Year's end progress

12 more days until the new year begins again.  I'm excited for what is to come and ready to make some changes in life as well.  All I can think about is the adoption and the child we will be bringing into our lives.  There are still so many unknowns about what is going to happen.  I'm thinking I will be less anxious once we finally have a match and know exactly who this little person will be.

In the past five months since we started the process, I feel as though we have acomplished a lot considering that there is so much a couple has to go through to adopt. I admit I'm pretty organized and like to get things done efficiently. I don't precrastinate when I passionate about something, and this, I'm definitely passionate about.

Right now our dossier is 99.5% complete.  We are waiting on our I600A approval from USCIS and then we will have that document and our lab results translated.  Then we can finally send everything to CAS.  We received our authentication papers back from the US Secretary of State and the Haitian embassy in Washington DC on Monday. It was pretty cool to see John Kerry's acutal signature on our documents.  I wonder if he actually reads everything, lol.  I get kind of anxious when I'm sending all this stuff through the mail. I always woner, what if something gets lost or misplaced. I would literally have a heart attack if our dossier got misplaced or destroyed. 

Tuesday we had our fingerprints taken at the US Citizenship and Immigration office. It was a pretty cool experience.  They took all 10 fingerprints and then rolled each finger across the screen.  I wonder what they can do with fingerprint ID, hmmm.  Maybe I will google it. Now that our fingerprints have been submited to the government, hopefully we will get our approval soon!!!!!!!!!! I'm so anxious, I just want to get everything down to Haiti ASAP.  I want to know who will be coming home to live with us.  This approval would be the best Christmas/New Yeas present ever!!

OUR COMPLETED HOME STUDY AND DOSSIER CHECKLISTS!!

Home Study Checklist

Dossier Checklist

This Christmas will be a quiet one with just me, Will and Rocco. We made reservations for Dinner on Christmas at "Flight" restaurant in Raleigh. Will's parents will join us, so that will be nice. We will catch a movie later that night, either "Mandela" or "American Hustle." We are also looking forward to our ski trip in a few weeks for my BIG 35! I'm getting old😏

*Making these check lists REALLY helped me with the process of preparing for the home study and completing our dossier. Without them, I would have been totally lost. Also, just seeing the list each day motivated me to get things done. 

Aaahhhh Time Flies

Wow, I can't believe it's been nine months since I last posted in my blog.  Honestly I got lazy and didn't have the time or energy to write. February 21st 2013 was my last entry, and February 2014 is almost here again. So much has happened, I can't fit it all in, but since the purpose of this blog is to tell our adoption story, I will create an adoption timeline which is posted on the right.

During our home study process, our social worker was talking to us about the importance of having a Life Book or some type of scrapbook for our future Haitian child to look back on when they get older. I will definitely have a book with pictures, but I also think it would be really cool if my child could read this blog or even make it into a book for him to keep.  I realized then, that maybe I should get back to writing.

So it's final that we will go through the steps to adopt a Haitian boy between the ages of 0-2 years of age.  We are about four months into the adoption process through Carolina Adoption Services (CAS).

www.carolinaadoption.org

DOSSIER

So we have to get approximately 35 of our dossier documents translated into French.  The adoption agency gave us a list of 6-8 names of folks who are willing to translate our dossier for us.  

Oh, the DOSSIER!!  How I have forgotton to mention what a dossier is. It's pronounced so that the"er" sounds like "a".  The origination is French. It is bascially "A group of papers that contain detailed information about someone."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dossier 

If you ever plan to go through with an international adoption, you will never forget the word Dossier.  Gathering the paperwork needed for this packet, has been one unforgettable experience lol.  It's not that it's hard, but many people are involved and it's oh so time consuming.  Every ounce of your personal life is put into this packet. From the day you were born to what you are doing at this very moment....how you live, eat, sleep, breathe...literally! I feel somewhat violated, but again, I hope it's all worth it in the end. 

So for right now our dossier is about 80% complete. The hard parts are done and now we are in a waiting game with the US government, Yay! We had to submit what is called a I-600A form along with our home study, birth certificates, marriage certificates, and a big fat check for $890.00 to the US Department of Homeland Security. This approval from the government says that we are allowed to bring a foreign child from another country to come and live with us.  This approval can take up to three months.  In the meantime we will translate our documents into French, send them to the Haitian Embassy in DC, and wait.  Nothing can be sent to Haiti until we have that I-600A approval.  When we get that, I will be one happy woman!!

I'm so ready to go to haiti. I have so many thoughts of what is to come of this.

In the Meantime...

Adoption Update: Not much going on. Will and I attended an information seminar last night in Raleigh, NC for CAS. Allie is the coordinator who does all the Haiti adoptions through CAS. There were three other couples there. Will and I were the only couple that knew we wanted to adopt from Haiti. All the other couples were not sure and just there to hear about the agency.

After the seminar, we still feel really good about going through CAS:) They are an accredited agency and have a really good reputation. The next week or two I will try and contact some of their families that they have used as references.  The one thing that scares me with the Haiti adoption, is that we have no choice in the child that we bring home. We can specify age, gender, and any special needs, but thats all. Everything else will won't know until we receive the child's information.

In the meantime, I have found a fun hobby of making my fur baby homemade doggie treats!! One night a few weeks ago, I found myself on a pet forum and I saw a thread about not feeding you dogs chicken jerky treats.  Low and behold I had some chicken jerky treats downstairs in my pantry for Rocco. Seeing this made me click and read. Apparently 95% of all dog jerky treats and many others are made in China. In the process of making these treats there is a chemical that had caused renal failure and death in several thousand dogs across the US. The FDA has done extensive research on this but has refused to take any of these products off the shelves in stores. After reading this, it scared the crap out of me. I immediately took those jerky treats and threw them away!  The next day I was in the grocery store and just started reading some of the ingredients on several of the most popular dog treats: Puperoni, Beggin' Strips, Milkbone, Etc. Surprisingly Puperoni has a chemical that is also found in antifreeze!!  I have been feeding my dog those treats for years. He is pretty healthy, but I have nooo idea what the long term affects could be. I decided to take his treats into my own hands, lol. At least I know what I'm feeding him!!

I went to a few websites that posted recipes for homeade dog treats and came across this one:

CESAR'S WAY

http://www.cesarsway.com/dogcare/nutrition/Recipe-Ideas-for-Quick-and-Healthy-Homemade-Dog-Treats

I decided to make the healthy pumpkin balls. I did tweak the recipe a little by adding peanut butter and a little honey. My dog LOVED them. Below are the pics I took. If you have a dog, you must try these!!

Canned pumpkin, molasses, peanut butter, water

Added whole wheat flour and cinnamon

Added honey

Rolled into balls then pressed with a fork

Rocco ready to eat!

Finished product 

Trying to Narrow it Down

We've decided to create a spreadsheet to help us organize all this adoption information. There are 19 different accredited Hatian adoption agencies and all of them have completely different information about their process. Will made an excel spreadsheet to help us organize it all!

Last Tuesday we attended an information session for families interested in foster care/adoption through the department of social services.  I have known for a while that I do not want to go this route to adopt. Adopting through social services is a whole other ball of wax.  Adoption in the US is much different that international adoption as well.  Will and I want a healthy child between the age of 1-2 years old and that is almost impossible in the US. Since there are so many orphans in other countries, it's much easier to get a young child. 95% of all children under the age of 5yr in the US are fostered with family members and it's rare for an outside party to adopt them. 

But we decided to attend the session anyway, just to hear what they had to say. Conveniently the session was held right down the street from my job, so I knew exactly where to go. Surprisingly there were a lot of families there, as you can see below. About half were there just to be foster parents and the other half were interested in adoption only. 

Foster/Adoption Information Session - Social Services

The good thing about adoption through social services is that you can adopt for cheap. But after attending this session, even Will knew that going this way is not for us.

After that, we continued to contact the rest of the agencies on the list and request information packets.  In the meantime, Carolina Adoption services, hosted a webinar on Haiti adoption last night. I literally raced home in time to make this webinar. I had a meeting with my lab director at 2pm, a hair appointment at 4:30, and needed to be home by 6pm for this webinar. Will was stuck at work, so he called in from the office. Allie from CAS hosted the webinar, and we were able to type in any questions we had. So far CAS seems to be the best fit for us. They have their own orphanage in Haiti where the children are between newborn and five years old. They are located here in North Carolina so we would easily be able to establish a relationship with them.  We will attend one of their information session in Raleigh in two weeks. 

In other news, I've been crazy busy at work. Had my first laboratory inspection last week and in the process of implementing a lab information system for my department. And on top of all that I'm in meetings everyday. 

Soooo ready for a vacation.  Me, Will, and Rocco have a trip planned to the outer banks in May. We rented a oceanfront condo in Kill Devil Hills. I love the outer banks, it's so peaceful. I also will be going back to Essence Music Festival in New Orleans during July 4th weekend with my sister and friends from college. That trip will deserve a blog of it's own :) 

Gathering the info.

Psalm 9:10 “And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.”

Will and I have started to gather our information for the adoption process. It's so much and so overwhelming, but I'm so excited at the same time!  I felt this way the first time we did In Vitro Fertilization. This amazing excitement of something great to come. Even thought the IVF was unsuccessful, I don't regret going through it.  

Just some statistics about Haiti and why I feel such a need to help one (or two) of these babies. I feel that Will and I are so blessed to have what we have, and to just bring one of these babies home and give them such a great life would bring us such joy. 

• Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere 
• Haiti Population - 9.6 million
• 50% of Haiti's population is school age
• Literacy rate is less than 50%
• 70% of population is in poverty
• Average annual income is $400 per year
• Approx 750,000 orphans since the earthquake

Orhpan girls at One Vision orphanage in Haiti

So what we have done to get started so far is very little, but I hope we are on the right track. We know we need to save about $20,000 give or take. This will take us a few months, so in the mean time we will just do a lot of research and take our time going through all of our information.  We have both joined a Haiti Adoption Facebook page which has tons of information and resources. We live in NC, and I have seen there are two or three other family from NC who have already started the adoption process, so I will be contacting them soon. 

We also have the list of IBESR approved adoption agencies in Haiti (see below). We will gather info from all of them and then narrow down to the lucky one.

1. A love Beyond Borders
2. Children House International
3. Carolina Adoption Services
4. European Adoption Services Consultant Inc. (EAC)
5. Bethany Christian Services Global, LLC
6. All Blessings International/ Kentucky Adoption Services
7. Wasatch Adoption
8. All God’s Children International (AGCI)
9. Holt International Children’s Services, Inc.
10. Love Basket
11. Dillon International, Inc.
12. Adoption-Link
13. Building Arizona Services
14. Lifeline Children Services
15. Sunny Ridge Family Center
16. Chinese Children Adoption International (CCAI)
17. Nightlight Christian Adoptions
18. America World Adoption Association
19. MLJ Adoptions Inc./Giving Hope Rescue Mission

I'm leaning towards Giving Hope Rescue Mission, but I don't know what path God will take us on. 

Tuesday we will attend an adoption/foster care information session through Social Services here in Raleigh, NC. This is mainly for families interested in domestic adoption, but we are attending just to find out what it's all about. We also registered for a Haiti Adoption Information Webinar through Carolina Adoption Services on February 6th. Hopefully we will be a little more informative after hearing from people who are actually experienced in the process. I am really interested in talking with families who have been through the haiti adoption process. I feel like all the advice I'm getting is from people who want me to do what THEY think is best, but have never adopted a child. It's very frustrating because we are going into the unknown and putting so much time, money and effort into bringing a child home from another country, I just really hope everything turns out okay.

About Us

ABOUT US...

The night he proposed-2006

Me: I was born in Norfolk, Va and lived in Chesapeake until I graduated from high school in 1997. Went to college at NC A&T State University and Virginia Commonwealth University. Majored in laboratory animal science. I worked in hospital and veterinary labs for several years. I was tired of being a lab rat all day, so I decided to go into management. I'm currently a lab manager for the health department in Raleigh, NC.

Will: Born and raised in Henderson, NC. Will is the oldest of three boys. He was pretty smart in high school and was kind of known as the school nerd. After high school Will went to NC State University and majored in electrical engineering. He currently works in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) as a Senior Network Engineer.

Our Furbaby Rocco :)

San Francisco (Alcatraz Island) - 2008

Will and Rocco - The Outer Banks

                                                                                                                

We are a pretty normal couple. We love going to the movies, eating out, and traveling. Since we have no kids to care for, we have the luxury of doing what we want, when we want too:) That is one benefit of being married and having no one else to be responsible for. That's onething that I do love, but I still want to be a mom. We will do whatever it takes to be parents! This could be a ten year journey, but lets hope not!

I almost forgot about our little fur baby Rocco. After trying to conceive for two years or so, I thought that if we can't get pregnant, maybe we should get a puppy for the time being to get our minds off of infertility. I did my research and decided that I wanted a beagle. They are very calm, loving, affectionate dogs. In the beginning, Will was totally against us getting an animal. Of courseI had the final say, lol!! I adopted Rocco from Triangle Beagle Rescue when he was 9 weeks old. Today we have had him for almost five years and Will and I love him dearly. He is definitely part of our family and always will be. I just wish I did not spoil him so much. He is definitely our little child to care for:)

Where do I begin....So much has already happened.

Tonight at the spur of the moment I decided to start a blog of this journey my husband and I are about to begin. Actually, we have been on this so called journey to parenthood for many years now, but have not been very vocal about it. I decided I want to document this experience so I can go back years from now and cherish the moments. Also to help others that may go through this process, considering that we are successful with our own. 

Will and I have been married for 7 and 1/2 years now. I have always wanted to be a mother ever since I can remember. After Will and I had been dating for a while, the conversation of marriage and kids came up. In the beginning Will did not care either way about starting a family. He basically said, if I want kids, then he is cool with it, but if I didn't then that would be fine too. So we decided to wait a couple of years after we were married then we would start to try to have a baby. I just knew that the "trying" would be an easy process for us. Boy was I wrong.

To make the long story short, I discovered in our journey to become parents, I was diagnosed with stage IV Endometriosis. This diagnosis pretty much means that my chances of conceiving a child on my own is less than 5%.  I could have written an entire blog about our past four years of trying to have a biological child of our own but it was too depressing to have to deal with day by day, let alone write about it. After multiple IUI's, 2.5 IVF's, 2 surgeries, a gazillion needles being stuck in every part of my body, many ultrasounds, thousands of dollars, and much heartache we have decided on adoption.

I was so against adoption in the beginning because I wanted my own biological child, but it was like out of the blue one day something came to me, I truly believe it was a calling from God. I had this feeling inside or this instinct telling me to adopt, but not from the U.S., from Haiti. I can't explain what or why this thought came to me, but I had a good feeling about it. My husband, not so much, lol. That took a little more convincing on my part. So a year and a half later we have decided to start our research on adoption agencies and rescue mission groups. We will officially start the process in July (2013) once we save up all of our money. 

What the future holds will be the story of this blog.