ups and downs

The last few days have been pretty uneventful here. I obtained another employment verification letter for our dossier and... it is still wrong! I've been assured that another revised copy is on its way to me - hopefully, it will be waiting for me when I get back to the office after the long weekend. So much effort for such a simple letter. I have to admit though, our HR Dept. has been super accommodating about providing the letter (the normal policy is to provide verifications via a web-based system, but that won't work for our purposes). They never even asked why I needed the letter, which is huge for me, since I'm not ready to talk about our adoption plans at work.

We have had our share of frustrations trying to obtain certain documents from our employers, insurance providers, and the government... and we also experienced stress and sorrow earlier in the process when our agency put us on hold due to some pending changes in the Ethiopian adoption laws which would have made us ineligible to adopt at this time (there is still a small chance that the laws could change at any point and that our adoption will be postponed by several months). But more than not, the process has moved smoothly and we expect to complete our adoption around the time we originally hoped.

Sadly, yesterday I received a very stark reminder about the uncertainty that surrounds adoptions. As we have moved through this process, I have found myself a bit addicted to the blogs of others also going through the adoption process. The blogs provide a great wealth of information about the process, what to expect, etc., and also create a community of people sharing similar experiences. So it was terribly heartbreaking to come across a post on the blog of one woman, also adopting from Ethiopia, who had received a referral last month (i.e. she had been matched with a child and was just waiting for her court date to make the adoption official), only to learn that the birth parents changed their minds about relinquishing their daughter. I am so sad for her and cannot imagine the pain she feels right now. I hope that her story will have a happy ending very soon.

Anyhow, I don't mean to be writing such a depressing post... As I've said, we could not be happier or more excited about adopting and becoming parents. But we are also guarded and cautious, and hope that our friends and family can bear with us and understand that the process of adopting is like being on a roller coaster, with lots of ups and downs.

With that, I am going to get back to enjoying the long weekend. We are having a personal in-home cooking lesson tonight, so I'll try to take a few pictures of our spanish-flavored creations and post more on that tomorrow!

we've been studied

I see that my dog (?) already shared his thoughts on the homestudy (we always knew EJ was special), but thought I'd add a few words...

So, yes, the homestudy was yesterday. I think overall it went very well. The only downside was that after all our cleaning, the social worker barely checked out our sparkling clean apartment! Anyhow, even though it lasted almost three hours, it went by really quickly, and there was nothing that really surprised us or caught us off-guard. And EJ was on his best behavior (thanks to a really good new bone).

It is definitely a milestone - although there is still a lot (A LOT) of waiting ahead of us, we have largely completed the paperwork involved in the adoption process, and completion of the homestudy will enable us to proceed with the final steps (agency and DHS/CIS approvals and ultimately submission of our file to Ethiopia). Up until recently, the idea that we would one day bring home a child seemed like something so far off, something we talked about over and over, but was too far in the future to really plan for. We are starting to realize that this future is not quite so distant.

One more note - we owe our friends and family many, many (belated) thank-yous for taking the time to write such kind words about us and providing references for us. We feel really lucky to have such wonderful people in our lives.

Living on the ej: Strange Lady in our House

So I figured since my picture has been up here a couple times already, I needed to get on board with this whole adoption thing. I guess it really is happening - I mean this lady was in my pad yesterday for like 3 hours asking my people questions about adoption, writing things down, blah blah blah (taking away quality petting & fetch time if you ask me). From what I gather, mer & ry weren't kidding around when they said I would be getting a little brother one of these days. I guess I'm ok with it - my cousin Matthew is a cool kid to play with - so as long as we can be clear that my bones are my bones, we should be all good, especially if he's a quick study on the art of opening kitchen drawers (one in particular known to have fabulous yummy TREATSSSS!!!). Sorry, lost control for a minute there, speaking of which, I've got some important business to take care of, so ciao (chow?) for now.

Arf!

ej

progress!

A busy morning here... We got fingerprinted for the state and fbi clearances and made our way to the county clerk to pick up a certified copy of our marriage certificate. Both efforts were successful, but if NYC ever wants any advice about how to improve their process for obtaining a copy of a marriage certificate to make it easier or less confusing, please feel free to give me a call. Thank goodness that Ryan is so patient and can make me laugh under any circumstance, because I was definitely not feeling so happy a few hours ago!

Now we're back to cleaning.... More thanks to Ryan because he continues to work hard, while I am enjoying a coffee break. I have the best husband.

running around

It was marathon day here in NYC, so Ryan and I went to Central Park for a bit to watch the runners and look for one of my friends who was running (we saw him just shy of the finish line and he looked terrific!!). I am always so in awe of the runners.... I would actually love to run the marathon myself and like to think that one day I might go for it (I write this even though I currently run way less than I did a couple of years ago... which is way less than it was a few years before that... you get the point). Anyway, we did hit the gym tonight and I had a better run than I have in a while (if nothing else, seeing 38,000 people running 26.2 miles is excellent motivation for a workout!).

On the adoption front, we're hoping to go to the county clerk tomorrow in person to get a certified copy of our marriage certificate (if you've seen my posts below, you understand that trying to obtain it by mail seems to be a lost cause) and to go get fingerprinted for the state criminal clearance and FBI clearance.

We are also gearing up for our homestudy on Tuesday - i.e. cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning (fortunately, we're both off from work tomorrow, because we did not exactly make great strides on that front today). I have to admit that sometimes this whole process doesn't quite feel real, but I imagine the homestudy will change that a bit. It will actually be the first time we meet with anyone from our agency in person. Everything else we've done so far has been by phone, email, and in writing. The homestudy is also the final step before our agency officially "approves" us, so it's definitely a milestone.

I don't have much more to share today, but we'll definitely check in after our homstudy visit - hopefully to say that it went very well.