Referral!!!

It’s official. Brent and I have agreed to adopt two gorgeous children!

Elsa is a nearly 6 year old (birthday in September?) little girl. She’s got huge, captivating eyes and is just beautiful. She likes to play with her friends and likes to swing. Overall, she sounds like she has a very sweet personality. She has been attending school and knows her letters and numbers in both Amharic and English. She is from Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and speaks Amharic.

Asegre is a 5-6 year old (exact age unknown) little boy. He’s got eyes that smile at you and a playful (slightly mischievous?) grin that will melt your heart. Apparently he loves to be pushed high on the swing. He hasn’t had formal schooling before, but is very enthusiastic about learning his letters and numbers now that he has the opportunity. Asegre is from southern Ethiopia where people are primarily coffee farmers and cattle herders. He currently speaks Sidamenga and is learning Amharic (Ethiopian national language) and a bit of English at the orphanage.

Yep, we got our boy AND our girl! We are SO excited!

The kids are not related and do not know each other. They are living in different orphanages. Each has their own, unique, sad story that led them to becoming available for adoption, but we won’t be posting those on the internet. Barring close family and friends that we may be looking for support from, we will leave it up to them to decide with whom their stories are shared.

You may be thinking, “Wow! That was really quick.” If you are, you’re right. Both Asegre and Elsa were “waiting children,” meaning that they were living in orphanages waiting for a family to choose to adopt them, primarily due to their “older” ages. Families choosing to adopt waiting children have their adoptions processed immediately and do not spend any time on the referral waiting list. The day after our home study was accepted by AAI, we were told about Elsa. A few days after that, we learned about Asegre. We took several weeks to consider what our family makeup would be like if we chose to adopt them before accepting the referral.

I will admit that it took me a little while to wrap my head around the fact that I would be a mom to two 5-6 year olds. The original picture of our family floating around in my head was of two children of differing ages (likely a 5-6 year old and a younger child). Once I was able to imagine our family with two 5-6 year olds, I was convinced. For whatever reason, I needed to be able to create that picture in my mind’s eye before I could make a decision. Brent was pretty committed to them from the beginning. We also sent their medical files to our pediatrician, who has immense experience with orphans from Africa, and had some in-depth discussions with our agency’s social worker regarding any potential challenges we might face with this particular family makeup. We are very excited about these two kiddos and have no doubts about our decision to adopt them.

So when do they get to come home? The short answer is that we expect them home around the end of this year. The Ethiopian courts are currently closed. This happens every year from August 8th – October 8th, I think, due to the rainy season. Right now, we are waiting for our dossier to be sent to Ethiopia and translated. Sometime after that happens, we will receive a court date. We expect our date to fall somewhere in late October/early November. That will be our first trip to Ethiopia and our first chance to meet Elsa and Asegre. At that time we will become their legal guardians. After court, we will fly back to the States while their adoption is completed and their US citizenship is processed. 1.5 to 2 months later we will travel to bring them home! Of course, international adoption can be pretty unpredictable, so we’ll keep you posted as things progress.

I have many more thoughts about the referral process and our adoption in general, but this post is already pretty long and you have the information you wanted most so I’ll save those thoughts for another post.

Oh, one other thing: pictures. We are not allowed to post pictures of the kids on the internet until we pass court. The Ethiopian government feels VERY strongly about this and has threatened to close the entire country to adoptions and has canceled families’ adoptions when they broke the rules. If you really want to see pictures and can promise that you won’t post them on the internet anywhere, shoot us an email and we would love to send them to you.