Leaving tomorrow!

Just realized I didn't announce this on the blog (been posting about the packing process over at Facebook). Once the excited grandfather arrives, we will have everything we need to go.

We will meet Jed on Monday (Sunday evening over here). We would appreciate prayers for the transition for everyone, extra patience for us, and relief from jetlag.

We'll post when we can!

Consulate Appointment

Has been scheduled for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, September 7. Working to figure out what that means in terms of "get there" and "leave by" dates for flights.

Travel Approval!

Our travel approval arrived last night. It only took 1.5 weeks; the first thing to go fast since the surprise referral! Our agency will be working on consulate appointments this week, and then we can schedule our travel (likely end of August-early September).

Funny thing, I finally sat down to start the packing list for China this morning...

Article 5!

After some agency nagging and fingernail chewing, we finally heard that our Article 5 has been picked up from the Consulate. It's theoretically supposed to take 2 weeks; it's been a month. At least we have it. It tells China that if they let us pick up Jed, the U.S. will let us bring him home.

Now the Article 5 gets sent to the main adoption office in China. They do whatever they need to do with it, including doublechecking that Jed is still in the orphanage and ready to be adopted. Then they give us Travel Approval, which is running approximately a month after Article 5. Then we schedule a Consulate Appointment in consultation with our agency, and then we will go to China! We're probably still at least 2 months away, but one more step down. I'm starting to collect things we'll need to pack.

Visa info is in Guangzhou

Got our letter yesterday informing us that Jed's visa information has been sent to the consulate in Guangzhou. Our agency will send some more paperwork, along with a copy of that letter, to Guangzhou, and then they will start working on his visa.

Once his visa is almost ready, they will issue an Article 5. That piece of paper will be sent to the CCAA and will start the process for travel approval. We should hear about our Article 5 in about 3 weeks.

I-800 APPROVED!

Provisionally. Apparently it doesn't get fully finalized until after we pick up Jed, and they still reserve the right to deny it, if you read the small print. But we've never heard of that happening. We were approved last Wednesday and got the notification letter in the mail yesterday.

Next step: USCIS has sent our I-800 to the National Visa Center, where they will begin processing paperwork for Jed's visa. They will send an official electronic communication to the US Consulate in Guangzhou so that they can open a file for him there. Recently the Consulate has begun requiring a copy of the notification letter that the NVC sends the family just to tell them something has been done on their behalf. This is DESPITE the fact that they already hold the official communication, and since the NVC letter is worthless in all other instances its arrival can be 4 days - 2 weeks after the official communication, slowing down the process AGAIN. Why did the Consulate add this ridiculous requirement? The adoptive parent community has been speculating for months (because the Consulate didn't offer any information with the abrupt change in policy). No one has ANY idea. Our government at work, people.

We should have an update on the NVC step in 2-3 weeks.

Visas have landed

We are now the proud possessors of three visas to visit China up to twice within the next six months. Here's hoping that twice won't be necessary, and that cutting it close won't even be a question.

Visas away!

Yesterday we Fedex'd out our visa applications. For reasons we do not understand, you cannot send your application directly to the Consulate. Someone must hand-carry it inside. Since we do not have time to drive down to NYC and hand-deliver our visa applications, we sent it to a courier who does this for a living.

They are not cheap. It'll cost almost $500 for our 3 visas, wow.

In other news, Gus is eagerly anticipating his brother's arrival. He asks me if tomorrow we will be going on our big trip to pick up his Jed. I tell him that it will be summer before we go (and possibly the end of summer, sigh!).

I-800 in the lockbox

We mailed out our I-800 (along with its accompanying verification paperwork) to the Dallas lockbox last Wednesday. It was picked up at 9:44 on Sunday night. Seriously? I'm delighted you picked it up, but it could have waited until Monday morning.

The I-800 will now be collated with the official version of the pre-approved I-800A and whatever else they have there, then sent to Missouri where our USCIS officer will review and approve it. Hopefully that will take about 2 weeks.

LOA!!!!!

Our Letter of Acceptance arrived from China today, day 89. It's been a long three months. This letter is the final approval from China for our son. Now we need the U.S. to process his visa, but barring unexpected acts of God he is our boy!

We were waiting for the LOA to talk with Gus about him, since the wait will still be around 3 months before we can travel. We told him that he had a little brother, that we would all be going on a big trip to get him and bring him home. He wanted to know if I would be sleeping in his room too, and we said no, just your little brother. He seemed pretty chill with it.

Now we will also share his name. He will be Josiah Junwei O'Donnell. And in keeping with the 3-letter nickname rule of the house (if you don't have a three-letter nickname, you can't get in, apparently), the names in this house will now consist of Jim, Reb, Gus, and Jed.

What happens next: another whole series of paperwork.

Tomorrow we stop by the agency to sign the LOA and have our I-800 proofread, then send it to USCIS. The I-800A (application to adopt A child) has been approved; the I-800 is the approval for THIS child.

Once that is approved, USCIS sends our file to the National Visa Center, which processes his visa papers. They will cable that information to the US Consulate in Guangzhou. However, the Consulate will not do anything until we send them a hard copy of the letter which the NVC sends to us confirming the paperwork. This is stupid and redundant, but unfortunately we can't fix that. The Consulate will review the paperwork and issue an Article 5, which goes to the Chinese government and then they issue a travel approval. Once we have that, our agency can schedule a Consulate Appointment and we schedule our travel around that. Travel in July sounds realistic, barring unusual paperwork holdups.

Please, if you haven't yet contacted your senators about the immunization issue, please do. Also, if you live in Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Vermont, or Indiana, your senators are cosponsors and may be able to push the vote to sooner rather than Christmas.

Call to Action Tuesday

I was hoping for LOA yesterday (a lot of them come on Mondays). Nope. We've now been waiting 75 days.

But in the meantime, there's something important we'd like to ask your help with.

Background: A few years ago, the US government approved the Hague Treaty that deals with international adoption. Our first adoption took place under the old rules, this adoption will take place under the new ones. In our last adoption, we signed a paper promising to get Gus's immunizations up to date as fast as reasonably possible, and we did. However, when the new legislation was typed up, a clerk accidentally left out the paragraph that allows for that to happen. OOOPS!!! But now it's US law. The result is that no child can come home under the new rules without being completely up to date on shots.

That means that after approximately a week with Little Dragon, just as he's starting to trust us, we will have to take him to the Embassy doctor and give him up to 8 shots in one day. That is BAD for a few reasons.

1) Attachment. Terrible! He will just be starting to trust us and then this happens. And then a few days later we will enclose him in a tube for 18 hours. Terrible.

2) Health. I am a big fan of immunizations (I am an immunologist, after all), but 8 shots in a day is too much stress for a little system. ESPECIALLY for a child with KNOWN special needs. ESPECIALLY for a child in less than the best of health (like one who has been in an institution). There was a recent case in which a little girl became very sick after her shots.

I am very concerned about Little Dragon's shots. I could apply for a medical waiver, but the Embassy has a history of not honoring them. I cannot apply for an exemption, because I would have to prove that I am categorically against shots (which I am not, just against shots done dangerously).

And to add insult to injury, several children have needed their shots redone anyway when they arrive home, because the shots given at the Embassy didn't "take".

I would like to have my child's immunizations performed under the supervision of the doctors we trust in the US, under a reasonable schedule. And there is a way. Unfortunately it will take an act of Congress! The Senate has finally cleared a bill through the Judiciary Committee and the State Department to deal with the typing oops. The bill is 1376, the International Adoption Simplification Act. But it is number 330 on their to-do list.

Please call your Senators today and ask them for quick and favorable resolution on this bill. Little Dragon would thank you.

Care Package Away!

We mailed out a care package to Little Dragon and his friends. You really can't have too many "personal" toys in an orphanage, so we just sent a couple of special objects for him and the rest is for sharing.

For sharing, we sent a bunch of warm hats, some pants and mittens that I made, a couple of soft toys, and a couple bags of dark chocolate.

For Little Dragon, we sent a ribbon-tagged blanket with dragons on one side (Jim slept with this for a few days), a stuffed panda bear with my perfume on it, and a baby picture book of his new family and room.

We've now been waiting 39 days for our LOA. The average for people in our situation is 77 days, but it doesn't stop me hoping that we'll be fast!

Update: care package was delivered at 11 a.m. on Saturday. We've now been waiting 45 days for our LOA.

Lotsa Shots

Yesterday we had an appointment at our (very) friendly neighborhood travel clinic. We got three shots each (typhoid, HepA, and Tdap), and a blood draw to check titers for HepB and MMR. You know you have a three-year-old when five minutes are happily spent counting the bandaids on your arm when you come home.

Next up, making an appointment at the children's travel clinic for Little Bear. I think he'll only need typhoid and H1N1.

Unfortunately, Little Dragon will also likely need shots before leaving China. It's a bad idea to require 8 or so shots into a small person only a few days before they get on a 12-hour flight (and I'm a pro-vaccine immunologist, so I'm not just being crazy here). It used to be that parents could promise to get their kids up-to-date on a reasonable immunization schedule, but then another rule changed and the kids (including those with medical needs) were swept up in the change too. A bill has been put forward to restore this exemption so that kids can be vaccinated on a more healthy schedule. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-1376 If your Senator is on the Judiciary Committee, where this bill is bottled up, please email to ask for it to be moved forward. Thanks!

Update: Good thing we had that blood work done. Our HepB titers are fine (I've actually been wondering about that for a decade), but Jim's mumps (like the unfortunate 1500 people in NYC right now) needs boosting, so he gets to go back for yet another shot.

Update 2: Jim has been re-mumpsed. And Gus's appointment is scheduled for the beginning of April.

LID

Our application is now sitting in a pile on someone's desk in China. Our LID was 1/21/10. Now we wait for LOA, our final approval from China, which is taking an average of 90 days. In the meantime we have some forms to fill out and a care package to prepare. After we get our LOA there's a slow-motion flurry of forms from several US agencies and the consulate. Assuming no snags, we will probably be able to travel around 3 months after LOA, which puts us an estimated 6 months out from travel as of now.

We are DTC!

That's Dossier to China, as of Tuesday afternoon. All the US approvals etc. are finally on their way.

The next acronym we wait for is LID, for Logged In Date, which means we'll have been officially entered into China's system.

I-800A approval

Arrived in Monday's mail in the form of a very boring-looking letter called an I-797, with information about where to send the subsequent I-800 that is already out of date. However, our goverment was at work and has provisionally approved us to adopt a child from a country which is party to the Hague Convention on the Rights of the Child. Excellent! Once we get the final approval from China we file that I-800 which will approve us for our specific child.

What's important about the I-800A approval is that it's the final piece of paper needed for our dossier. So I took it to our agency yesterday afternoon, and they will doublecheck the whole paper stack and then send it to China.

Pre-approved

It looks like China thinks we'll do all right at this parenting thing. Today we got our pre-approval notice which is not unlike getting pre-approval on a mortgage. Assuming that our official dossier, once they receive it, matches the information we sent China in our Letter of Intent, China will let us adopt this young man.

Since we didn't lie in our dossier, that's good news for us!

Biometricated

Yesterday morning we went downtown to our friendly local USCIS franchise to get our fingerprints taken. We did this 3 years ago, and presumably the fingerprints haven't changed a whole lot since then, but what the hey. All told, it was probably the quickest interaction I've ever had with our federal bureaucracy. We were in and out of there in 15 minutes. I totally made it to my 9:00 meeting at work. Applying for my library card took longer than that.

So that's another hurdle out of the way. Now we wait for the governments to agree that we're fit parents.

Paper Progress

And now back to the waiting part...

We got a letter that our I-800A had indeed been received, and then were summoned for our fingerprinting appointment next Friday (and I do mean summoned: if we decide not to show up or reschedule by *mail* (what century is this?), our entire application will be canceled). So we'll be there.

Jim finished our LOI and our agency has now sent it to China. LOI stands for Letter of Intent. Although our homestudy approved us for a number of medical needs, the LOI requires us to address how we plan to handle the needs of the specific child whose referral we have accepted. So we wrote about the excellent pediatric cardiology in Boston and lots of snuggles.

Our agency hopes to have pre-approval back from China soon (that letter means that as long as our homestudy backs up what we wrote in the LOI, we should be cleared to adopt that child). They want to send our pre-approval with our completed US governmental paperwork, so that everything will move quickly. I had no idea we could do these steps concurrently!

We've winnowed the field down to two American names for the little dragon, but we're still working on it.

Our second son

Our homestudy hadn't been in our hands a week yet. We just got the money order to send to USCIS (to pay people's salaries to open a file, then fingerprint and cross-check us). I was going to post the I-800A when I discovered a typo on the first page (our address, kinda important), so we got that fixed and posted it the next day.

The other thing that happened that day was we got a referral!!!!!!!!!!!!! We weren't planning to look at files until around February when our completed and authenticated dossier would be sent to China. But our agency received a list of kiddos just for them, and since I think we're the only family they have who is open to a boy referral, they emailed us to see if we would be interested in looking.

Well, how could we not look? The little boy is 18 months old and has a congenital heart defect, which has already been successfully operated on. And Reb works in the best place--within minutes his blood work was being checked by our ER doctor, our visiting fellow from China (who is from his hometown!) was helping me pronounce his name, and another Chinese fellow was helping to translate some of the medical documents. He brought the rest home to his wife, who is also Chinese and also a cardiologist, so that she can explain them to us. And she got recommendations of two pediatric cardiologists with whom to discuss the diagnosis. The help was pretty amazing, and it would have been more fun if she hadn't been almost hyperventilating. She kept saying, "But we didn't expect this until February!" Wait shmait. Hah.

After the myriad consultations, we decided to accept the referral, and we're now full steam ahead again putting together acceptance documents and paying in-country fees. We're also still working on figuring out what his name's going to be (down to 9 candidates). We have 2 kids! Now we just have to get us all together.

I-800A on the way

It was posted last Thursday. Sorry in the blogging delay, we've been combined busy and sick for almost a week now. Bad combo.

I checked the tracking today to see where it was, and was informed that it had been dropped off at 9:12 on Thursday. I know that, I was there.

This application opens a file for us with the USCIS and included our homestudy. Hopefully we'll get a fingerprinting appointment in around a month.

Homestudy Complete!

Our social worker sent us the first draft by email this week. We found a few typos (for example we met in 1996, not 1966). Thanks to all of our recommenders! She included some quotes, and we're rather embarrassed by the gushing. Maybe that's a second reason that recommendations are (mostly, apparently) anonymous.

In the meantime we filled out the I-800, the big government form that gets our process officially moving in the USCIS realm. We couldn't figure out a couple of questions, so we emailed that to our agency and asked for help. Can you believe it, a government form to which the answers aren't clear to reasonably average but overeducated people? We got that cleared up this week too.

So next week we should get our official copies of the homestudy in the mail, and send one out with the I-800. Then we wait for our fingerprinting appointment (probably in about a month).

First big step done

We met with our social worker again yesterday, and gave her all the rest of the paperwork required for our dossier (and some special stuff the agency requires too). The only thing potentially missing are the background checks from Texas, but since those were mailed directly to the agency we think they're probably sitting on a pile there. But we submitted all the letters and pictures and clearances we had. Thank you, writers of references!

Next we wait a few weeks for our social worker to write up our homestudy. Meanwhile we can begin filling out the I-800A (16 pages!) to petition for the privilege to adopt "a" child internationally. (Once we identify "the" child, we file another form called the I-800.)

After we submit the I-800A with the homestudy, we will wait for the government to process it, get our fingerprints done and processed, and wait again for final approval. All this should take about 3 months.

Almost Dossier'd

We picked up our medical clearances today (I flunked my hearing test in one ear, possibly due to that slow-draining cold, but the doctor wrote that it would not alter either my longevity or parenting ability, so we should be fine). Now we only need to collect some pictures (of the apartment and the family), write a cover letter to China, and schedule another meeting with our social worker. Well, and then fill out the big USCIS form.

Jim picked up another crib mattress today, since Gus is using his mattress in the toddler bed and I developed a hangup about taking a picture of the kids' room with only the crib springs showing.

Moving along

It's been slow but productive few weeks. We sent out all our requests for reference letters. We started to get back child abuse clearances from our many states.

We've finished our 10 hours of parenting training now required by the Hague treaty. Our agency recommended Heart of the Matter seminars, which is run by two adoptive moms, one a teacher and one a social worker. The DVDs are basically recordings of one of their all-day seminars, but it was so much information we were glad to spread it out over a couple of week. They did a great job, really excellent information about how lacking a family causes changes in brain development and how we can help to fill in those mental and emotional building blocks with hard work once our kids get home. We did many of these things with Gus without knowing how important they were, and now they're just a part of our parenting style (bonus!). We'd be happy to lend our our videos if you're interested.

We finished researching medical needs. Well, for now--I'm sure there will be more researching once we have a referral. We have a list with which we feel pretty comfortable and will be giving it to our social worker to write into the homestudy at our next meeting.

We also had a reminder about how life will probably be for the first several weeks with a child who doesn't know us and doesn't want to be here. A good friend of ours went into premature labor and called us to take her 3-year-old for the night while her husband rushed back into town. Gus is good friends with this little girl, and she knows us reasonably well, but she still didn't want to be here with us for the night and we were the wrong people to comfort her. It'll be like that, probably, when the next munchkin comes home, only harder. Better to be prepared than not.

Next week is hopefully our first doctor's appointment. We wanted to do it this week but then I got sidelined by a nasty virus. Mostly better now, and hoping to move more quickly next week.

First Social Worker Meeting

Our social worker came to our apartment on Monday morning to chat. She approved our apartment as being child-worthy, picked up the small stack of documents we had ready for her, and talked to us a while to make sure we had a reasonable idea of what we were getting into. Now that we have her contact information, those of you writing us reference letters will soon be getting your forms. This process is moving much faster than last time--our first agency meeting was only a few weeks ago!

Notary Date

Due to a happy excess of caution, we don't have to order more birth and marriage certificates. We ordered extra for Gus's paperwork in case something was lost, and we had enough left over for this dossier! Of course, if something gets lost we'll have to order more.

Had a notary date today. We had so many of these last time we eventually named them. We meet in halfway between our usual places, get things notarized, have lunch, and scatter again. This paperwork really is easier, because we can get everything notarized at once, near the beginning, rather than in spurts throughout the process. We got 9 forms notarized and mailed out all our requests for background checks (3 states each, one twice).

Also tonight we started our Hague parenting training. Taking a parenting training class is a new but a good thing. We're watching a series of DVDs; the first one was really interesting, about how children who haven't had optimal circumstances in the first few months/years of life need extra help in good brain development to process sensory experiences. We can help build good brains by mixing lots of sensory experiences with our presence and physical touch. We did these things very intentionally with Gus, just from the perspective of attachment instead of brain development. Bonus!

The Paperchase Begins

But it's not as exciting as it sounds. We had a meeting at the agency last Wednesday to go through the pile of paperwork to make sure we understood every piece. Happily, it's not as scary this time around, but it's still tedious. Now to fill out lots of forms, order copies of birth/marriage certificates, and get reacquainted with our local notary.

We also scheduled our first meeting with our new social worker for Monday. It sounds like a getting-to-know-you/are-you-sure-what-you're-doing/do-you-understand-all-these-forms kind of meeting. So not terribly exciting either, but all progress.

It's that time again...

The blog is back, and that means the search is on for another future O'Donnell. Here's what we know so far.

Guatemala has closed its international adoption program while it reformats it to conform to the Hague regulations. With no idea how long that will take (it will probably take a lot of work to remake the program to fit into the new framework), we aren't holding our breath, and had to choose another country.

We have chosen China, and specifically the Waiting Child program which includes children with medical needs. That's the short answer. Here's the long one.

As recently as five years ago, abandonments of girls was high due to the combination of the one-child policy and the long-standing cultural preference for boys. Parents around the world responded in a big way, and tens of thousands of adoptive parents made homes for those little girls. However, in five years a lot has changed. Rights for women are advancing in China, abandonments are way down, and domestic adoption is up. These are all great things, but the result is that there are many fewer children available to be adopted by those tens of thousands of potential adoptive parents. Practically this situation has meant a very long wait for young children without medical needs, and because orphanages receive money from the international adoption process to help run their facility, it has also unfortunately resulted in some degree of child trafficking. We do not feel comfortable being part of the demand which creates this situation (it is still quite unclear how widespread it is).

However, the increasing pollution in China has resulted in an increased percentage of children born with congenital defects, and a combination of medical expenses and social discrimination against people with disabilities has left many children with medical needs in need of second homes. We are currently doing our homework researching some of these needs.

Boy or girl? Don't know yet. Won't know until we get the specific file for our child. However, because the children in need of adoption have been girls for so long, many families come into the adoption process with a "girl-only" mindset, meaning that there are many little boys waiting. We'll see!

We took our first official step today, attending an organizational meeting for a potential agency. We have chosen a new agency, not because the old one wasn't great to us and acting ethically in Guatemala, but because we learned post-adoption that they financially support an organization with which we vehemently disagree (maybe I'll rant more on this another time) called the National Council for Adoption (it sounds nice, but it's not). We just couldn't give money to an agency which would in some degree end up funding this organization which makes me so angry it gives me the shivers. We have already started the process somewhat, of course, researching this agency and starting homework on medical needs. Next step is to do more homework into those needs, talk with local families who have worked with this agency and handled some of the needs we are considering, and then file our formal application. We'll keep you posted!

Oh, and please do not talk with Gus about the adoption. We are not planning to discuss it with him until the process is much closer to completion--it's just too long for a small person to wait for something to happen.

He's a Yankee Doodle Dandy

Well, we're now really finished. Gus went to family court yesterday (required to wait 6 months after coming home) to re-adopt in Massachusetts. We signed a little piece of paper formalizing his name change, the judge let him bang the gavel, and Gus is now an American citizen.

And with that, there's no more to say here until there's another future O'Donnell to talk about. Thank you for your kind attention over the past 2 years. See you next time.

Antigua and back home

(The comma is back, and so are we!)

Antigua is a much friendlier place for American tourists than Guatemala City. When we got there, Jacobo drove us around the town (didn't take too long; it's only about 100 square blocks) and to our hotel, the Posada Lazos Fuertes. If you recall our previous post about organizations to which we contribute, you'll recall Safe Passage, the organization that helps kids who otherwise would be foraging through the Guatemala City dump. They own the hotel we stayed at. Most of the other occupants were Safe Passage volunteers, including a church youth group from Maine we met. Makes for a noisy hotel, but quite pretty. The town is quite attractive, too. We spent the next two and a half days roaming around the streets, looking at jade in shops, and playing with Gus in the Parque Central. Good food and a lot of fun. The worst part of the weekend was trying to get Gus to bed for naps.

Monday at noon Jacobo came back to pick us up for the drive back to Guatemala City. At this point we were still planning to fly home the next day. Oscar was going to pick up Gus's visa at the embassy for us and deliver it to our hotel at 4. He did so, but soon after he left Rebekah's sharp eyes noticed that the visa had Gus's name spelled wrong (Guastavo instead of Gustavo). We called Oscar immediately, and he met me at the embassy again a few minutes later. By now the place was closed for the night but Oscar managed to talk our way back in. Inside they informed us that there was no way we could get a revised visa on Gus's passport before our 6:30 flight the next morning. Still don't understand why not; clearly all they had to do was change a field on a record in some database and reprint the form, but that's bureaucracy for you. Chagrined, I walked back to the hotel and informed Reb that we had to change our flights and stay an extra day. We did so, and prepared for another 24 hours of confinement (remember, we couldn't leave the hotel with Gus in Guatemala City).

Tuesday turned out to be not so bad. We ate at the hotel restaurant; we played around with Gus; we packed, and we had internet access again, so we called people via Skype. The embassy had our corrected visa ready by 9:00 am. Nothing else to report there. One thing I will say about our hotels: you don't drink tap water in Guatemala or risk gastrointestinal unpleasantness, so you have to rely on the agua pura, or bottled water. The Lazos Fuertes in Antigua recognized this and had unlimited free water available in those water coolers you see in offices. At the San Carlos, you had to pay for it: Q10 per pint. Not expensive, I know, but it's definitely a point against them in my book.

Wednesday we flew home. We had a long layover in Houston, so after we spent an hour in the Homeland Security back office dealing with immigration, we got to introduce Gus to my family. That was a high point, but just about the only high point. The second leg of our flight was delayed two hours, the first hour due to weather in Boston, and the second due to electrical issues with our plane. It was really rough sitting there, Gus crying and hungry in his car seat and us unable to do anything about it because we needed to save his bottle for takeoff so that he wouldn't have ear troubles. Once we did take off, though, he slept through the entire 4 hours.

And so we're home. Hotel life definitely isn't the best way to start a parent-child relationship, but I think we made the best of it. We can get him on a proper schedule now, and we can start to wean him off the sugar-laden Guatemalan formula and cereal he's been eating (seriously, the stuff smells like hot chocolate mix). It's good to be back.

And then they disappeared for a week

(Note to the reader: the comma key is still out of commission on this computer so continued apologies to any Lynne Truss fans out there.)

It turns out that once you have children you no longer have much free time left for blogging. Go figure. We're back in Guatemala City now and planning to come home tomorrow morning. The original plan was to come back today of course but more on that later.

Thursday morning Reb and I went to a couple of nearby museums (musea?) the first featuring old Mayan pots and whatnot and the second featuring new Mayan fabrics and textiles. Pictures are available on the internets. After that we walked back to the hotel and was surprised to find Gus and his foster parents there waiting for us. We were supposed to meet at 1 and it was 12:30 but they'd had a long drive out from Quetzeltenango (also known as Xela for some reason). It was rather awkward. Gus was asleep and the foster parents didn't speak any English so we recruited a nice hotel employee to translate for us for half an hour before Oscar our Bethany rep arrived. We discussed things like schedules and how long a drive it was from
Xela to Guatemala City. Oscar is all business. No small talk for that man. He showed up and said "Hello how are you let's talk about the baby's schedule." Around then we decided it would be a bad idea to let Gus sleep through the hand-off so we woke him up and passed him around. Naturally he was pretty wary of us. Finally Oscar and the foster parents left and that was when Gus started sobbing uncontrollably. He didn't stop for 4 hours except for a short interval when he cried himself to sleep. Finally though that evening he seemed to have worked through the initial grieving process and actually smiled at us before he went to bed.

Friday morning Gus woke up all smiles. We fed him cereal and gave him a bottle and took off for the embassy which happens to be next door to the hotel. We were feeling pretty smug about the amount of time it took to be out the door. Our alarm woke us up at 6 and we met Oscar at 7:05 dressed showered and fed. You're not allowed to take pictures of the embassy so I can't post one but imagine any government building built between 1960 and 1975 and you're pretty close. The waiting room resembled the DMV. They batch all the adoptions together at the same time so there were about 25 Guatemalan babies and American parents hanging out in there. Pretty crowded. We were in there about 2 hours. They asked us questions about making sure we fulfilled the requirements for adoption in our state (or commonwealth in our case) and had us swear an oath that we would re-adopt Gus when we got home. The whole thing took about two hours after which they told us his visa would be ready Monday at 3:30. Oscar told us that he would pick up the visa for us and deliver it to us at the hotel.

That was the last official business we had to do till then so we had arranged to spend the weekend in Antigua Guatemala. Guatemala City is smelly. There are a lot of old cars with diesel engines floating around including the GC public transportation system which consists of these red "chicken buses" which drive up and down the avenidas. They're crazy. Usually packed full of commuters and a couple guys hanging out the open doors as if it's a garbage truck. Also due to cultural misunderstandings about Americans adopting Guatemalan babies (ask us about them sometime) it would have been unwise to leave the hotel with Gus unaccompanied. It's different in Antigua. I was personally surprised at the sheer number of Americans there were there. Many American foster parents and young fresh out of college kids either volunteering or learning Spanish. Jacobo (our driver who picked us up at the airport) drove us over there that afternoon. Gorgeous drive through the mountains. I'll save the weekend in Antigua for another post.

Innocents Abroad

Please forgive my punctuation in this post; we borrowed a lightweight laptop to bring down with us and the comma key doesn't work. It is 19:30 local time here in Guatemala City. Guatemala runs on Central Time but they don't honor Daylight Savings Time. So Guatemala runs on the same time as most of Indiana.

After two rather long flights we arrived this morning at the GC airport. Customs and immigration were a breeze; they barely glanced at the forms. After passing through customs we encountered a large mob of Guatemalans congregating outside the exit all of whom either appeared to be waiting for someone or offering us a ride. We quickly found the gentleman we'd actually arranged a ride from. His name is Jacobo and he served as our tour guide for the next two hours. He showed us quite a bit of Guatemala City and not just the nice parts either. Most of the tour was driving but at one point he parked the car and gave us a look-see at the Catedral Metropolitana (we learned something new: a church cannot be called a cathedral unless it has a special chair for the bishop) and the National Palace. I've posted pictures I took during the tour on our Flickr page. Reb was falling asleep at this point so we had Jacobo drive us to our hotel where we checked in and took a nap.

After waking up I turned on the computer to see what kinds of wireless internet options were available. Turns out the wireless works just fine here although Google and Blogger noticed the change of locale and helpfully translated all its web pages into Spanish for me. I'm quickly coming to terms with the vast amount of Spanish that I don't know. Thank God for Rebekah.

At this point we were getting hungry; we'd just had a couple granola bars for lunch. We went to the concierge desk and changed about $200US into quetzales and asked for a restaurant recommendation. He pointed us to an authentic Guatemalan restaurant called Kacao. We walked over there and discovered that the place didn't open until 6 so we wandered around for half an hour until then. We discovered a book store and passed most of the time in there. All kinds of stuff in there including Nathanial Hawthorne's classic La Letra Roja and Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope sadly not translated into Spanish. We bought a couple board books for Gus.

Finally we went back to Kacao. It was excellent. I get the impression it's a bit of a tourist trap; all the wait staff were wearing traditional Mayan outfits and the restaurant had a domed thatched roof (think Disney World's Polynesian resort and you'll get the idea). The food was great. We had tamales as an appetizer and then we ordered two different Guatemalan dishes both of which arrived in the form of a soup. We stuffed ourselves. Of the five couples in the restaurant with us I think three were adoptive parents or about to become adoptive parents. However the waiters didn't use English with us at all. Reb did great. I was able to contribute a "una cerveza por favor" and several graciases but that was about it.

That wraps up our day. Bed time. Tomorrow we meet our son!

The beginning is near

Tonight we're heading to the airport to catch a 5:35 am flight to Guatemala. We have something like 4x as much luggage as we've ever needed. Yikes!

Travel Dates

The pink slip has arrived (via email). We're expected at the Embassy on July 13 bright and early in the morning. That's a Friday, and Gus's visa won't be available for pickup until Monday, so it'll work out that we're there for almost a full week since we have to stay the weekend. We'll go to Antigua for the weekend, since we hear it's a much nicer place than the capital.

Rough schedule:

• Wed. 7/11: Fly down to Guatemala City
• Thurs. 7/12: Gus gets handed over to us; we meet his foster mother
• Fri. 7/13: Embassy appointment
• Sat. and Sun 7/14-15: Vacation in Antigua, Guatemala
  
• Mon. 7/16: Get Gus's visa from the Embassy
• Tues. 7/17: Back to Los Estados Unidos
  

What about the others?

Of course we're completely pumped that Gus will be arriving home soon, but our excitement over his arrival doesn't remove the elephant in the room: what about the other children? Not long after we chose to build our family through adoption, we started to ask this question. We are thrilled to be the family for our children, even though it's not fair that they should need a second family. But what about the children who lose their first family and don't have a second family either? We can't adopt every child who needs a home.
We aren't the first people to ask this question, of course. Half the Sky, a non-profit foundation which provides love, education, and foster families for an increasing number of children who are without homes in China was founded by a family asking this question about the children who they had seen in their daughter's orphanage. Since its founding in 1998 and the opening of its first pilot program in 2000, Half the Sky has expanded to serve thousands of children in its 30 centers in China.
We are proud to support Half the Sky--but the question "What about the others?" is really two questions. The first is, "What happens to the children who have lost their first families?" This issue is what Half the Sky addresses. Although we value Half the Sky's work in loving and educating children in orphanages, its work does not answer the second question, "Why do so many children lose their first families to begin with?" In this case, there's very little that we as Americans can do about that problem, because it is rooted in governmental action and social norms.
However, we can do something about that problem in Guatemala. Most of the relinquishments in Guatemala are rooted in poverty and lack of education. We cannot change that Gus needs a second family right now, but if we could help the families before they have children whose care they cannot sustain, then we could help reduce the number of children in Gus's situation who need a second family. And by solving the second problem, we would also solve the first.
With this goal in mind, we recently evaluated a number of charitable organizations that work in Guatemala and around the world. There are many worthy organizations that work with children who are growing up in orphanages or on the streets of Guatemala, but we wanted to focus our efforts mainly on prevention. We found three organizations which we are now proud to support. We wanted to bring them to your attention so that you could learn what efforts are being put forth to help keep children in their first families in Guatemala, and to assist in those efforts if you choose. We feel that as adoptive parents we bear a special responsibility to the children who are missing their first families and who, for some reason, are not in Gus's place to come home to ours (or to other loving families). And we hope that with our help, Gus will be one of the last children in Guatemala to need a second home.

Safe Passage works with the families whose livelihoods depend on the Guatemala City dump. These families, who were profiled in the Oscar-nominated short documentary "Recycled Life," are mainly indigenous Mayans who were forced from their land during the civil war. The parents daily dig through the trash, but children were banned after a methane explosion in 2005. Safe Passage works with those children and their families to give them a way out of poverty, so that the next generation will not look forward to a "career" of digging through the dump. In Guatemala, school is free but the uniforms and materials required to attend it are not. Safe Passage provides uniforms, after-school tutoring, music and sports, nutrition, and medicine for the children. They also offer literacy tutoring for the parents.

Freedom from Hunger is a microloan organization (this concept has become much better known since Mohammad Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in microloans, but it's not a new idea. FFH was founded in 1946). It provides small loans and business advice to people (usually women) to start small businesses. Along with the business assistance they provide education on health and nutrition, which along with the extra income significantly improves the health and outlook of the family. Repayment of the loans allows new loans to be made and more families to better care for themselves.

Agros International is the most innovative charity we've seen yet. It focuses on an entire rural community, first helping them secure a loan as a group for land for their community. The land is key, because in Guatemala and other places, the indigenous people were forcibly removed from their land and communities. Their way of life was destroyed and they were given "career options" like digging through the Guatemala City garbage dump. Agros begins with a community looking to work together to start over. It finds land for that community, then helps them succeed with community education, infrastructure assistance, and microloans. As the community flourishes they are able to repay the loans, which are then used to secure a land loan for another community.

We feel that it is a great gift to be able to help Gus's people--it is a privilege, like the privilege of being his parents. Of course we would be delighted to discuss any of these organizations further in person, and we hope that as some of you are looking for gifts for Gus that you would also or instead consider a gift to his people in his honor.

Final Review

We got an email today from the agency telling us that our paperwork is now at the US Embassy awaiting final review. They told us that at this point it typically takes 3-4 business days for them to review it, at which point they'll issue the long-awaited pink slip with our Embassy appointment date. The appointment dates are typically 10 days after that.

All this means that we're about 2-3 weeks from travel time. Our abogado is really on the ball down there.

By the way, we've been brushing up on our Espanol for the last few weeks (I'm a complete Spanish newbie, so "brushing up" is a very kind way of putting it). We really recommend Coffee Break Spanish, which is a podcast series that teaches Spanish in very small chunks (about 20 minutes a week). Check it out.

Still much to do. I've finished our paperwork, but we still need to pack and buy lots of little stuff we're going to need. And we're out of town next weekend. Well, we can shop in Philly as well as we can here.

This is how I roll

Two new acquisitions of note to report. Reb has recently learned to knit, and of course the first project she decided to take on was a wool diaper cover for the young'un. He'll be stylin'. It turned out really well, I must say. Note the drawstring waistband.


The other recent acquisition was a gift from some new friends who have two Guatemalan children themselves. I don't really know what it's called, but I fully expect him to have a blast bouncing around in it, waking the neighbors downstairs.

Pressing on!

We got the email today telling us that we have been approved by PGN, exactly two months after the last time that we went in. We are now out of the Guatemalan attorney general's office and moving on to the next (and final) step!

Now there are only two things left that need to happen before we get the travel go-ahead. First, Gus's first mother signs off on the adoption for the third time (she's done it twice already). At that point, as far as Guatemala is concerned, Gus is ours. Then the US Embassy works on the adoption visa for him so that he can come home with us.

Typical (I repeat, typical, and our mileage may vary) wait times from this point until our final travel date are 6 to 8 weeks. We'll probably only get a week's notice of our court date. In the meantime, we have some forms to gather to take down with us: tax forms, immunization records, the I-864, and a copy of our home study.

Starting to freak out a little bit. We're definitely well into the third trimester now!

Status update

We just received word that we are still in PGN. No news is good news; at least we haven't been kicked out.

Pictures, Month Six

More pictures today. He's sitting up! And he's wearing the onesie his grandparents sent him! What a dapper young man our son is. I posted all the pictures to our usual Flickr account.

We also got a status update today. We're still in PGN, and we've been there since 4/11. This is a good sign.

PGN, Round Three

We found out today that we were kicked out of PGN (the Guatemalan AG's office) a month ago, and on 4/11 we went back in for the third time. What was the issue this time? Another tilde, this time on the DNA consent form. It's a shame. The tilde used to be my favorite punctuation mark, with the interrobang a close second. Not anymore.

Recommended Reading

I read a fabulous book, the first I've read which is specifically tailored for the friends and family of an adopting family--that would be YOU! It gives dos and don'ts for grownups and tips on how to explain to your kids what has happened in the life of our kid. It's called "Cross-Cultural Adoption: How to Answer Questions" and is by Amy Coughlin and Caryn Abramowitz. Got it here via interlibrary loan, no problem--it's a quick and very helpful read. Please do!

Medical Update, Month Five

Just a medical update today; no new pictures. Gus had his latest physical last Tuesday. Still developing normally ("Buenas conditiones"). He's now 15.4 pounds and 65 centimeters long. He grew almost 2 inches in a month. He's really packing it on!

Update (4/17/2007): Pictures showed up today. I don't know if it's just gas or not, but it looks like he's smiling to me.

Package

We got the opportunity to send down a package to Gus today. Insiders call these packages "Ziplocs of Love." Now you know. They're very strict on how the package thing works. Not wanting the Bethany Guatemala reps to be overburdened with gifts to pass on to children's foster homes, the rules are:

• Packages must fit inside a gallon-sized Ziploc bag.
• Packages may not be mailed to Guatemala. They have to be couriered down in the luggage of another set of adoptive parents traveling to visit or bring home their own kid.

We've been on a package-sending list for a month or so, and this week we finally got notified that a nice couple in Iowa City will be willing to bring our package down with them later this month. We've had a bunch of stuff ready to go for a while, so today we bundled it all up (had to tape the bag shut) and mailed it off to Iowa.

Package manifest:

• Two disposable cameras.
• New onesie outfit supplied by Jim's parents.
• Blanket with ribbon tabs made by Reb, designed for chewing on. Jim slept with this under his T-shirt for a month to try to make it smell like him. He's been told it was effective.
• Stuffed heffalump, spritzed with a bit of Reb's perfume to make it smell like her. Definitely effective. Quarantined into another plastic bag to prevent everything else smelling like her.
• Portable voice recorder with cassette tape of us singing songs and reading stories.
• Spare batteries.
• Rattle.
• Small picture album of Gus' family.
  
• Chocolate for the foster mother. It's traditional.
  

Please Don't Meet the Robinsons

Some of our readers have seen my extensive collection of animated movies, which I hope to like enough that Gus's insistence on the 30th consecutive viewing of a particular film won't make me ill, but perhaps no movie can hold up to that standard. One that certainly doesn't is the newest Disney production, "Meet the Robinsons." This movie is adoption-themed and so caught my attention, but it's not good attention. Early reviews make me think that the movie is poorly researched and that the major theme is actually insulting to adoptees. I'll read more reviews and write more on this later (it's a busy day), but for now, I ask that you please exercise pro-adoption activism by not supporting such a fiasco with your hard-earned money.

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Sorry to make you wait the weekend for the rest of this discussion--Easter weekend is so busy, and yes it was WONDERFUL. Quick synopsis of the movie: hero was dropped off on an orphanage's steps as a baby. He is a child genius, and is rejected by 124 potential adoptive couples (he keeps a tally), finally deciding that he wants to search for his birthmother since she's the only person who may ever have really wanted him. Then a child from the future snatches him from a science fair to rescue the future. While doing so he sees his future, and it's a good one. He decides that to have that future he must "keep moving forward", and abandons the search for his birthmother (although in the time machine brought by future-kid he has the chance to see her and find out who she is, to be able to search for her in his own time) in order to have the new future with a science-geek adoptive family.

Here's why I dislike this movie, from least to most exasperating.

First, the portrayal of the hero's birthmother is incredibly limited. It is unbelievably rare in this country today for a child to be just "dropped off" anywhere. The birthmothers I have met through Bethany care deeply for their children and maintain open adoptive relationships. Although I understand using this situation as a narrative device and I was glad that the birthmother was portrayed in a relatively positive manner, it is still distressing to see a situation so far from normal presented to children as the adoption scenario.

Second, the interactions of potential adoptive parents in the early stages of the movie are overwhelmingly negative. The hero of the story is visited by 124 potential adoptive families, all of whom reject him in person for trivial reasons. The hero is adopted at the end; but as a potential adoptive parent, I found it demeaning that only 0.8% of adoptive parents mentioned in this movie were portrayed as reasonable human beings, especially when many adoptive parents seek to adopt children with known special physical needs.

Third, I was absolutely horrified to see the theme of the film, “Keep moving forward”, applied to adoption. Adoptees have been told for generations to “keep moving forward,” to forget their past, and to “move on” with their new families, as the hero does at the end of the story. Such advice has brought great grief and trauma to many adoptees, who have found en masse that the loss of their birth families is a hole that their adoptive families simply cannot fill. Children are better adjusted in adoptive families that empathize with the grief of their children about the loss of their birth families. Past experience and current research has led to the welcome practice of open adoption, in which adoptees maintain contact with both their birth and adoptive families. Applying the theme of “keep moving forward” to adoption insults the real-life experiences of adoptees, which tells us that their emotional health requires addressing the past: precisely the opposite.

I'm pretty upset about this mischaracterization of adoption and adoptees especially; I'll be sending a letter to our agency and to Disney. If you can think of any other way for me to advocate for real education about adoption regarding this movie, please let me know.

Back in PGN

Our most recent case update says that we've been back in PGN, with Gus's visa preapproval from the U.S. Embassy, since March 20. Presumably the great tilde issue has been solved. The next few updates will probably be "still in PGN", and then it will either be "kicked out" or "OUT OUT".

There has been zero news on the revamping of Guatemalan legislation. I hope they're spending so much time working on it that they haven't time to discuss it yet. Please continue to be in prayer for the system changes to be wise.

A Fightin' Owls Car Seat

We inherited a car seat from one of Reb's co-workers whose daughter just outgrew it. Unfortunately, the denim seat cover was in pretty sorry shape, which was understandable given the harsh treatment they undergo. It was grimy and faded with two years worth of sun exposure and crushed Cheerios. However, the seat itself is perfectly sound and only took a bit of cleaning to restore to mint condition.

What to do? As in so many cases, eBay came to the rescue; specifically, the eBay store run by a seamstress called wantful things. She did a simply amazing job sewing a custom car seat cover for us for a ridiculously low price. She works like this: we buy the sewing job using eBay; then we purchase two yards of the fabric of our choice, or one yard each of two fabrics of our choice, and send it to her. As you can see from the picture, we decided to go with our college colors. Then she makes a padded seat cover out of it. It fit over our car seat perfectly, and we were so impressed that we felt that she deserved a plug beyond the usual eBay feedback system. If you're in the market for a seat cover, look no further.

Domestic Adoption Reform

We interrupt your waiting for news about Guatemalan adoption reform to draw your attention to domestic adoption reform here in the U.S. The blogosphere has been buzzing this week, and an adoptee rights bill is in the Massachusetts State Senate.

Some of you asked us why we didn't choose to adopt domestically. There were many reasons behind that decision, but in this context I want to discuss a couple of them. We felt uncomfortable that the domestic adoption process in this country 1) allows first mothers to finalize the relinquishment way too early (some states require only a 24 hour waiting period, by which time the drugs haven't worn off, the hormones are nowhere near evening out, and she hasn't really had a chance to try to parent this child; in Guatemala the first mother is required to sign off 3 times over a period of months), and 2) first mothers choose the adoptive parents BEFORE the birth of the child. This second point sounds very cute and fuzzy and sweet, but although I support the first mother's decision to choose the adoptive family I do not think they should be choosing before birth. I have heard the stories of multiple first mothers for whom their love and respect for the adoptive parents pushed them to place rather than to parent. When they wavered, they couldn't bear to disappoint the wonderful people who were hoping so much for their baby--and the child left a home that could have raised it, and the adoptive family was filled with a child that didn't need their home.

What would a better system look like? A good example is Australia's, in which the emphasis is upon parenting before placing, and a lot fewer babies end up needing new homes. Here's an excellent post by paragraphein about how the specifics of a revamped U.S. domestic adoption system could work. I'm all for it.

Since the entrance of Gus into all of our lives, I've become much more activist about the rights of all people involved in adoption, especially the adoptees. Adoptees are so very vulnerable; they aren't consulted about the family they want to be part of, and they often lack advocates until they have been adopted. I'd like to encourage you to help advocate for the well-being of these children and the adults they grow into: another great post by paragraphein gives some suggestions for becoming an advocate with varying degrees of time to give and further details on the problems with the current system, an excellent blog by seriously details her experience fighting for a truly ethical domestic adoption (including a blessedly failed placement), and this site discusses legislation which may be pending in your area.

The adoption process in our own country scared us. How sad. Let's help make our process an example to the world in how it prioritizes the best interests of the children, protects the birth parents, and supports the adoptive parents.

Pictures & Medical Update, Month Four

We got the latest set of pictures and a medical update on Gus today from Bethany. He now weighs 13 libras, and is 61 centimetros long and still healthy, praise the Lord. He got a second round of booster shots. I'll be posting the new pictures at the usual place.

He must really like wearing that baseball onesie.

Spoke Too Soon

It appears that all it takes to make something happen is to blog that nothing has happened. We just got an email from the Guatemalan embassy informing us that we are pre-approved for a travel visa for Gus. That's the necessary next step before we go back into PGN (the Guatemalan attorney general's office) for our second try at acceptance there. Exciting stuff!

March Non-Update

We got our monthly "update" email from our agency today that said, yep, still waiting. We knew that. What we're specifically waiting for right now is for the US Embassy in Guatemala to give their approval to the adoption file now that the DNA test has been completed and was a match. This process used to take about a month, but an adoption facilitator recently acquired a visa for a child under false pretences and took her to the U.S. before she was found out (the child is now with her adoptive family and the facilitator's in a heap of trouble)--as a result the Embassy's been pretty gun-shy lately, and approvals have been taking significantly longer. Can't blame them; we're just waiting.

Once we have the Embassy's approval, we'll go back into the Attorney General's office again (no word on the tilde issue--if we get kicked out for it again, we'll know it wasn't resolved to their satisfaction).

And no updates on the political situation regarding international adoption in Guatemala, except that our agency is now cautiously giving referrals again, with lots of new caveats about which potential adoptive parents must be informed. It's been two weeks since the big announcement, but there's been no new news, only speculation. I'm wondering if it was posturing for the recent visit by our President. But until we have solid information, we remain in waiting limbo. Our process is still moving forward, but it's possible that it could be stopped at any time, and with the current political situation and the Embassy delays it's now very unlikely that Gus will be home by summer. Sigh.

A Word from Our Agency

Yesterday we received an email from our agency, confirming what we had already assumed about the new legislation in Guatemala. 1) The laws in Guatemala regarding international adoption will be changing in order to be consistent with the Hague Convention. 2) Those exact changes and the timeline on which they will be implemented is unknown. (We hear that the Guatemalan Congress is working on new laws, and that the legislation announced from the First Lady's office last week may have been meant to increase pressure on that process.) 3) Our agency has stopped giving referrals until details regarding the changes are known.

It appears that all cases in process are continuing to be processed as usual until the details regarding the changes are published. We hope to hear an update on our specific case soon. Please continue to pray for wisdom to construct the new laws, for the best interests of the children to be paramount in the process, and for creativity as the Congress tries to keep the good parts of their adoption process while closing the loopholes on the bad.

I Want My GusTV!

Wednesday we received an old-school (VHS, not DVD)-style video of Gus in the mail. It's about 5 minutes, and looks as though it was taken in the office of the coordinator in Guatemala, who narrated it. He spent most of the time wiggling. When they turned him over on his tummy to show us how he could lift up his head, he looked around for his foster mother, who was making funny noises (and presumably faces) at him from behind the camera. His foster mother said that he almost always sleeps through the night already, and that he takes two naps a day and spends the rest of his time wiggling. He's awfully cute in motion.

The not-so-good news: the political situation in Guatemala regarding adoption is always volatile, and it's been more rather than less in the past week. I can't explain very clearly what is going on, because no one seems to really know at this point. But yesterday the Guatemalan President presented what seems to be an executive order which would change how international adoptions are conducted--however, he probably doesn't have the authority to enforce his order, and portions of it appear to be illegal under current Guatemalan law. We don't know how the Guatemalan Congress, which is working on changes of its own to bring Guatemala into line with the Hague Convention standards, will take to the President's appropriation of their jobs. The President says that his order is only a stop-gap, but it may be sufficient to get the UNICEF money that has been offered to Guatemala as well as to snarl the system pretty effectively until the Congress finishes its work. That's all we know. No one has any idea when the changes will take place or how they will affect families currently in process.

No panicking, anyone. The uncertainty is all part of international adoption, and we knew that when we decided to start this process. Please join us in praying that wisdom would prevail, and that the people who make decisions would have the best interests of the children as their primary agenda.

An Exciting Day

Today we got a very exciting email from our social worker. It said that not only are we out of Family Court, we were submitted to the Attorney General's office (PGN) on January 17, and have already been kicked out! Kick-outs are part of the routine from the PGN; most families have two or three kick-outs. Ours was because the pre-approval hadn't come from the US Embassy yet (it should soon, since the DNA has been completed), and because the last name on the baby's birth certificate doesn't exactly match the last name on the mother's birth certificate (it's a difference of a tilde). So we're waiting for pre-approval, and the attorneys are working on a resolution of the tilde issue. Yes, we think it's funny too.

What's most exciting is that we've already been in PGN for a month, and had our first kick-out without even knowing it. The Guatemalan political situation is, as always, a little weird and unpredictable, but we may be looking at around 3 months until baby instead of around 6. Of course, no guarantees. But I'm starting to get excited on the inside, and my sister (who has two munchkins) is helping me figure out what non-furniture baby things we need.

We also got a medical update (but no pictures). He's doing great!

And lastly, since the Family Court process has been completed, we're feeling reasonably sure that this baby is our baby. Although we're keeping his full name a secret for a while longer, he doesn't need to be Ronald in public anymore. Now y'all can call him the nickname we've been calling him, privately and hopefully, within 24 hours of his referral: his name is Gus.

Crib installed

The baby's room is now fully furnished. Last weekend we acquired and installed a crib in the baby's room. We got it from a co-worker of Rebekah's whose daughter just outgrew it. We also finished and moved in the toy bin (trying and not succeeding to use up the extra paint left over from painting the dresser--we're used to painting rooms, so we way overestimated how much paint we would need). After all the furniture was moved in, we promptly rearranged every piece, but we think we're happy with the arrangement now.

Note the crib's feet. The crib didn't start with any shoes of its own, but these shoes have been waiting for it for years, a gift from friends when we first started telling people that we were going to adopt.

DNA Is A Match

Just over a week ago DNA was collected from baby and mother. The DNA was sent to the USA for testing to ensure that the woman relinquishing the rights to raise the child was truly the mother of the child. The results just came back with a probability of maternity of 99.99%. That's quite a yes, and it's a really big step in our process.

There's one more step before we can really begin to feel that this child is OUR baby, and that's the completion of the Family Court report. We know that the social worker interviewed the mother last week, and if she was and continues to be sure that she and no one in her family is able right now to raise a child, then the Family Court will approve her request to transfer the rights of raising him to us. The positive DNA test confirms that she has the right to do that. Once that process is complete, we will begin to get very excited--but not too excited, because the paperwork is taking an average of six months in the Attorney General's office right now. We hope to have that report within 1-2 months, and be able to say that this child is not just "maybe" ours, but "almost certainly" ours.

Birthmother Interview and Rocking Chair

It was a busy week in Boston and Guatemala. In Guatemala, the DNA test happened (we now have a couple of pictures of him at the test, which are posted on our picture site as usual). We were also notified that the meeting between the Guatemalan social worker and the mother also happened last week, so even though we didn't get official word that we were "protocolized", we must have been, because the social worker's interview is part of the Family Court process. Our attorney couldn't be acting on our behalf in Family Court if our document giving him power of attorney hadn't been accepted by the court.

In Boston, we celebrated the arrival of our rocking chair, a Christmas gift from Reb's parents which had to be special-ordered. Soon* there'll be a baby instead of a bear in that chair. We also got a toy bin/organizer/thing which we're painting, so his room is coming right along.

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*6-8 months, according to recent historical averages

DNA Test Done

We just received word that the DNA test on mother and baby was done on Monday. That means that the samples were collected and sent off to the lab. We should hear the results in between a week to a month from now.

More Pictures

We got another batch of pictures and another medical update today. He is now 10 pounds and 58 centimeters. And according to the medical report, he had a respiratory infection, poor kid.

DNA Authorization from the Embassy

We've received word that the US Embassy in Guatemala has given approval to have the DNA tests done on birthmother and baby. We're assuming that, although this instruction was given by the US Embassy and not by the Guatemalan government, that it couldn't have been given unless we were officially entered into the Guatemalan system, known as protocolization. Protocolization is important because when the Guatemalan adoption process has been shut down before for various reasons (and we expect that soon the Hague will cause a shutdown while the process is reorganized), protocolization was the cutoff to be allowed to continue with an adoption. Of course, there are no guarantees: international adoption is much like the stock market, in that past performance is not an indication of future results. So we're maintaining our same level of optimistic hopefulness, but were surprised to hear about DNA authorization before protocolization!

Another very important process tends to run alongside of the DNA testing: Family Court. Soon the baby whose referral we have accepted will be referred to Family Court as well, and a social worker will visit his birthfamily. She will ask if the birthmother is really convinced that she is not able to take care of this child and truly wants to relinquish the rights to raise him to another family. She will make sure that the birthmother knows that the relinquishment is legally final once the adoption is complete, and she will ask again if there is any family member who would be able to care for this child so that he could stay with his birthfamily. If the birthmother is convinced that she and her family would be unable to care for the child and that she does want to relinquish the rights to raise him to another family, then approval will be given by the Family Court for the adoption to proceed.

The timeline for Family Court is usually about 3 months, and for DNA results is 1-2. So far we are right on the average schedule.

If you'd like to get more information on the average status/progress of Guatemalan adoptions through our agency, they post an International Adoption Update within the first week of every month on their website. The update is on the left-hand sidebar. Also, a great website with useful information for adoptive families and friends from all countries is RainbowKids. They even have a letter to grandparents posted this month!

UPDATE: Received word today that we have NOT yet been protocolized. The entry into the Guatemalan system and the US Embassy are two independent tracks. Our documents have been in Guatemala for a few weeks, but have been delayed being put into the system because of the holidays (and then catching-up from the holidays).

Baby room update 2

In the end, we decided not to stain the dresser after all. Instead, we painted it, as you can see to the right. It turned out pretty well. The semi-gloss paint makes the knobs really pop.

Also, as you can see, we received and installed the foam tiles to cover the floor. Hopefully fewer tears will be shed when he starts to learn to walk.

Baby room update

Happy New Year, dear reader. We don't have any real news today, except to brag about our sweet new enormous dresser for the baby's room (show of hands: who is now officially sick of hearing people describe things as ginormous? The zeitgeist really spat that one in our faces this year, didn't it? In 2007, let's turn it around and start using egantic.)

There it is, to the right. We took advantage of a mad end-of-year clearance sale at Millstores, a really nice unfinished furniture store in Malden, MA. 40% off for a nice solid dresser. The knobs are sitting on top, but I'm not all that thrilled about the knobs that were included. We may look into some alternatives. I also have to sand down some of the sharp edges and stain and seal it. Not sure how dark a stain we should go for, if any. Any suggestions from the readership? The floor and wall are in the shot.

Other exciting baby room progress: we've ordered 100 square feet of foam tiles to cover the floor with for playing/crawling/falling down purposes. This weekend we're going rocker/glider shopping. I know certain parties are interested in seeing more room updates, so I'll keep posting them. Thanks to the rest of you for indulging us.

Merry Christmas, the child has hair!

Ronald's appearance in the hat throughout his first set of pictures had many of us wondering whether he was bald or sporting a mohawk underneath. We just got the pictures from his latest doctor's checkup, and he definitively does have hair. The doctor says he's doing great, and his (blurred) pictures show that he's pretty wiggly. The rest of the pictures are on our photo-sharing site; if you'd like to see them and don't have the link, email us.

We also got news that our acceptance documents are finished being uber-authenticated and are on their way to Guatemala (where they will likely sit on someone's desk until mid-January). Yay for hair!

Officially Accepted

This morning we sent off the referral acceptance paperwork to Grand Rapids. It included various forms authorizing DNA testing on the birth mother and baby, State Sealed witness statements that we're good folk, a power of attorney document, and of course a check.

Now we go back into our wait state until we hear more...

(Note from Reb: Guatemala in general and the Family Court system in particular takes a 4-6 week vacation around Christmas. We're hoping that our paperwork will make it into the system before everyone breaks for the holiday, but we're not looking for any more news than that until next year.)

Medical report all clear

Today we had a doctor review the medical information that was sent with Ronald's referral. As far as she could tell, everything looks fine. The blood work didn't reveal anything of concern, and his height and weight were normal. All in all, he's a healthy little guy. Now we'll pull together the referral paperwork and send it off as quickly as we can.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Referral!

It's been less than three weeks since the national office received our completed dossier. But on Sunday we opened an email from Pam announcing our referral of a baby boy. Wow!

He was born on November 5. He weighs 6 pounds (American babies are enormous compared to some other countries) and is 19.3 inches long. He's already in foster care and under the supervision of a pediatrician.

A caution: we can't be sure yet that this baby is our Ronald. International adoption is not predictable. We're trying to wait until the DNA test, a few months from now, to give our hearts to this baby. (DNA test ensures that the woman making an adoption plan for the child is indeed his birthmother; she will also reaffirm her decision to make that plan at the time of the test.) Until then, we'll call him "Ronald" but we mean "Ronald?". But he's cute. More pictures are posted on our picture-sharing website--if you don't have the address, email us and we'll send it to you.

Up next: tomorrow we bring his pictures and medical report to the International Adoption program at Children's Hospital for review by their doctor. As long as there are no surprises, we plan to accept the referral. More paperwork, notarization, and state seals. After that our documents will be translated and sent to Guatemala. It takes a while to move into the system, so we probably won't officially enter Family Court, the next big step, for about three months.

An Ethical Adoption

Some of you may have read a recent article in the New York Times which must have been pretty upsetting to everyone who read it. As an adoptive parent-in-waiting, it was particularly upsetting to me in the way it implied that most adoptions of Guatemalan children are unethical.

I was disappointed in the Times; to start with, the reporter didn't do basic fact-checks which put his other conclusions at serious risk. The easiest whoops, which the Times has now corrected online, stated that the current President Berger signed the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions in 2002, when it was actually President Portillo. More damaging was the statement that "after years of legal challenges the nation’s Constitutional Court ruled definitively this year that the country must abide by it." That's just not true. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court had previously ruled that President Portillo's accession to the treaty was unconstitutional; their recent ruling says that regardless of the unconstitutionality, the current President cannot be forced to withdraw from the treaty. It's a complicated impasse, but should not have been papered over with that definitive but incorrect statement.

Why does the Hague treaty matter to Guatemalan adoption anyway? The Hague treaty does seem to want to help children. Unfortunately it has the same downside as another piece of well-known legislation that wanted to help children: the No Child Left Behind legislation. Both are unfunded mandates, meaning that significant rules are instituted with no additional funding to institute them. The Hague would require the government to take over all adoptions, but children in Guatemala whose families cannot take care of them do not go into foster care unless they are given into the care of a private attorney for international adoption. They grow up in orphanages and then are on their own at 18. The Hague would also strongly encourage domestic adoption options for all children to be exhausted before the children would be available for international adoption. But in Guatemala, domestic adoption is extremely rare because of cultural traditions, and holding every child for the rare domestic adoption would mean that the vast majority of children would spend more years in an orphanage.

A study released today on children in orphanages and adopted from orphanages in Romania showed that adoption increased the health and IQ of the children, especially when they were adopted before age 2. Anti-international adoption groups are already assailing the study, correctly assuming that it will be used to pressure countries to reopen international adoptions. Some people think that preserving the culture of the children is of paramount importance--this study shows clearly that with that goal they are sacrificing the health of the children. Therefore, implementing the Hague treaty in Guatemala (if the impasse is somehow solved) will very likely have unfortunate deleterious side effects on a large number of children.

The major theme of the Times story was baby-buying, and told a story of an unscrupulous attorney giving money to a birth mother in exchange for her baby so that the child could be adopted internationally. That story should be upsetting. I do not doubt that some attorneys and agencies are corrupt, or that some adoptive parents are desperate, clueless, or careless enough to accept the referral of any child. But responsible adoptive parents should choose their agency carefully. We did serious homework before we chose, and our agency has a long history of ethical international adoption. They continue to work in countries where the international adoptions have been closed, for the sake of the children, and they are non-profit. They run background and reference checks on their attorneys, and those attorneys are responsible to direct supervisors in Guatemala and the U.S. supervisors who frequently travel there.

This whole post means: we are neither desperate nor clueless, and we do care very much that our adoption is conducted in an ethical fashion. It was insulting to us and to many other ethical adoptive parents, agencies, attorneys, and notaries for the Times to publish such an inflammatory article which suggests that an ethical adoption from Guatemala is not possible. However, these articles seem to come out about every six months. Consider them rebutted. We have done our homework, we are behaving responsibly, and our Ronald will NOT have been bought.

Snag #1

We got an email from Grand Rapids today. Among the dossier paperwork there is an Affidavit of Names form on which we wrote down as many variations of our names as we can think of under which we've been known. Nicknames, maiden names, middle names, middle initials, "nee", the works. Thank goodness we didn't have to deal with possible misspellings; we would have needed another page.

The hawkeyes at Grand Rapids thought it would be good if we included some variations of our last name sans the apostrophe, which would normally sit in the second position, and with a capitalized and lowercased D. Variety is the spice of life. I opened up Word and typed up a duplicate of the document with the new names included and printed it out. Friday night we went over to the UPS store for the re-notarization, and Monday morning I'll take the notarized form downtown to get a new Seal, and then we'll Xerox it and send it on back. All else is well.

Dossier is out the door

We're really just waiting now. After all the state sealed documents were back, we photocopied everything four times and today I drove up to Andover to hand in the finished dossier. The ball is officially in Bethany's court now. Assuming all is well with the dossier (they'll look it over to make sure) we're now in line for a referral.

That means this space will likely be pretty quiet for a while, because there won't be a whole lot to say until we get news. If news comes, we'll post it, but I wouldn't go checking this blog every day now. Toss it into whatever RSS aggregator you use (I used to use JetBrains' Omea Reader, but now I'm a big Google Reader fan) and it'll ping you when we have something worth saying.

Just Waiting Now

Yesterday Jim and I met for lunch and notarizing, for hopefully the last time in a while. We notarized a form we'd overlooked earlier, and one that stated that the copy of the I-797C was from the goverment and not something we'd Photoshopped up. Now we're just waiting for the offices of the Secretaries of State to mail back our sealed paperwork. Their websites promised swift turnarounds on adoption documents, but nothing's arrived yet. Humph.

Update 10/13/2006 20:28 EST: Spoke too soon. In the mail today arrived State Seals from Delaware and Missouri. Texas and Ohio remain.

Update 10/14/2006 Texas arrived this afternoon. Come on Ohio!

Update 10/16/2006 OHIO!

Serious Progress

It's been a very productive paperwork week. I took all the Massachusetts documents into the Commissions Office to get the State Seal this week (although we both wish that Guatemala was an Apostille country, because they get a ribbon with their seal. It's prettier). The State Seal essentially notarizes the notary. Then on Saturday we took over the copy place and made at least four copies of everything. We organized them all and made a list of what we were still missing, which isn't very much!

We have a couple more forms that need to be notarized that were lost in previous shuffles. And we received our I-797C in the mail yesterday! That's a much more exciting event when you know that it follows the fingerprinting, which we only had done on Tuesday, and has been known to take months to arrive. We'll need to make four copies of that this week. All of what's missing should be taken care of in an hour, except for the remaining State Seals that we sent off to four other state capitals.

So now we're counting down: Massachusetts State Seal -- DONE!

More Fun with Notaries

We finally have all the pieces assembled. We're almost ready to send off the dossier to Grand Rapids where it can be translated into Spanish and we can get on the referral waiting list. The last two days have been a flurry of official business. Fingerprints were taken. Documents were notarized. Money changed hands. Officials were bribed.

No, of course that isn't true! We did get our fingerprints taken yesterday morning, though. We went to a dingy-looking office in downtown Boston with a banner stapled to the wall saying, "Welcome to the Department of Homeland Security!" The Dept. of Homeland Security looks a lot like the DMV. We went in, took a number, and waited half an hour for our turn to be called. We were taken into the back room, and they took our prints using a scanner gadget that was able to give the operator real-time feedback on the quality of the print. Then a severe-looking Jack Webb type came over and double-checked everything before they let us go.

Last night we went over our instructions and discovered that we had to get a Great Seal on most of our documents. We had neglected to do that. So we sent various notarized documents and checks to Austin (marriage license), Columbus (birth certificate), Jefferson City (another birth certificate), and Dover (employer letter) to get Great Seals attached to them all, and this morning Rebekah went to the appropriate Boston office to get Massachusetts Great Seals on all the locally notarized documents. Once there, she was told that the medical letters we had had notarized at our doctor's office were not correct, which spawned a series of phone calls to various mobile notaries trying to get someone to meet me at our doctor's office today to do this thing up right. 123Notary is a swell resource if you find yourself in a bind like that.

Now the plan is to get the dossier mailed off by the end of next week if the various secretaries of state get on the ball for us. Phew.