10-23T21:29:00.005-05:00

Thursdays have become a mad flurry of doin stuff because they are the only day we have off together (that don't involve football :-)
Today we picked up our IL foster parenting medical forms from Doc Brown, dropped off our packet of forms to Family Resource Center to get our homestudy rolling, early voted (I highly recommend this,) ate at our new favorite Thai restaurant that we found in DearCharlie's neighborhood, drove down to Matt's work to get his employer letter for the Gladney app, grocery shopped, and got a call from our FRC case worker to set up the homestudy (set for Nov. 13.) And we're not done yet! We are going to assemble the remaining part of our Gladney application so I can send it in tomorrow.
We are a little bit behind schedule on that because we had a few missing pieces to put in. Matt and I are so forever grateful for the two people who did our employer letters. These letters are not only for the Gladney app, but will go in our dossier as well. Which means they had to be perfect. It seems quite simple. A letter from your employer stating that you are an employee of said company, how long you have been an employee and how much you earn. This letter is to be signed by someone you work for, in our cases, a manager. This letter must be signed in front of a notary. The wonderful and amazing Kirsten did mine about a month ago. Took the letter on her own time to a FedEx/Kinkos and got it notarized. It was beautiful. Great. Done. Except.... The date of the letter didn't match the date it was notarized. Remember, it has to be perfect. So Kirsten (maybe we'll call her DearKirsten) went back and did it again this week. She's so awesome. Matt had a similarly frustrating experience. He took his manager, Scott to get the letter notarized at the bank across the street from his work on one of the ridiculous days we were waiting for the car loan approval code. Oh, I'm sorry, you have to be a bank customer to use our notary services, would you like to open an account? No thank you (crumples letter in rage.) Then, last week he took Scott to the UPS around the corner from work to get it notarized. Oh, I'm sorry, our notary is not here today. Great. But, the third time was the charm. The notary was at the UPS today and we will bother Scott no more.
The other missing piece of our Gladney app was a collection of pictures of us and our lives. This has proved difficult, because apparently Matt and I don't appear in many pictures together. Some family and friends were kind enough to send us whatever pictures they had, but we still had to take a couple of our own a few of nights ago. Here's us trying to take a picture of ourselves while our cat, Bishop decided that family pictures without him were unacceptable:
Hopefully we will be able to pull together enough pictures to get this thing done.

Btw, I also wanted to mention that Matt took our Prius to get gas for the first time in the two weeks we've had it, and found out it is only a 10 gallon tank and only cost $30 to fill up. That's pretty awesome.

Ok, signing off for now. Gotta be productive!

some stuffs

2008-10-16T22:34:00.003-05:00

We did a few things the past two days. Yesterday we got another set of fingerprints, this time for our IL foster parenting licenses. For this set, we had to go to the YMCA in Evanston. Holy cow, I've never seen such a nice Y. The reception area looked like a fancy hotel. Then we go past the two enormous indoor pools to this little room where they've got a gal set up with a laptop and a portable biometrics pad. This one was much faster than our last set, but thank goodness we got there when we did, because apparently all of Evanston needed to get fingerprinted that day and walked in just after we did. So, two fingerprintings down, one to go (as far as I know!)

Today, we got to do the delightful task of bringing the cats to the vet for their vaccinations (required for foster parent license.) Oh man they hate this. We have indoor cats, whose universe does not expand outside of the confines of our condo. Putting them in the boxes, taking them in the car, pulling them out to get needles stuck all over them, its all terrible. They both get carsick, so by the time they get to the vet they've got puke all over themselves. Yeah, not awesome. Then when we get them home, Bishop has to pout all day like he has just witnessed the worst atrocities imaginable. Ridiculous. But it's done. Now they won't get the rabies from us, i guess?

We also took more forms to Doc Brown's to get filled out. I think they must be getting sick of seeing us there. But they are so nice and he and his wife (who is his receptionist) have adopted children, so at least they understand.

One side note from today. We went with our neighbor, Suzy, to a hearing downtown for a unit in our building that is being foreclosed on. We were standing in front of the building chatting afterwards and a black car pulls up and who should pop out? Mayor Daley. He shook a few hands, posed for a few pictures, and went into the building. Weird.

Tonight, we fill out some forms. I can hardly wait.

the kick is true

2008-10-13T13:05:00.007-05:00

It's hard to describe how mentally taxing the past couple of weeks have been, when every possible little thing that could have gone wrong did, and yet somehow, the two biggest things we needed to go right, did.
A week ago, at this time, Matt and I were low. Really low. Our car was dead. We had to get a new one. There was so much confusion over how we should go about this. All of our adoption plans for the week were scratched because A - without a car, we could not accomplish our tasks, and B - we had to get a car somehow. And the icing on the cake? We were both totally freaking out about a bill we had received in the mail a week before from my fertility doctor for $5500!! So yeah, things were not looking too bright in the McBride household.
What a difference a week makes. I was going to write down the whole story about the car, I really was. But its so long, so complicated, I just don't know how I could put it all into words. The long and the short of it is, we now own a beautiful 2004 Toyota Prius, bought from a man I will always refer to as ThatCharlieGodBlessHimSuchANiceBoy (or maybe just DearCharlie, for short.) We went through a lot with DearCharlie in the two days we spent with him. Expired registrations, expired emissions tests, tickets for expired registrations, and most importantly, a loan approval code that seemed like it would never come. But somehow, in the 11th hour, in overtime, in extra innings, at the end of the day, the end of our patience, the end our sanity, the code came through. And DearCharlie sold us his car.
And our beloved Subaru? Bought by our mechanic, Norm, for $300. Norm loves Subarus and he will fix her up nice and good.
Oh yeah, and that $5500 doctor bill? Oh sorry, just a mistake, don't worry, everything went through insurance, call me if you have any other questions. Are you kidding me?!?

The most frustrating thing through all of it, is that I cannot help but think about how our adoption process was being delayed by all this junk. I know a week doesn't seem like a very long time, but in the world of International Adoption, where the waitlist grows and grows every day, it is a significant amount of time. I'm realizing that, because of the approximate time that I think we will be put on the waitlist, and because the courts in Addis close during the rainy season in August and September, we probably won't be able to get the baby until sometime around November, instead of late summer like I had hoped. It's not the end of the world, but it still sucks.
However, as evidenced by the last couple of weeks, I know the big stuff will work out in the end.

pop quiz 2 (electric boogaloo)

2008-10-05T07:57:00.003-05:00

Dear Dad, I'm sorry to say, you were right. Every time you send us money, our car dies. I don't know why this is. I have tried talking to her nicely, telling her the money is for the baby, not her. But she just won't listen. I think she thinks she is the baby.

Yes, that's right. Last night, after picking Matt up from work, our car (the beloved Subaru) began a new round of dying gasps on the way home. It seems she is trying to tell us that she is old and not long for this world. So sad. And to make matters worse, I was supposed to go to an all day ethics class today as a part of my required continuing education requirements, but after only 4 hours of sleep, the thought of sitting in a classroom for seven hours while somebody tells me not to touch my client's private parts makes me want to barf. So I'm skipping. I'd rather spend the time feeling sorry for myself. Wah.

In other news, the adoption process is progressing. We had our meeting with a social worker from our homestudy agency this past Thursday. I thought it was a really good meeting. She asked us a bunch of questions about ourselves, our lives and adoption. But it really was more like a lovely conversation between three people. About us. And I must admit, I really like talking about us. Is that vain?
We were, however, dismayed to learn that with this homestudy, we have inherited a whole new pile of paperwork. In Illinois, it seems you are required to see and spend time with your child before you can adopt. So when we bring the baby home, in the eyes of IL, we will be considered foster parents. Which means we have to get a foster parenting license. It's not really that big of a deal, just so much more paperwork.
This will be piled on top of the paperwork we have to do just to set up our homestudy. Many forms to fill out, including a trip back to Doc Brown to have him fill out another form for us. And kitty cat inoculations. And, much to our delight, another set of fingerprints! This will make it three rounds of fingerprinting that we will have to accomplish. Seriously, can't these people just share?

We did get one more big thing done. We sent in the first part of our big Gladney application, along with our program fee deposit. It felt great to get that in the mail. In the next week or so, we will be sending in the next two parts, and then we can start working on our dossier!
Do you all understand how happy I am going to be when the paperwork is over? If that day every comes, it's going to be beautiful.

In the meantime, apparently life doesn't stop just because you are adopting a baby from Ethiopia. So, maybe the next time I write, we will have a new car. And then Dad, you can feel free to send money again :-D

timeline

2008-09-29T21:24:00.002-05:00

I added an easy-to-follow adoption timeline to the left.
Cool, huh?

what? i'm supposed to keep doing this?

2008-09-29T03:53:00.003-05:00

Oh hey everybody. What's up? Yeah, it's been a while. Apparently once you start one of these blogs, you're supposed to keep updating it. Hmph, who knew?
Well, I do apologize that it has been so long. But for anybody who might be still checkin' in every now and then, things are happening, we're movin and shakin, we're in it.
So what have we been up to? Well, glad you asked :-)

First let me say that I looooove my husband. He is so awesome. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, after I had completed my 19th nervous breakdown, he realized it was time for the two of us to sit down and organize ourselves. I just kept doing the same thing over and over. I would read through all of our materials trying to get an idea of what we were supposed to be doing and get completely overwhelmed and think, nope, there's no way we can do this. It's impossible. So one night, Matt and I went it through all of it together, broke it down into small manageable sections, and set deadlines for each section. Listen, I realize that most of you will think, duh, of course that's what you should do, but honestly, I had no idea. My career does not require me to organize myself in this manner, and I seriously doubt I ever had anything this elaborate to accomplish when I was in school. So it really was like a revelation to me and it made me feel so much better. I have remained relatively calm ever since!
The first thing we had to accomplish was our our I-600 application for Immigration and we had already sent that in. About 2 weeks later we received acknowledgment that they had received our application, followed quickly by our appointment time for our fingerprinting (or biometrics, as they are fond of calling it.) We went this past Thursday, very early in the morning to a very bare-bones, cold government looking office in a strip mall to have that done. Very exciting. But, now all they need from us is our homestudy report to complete the application.
And that brings us to our next item. We sent in our homestudy application to Family Resource Center here in Chicago, along with what is probably the biggest personal check I have ever written. Get used to that, I guess. We have our first interview with our social worker in her office this Thursday. I feel like this is a big step, because everything is dependent on this homestudy, and it is really the first time we will sit down with someone face to face to discuss this adoption.
Our next step outside of the homestudy is to send in our Gladney application which is in three parts. We will send in part one this week, followed by the next two parts in the next two weeks. At this point, we will really begin to work on our dossier, which will be the toughest part of the paperchase. But, more on that in a future post.

So, that's where we're at. It feels really good to be able to cross stuff off our list. I think the most frustrating thing right now is that, instead of feeling like this is about a baby, it just feels like it is about paperwork. I really can't wait until this is all done and I can just focus on the fact that the end result of this is that we will become parents.

Ok, I will be updating more frequently. I swear!

um, er....

2008-09-23T01:04:00.001-05:00

an update is coming. i swear.

doctors and hurricanes

2008-09-01T14:00:00.000-05:00

It's hurricane day, err, labor day. I slept on the couch last night with the tv on so I could wake up to coverage of hurricane Gustav. My stomach was doing acrobats inside of me all of yesterday while I waited to see what would happen to my hometown of New Orleans and my family and friends who live there. As of now, 1:53pm (and I am seriously knocking wood) the proverbial bullet was dodged. I'm sure Fema, the army corps of engineers, the state of Louisiana and George Bush himself will take credit, but really, we're just lucky the storm went westward.
Anyway, if all holds (again, knock knock knock) I can go back to just having my stomach do acrobats about adoption stuff.
I spoke to my mom and my dad, and they each reminded me that I must take this one step at a time. And guess what? We've made a couple more steps. I sent in requests for certified copies of my birth certificate and our marriage license and mailed off form I-600A last Thursday. Also on Thursday, we both went for our required physicals. Our doctor is Dr. Mark Brown and he is awesome! We show up with packets of forms and instructions, some of which need to be notarized, and he just takes it all in stride and is very excited for us and tells us, no problem, we can get this all done. Good ol' Doc Brown. And, you will all be happy to know, we are both free of all communicable diseases. Whew! And, to top it off, my cholesterol has dropped 30 points since the last time it was measured!
So, we continue with the steps. And to all my Gulf Coast family and friends, I will continue to watch and hope for the best.

we did stuff

2008-08-25T00:43:00.000-05:00

We have begun the paper chase! We've done stuff! Woo-hoo!
So this is what we've done. We got life insurance (yikes, so adult.) We began working on our Gladney application. We completed form I-600A Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition which will be sent off to US Citizenship and Immigration Services tomorrow (along with 2 checks made out to Department of Homeland Security - awesome.) We bought a filing box and filing folders (I've never been so organized.) And we bought one of the most useful items I could ever imagine, a copy machine/scanner/printer!
How bout that?
Next on the agenda, filling out and sending in our application for our homestudy.

i want to be a number!

2008-08-19T00:53:00.000-05:00

I've just spent about 2 hours staring at instructions, checklists and applications and all I keep thinking is, why can't I just give them our credit scores!?! They're good! I thought that's all that mattered in life anyway. Doesn't our whole life and worthiness as a person boil down to that one little number? In the past, I've gotten so mad at the idea that this one little number could describe to some big corporation that I was worthy of their affection, and now, I find myself very pissed off that there is not one line on any of these forms that asks me for that very number. We've worked very hard to make our numbers good. And now I can't even use them! Dag-nabit!

So what's happened since my last post? Well, the car got fixed, Catherine visited for 10 days, I went to my first soccer game, watched approximately 500 hours of Olympics, we received our Gladney application and about a million attachments via email, I've freaked out about this about 5 times, and I opened a FedEx account. In no particular order.

Thursday is the next day that Matt and I have off together, so we are going to go through all of this stuff and try to work out a game plan. And next time I post, hopefully I will be able to report that I have actually done something productive. But for now, one might find me huddled in a corner, rocking back and forth, muttering my credit score over and over and over...

pop quiz, hot shot

2008-08-08T15:03:00.000-05:00

Sometimes life tests you. I think this is one of those times for me. Not a big test, like when a certain family member gets a certain baseball sized tumor, but little tests. You know, like when you're about spend endless amounts of money on an international adoption, and your car decides to break down on the way to pick your best friend up from the airport. And luckily it happened right in front of a service station, but the very nice man there says your radiator is broken and he's gonna have to replace it for $455. And you're half way between here and there, so you have take a cab back to your home and wait for the man to call you back.
Well, that's where I'm at.
I hope I pass.
But, Catherine is safely here and I mailed off the request for our Gladney application today! So that's good.
Oy.

phone orientation

2008-08-06T23:50:00.000-05:00

We talked with Judy from the Gladney Center today for our orientation. She basically outlined everything I described in the post below, only in a much more concise, organized, non-rambling manner. She's sooooo nice and has this perfect Texas accent and makes you feel like this is a manageable set of tasks that you can accomplish.
Oh Judy, can't you just do all this for us? Pretty Please?
Ok, no, we can do this. One step at a time, one step at a time...
Wait, what are we supposed to do first?

how long's this gonna take?

2008-08-05T21:56:00.000-05:00

Ok, as promised, here is a rough rundown of how this is gonna go.
The gist is, its going to take about a year. Give or take.
Tomorrow morning we have a one hour phone orientation with one of the people from the adoption agency. In it, we will learn the details of everything that we're going to have to do to make this happen. She has already emailed me the manual. I read it and got scared, fast. There is just so much paperwork and documenting and notarizing and certifying and copying and inspecting and so on and so forth. I understand it. The whole goal is to make sure the child is going to a decent home with decent people who are truly fit to be parents. (I just wonder how it would go if they did this for EVERYONE who is having a baby.)
The other thing that makes all of this so much more complicated is that we are dealing with international adoption. That means that, not only are we proving ourselves to our agency and the US government, but we also must prove ourselves worthy to Ethiopia as well. In order to do this, you must compile what's called a "foreign dossier." In this dossier are about a hundred million things documenting your life, your health, your home and everything else. And it must be presented exactly how Ethiopia says it must be presented, or you're gonna have trouble getting through court. Ok, I'm getting ahead of myself.
One of the first things we will have to take care of while we are compiling documents is to complete a homestudy. A homestudy is when a social worker comes to your home for 5 or 6 hours and, well, studies you. Well ok, they don't just sit there and watch you while you go about your business. They ask you questions and you ask them questions and they write stuff down about you and your home. How this lasts for 5 or 6 hours, I have no idea. But we'll find out. When they are done they write a report, which takes about a month. This report will go to our agency, the US government and in our foreign dossier (I think.)
At the same time as all of this, we will also be filling out our enormous application for our agency.
When ALL of this is complete, the homestudy, doctors visits, applications, fingerprinting, background checks, documenting, all of it, our dossier will be sent to Ethiopia. At this point we will be put on the wait list for a referral. A referral is a child. Well, ok, its when they send a recommendation of a child to you and you can either accept it or deny it. Our agency says this wait list is about 3 to 5 months, but of course, that can always change. Once you get your referral, you will then wait another 2 to 3 months for a court date. The court date is when the adoption is either approved or denied. Near as I can tell, you rarely get through on your first court date. It might take as many as 5 or 6. And god forbid your court date happens to fall around late summer, because the courts close in August and September for the rainy season.

But then, once we have finally passed our court date, we get to go to Ethiopia and get our baby!
Yay!

friends and family ROCK

2008-08-04T00:50:00.000-05:00

You all are SO awesome! I have received so many wonderful responses and it makes Matt and me feel so good. Thank you all so much. I have been trying to email everyone back, and if I haven't emailed you already, I will. But just know how much it means to me that you have given us your support.

I wanted to do another post tonight to sort of give a rundown of the time line of this whole process, but I got home really late due to the torrential apocalypse of thunderstorms that hit Chicago tonight. So I'm just gonna watch some tivo'd Paranormal State and go to bed. But I promise the time line for tomorrow night.

Love to you all!

and so it begins

2008-08-03T20:06:00.000-05:00

This is a blog to document our adoption process. That's right, we're adopting! From Ethiopia! We're so excited! But how did this all come about (you might be wondering.) Actually, you might be wondering a lot of things. Let me see if I can answer some questions.

Why are you adopting?
Well, as many of you know, Matt and I have been trying to start a family for a couple of years here now. And well, it wasn't going too well. So we enlisted the help of a fertility expert who, after several tests and one surgery, determined that the only way I'd be getting knocked up would be through in vitro fertilization. And aside from the fact that I always told myself I would never do IVF because of the hormones and the stress and the less than 50% chance of it working in a given cycle, we simply couldn't do it because we do not have insurance that covers the process (thanks a lot American health care system.) This is how the math works in my head: $10,000 for something that has a good chance of not working, versus $20,000 for a process in which we definitely end up with a baby. After a day of torment, grief and helplessness that followed our last meeting with the doc, the answer became very clear. For as much as I really wanted to be pregnant, and feel a life grow inside of me, the ultimate goal was always to be a mom. And for us to be a family.
And truthfully, Matt and I have always discussed adoption as an option for a second child. Matt has especially strong feelings about it, as he himself is adopted (by his dad.) So it certainly was not a foreign notion. Speaking of foreign...

Why international adoption?
First, let me say that, truthfully, we know deep down in our hearts, the really right thing to do would be to adopt older, waiting children in this country. There are so many kids who have physical, mental and/or emotional issues right here in America that need families, not to mention that there is very little cost in that kind of adoption. And it makes us both sad that we do not feel emotionally or financially prepared to care for those children. I really wish I could be that person. Maybe someday I will be.

So ok, what about signing up with a birth-mother domestically and getting a healthy newborn? Well, you know that part in Juno when they are flipping through the penny saver looking at advertisements for couples who want to adopt? Yeah, that's true, and I can't go through that. I can't be posting advertisements for us. I can't be hoping praying begging for somebody to pick me. I have a big enough fear of rejection. I don't need that. And of course, we've all heard the horror stories of families going through that whole process, only to have the birth-mom change her mind in the end. I would die. So international it is...

So why Ethiopia?
In the end I just knew it was right.
But at the beginning of my research, I was um, daunted. How do you do this? How do you pick an agency? How do you pick a country? How can we, a couple of shift-workers, afford to go overseas to get a child?
All I can say is, THANK GOD FOR THE INTERNETS!!!! Honestly, I don't know how I would have figured any of this out without that special series of tubes. It went like this: Google international adoption, click on a couple of websites for adoption agencies, end up on website for The Gladney Center for Adoption from some link on some website, click on Ethiopia, watch video that automatically plays of this nice couple describing how the man from the agency came down the stairs and simply placed their baby in their arms, sob and sob and sob and know in my heart that I want us to be that couple. And then through the tears, I did the research. The basics are that Ethiopia is one of the easiest and cheapest countries to adopt from (that doesn't mean that it is either easy of cheap.) And we can get a baby, under a year old, which is not true of many other countries. But what got me, really, once I started reading a little bit about Ethiopia, is that there is just such a need. There are so many children that grow up in extreme poverty, the kind that we don't know in this country, in orphanages that have nothing. And please don't think that I am thinking I am some kind of savior. God knows I'm far from it. I'm just a girl who wants to be a mom hoping to find a baby who needs a mom and a dad.
And so in the end, I just knew it was right.

But Tam, if you adopt from Ethiopia, your child will be black. And you and Matt are white.
Yes, thank you, we are aware of the situation. It's ok if you were thinking it, even if you didn't want to say it. Matt and I are not naive enough to think that, just because we are cool with it, everything will go smoothly and we will all live happily ever after. People will stare, and people will say things. That is not my biggest worry. There are ways to deal with that. My biggest worry is that I will have a child (and eventually children) who will be straddling two worlds without knowing which to identify with. And we're gonna have to work on that. All I know for sure is that I will love them and hope to provide a safe sanctuary within our family.

So that is it, my very long-winded summary of how we came to this monumental decision in our lives.

Please feel free to comment, ask me any other questions, share thoughts, etc.

A lot of people have asked me to keep them up to date on what is going on with this process, so if you are interested (and you made it through my excessively long first post - good on you) please follow along in this exciting and terrifying journey with us.