Explaining the ticker

So, I thought since I found this great ticker that counts down the days we have been waiting for our daughter I would explain what we are doing. Last March Jeremy and I were in the process of adopting through our local foster care system when we decided that we really wanted to do another International adoption. So, after much information gathering we found a great agency and decided to adopt from Ethiopia (ET). We started gathering all of the paperwork and completed our home study and we were on our way to adopt siblings under 3 years of age (there has to be 1 year between Mia and the oldest sibling). Of course at the time we were hoping for twins, but we were excited for any age combination our agency would match us with. On August 31, 2007 we were OFFICIALLY waiting. As the days, then weeks, then months creeped by we were so busy with Mia it did not seem to be that long of a wait.

Now, here I want to tell you a little bit about the ET adoption process. It starts with your months of waiting and then once you get a referral you can jump up and down! About 8 weeks after the referral you are assigned a court date, and once you make it through court you are issued a birth certificate. At the time you make it through court your child is officially yours. Usually about 3-4 weeks after the referral you travel to ET for 1 week to pick up your child. So that is the short version of the process, the catch though is the courts close. From the middle of August until the beginning of October the courts in ET close. Since a judge will not be able to hear the court case (because they are closed) our Agency stops giving out referrals around the middle of June. This is basically so you do not get a referral and then have to wait months and months for the courts to reopen before you can travel. It makes a lot of sense, but there is also a lot of anxiety related to it. When we started this process we were told it would be about a 5-7 month wait for a referral which would have put us receiving a referral between the end of January and the end of March. Well, in the meantime the wait has grown...6-9 months. So, 9 months will be May 31, 2008, which is still prior to the cutoff date, but there is still lots of anxiety that we will not make it before then. Back to my story...

So, in December we were still waiting for our sibling referral when I noticed that there were not very many sibling referral being given out and the wait for siblings was getting longer and longer. Jeremy and I decided that it was best for our family to go ahead and request an infant between 0 and 12 months. When we made this decision I told Jeremy it was important for me to know the sex of our new baby, so I asked him if he wanted a boy or a girl. He hemmed and hawed and said he wanted a boy, I replied that I wanted a girl, so as of Februaury 25th we are waiting for an infant girl between the ages of 0-12 months! I wanted to determine the sex so we could pick a name and start getting the nursery together. So, her name will be Sophia Leigh, named after my sister (the Leigh part) and we are still hoping to receive a referral prior to the cutoff date.

This is the shortest version of the story, but you are now caught up and I can begin my daily/weekly posting of the rest of our journey.

A whole lot of stuff to cover

1. Kristine liked my post that I dedicated to her, so here is an update on my BFF. Her doggie, Kayla, is very sick. The x-ray says she has a tumor on her spleen that may be blocking her intestines. Kristine is going to get an ultra sound today (for Kayla in case this was confusing), so hopefully we will her good news tonight. Although I do not know how any of it can be good news, because it looks like surgery, chemo, or radiation at a minimum. Poor KK we are thinking of you (okay we being my mom and Lauren).

2. So, yesterday was April Fools right, boy did the boys at work get me something good. First, I go into my office to log in and the boys have unplugged my mouse and keyboards - I figured that one out pretty fast. Second, they put a piece of tape of the button that keeps your phone hung up, so when I went to answer my phone it was still hung up and kept ringing. After 3 rings I figured that one out. Then the coup de grace (is that how you spell it), they went into Word on my computer and changed my autocorrect, so every time I typed in "and" the word "eggplant" came up and every time I typed in the word "the" the word "Uranus" came up...clever! So, who knows what I will do to get them back, but my thought is who cares if it is not April Fools, they will suffer (insert evil laugh here).

3. Last but not least it was a fun morning. Mia had to have her Sinus CT scan at 8:00 this morning, so my Dad met me there. She has already had one x-ray and was a champ, but for some reason she did not want to go through the big donut hole. So after 5 minutes of screaming and kicking we were able to get her calm and still enough to go through the hole, and we kept telling her to smile because she was getting her picture takes. Poor thing has this horrible sad smile on her face and the whole time she is doing that little hiccup thing after you cry, it almost made me want to cry. At least now I know the trick is to place a granola bar on the bed area and say "do you want a granola bar, come over here and hop in bed and you can have it". After that whole shindig my Dad took her around the hospital and introduced her to tons of people. At one office the ladies there gave her a rubber duckie and a bag and she proceeded to walk around office accepting small gifts and food from people...my little beggar!

My life story in a few paragraphs

For those of you that do not know me well, let me fill you in. Jeremy and I have been married for almost 7 years...7 year itch coming soon, just kidding honey! In May of 2004 we decided we were going to only adopt our children. Nothing against biological kids, but those first few months...yikes! We knew immediately we wanted to adopt from China, and began the process. It was not nearly as lengthy as it is now, and on May 26, 2005 we received our referral for Mia. She was 9 months old at referral time, and we left on July 9th to go pick her up (Jeremy's b-day)! We spent the first couple of days in Beijing recuperating and sightseeing, then on July 12th at 2:00 pm we got to meet our daughter for the first time. Talk about love at first sight for us not her. She screamed and cried for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only 5 minutes. We immediately prepared a bottle, our first ever and she tried her hardest to drink it down. As we were holding her and feeding her I was looking around wondering why all of the other babies (9 in total) seemed to be gulping down their formula and Mia could barely get a drop out. Come to find out there are different sizes and the hole for the formula we SO TINY. We used a safety pin and nail clippers made the hole bigger and my daughter was finally satisfied.

Other adoptive parents talk about bonding and how it can be hard at first, but I think Mia was kind of neglected in the orphanage (maybe not loved quite as much as some of the others) and so she took to us right away. The next 12 days were a whirlwind and we finally were able to bring her home on July 23rd.

Mia is now 3 1/2 years old and crazy amazing, so what did we decide to do in March of 2007...adopt another!!!!

Stay tuned for the details on this new adoption to get our beautiful daughter Sophie.

This is for you Kristine!

Since Kristine is going to view my blog, I decided to write a quickie post. However, I am not quite ready to post about the only thing that is going on in my life right now, this post will be short.

I am going to post all about Mia (for those that do not get to see her a lot) and then I am going to post about our soon to be daughter, Sophie.

So, as they say...stay tuned...it will be a fun ride!

Oh my gosh...

I cannot believe I am actually "blogging". I wouldn't say I have been exactly a downer about blogging, maybe slightly uninformed, BUT now I think I am ready to try it. It may take me awhile to get my page to look and act the way I want it to, but I think I am into this.

So, you don't know me...my name is Debbie and I am married to a wonderful man (many say dream man), Jeremy, and together we have one daughter, Mia. We live in our perfect house (Virginia), well it will be once Jeremy finishes working on it. Together we are on our journey to adopt our second daughter...

Here is a picture of Mia and me.