Age

What does age mean?  It can mean a lot, it can mean you can or cannot stay up until a certain time, it can mean you rely on someone to drive you around if you are not old enough to do it yourself.  It can mean that you are able to be sent off to war to protect our Country.  It might be that you are old enough to make decisions for yourself and have enough experience that some of those decisions are really good!

It can also mean that you have began to understand who you are, but I think even that changes over time with people.

Why am I speaking of this?  As we are trying to move forward in adoption age is a serious question.  Is there a point where age does matter? What does that look like, who does it matter to? How does it matter, what will it effect?

There are a lot of different answers to the above questions, depends on everyone's experiences!

We are considering a journey much different than we had imagined, considering something that at times seems a little crazy, but in my heart feels right.

Those of you that read this that have adopted know that we all have a different calling, that we all have different abilities and that we all have to figure those out and choose them.  It is not easy, I know for me there are some major things that I know that I cannot handle and some that seem ok, but it is really the little things that seem to be harder to know if you can handle. Those are the things you have to let faith lead in though.
We will hopefully be announcing next week what our journey is until then any advice on age or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!!

Back to the Drawing Board!

People ask, why do you post about things that could change, doesn't that make it harder?  Yes, it does, but I want anyone who is about to enter the world of adoption to see that it is hard, there are so many bumps in the road and they are not alone.  I don't want anyone to give up just because the plan changes!  Because in the end you will have a child, a child that is so precious to you and that those bumps seem so minor to what THEY have been through.

So yes we hit a bump at the end of last week, we will not be working with the Agency we thought we would, it is a very strange story but I am ok with it.  I do not want to be part of ANYTHING that does not put the needs of children first.  We had really prayed about it last week, I fully gave it to God and for the first time in a long time I did not have to really listen, it was a NO do not move forward and he put a clear stop to that path.

So now we are back to the drawing board, we are going to speak to the agency that we used when we adopted Chaltu, this week, we also are considering domestic adoption.  There are a lot more things to consider if we move forward in that direction, but there are several (that we have seen basic profiles) children that are school age but younger than Chaltu waiting...I am more nervous about this than international so we have to do some major homework and praying!

The journey continues!

What good is history??

Well- if you learn from it a lot is good about knowing history!!  If you are wondering what I am talking about...well we are just beginning with the home study and we are already running into road blocks.

1. Dr. Appts...impossible to get I had to actually explain myself 3 times of why Chaltu needs to see the Dr. and the person could not understand as it has only been 6 months since she was seen.  She actually did not know how to make an appt  since it had not been a year... What?????? Weird!!!

2. Fingerprints- no Duane did not slice his finger again (for those who don't know that happened the week of fingerprints during our first adoption!) but we were suppose to go on Thursday, now Duane's work schedule has changed...

3. Notary- Due to Duane's work changing this will now have to wait until next week. UGH!!!

So what does all of this mean? Well our home study social worker is available July and September- then she retires! She is gone the month of August!  So all of this means that we may have to wait until September to get our home study completed UGH!!!! Of course we could have a different social worker, but we love ours!!

You might be asking yourself what does all of this have to do with my title?  Well, lucky for me I remember the history of our first adoption, the set backs, the tears, the anxiousness....I am not saying that it is easy to look at the above 3 and be ok with it, BUT all of those set backs  that we had in the first adoption led us to Chaltu!! God always has a plan and even when we think that it is going astray if we will wait we will see just how beautiful it actually is!

On a separate note, we have decided on a Country- Uganda!!  We are very excited to see how this all unfolds.  If anyone has any information or knows anyone that has adopted from there I would love to chat!!!

Heres to making more history!!

Decisions...decisions...decisions!

We went to our intake meeting! All was great! We are now in the process of making a decision on a Country.  

We are going between Ghana and Uganda, they both have their risks and their benefits! We have seen profiles of children from both Countries which can make it a bit harder, but we are trying to put those out of our mind for now and decide on Country.  

The Agency we are using as had great success in Ghana, but it is risky as most other Regions have suspended adoptions, so I am a bit nervous about it.

Then with Uganda it is a pilot program for this agency, so that will incur risk...UGH! Any advice out there or things to consider would be greatly appreciated!!

As for Chaltu in this process?? (I can't not talk about my angel!!) She is very excited! We are providing her with as many answers, details she wants.  We want her to feel comfortable with this, it also shows her what all we went through to get her, I say this in a positive way, she can see how hard we worked to have HER as our daughter!  She asked me the other day when I was working on homestudy paperwork if I had to do ALL that paperwork when we were adopting her...when I said yes, she smiled so big!  How important all these small details are to our girl!  I leave you with an adorable pic of her!! Thanks in advance for any other thoughts or advice!