Home Study

Yesterday was day two of Home Study; one day remaining.  Home Study is where we get trained in all things adoption families need to know.  How the training is done varies from place to place, but ours was done in our home by a very nice lady who's very experienced and lives right in our community.  It took a little time to get done, but overall not an unpleasant event.  It's a good idea, generally, to make sure people who are assuming responsibility for children are prepared.  I've often thought it would be helpful, and even reasonable, for insurance companies or hospitals to require something similar for birth parents.  After all, most kids are not adopted, so most parents don't get training like this.  For our part, in retrospect, it would have been helpful to have learned some of this information in formal training (rather than by experience only) for our first four kids.

This morning, we saw our names on the Holt update list:

Working on Dossier / Homestudy

The Romano Family                                                                (WC 3y boy)

(WC means Waiting Child) we're with about 15 others who are working on immigration paperwork and about 20 others who are waiting for a referral (that's where you find out who your new child is).  14 other families are waiting for Ethiopian court action and 18 who have passed the court and are waiting for travel dates.  Groups traveling in June and July have been assigned, and in reading the forums and other blogs, we're getting a better idea of just how long this whole process can take.  I keep telling people our goal is to set the land speed record for international adoption.  Seeing the waiting list gives me pause, but seeing our name on it and knowing our dossier is just about done pumps me back up.  Meanwhile, we're researching grants and other fundraising options.  More on that later.

Celebrating!.....a bit

Word from Jessica at Holt, the committee matched us with H.  Great news!  We're very encouraged.  We're using that word rather than excited because it's still a very long process.  We've got to do just under a million things before we can truly call him our son or brother.  Those things include: build a dossier for the State Dept & Customs, finish our home study, pass Ethiopian court, get his visa approved, raise another $12,000, travel to Ethiopia twice, and tell our story about a thousand times.  Looking forward to all of it.

Prayers tonight

I thought tomorrow would be our first blog post.  It seems more appropriate to blog about our adoption when we know more.  Still, I can't help but write some about how I am/we are feeling now.

Spoke again today with Jessica from Holt.  Long discussion about H, his condition, our disposition, our plans and our expectations.  We're going to committee again tomorrow; sort of.  This time, it's just us, no other family competing for selection.  Just a simple question: given what they know about us, is being part of our family better for a 3-year old boy with a difficult neurological condition than being in an orphanage 1/2 a world away?

We're hopeful.  Prayers tonight.