The Waiting List!

I mailed our dossier to the Assistant Stork on Halloween. To say the day was filled with mixed emotions would be putting it lightly.

Excitement! This is it! We are done on our end for now. It may still take awhile to bring our little lady home, but it won't be because I am not finished with paperwork. I'm going to add another sweet little face to my daily routine.  Our family is growing again and approval from the Ethiopian Embassy is the adoption pregnancy test!  It was positive!

Anxiety. How can I just hand this packet over to that girl standing there behind the counter?  Does she know how irreplaceable these original documents are?  Does she know that, in my eyes, a small child's life depends on this envelope reaching Washington DC? Can she be trusted with five months of hard work?  How old is she anyway?  What kind of collateral can she offer in exchange for this prized document?  What is her last name? Her phone number and address? What is her mother's maiden name? Last four digits of her social? And then I breathe, and calmly hand my envelope over, pay my $22.68 and she says with a smile, "Are these adoption documents?  I know they are very important to you, I just helped my friend put together her dossier!"  I sigh and my heart rate returns to normal, thank you kind young person at the local UPS Store.  That simple statement made that moment a whole lot easier!

Relief.  It's done.  And now it is out of my hands.  I can let go and let God take over. And That is a joyous feeling.

And in the end....


Praise.  For the God of the universe who looked into my heart and Adam's heart and said, "No, you aren't done yet.  You do have room in your home and your hearts for another child.  There is someone who needs you, please let them in."  What loss and sorrow this little one will have already experienced even before the age of 2.  But what love they will have in our home to mend their broken heart, to once again be held and told "You are loved, treasured and precious.  You are a gift from God."

My job now is to pray and prepare.  These two things, I can do.

~Amanda

Things Are Really Ramping Up (long post!)

I've been a bad blogger so far.

And that's okay. I never claimed to have been a good one to begin with...

To re-cap the last month's worth of adoption activities:

1) We got the official application completed back in early August and we were officially accepted into the Ethiopian adoption program with Adoption Associates. That's a big step right there.

 

2) After getting various and sundry papers together, we had our Home Study visits with our social worker, which is a huge part of the adoption process. However, for as huge as it is, it was relatively painless.

Actually, it was completely painless.

See, the home study is one of those major hurdles you have to overcome toward being given the stamp of approval to adopt a child. Your house and your family have to been deemed suitable for placement, so the typical inclination would be to get your house shinier than Mr. Clean's forehead and make sure your kiddos are dressed in their Sunday best and then to slap a coat of Antique White (Sherman Williams #6119, for that "Pinterest-y" look) on the ol' picket fence to be sure that you put your best foot forward.

But here's the deal: That's not reality, and reality is what the social worker is looking for.

Oh, sure, we ("we" = Amanda) cleaned up and made sure the girls didn't have PB&J remnants all over their chubby cheeks, but for the most part, they just got a good healthy dose of "us".

During our first visit, we just let the girls piddle around, so there was a healthy audience of inquisitive stares and Disney princesses. The younger girls were feeling a little restless that night, but like I said: that's reality. To be honest, I thought the interview was pretty run-of-the-mill. I had been expecting the hard-hitting questions about our backgrounds and discipline styles, but the requested information ended up being pretty basic.

Our second visit (the individual interviews) was probably even more relaxed. We even got off on a tangent about SEC football. (I think that's what eventually got us the "all clear", by the way...)

Not counting our chicks before they hatched, since the official home study report hasn't come back yet, but I think we passed that little test. Hopefully she saw that our girls were all happy and healthy and that our house was a good atmosphere to bring in a new kiddo.

3) We've begun (and nearly finished) the paper chase for our dossier, the giant "book-o'-Higgy-knowledge" that Ethiopia will use to deem us worthy of a child.

Can I just say, Amanda has been completely amazing with this thing. Because of the nature of the documents and all of the seals/jurats/acknowledgments/signatures/holy writs/necessary inferences/divine ordinances needed to verify their authenticity, the dossier is probably the most tedious portion of the whole process. But she has compiled document after document and run through the checklist like a madwoman. All while working as a nurse, rasing/homeschooling our girls, managing an e-mail list at church, and now helping to organize an adoption fundraiser for another family!

I couldn't have picked a more amazing woman if I'd tried (thank You, Lord, for picking her out for me!)...

And that's where we are at the moment.

(whew!)

Venturing Out Onto the Yellow Brick Interstate

So, our journey is beginning. I mean, technically, it began about a month ago when we contacted an agency (Adoption Assistance in Danville, KY) to conduct our home study (a set of "interviews" designed to see if our home is suitable for placement of an adoptive child), but the rubber is really meeting the road now. We've gotten all of our documentation together for them and we'll have our first home study appointment on the 21st.

I keep reading about a lot of reluctant fathers who seem to dread the home study. I'm a little nervous about it, for sure, but I definitely don't dread it. I don't really mind answering questions about my life or my parenting style.

We also submitted a pre-application with Adoption Associates, Inc, and they have sent their formal application to us.

Wow. This thing is huge...

But that's okay. We realize that any time you're dealing with a government or two, some grunt work will be involved. I suppose we're a little different from the average adoptive couple, in that we aren't in a hurry to get through this process as soon as possible. I mean, don't get me wrong, we don't want anything to drag out any longer than is necessary, but we just don't have the "NOW! NOW! NOW!" feeling, as far as a child being placed in our arms.

But definitely don't mistake patience for a lack of motivation...

I (Adam) have been devouring anything I can get my hands on concerning Ethiopian/trans-racial adoption (did I mention in the last blog that we've chosen Ethiopia?). I've listen to podcasts, checked out books, read articles, perused blogs. And I know Amanda has done the same. We just want to feel as informed as possible going into this thing. (I was sorely disappointed by our local library branch yesterday when I couldn't find any travel books on Ethiopia.)

Looks like I'll be headed to Joseph Beth soon...

1. Here we go...

Well, here we are.

We're beginning our adoption journey and joining the blogging community all in one. I know that for now, no one will really see this, but I (Adam) think it'll be a great way to chronicle our journey through the adoption process and to eventually keep folks up to date on what's going on with us.

I'm assuming most visitors here will be familiar with us, but for those that aren't, my name is Adam Higginbotham (yes, I know it's a mouthful). I live in Lexington, KY with my wife Amanda and our three daughters, ages 4, 2 and 1.

"Three children under five, and you want another?!?!?"

Yes, we're crazy for wanting to go ahead and add another kiddo to that mix. Bear with me...

It's actually part of the reason for the title. Honestly, no matter where we go, the statement we hear from passers-by is the same: "You've got your hands full, don't you?". Yes, but our hands are a reflection of our hearts.

Full.

Which is also the reason for our decision to adopt. There's a lot of love in our house and it seems selfish to keep it all bottled up just amongst the five of us. So many kids out there will never know the blessing of a mother or a father. They will never have someone to hug them or tuck them in at night with a story and a song. They would never know "home".

As many other adoptive parents put it, we're aiming to make that number "one less".

So there you have it. Hopefully, this is the beginning of something wonderful. Most other posts after this will probably be much less flowery, but I figure if we're going to start this thing, let's do it with purpose.

Onward and upward...