are we locked and loaded?

After sprinting up the wait list ladder from early May to late June, we have officially come to a steady halt. There has been no movement in almost two months. We still remain officially #16, and unofficially (we think) #10 with 6 families on hold in front of us. I'm not even sure how I feel about it....resigned, I suppose.

I do know that it has to be easier to wait for a child BEFORE the referral rather than the waiting after we've been matched and have seen his little face. Knowing this keeps things in perspective. I don't want to think about the waiting AFTER the referral. I know it will test me in ways beyond what I can imagine.

It's hard to get too discouraged when sweet Kysa fills our days, but honestly, after now being in this process for over a year it feels incredibly nebulous. Our friends and neighbors are having babies we imagined would be about the same age as our baby boy...but we're just not sure now. I've allowed myself to buy a few things for Mamoosh so that he stays REAL not just some fantasy. But I do find myself wondering sometimes if it will ever happen....

We did get a hint of good news this week in an email from our adoption coordinator. Here's the quick message:

Just wanted to let you know that your dossier was sent today to Ethiopia. Once it has arrived, it will be translated and wait to be matched with a referral.

I guess that means they're getting us locked and loaded.

Fredrik did ask our coordinator directly why there have been so few referrals and this is her answer:

The regional MOWA in one of the regions we work in has been slow to approve any paperwork as they just finished inspecting all the orphanages in that region. The regional MOWA closed many orphanages, none of which we worked with, so the MOWA is having to take care of relocating the children from those orphanages. Our staff reports to us that the regional MOWA is experiencing a ‘back-lash’ from all the changes that they are trying to implement. They feel it is temporary and should be resolved soon. We do work with another orphanage in a different region and are slowly giving out referrals from them (although mostly older children).

*MOWA is Ministry Of Women's Affairs

We're hoping that once MOWA gets the children from the closed care centers into their new care centers that the referrals will pick back up again.

Please keep all the children being shuffled around in your thoughts and prayers...they all deserve Forever Homes.

Namaste.
Allison

I am not enough...

I've been procrastinating. Writing this post means having to put my feelings into words, and I haven't wanted to turn the images and fears that haunt my dreams and waking hours into coherent thoughts.

While I was pregnant with Kysa, every meal I ate became a gift to my growing child...it was the only real gift I could give her on a daily basis along with sending her thoughts of love and providing a stress free environment for her growth and development. Every locally grown salad, bowl of organic berries, or whole wheat bread became a gift of love to her. I, alone could provide my child nutrition, love and safety. It was so easy and simple. It was empowering to feel that I was enough...

This week we watched the nightly news during our dinner time. The images from the Horn of Africa bring our conversation to a halt and we stop eating as Fredrik and I retreat into ourselves to listen, watch and process. After the segment is over I busy myself with Kysa and Fredrik begins to clear the plates. Dinner is over. I'm feeling physically ill. We avoid each others' gaze, but I feel Fredrik watching me to see if I'm okay. When I can breathe again I initiate the conversation, and we begin to process the information together moving from general concern for the entire region to the very personal. This has been our nightly dance.

And while waiting for our son is hard enough, the famine in Ethiopia and surrounding countries makes the wait excruciating. I just know there is a baby boy who NEEDS us and we are so ready to be his family. We are so willing to help...yet we wait and wait for our number to be called.

I feel utterly powerless. I am not enough...

If you haven't been following the news, please take a look at these images from The Economist posted below. If the people in the images seem far away, foreign and not a part of your world then please consider your connection to me. If you are reading this you are most likely a friend or family member...or also involved in adoption in some way. Please see these people as MY family, because quite simply...they are.

This is what I see:
Every skeletal baby is my son, every desperate yet stoic mother is his birth mother, every defeated man is my son's birth father, every group of weary children are my son's siblings, the masses of people are his fellow countrymen, his tribe, his community....and that makes them mine. It's personal...oh, so personal.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2011/08/pictures

Please consider joining Fredrik and me in sending aid to one of these agencies:
IRC (International Rescue Committee) - https://www.rescue.org/donate/drought_africa
World Food Program - https://www.wfp.org/donate/hoa_banners
USAID - http://www.usaid.gov/hornofafrica/
Oxfam - http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/east-africa-food-crisis#donate

We appreciate your thoughts and prayers, and any aid you might send to our family in the Horn of Africa...

Aum Shanti-
Allison

We are the world, and this time it's personal

Beautiful beaches along the North Carolina coast. Wonderful friends with whom to share memories and dreams. Amazing food and drinks to get us through each day...no shortage of anything we could imagine.

This entire week we are most blessed to have our little Kysa around at all times. Her smile cannot help but place a mirror image on the faces of everyone she meets. It's a household full of smiles this week.

Personally, I needed this vacation. I needed to get away, to relax, to escape work for a few short days. It's been wonderful, a real mental break. I even finished my book... ah, many months in the making. Thank goodness for a vacation, the best time to catch up on that reading I have wanted to finish for a long time. The book I finished is called "There is No Me Without You" by Melissa Fay Greene.

It's impossible to summarize a 400+ page book in a few sentences and do it justice, but I can share my reaction. I hurt that there are millions of orphans in Ethiopia. I feel for the pain those childrens and families have to go through. I praise those before us who have ventured to adopt from Ethiopia and other countries and given those children a chance and some love. I cried.

We sit at Topsail Beach this week eating well, sipping drinks, surfing, swimming and laughing. I hope next summer we will be a family of four. But right now we are also aware of the suffering going on in Ethiopia and the surrounding Horn of Africa countries - a famine worse than in many decades, caused by nature but made worse by inactivity, denial or outright inhumanity by the rest of the world. As of this week, 11.6 million people are in desperate need of humanitarian aid in this part of the world - of which 3.2 million effected are Ethiopians. Those are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. Yes, it made the nightly news last week. But what else is being done..what else can be done? 20 years ago we sang "We are the World". As another mother of Ethiopian adopted children said this week, "this time it's personal". Yes, this time it is personal.

Read more about the current famines: http://reliefweb.int/node/436245

Somewhere 7,447 miles from here a family is living that has had or will have a son, that will one day be our son. Perhaps they are doing moderately well, perhaps they are not impacted at all by the famines.. or, perhaps they are one of the 3.2 million who are either directly or indirectly impacted by these famines. Tonight I think of that family. I want to spread their word. If you read this, please listen and absorb the words don't just let them gloss over like words in a magazine article. If you read this you are obviously a family member, a friend or a follower with high interest in this region or our story. You can help. "Just 50 US cents per day is enough to feed a hungry child or a mother on the edge or survival." - UN World Food Program on help needed in the Horn of Africa.

We contacted our adoption agency for advice. While they cannot endorse a particular aid organization, they did share some names of places that could use your help. I list them here with links to their pages. Now the rest is up to you, as you can see above... it doesn't take much.

IRC (International Rescue Committee) - https://www.rescue.org/donate/drought_africa
World Food Program - https://www.wfp.org/donate/hoa_banners
USAID - http://www.usaid.gov/hornofafrica/
Oxfam - http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/east-africa-food-crisis#donate

In addition, we continue to support and believe in the work that AHOPE is doing in Ethiopia with HIV/AIDS children. Read the book I was talking about and you'll understand the importance of this organization too.

AHOPE - http://www.ahopeforchildren.org/

Most of you reading this are blessed and are also likely enjoying wonderful time with family and friends this summer. This is amazing, you should enjoy it thoroughly and be thankful. That song 20 years ago was a little corny and today risks sounding very 'old school'. No need to go dig up that old recording or search for it on You Tube or Pandora (although you may get a laugh if you do). Still, we really are the world. It's not a very big place. Somewhere out there a child is hungry...that might be our son. This time it is personal.

Love.

/ fredrik

Doesn't feel like good news...

Fredrik and I have been so excited by the multiple referrals recently and our seemingly rapid movement up the wait list.. We've loved all the excitement from family and friends who celebrate with us and encourage us as we climb the wait list ladder.

While trying to be realistic we check the blog multiple times a day to see if there's any movement and it seems weekly there's at least one or two referrals. Some of these referrals don't move us closer to our baby, but nonetheless it's a happy time to celebrate a child getting a forever family.

Today our agency posted new wait list estimates.

Infant Girl (0-2 years): 13 months
Infant Boy (0-2 years): 12 months
Toddler Girl (2-4 years): 6 months
Toddler Boy (2-4 years): 4 1/2 months
Older children (5 and up): under two months.

Please bear in mind that these times are estimates. We have no control over the timing of children in need of families. However, if the trend continues over the next few months, we anticipate all wait times being under one year.

So while I think this is suppose to be good news, I think I was getting WAY too optimistic. In my mind I was hoping for a fall referral and bringing baby boy home sometime this winter. Sigh. We're still #10 unofficially, we think, so who knows....

Fredrik gets to say, "I told you so...."
Bleh.

A few more pieces of the puzzle

We have been on the wait list for 2 months now, but just this week we completed a few more pieces of the puzzle before getting ready for our referral. On Monday this week we finally completed our online educational component and answered the questionnaire. On Tuesday we went one last time (can that really be true?) to the bank to notarize our I-171H form from the USCIS. Envelopes addressed, check. Stamps, check. Done (with these pieces of the puzzle).

Somehow it feels no different as we have been waiting and moving up the list already at rapid pace. But, an amazing feeling that now all the paperwork really might just be in place. We hold our breath.

Easy to sit back and feel that the puzzle is completed, but when you really think about it and pull back the lens... you realize that the reality is only a few pieces in the corner are set and remaining are thousands of puzzle pieces scattered and waiting for their opportunity to tell a story. I can't wait to see each piece, lay each piece and see the beautiful story unfold.

/ fredrik

Hard to fathom being at #10 (ok, #16)

Our journey keeps going. Another week, another referral that moves us up the list.

Just this afternoon Allison says to me, "it's hard to check the [IAN] web site and not see a referral that moves us up the list." Yeah, I agree. But I keep telling her, they don't happen every day... not even every week or month sometimes. Yet, they actually DO seem to keep coming. By the end of the day we officially moved up another spot to #16 (unofficially #10 with some families on 'hold').

It's hard not to try to do the math. So, if there is 1 referral per week and we are unofficially #10 and everyone else stays on 'hold' then we will get our referral...

It's hard not to rearrange the house in your mind. So, we'll need to get that extra stroller seat, that extra high chair, that extra car seat, those boy clothes, that other bed...

It's hard not to visualize our family with Mamoosh even more now. So, we really are within grasp of this moment that just a few months ago seemed so far away. Just this last weekend we had a mini Kysa photoshoot with Tamara. Our precious little Kysa so cute with her blonde little curls. But we still can't help talk to Tamara about having her there at the airport to capture our coming home with Mamoosh and those first moments in Charleston with our two beautiful children. I can't wait for that moment...

It's hard not to check the IAN web site daily. Good night for now, I hope to blog again tomorrow [after I check the IAN web site again].

/ fredrik

Light Bulb Bustin' Gratitude

Last night I couldn't sleep, and in the early morning hours my mind began to race about the adoption. After several useless minutes of mind spinning, I was able to rest my mind on our son's Enat (Amharic word for mother). I was able to finally go back to sleep by breathing her thoughts of love and gratitude.

This morning I went to yoga tired, emotionally raw, and my knees and back hurt. I dedicated my practice to Enat as I do every day. Towards the end of class we rolled onto our backs to prepare for back bending practice. My teacher, Jeffrey, began to talk about heart opening and gratitude, and he encouraged us to offer up our efforts to something or someone else. I closed my eyes and thought of Enat, my exhaustion and pain had long disappeared and I felt a deep sense of peace and joy. A smile began to escape my lips despite the effort ahead of me. At that precise moment there was a sharp crack of glass shattering, as the light bulb directly over my head burst and rained down on me.

Just me.
Just around my mat.
Seriously. I couldn't make this up.
Glass was in my hair, my clothes, stuck in my mat, and to my sweaty skin. I could still feel the residue of the peace and joy I felt only seconds before as I looked around me with wonder.

Jeffrey grabbed a broom and swept up the glass around me, and I continued class searching for meaning in the light bulb explosion, monkey mind spinning...Is Enat okay? is she still alive?...was our son just born?...is he okay? (and then embarrassingly, my ego kicked in)...was that a siddhi (special yogic power)? did the enormity of my gratitude bust the light bulb?

And then on the way home I remembered...
Jeffrey started class with the study of the following yoga sutra: abhyasa vairagyaabhyam tan nirodhah
meaning: fluctuations of the mind can be stopped with practice and non-attachment.

He asked each student to rephrase the sutra in our own words.
My version was:
Coming to the mat everyday without taking yourself seriously will bring you sanity.

And so began the conversation with myself that sounded a bit like this in my head...
Slow down, Yogamama, while you might be capable of more than you can imagine, you are NOT an X-men. Thinking that you are capable of blowing up a light bulb with your gratitude probably falls under the category of taking yourself too seriously.

And so light bulb (and Jeffrey-ji), I thank you for simultaneously teaching me the power of possibility and humility. I don't believe in coincidence and perhaps there is a connection to my gratitude, the light bulb and Enat, perhaps it's just time for Jivamukti to change their light bulbs, or perhaps I needed a light bulb to literally explode over my head to teach me a deeper meaning of the yoga sutra.
I'll never know.
And I'm okay with that.
Back to the mat. With light bulb bustin' gratitude.
Swaha.