The Ride

Pictures from Durban South Africa June 2005 Reminding myself today to enjoy the ride. I have been so incredibly nervous and anxious- I guess something I have wanted for so very long- is finally really really close. The Dossier arrived at CWA today and we got an email saying that Tracy (our case manager) wanted to talk to us tomorrow about a referral. I have just told the folks I work with this news- yesterday and today. I felt like I needed to tell them once the Dossier was sent because I knew the referral was not far behind. I think my family is a bit stunned this is happening this fast. I knew it might be this fast. That is no surprise. but I am still very anxious that possibly tomorrow - or at least in the next few days. Our Barr family as we now know it will change forever. So I have been praying, not sleeping much, asking close friends to pray...and what is nice is God keeps sending me sweet messages of reassurance. For instance, this afternoon when I got the email about the referral...I could not get in touch with Mark and had no one to tell...and I was just sitting there frozen...gripped with anxiety. And my close friend Sarah, from New York, whom I have not even spoken to since she visited over New Years emailed me. She emailed me within 5 minutes or so of the email about the referral call and she said:

2/28/2006
Hi Em,

Just thinking of you and wondering how you are doing. My Spidey-sense is tingling so I figure we should touch base.

Have you heard anything more about the new Barr kid? Do you need anything? I wish so much that I was there. It probably doesn't show but I am so happy and nervous and excited for you... Am I totally weird if I say it feels like a pregnancy from here?

I miss you terribly, please call me if you get a chance.

Love and hugs to all, Sarah


This along with connecting with another mom who is adopting from Ethiopia who has three children all the same ages as our children- and not just that but her youngest daughter and our youngest daughter were born on the same day. And as it turns out, Mark and I honeymooned in Savannah, GA and celebrated St Patrick’s Day there in 1992. This other mom was at that very same St. Paddy's Day parade. So we were at the same parade in Savannah GA in 1992...we were pregnant at the same time for all three of our kids, and we gave birth to our third child on the exact same day...and we are both requesting similar children from CWA and getting referrals at the exact same time.


It is so odd, and yet so reassuring at the same time. I have no idea why its reassuring, but getting text messages from my one brother and phone calls from the other and the calm voice of my sister on the other end of a voice mail. It all helps when things seem a bit overwhelming...as it is in international adoption. Yesterday we had our first flower pop out of the ground...it was really beautiful. It’s all part of the ride. The anxiety, the hope, the fear, and the wonder.

And so when I find myself just feeling like everything is so unknown. The kids are great in grounding me...they talk about really practical things like names and food - what will the child want to eat? Do they have Chicken Mcnuggets in Ethiopia? Will this child be scared of Max (we have decided that yes- the child will be scared of Max- I mean he chases Rabbits!) It’s all part of the ride.

The Little Prince on Dossiers

Today we have our completed homestudy. We have our dossier ready to go. The dossier is a big pile of paper that says a lot of stuff about us, about our family, about our home, our jobs, our kids, our life and even our dog. Mark went through it and found some errors...I kept thinking with all of the research I do at work, all the double and triple checking of other people’s work I should have caught those errors long ago...I spend a good bit of time on details every day and I missed some pretty important details. I felt like one of the characters from The Little Prince, but I couldn't figure out which one. So I looked and I think it’s this one. I feel like the Geographer -the man who sits and writes everything down - how much money we make, how my parents raised me, how much we owed in taxed the past three years, how many square feet our home is...all of the matters of consequence...all of the things that are supposed to allow us to bring our child home from Ethiopia...and I feel like the child is the Flower in all of this. The Flower is the most important thing in the world to The Little Prince, but the flower cannot be counted. And the flower needs Protection and Love.



"Oh, look! Here is an explorer!" he exclaimed to himself when he saw the little prince coming.
The little prince sat down on the table and panted a little. He had already traveled so much and so far!
"Where do you come from?" the old gentleman said to him.
"What is that big book?" said the little prince. "What are you doing?"
"I am a geographer," said the old gentleman.
"What is a geographer?" asked the little prince.
"A geographer is a scholar who knows the location of all the seas, rivers, towns, mountains, and deserts."
"That is very interesting," said the little prince. "Here at last is a man who has a real profession!" And he cast a look around him at the planet of the geographer. It was the most magnificent and stately planet that he had ever seen.
"Your planet is very beautiful," he said. "Has it any oceans?"
"I couldn't tell you," said the geographer.
"Ah!" The little prince was disappointed. "Has it any mountains?"
"I couldn't tell you," said the geographer.
"And towns, and rivers, and deserts?"
"I couldn't tell you that, either."
"But you are a geographer!"
"Exactly," the geographer said. "But I am not an explorer. I haven't a single explorer on my planet. It is not the geographer who goes out to count the towns, the rivers, the mountains, the seas, the oceans, and the deserts. The geographer is much too important to go loafing about. He does not leave his desk. But he receives the explorers in his study. He asks them questions, and he notes down what they recall of their travels. And if the recollections of any one among them seem interesting to him, the geographer orders an inquiry into that explorer's moral character."
"Why is that?"
"Because an explorer who told lies would bring disaster on the books of the geographer. So would an explorer who drank too much."
"Why is that?" asked the little prince.
"Because intoxicated men see double. Then the geographer would note down two mountains in a place where there was only one."
"I know some one," said the little prince, "who would make a bad explorer."
"That is possible. Then, when the moral character of the explorer is shown to be good, an inquiry is ordered into his discovery."
"One goes to see it?"
"No. That would be too complicated. But one requires the explorer to furnish proofs. For example, if the discovery in question is that of a large mountain, one requires that large stones be brought back from it."
The geographer was suddenly stirred to excitement.
"But you--you come from far away! You are an explorer! You shall describe your planet to me!"
And, having opened his big register, the geographer sharpened his pencil. The recitals of explorers are put down first in pencil. One waits until the explorer has furnished proofs, before putting them down in ink.
"Well?" said the geographer expectantly.
"Oh, where I live," said the little prince, "it is not very interesting. It is all so small. I have three volcanoes. Two volcanoes are active and the other is extinct. But one never knows."
"One never knows," said the geographer.
"I have also a flower."
"We do not record flowers," said the geographer.
"Why is that? The flower is the most beautiful thing on my planet!""We do not record them," said the geographer, "because they are ephemeral."
"What does that mean--'ephemeral'?"
"Geographies," said the geographer, "are the books which, of all books, are most concerned with matters of consequence. They never become old-fashioned. It is very rarely that a mountain changes its position. It is very rarely that an ocean empties itself of its waters. We write of eternal things."
"But extinct volcanoes may come to life again," the little prince interrupted. "What does that mean-- 'ephemeral'?"
"Whether volcanoes are extinct or alive, it comes to the same thing for us," said the geographer. "The thing that matters to us is the mountain. It does not change."
"But what does that mean--'ephemeral'?" repeated the little prince, who never in his life had let go of a question, once he had asked it.
"It means, 'which is in danger of speedy disappearance.'"
"Is my flower in danger of speedy disappearance?"
"Certainly it is."
"My flower is ephemeral," the little prince said to himself, "and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world. And I have left her on my planet, all alone!"

That was his first moment of regret. But he took courage once more.
"What place would you advise me to visit now?" he asked.
"The planet Earth," replied the geographer. "It has a good reputation."
And the little prince went away, thinking of his flower

Curious George on Attachment

Mark and I spent all day yesterday in a required adoption class- where we learned that the term "reunion" is bad...and that you are supposed to say "was adopted” not "is adopted". We also watched an hour long video that was made when I was in about 7th grade about adoption- which had some merit- but was so outdated that it was difficult to watch. Mark and I felt like we could have finished the day in about 2 hours. Afterwards, we went with my close friend and her family to see the Curious George movie. Mark and I, almost simultaneously, said after the movie ended, that we learned more about attachment from Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat than in 5 hours of required adoption class. Honestly, the scene where George and than Man in the Yellow Hat are walking through the city and the monkey sees all of the children being loved by their parents and then he mimics every action was so well done. It even demonstrated how children will regress when they are attaching- at one point George curls up into the cradle position and sticks his thumb in his mouth...and then he sticks his thumb into The Man in the Yellow Hat's mouth...after which the audience of little kids all groaned "Grossssss!"

We are still only telling people about the adoption in a slow process. And of course we have upset people along the way. I guess everyone said to expect that. It is funny though, when I know someone knows about the adoption and they don't mention it. If I were 6 months pregnant right now everyone would be asking me how I am feeling and how things are going, have we thought about names, do we know about a referral yet...etc. We get some of that. But only from a very few people. It’s different. It’s different for us and for them. I think a lot of people just don't know what to say. Anyway, I am getting more and more excited, as is Mark. The kids are probably the most excited. Cal keeps wanting to talk about names. We looked at a bunch of the older waiting kids...just to see if one of them fit. That is not an easy thing to do. They are all beautiful and all deserve to have a home. We just keep praying that God will help the Barr kid in Ethiopia find his mom and dad (in yellow hats) quickly.

Homestudy is Done and Learing to Jump Rope

Today Mark and I, separately, signed our homestudy. Because it has been signed - it will now be sent to Adoption Alliance- who approves all homestudies for the State of Colorado. They say it will take about a week. We used International Adoption Net for our homestudy and have been really pleased.

IAN - Our Homestudy Agency

Signing the homestudy felt like a big deal. I don't know what part of the "pregnancy of adoption" it would be compared to, but its a huge thing to have done- the next huge thing is the dossier being sent and then of course the referral.

Milestones:

Deciding to Adopt
Choosing where you will adopt from
Choosing the kind of child you are interested in (infant or older child etc)
Choosing a homestudy agency
Choosing an adoption agency (if they are not the same place)
Completing your homestudy
Completing your dossier and sending it to you agency
Getting your 1600a fingerprints done
Getting your 171h (is that what its called??)
Getting a referral
Having the court date
Traveling to Ethiopia
Meeting your child/ren
Getting that paperwork completed
Bringing your child home - the birth.

I feel a real sense of accomplishment completing the homestudy. And most of the work is really done by someone else! It’s also really important to note that Phoebe has learned to jump rope and now jumps constantly. (See the post named "The Process".) So she is ready- just in case she is ever called to demonstrate this!

Getting Anxious

OK...so I am officially kind of freaking out about this...and getting more and more anxious. I feel like with my pregnancies it would always help to read all of those pregnancy books. I have a pretty big collection..because I would get new ones with each pregnancy. I would read them at night- about how the baby is developing, what is supposed to be happening...I would read birth stories...but I have to say - most of the books about adoption that I have- although they are great resources...they are really pretty depressing. So many issues of grief and attachment- that you frankly have to take a break from them for a while or you would never go through with it. There is one nice book- that I love because it is a great story of perseverance in an adoption in Zimbabwe.

Love in the Driest Season

So, I don't really know what to do to keep me from getting to anxious or overwhelmed by the idea of adding to our family...I keep reading that yahoo list...though it seems that I have probably cycled through a lot of the information. I have been saving any emails that seem like they may be helpful in the future. For instance, I have saved emails on traveling, completing a dossier, reading about transracial adoption, good web links etc. There are over 30 pages of emails- I think it has some great information that you are not going to get anywhere else- like who is the best cab driver to drive you around Addis Ababa - and how much he charges- or how much he charged before his name was given to over a 1,000 people on this Yahoo EthiopiaAdopt list! But now- it seems that many of the questions have been asked- we are cycling through. My favorite parts are reading about people who have had referrals or who are traveling soon. So I plan to write when that happens- to help someone like me get through the early waiting. This blog helps too. I hope our child/ren will grow up knowing how much we anticipated their arrival and how filled with hope and love we were. The kids keep asking- will this really happen? Cal said, "Mom will this happen? or will it be like that house where we looked and looked and thought it was ours and then it did not happen?" I told him it would happen. That is was not like the house. But I did not known when.

Brehane and Other Names

My email buddy is leaving to go and pick up her daughter tomorrow- she had emailed me about some book suggestions and I was emailing back. Her daughter has 4 beautiful names- her Ethiopian Name, two chosen names and the families last name, This is always a huge topic of discussion on the Yahoo list and people feel very strongly about it on both sides...either keeping the Ethiopian name or using a chosen name. I think a lot of people do what Heidi is doing and use all of the names and then call the child by their Ethiopian name but allow for flexibility...except the folks adopting infants- many of them seem to change the name and keep the Ethiopian name as a middle name- many- but not all. Since mark and I have really loved naming our children- and have made a real science out of it- lists and comparisons etc...We love talking about it and trying new ones out---even after the baby is born...I am sure this will be fun for us too. I did ask him what he thought the other night about the name..."Mark should we keep the Ethiopian name?" "Only if its not too odd with our name” We think most of the names aren't- and most are quite beautiful...but he doesn't want to feel tied to a name that really - for whatever reason would not work...for instance- at Children's Hospital- I kid you not - there is a women whose name is "Candy Barr". You may have noticed that our web address is "Brehane" (also spelled Berhane) this is a beautiful name that means: my light.

Here are two sites, which offer translations to many beautiful Ethiopian names:

My Ethiopian Name

Ethiopian Names

This is part of the email I wrote to Heidi, my friend about naming our other children:

"All the names are great and I think you are right to call her what she knows and then who knows once she is here and you guys are becoming more and more her mommy and daddy- other names may fit- and as you said she will have choices. I love that they can have choices. I have also always cherished the naming of my children. We have so many naming books its kind of comical and I still have lists from each kid...and none were named until after they were born. Madeline Elaine was almost Gabriella Elaine- and she has been called Maddie then for three years insisted on being called Madeline and now back to Maddie....Cal was nearly Henry Joseph- but we liked the nickname CJ and /or Cal and so we named him Caelan Joseph when he was close to 24 hours old- he is called almost exclusively "Cal" by everyone. Phoebe Darling (not from an obsession of Peter Pan- but my great grandmother was Nellie Darling) was not named for three days- the problem being that Madeline - who was 6 1/2 at the time preferred the other name we had chosen- "Miriam" (Mark's birth mother's last name- he is adopted) and we planned on calling the baby "Mimi"- when we had to break it to our little girl that no, in fact she couldn't name the baby- there was a lot of tears- from both of us! So, Phoebe is Phoebe and she has a best friend whose name is Phoebe and they are known as "The Phoebe's". The Phoebe's were in pre-k and K together and everyone called them by their first and middle names- to distinguish them- and so Phoebe for several years was always called "Phoebe Darling" and when we gave her that middle name- we never thought it would ever get used to that extent. Everyone thought we were from the South- not New York! :)

Yes its the middle of the night and I am rambling - I woke up not feeling well...so maybe this adoption is more and more like an actual pregnancy after all!"

CWA's First Kids!

As you know, our agency is very new at working on adoptions in Ethiopia. The exciting thing today is that 2 of their babies have gone through their court appointments and will hopefully be able to travel in the next 3-6 weeks. Its exciting to see that they have completed that process and will be even more exciting in a few weeks when they are able to send families to bring their children home. I have been emailing back and forth with one of the new mom's and she is very excited and it’s been great for me because I think I tend towards worrying about this and perseverating on the unknown. So it has been fun to get really excited about her daughter's court date. What does that mean for us? Well the orphanage that houses kids from infant through about age 3 holds about 16 children at a time. So as the kids are moved out of there and into their new parents arms- there will be room for new young children. That means that our little guy- who may not be in the orphanage yet may come into it at some point and then we would get our referral. Our referral is when we get a call and we are told about a child waiting for us and we get some medical information and any background that might be available and a photo. Then we can bring this info to our doctor or send it to a specialist like Dr. Aronson for review.

The Orphan Doctor

People send the info they have to Dr. Aronson and send in a fee and she will evaluate the info and provide an expert opinion on any issues your child may be facing or will need to deal with. This might be information related to TB testing, malnourishment or development among others. Well, now I just want to get the dossier done and sent!

Mark's Passport

Mark's Passport came today! I know there are several other things we are waiting for---like the homestudy...I thought it would be done by now- but its seems to take a long time for the social worker to pull together and then she has to run it by people who ask for changes and more information. And we also have to wait for clearance from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. That seems to have taken awhile. Anyway, I am hoping that this Dossier can be sent off some time in the next couple of weeks- but maybe that is wishful thinking. I told my other good friend and coworker today. She was the jump up and hug you kind of excited. It was nice. It was kind of a hard day- so it was nice to end it that way.

Our Agency

Christian World Adoption

We chose this agency because after talking with most of the other agencies and after reading all of the material sent from the other agencies- we felt this was the best fit for our family. We liked that we shared the same faith and values. We liked that they were less expensive than the others, they did not have a lot of restrictions on who you may or may not adopt and they clearly have the children in mind first. They are the newest approved agency and so we knew that we would be dealing with some things that are unknown- like timelines and possible bumps in the road. To date they have not sent a family who has traveled to Ethiopia and brought home their child- but many families have had referrals. And we have been told to just be ready at any time for a referral. I kind of wish I had a little bit of an idea- for instance: "This will absolutely not happen this month- there are several families ahead of you." That would keep me from constantly checking messages and emails for any news...ok maybe it wouldn't help at all! The other agencies and their websites can be found here:

All US Approved Ethiopian Adoption Agencies

We feel that our agency is ethical, honest, has the best interest of the child in mind and has already put a significant amount of money into developing the program and helping the older Ethiopian children they are affiliated with. They have provided money towards school uniforms and supplies among other things. They brought home a video of about 30 kids from 3-12 years old and almost all of them already have families who have decided to adopt them, including a sibling set of 4 and a sibling set of 5! It’s amazing really. I am excited to be able to see the new video of even more children from their recent trip. Its great to watch the video and then see that these children who are older are finding families so fast. It will be wonderful to celebrate with those first few families who actually are able to bring their children home.

Maybe part of why we chose this agency was that it is kind of fun to watch this process from the beginning. The first family whose dossier has been sent, the first referrals, the first kids home...And to know that this program, which is growing so fast, will be able to have a significant impact on Ethiopian families long into the future, as some of the other Ethiopian adoption agencies have already experienced.