Speaking of adoption, a lot of people were wondering if we planned on continuing with the adoption once Ella was born. The answer is and always was absolutely and completely YES! The children that we will adopt one day have been growing in our hearts for the past two years and we can’t give them up! Once we were secure in the pregnancy we had to put the adoption on hold by writing a letter to Colombia officials, but we are now in the midst of updating everything that needs updating. That means more paperwork. I am getting to be quite the clerical expert over here. Seriously, I think that parents should be given a special certificate at the end of an adoption for “Expertise is Document Gathering, Filling Out, Submitting, Re-Submitting, Stamping, Mailing, Certifying, Apostilling, and WAITING.” I would frame that. And maybe make it into a t-shirt.
Since Ella’s birth I have quit my FT job and traded it in for a PT stay at home position. It has been a huge blessing to be at home with my daughter – though challenging to get the work done sometimes, I’m not going to lie! I get to put in about 20-30hrs a week and don’t have to pay for child care. I mark that off in the win column. John is still working hard up at the hospital and also has a PT job in the industrious fast food industry to help squirrel away more for the trip for the kiddos.
Right now we are looking at at least a year before getting matched with children. It is Colombian law that we cannot get matched before Ella is a year old, however there seems to be some question as to whether we would be placed on the wait list before then. We won’t find out until we get all the updated documents to the attorney in Colombia and they get them translated for the authorities. This is a little bit of a blessing in disguise. Knowing I definitely have at least the next nine months to prepare to become a family of five is a little calming, mostly because it will give us more time to save and fundraise before the final fees.
At the moment we have only one or two documents left to get to our agency. We are biting our nails a little bit as we were given a tight timeline, five months (January 18th is our deadline), to get everything updated or we would be considered withdrawn from the program (this wasn’t our agency’s doing, by the way, it came from Colombia). That may seem like a long time but when you have to get all the document gathered, certified, apostilled…it can take a while. Especially since we found that we don’t have until January to get the documents to the agency – they need to be in Colombia and translated by then! Factor in the holiday season and the long breaks the government down there take and it’s enough to give me an ulcer. We thought we were just about done a week ago and found out we got the wrong documents filled out for our medical reports. At this point I’m hoping to get these taken care of by the beginning of December – we have to do everything we can to hustle at this point!
We are still very excited and I promise that now that I’m home I’ll blog much more often. I really wanted to create space on this site to give more information on adoption research, FAQs, and things like that so I could help be a resource to anyone that has questions about adoption. I experiment with Colombian food sometimes and am trying to periodically do research about Colombian customs and really want to get better at posting pictures about that too. After all, once we bring the kids home we will be an Italian-Irish-German-Colombian-American family!
I hope everyone is able to have a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving with family and friends! Enjoy your turkey everyone (and don’t forget to brine it, you won’t be sorry)!
-Theresa