Recipe

Recipe for a Monday

yield: hopefully only one.

Have on hand:

  4 am accidental wake up

  2 1/2 cups coffee

  2 grouchy middle schoolers (minced to be up at 6am)

  2 elementary kids, first day back after spring break

  5 cinnamon rolls 

  2 bowls of cereal

  Additional coffee as needed.

Mix well:

  45 minute traffic jam on the way to work

  2 patients canceling for stupid reasons

  1 doctor in a crabby mood

  1 lunch forgotten until 3pm

Bake for 7 hours in "8 people from our yahoo group got court dates and Jamey and I didn't" pan.

Sprinkle with a phone call to USCIS, a phone call to Holt and the realization that no government official from the senate or congress cares if you have your 171H.

Dash of disagreement with husband, glaze with messy house, and serve slowly over the course of the day.

Review: no stars.

I would not make this recipe again. It results in a flat, dry, crumbly day that no one wants to touch.

Names

If you want to throw a stink bomb into a group of adoptive parents...

Ask about naming the adopted child.

We discussed this at length (Paul and I) and decided that we would 

give our children a first name and keep their Ethiopian name as their middle. 

We feel that they can then decide to use that name later in life if they choose, 

but would have the name we give them which would give them a 

way to "blend" a little in school and with friends.

(ie -not answer questions about adoption/Ethiopia/etc all the time)

For our 4 year old daughter we chose Lillian.

It is a diminutive of Elizabeth, which has personal family meaning,

and also my great-grandmother's middle name.

For our 3 year old daughter we chose Evelyn.

It is Paul's grandmother's name and we think it goes beautifully with her Ethiopian name.

For our 2 year old son we chose Joshua.

Paul's parents had a baby that went to Heaven after just moments here with his parents

and we want to honor them and his memory by naming our sweet baby boy after him.

We plan on calling them by both names for awhile... 

just so that they understand who we are talking to 

(but my pronouncing their Ethiopian names in 

Southern may just confuse them even more!).

So... just so you know we are fully insane...

our girls are:

Allie

Olivia (Livi)

Lillian (Lily)

Evelyn (Evie)

and our boys are

Paul

Samuel (Sam)

and

Joshua (just Joshua)

I can't wait to have all 7 of my babies together!!

YIPPIE!!!

I got updated medical reports on my kids today!

They are in Addis Ababa now!

Yippie!!

Further more, one of my two favorite Holt people - Stephanie - totally talked me off a cliff this afternoon (prior to hearing about the labs and Addis news!)!

She is awesome and I hope someday to meet her and Jenn and give them both big hugs!

She told me that some of the nannies transition with the kids when they move from one center to the other so that  they have a familiar face, and they also transition with other children to make it easier! 

I just can't tell you what that does for my heart today!!

On the labs... I have some concerns, but nothing I think needs immediate care. 

I am having them looked at tomorrow though.

Poor Evelyn looks to be a little sick, too.

I need my babies home. 

But, today... I am happy to know they are one step closer!

Desiring order

It has been said that our God is not a God of chaos.
I am not sure if that exact phrase is anywhere in the Bible, but the idea is certainly woven into the text from Genesis 1:1 all the way through Revelation. God start's big and then moves small. He made the universe, the light, the dark, the earth, the water, the land, the vegetation, the fish, the land animals then man... then finally, he breathed life into man. The entire Pentateuch is filled with lists, orderly rules and repetitive commands - so that we would "get it".

Fast forward to today.
We work in a somewhat orderly world.
The sun rises, the sun sets.
The seasons change in predictable patterns.
We have routines for our days.

That having been said... there is very little order or routine in International Adoption.
It is sometimes incredibly frustrating for those of us who desire that predictable, routine, lists and rules, pattern for our lives.

Today I am praying for this document from USCIS.
I don't know why we don't have anything from them yet... no email back, no phone call, even the Congressman's office can't find out.

Today I am praying for my friend Jamey.
She has been waiting a LONG time to go pick up her little girl who will have been in care for a year this month.
She has been passed over for a court date even though she has her USCIS paperwork and could travel tomorrow.
Every time someone on our yahoo group list posts that they have a court date, its like a sucker punch to those of us waiting for the same thing and being passed over.

Today I am praying for my attitude.
Every time someone posts that they have their court date, they got their document from USCIS, or they have a new referral, etc, etc, etc... I truly WANT to be happy for them, but I see my timeline getting longer and longer. Our agency has been able to rush dossiers from their office to Ethiopia in 10 days. Mine took a month, which at the time was average. Now I wonder, are they still rushing the paperwork for those who were waiting BEFORE the rush happened or are they just rushing those new folks getting their paperwork to Ethiopia? Yes, I know that every referral is another family being formed, another child gaining a family forever.

But you know what hurts? When someone posts that their process is moving along SO FAST and therefore that is evidence that God has blessed their adoption. What does that mean for those of us who are stuck right now? Does the opposite of that statement apply? Because we are still waiting, God has NOT blessed our process? "Gee... sorry you have been waiting on USCIS... God blessed us and not you."
I know those people don't mean it like that, but for those who wait... that's what we hear.

It hurts.

Every time.

Every time someone gets a court date and I can't get in touch with the right people at USCIS... it hurts more.

Every time someone passes court on a "surprise court date"... I wonder if my date has been assigned and then delayed because they don't have my approval.

It just hurts.

Today I am praying for those who wait and feel forgotten.

We will get our babies and someday this waiting will seem like a blip on the radar of our lives.

But today... it hurts.

Dental pain and government offices

Sunday evening I began to notice a slight sore spot by my nose.

I figured it was an underground attack zit just waiting for my next photo opportunity to pop out and say "hello".

Nope.

That would have been nice.

Monday, the soreness was more clearly from a tooth.

#11 to be precise.

So I went into work a tiny bit early and asked our assistant to please x-ray 

that tooth and see what was going on.

Since I have worked in the dental office for a year now, 

I could see right away that I have a "halo" around the root ... meaning infection.

It was ok the rest of that day...

then, as if my own body was mocking me...

evening fell.

By Tuesday morning, I was DONE.

I texted my mom (.../boss/office manager) and said this tooth needed to come out. 

Today. 

Like 3 hours ago.

Well... my stepdad who is the dentist said it can come out, 

but there would be more to deal with than just the normal placing the implant, abutment and crown. 

So... he called a friend to get me in to have a root canal.

Their earliest appointment was today at 10:30.

By 3pm yesterday I was begging for a shot of anesthetic.

So, he numbed it up nicely and wrote a prescription to get me through the night.

Later that same day... I was in excruciating pain. The anesthetic wore off, the lortab was not working, and my stomach was upset since I couldn't eat and was taking all these pills.

I laid on the couch with a heating pad most of the night. I fell asleep for 30 minutes here and there, but vividly remember almost every hour on the clock all night long. 

Finally, morning came. I began to be aware that I was incredibly itchy and it was not localized to any one area.

My eyeballs itched.

My ears itched.

The bottom of my feet itched.

My knees itched. 

The webbing between my fingers itched.

I called the pharmacy to find out if it was the combination of the lortab, the amoxicillin, advil and tylenol pm...

or if it could be something else all together.

She asked if I had ever taken lortab before. 

Nope. 

I never take anything like that.

Guess who has an allergic reaction to hydrocodone?

Yep.

And I am STILL itchy (8 hours since my last 1/2 pill).

So... I got the root canal phase 1 finished at least.

I am swollen to the point that I look like I tried to stuff my face full of marshmallows.

So... once my pain subsided to the point where I could think about anything else...

I began to think... I have not heard back from the congresswoman's office about my USCIS case yet!

So... I tried to call. Guess what? The person I need to speak with is not there.

So I sent ANOTHER email.

I hate waiting on people to do stuff like this.

My paperwork is literally sitting on someone's desk waiting to be approved.

If I don't get that paperwork or at least a verbal approval, I can't get my court date for whenever it is first scheduled. They will reschedule my date. 

I don't want that to happen.

Anyway...

Also the past couple of weeks our agency has matched nearly 20 referrals THAT I KNOW OF!

Not that I don't love hearing about those referrals.

Not that I am not happy for all of the new parents.

BUT... 

Some of these referrals are for tiny itty bitty babies and they JUST came into care.

I really will feel frustrated if those families get court dates and travel dates before me (or my other WCP friends who have kids who have been in care for a year already).

Not that I don't want them to get their babies soon... because I do.

I just feel like the longer a child has been waiting... the faster they should be allowed to come home.

Maybe that's wrong.

But, that's where I am today.