Fermember When. Adoption Update.

I thought I would do an adoption update for those of you wanting to follow along.  First of all, this is quite a long and sometimes slow process.  There is a lot of waiting involved, and I am so not patient, ugh.  So, here's the scoop...I spent 4+ months researching agencies and looking at all options.  Initially we were considering Ethiopia and Ghana so I was looking at the options in both countries.  The advice I have been given over and over is follow your gut (and heart), but it took some time to tune in to that.  In the end, my heart was pulled to both Ethiopia and Ghana (and still is) but because we want to adopt a baby girl we decided to go with Ethiopia as their program does more infant/young toddler adoptions (I secretly hope to return to Ghana for another adoption someday...I guess it's not a secret anymore :).  

There are a lot of agencies out there and they operate very differently.  Based on other adoptive parents experiences and after speaking to people at different agencies I chose WACAP for our placement agency.  They come highly recommended and we are so excited and proud to be working with them.  So they will help us by processing all our paperwork and they will refer us a baby girl that is in need.  We hope to be on their "waiting list" by August and then will wait 1-10 months for a referral.  Once we receive a referral we will examine all the medical information and stare lovingly at her picture and then we will decide if we "accept" the referral (based on medical information).  After we accept the referral we wait to be assigned a court date.  Our agency's personnel in Ethiopia will go to court with our baby's information and the judge will decide if it is acceptable and if it is we will "pass court" and she will legally be ours :) After we pass court we will travel a couple weeks later to go pick her up.  Yep, that's right, we will be going to Ethiopia, wow, I don't even like to fly an hour and now I am going to fly to Africa, yikes!!  We are still trying to decide if both hubby and I will go (it is okay if only 1 parent goes)....More on that later.

sigh...I know, that's a lot of info. to wrap your head around, and yes, there will be a quiz later :)

So, our first step is to complete a Home Study.  This is where a social worker comes to your house on a couple occasions and does interviews and takes a tour of your house to make sure all the matches are out of reach, ha.  I am sending in the application soon, yipee...our first piece of paperwork completed (trust me, there are a couple books worth of paperwork to do).

This whole process will take about 12-18 months so we are hoping to have our baby girl home by fall 2010!

Please stay tuned for some great gift Give Aways...It looks like My Art and the Cheesecake Cookbooks are the big winners!!!  Thank God I don't have to do the marathon, ha, but I would if it gets us to our girl :)

Thanks for everyone's support and excitement, it means so much!!!!  

Love and Kisses, Harmony

p.s. There is a great term in the adoption world about this process and it's called, "Paper Pregnant"!  I have already warned hubby that there will be cravings, crying spells and possibly nausea.  He was really hoping we got to skip that part, sorry honey :(