Yes, we were trying to buy a house for several months. The short answer is that we have decided to put that dream on hold for the time being and pursue the dream of adoption instead. The longer explanation is a bit more complex.
Having kids and buying a house have been two equally important goals for us for at least the past year. We chose the housing route first because it seemed like a good time to buy and the Federal first-time-homebuyer's tax credit added extra incentive. While we did not need the extra tax money to buy a house, it would have provided us with a good chunk of money in the bank post-homebuying to quickly work toward our other goal - adoption. It turned out that the low end housing market in Ventura was EXTREMELY competitive. Houses literally would sell within the first 48 hours of being listed on the MLS, and for much more money than the listing price. In the last (4th or 5th) house we put an offer on, we offered $24,000 over the asking price and still did not get it. Basically, their are plenty of people in southern California that still have money to spend and they are buying up the low-end housing with cash and beating out the first time homebuyers that must rely on mortgages. If we would have kept trying would we have got something? Yes, probably, but when the homebuying tax credit expired we decided to use our money to pursue our other equally important goal of adoption instead. You might not know, but there is also a Federal adoption tax credit (currently a little over $13,000). If all goes as we hope and we are able to pay for the entire adoption up front (rather than putting the last bit that we don't have saved yet on credit), we will be able to use the adoption tax credit as seed money for a down payment on a house. In the meantime, we love our rental house. It is cute (see picture at the top of our blog), cozy, and in a much better neighborhood than anything we could afford to buy in.
Why do you want to adopt?
Adoption was something Brent and I always had in the back of our minds as an option for building our family. I am not sure when Brent was exposed to it or began thinking about it, but it was before we met. For me, I grew up with a social worker for a father, and had many kids that needed homes stay with our family for varying lengths of time. It just seemed logical to me that there are millions of kids out in the world that need a family and that I could provide that for a few of them.
Brent and I specifically decided that we would build our family through international adoption during our travels in southeast Asia. Throughout the countries we visited, we inevitably befriended street kids along the way. We played with them, gave them fruit, and were inspired by their intelligence and optimism. One kid in particular really drove the idea home though. We met Poi Lee in a beach town in southern Cambodia. He latched on to me the first day we arrived in the seedy, burgeoning tourist destination. I was sitting on the beach and the kids were crawling all over me - wanting their picture taken, wanting to sell us something, wanting to paint my toenails. Soon after arriving and settling in I felt a tug at my shirt sleeve and looked to my right to see a little boy huddled close to my side. He whispered in my ear, "Be careful miss. Those boys steal." The next few days, shortly after we would show up at the beach this one shy, quiet little boy would appear. He never got super close and he definitely didn't mob us with the rest of the kids, but he always kept watch over us. On our last night in this town after a day of sightseeing on the back of a motor bike, he army crawled through the sand up to where we were having dinner to ambush us with a big grin on his face. The rest of the kids weren't around and he had the chance to hang out with us on his own. We offered to buy him some dinner or share our food with him. He adamantly refused. I thought I had seen him in a school yard earlier, so I asked him if he was at school earlier in the day. That's when we learned his story. He was 10 years old. He didn't attend school. His mother was dead. His father lived in a town 25 km to the east and "fights with him (gestured being hit in the face)". He ran away and was now living on the beach. He slept in the sand and collected bottles to survive. He just wanted to be close to us and hang out. He refused any money or food we offered him. Needless to say, when we finally went to bed that night, we didn't get much sleep. Both Brent and I stayed up most of the night thinking, "if (s)he says something, we'll see if we can adopt him." I envisioned bringing him to Idaho, teaching him English, introducing him to the snow... We really didn't have much money (just what we were traveling with) and no secure jobs (we were still working seasonally on Catalina), but we both knew that we had a lot of love and support to give to this sweet little boy. Ultimately, neither of us said anything that night to the other person and we moved on to the next town. Days later, we learned that the same thoughts had been rushing through our heads that night. Now, at that point, we knew nothing about international adoption, except that Angelina Jolie had brought home a Cambodian orphan when she was in the country a few years earlier filming Tomb Raider. It turns out that, unless your are Angelina, Americans cannot currently adopt from Cambodia. We have never forgotten Poi Lee though and vowed to adopt someday when we were more ready to be parents. I guess that time is now.
Don't you want to have kids of your own?
Yes. Brent and I have always envisioned having one kid of our own and two adopted children. The order in which we brought the kids into our family was something we debated (and changed our mind on) a lot. Ultimately, we decided to adopt first because we didn't want our adopted children to feel like Plan B. (Note, I do not judge others that choose to adopt after having their own kids; this is just the way we chose to frame it for our family). We also want to give them our undivided attention and love, since they will have suffered from some degree of loss (otherwise they wouldn't be up for adoption) and likely some degree of neglect as well.
Why international adoption vs. domestic adoption?
See the story of Poi Lee above.
Also, whether founded in fact or not, the domestic adoption system scares me a bit. There are those stories of parents raising an adopted child for several years and then having to give them back to their biological parents. I couldn't do that. It would destroy me.
Additionally, there is a high demand for healthy adoptable infants and young children in the domestic system. Those kids find good homes. In Ethiopia there are MANY more adoptable children than the international adoption system can find homes for. Young, healthy children are still in higher demand than older children, but there are an estimated 4-6 million orphans in Ethiopia total. As individuals, we can't solve the problems that lead to so many orphans in Ethiopia (primarily poverty and loss of parents due to HIV/AIDS), but we can provide a loving, stable family for a couple of kids.
Why Ethiopia?
See statistics above.
Read Melissa Fay Greene's There is No Me Without You.
Otherwise, the answer to this question is really just gut feeling. We know somehow that our kids are in Ethiopia.
I guess a final answer to this question is that, despite widespread poverty, Ethiopians have a loving, nurturing culture. While many kids that enter orphanages in ET are malnourished, they often came from a family that did the best with what they had and loved their kids. ET kids seem to have less instances of the psychological disorders that are sometimes found in kids adopted from eastern European countries where orphanages are more institutionalized and the kids receive less nurturing care. (Disclaimer: this is more of an anecdotal statement that one based on facts; do your own research and trust your own gut if you are trying to decide on a country to adopt from).
Two kids at once, really? Won't that be crazy?
Yes. Sometimes this one gives me enough anxiety to make it hard to sleep at night, but we are convinced that this is the way to we want to do it. We would like our adopted kids to be able to support each other through shared experience. We like the fact that they will look like each other (rather than being the sole Ethiopian in our family and one of a small handful in our community). We hope to adopt siblings so they also share a family history, although this might not be the way it works out.
At least we are going from 0 to 2. We won't know the difference of how easy it was to just have one. Like everything we do, we'll just jump right in and give it our all. Ultimately, we think it will be for the best in the long run.
Isn't adoption super expensive?
Yes. We estimate that, when all is said and done, we will have spent around $29,000 to bring our kids home.
Yes, this seems ridiculous when you consider the fact that we are providing a home to children that don't have one. Here is a quick breakdown of some of the costs so you can understand where some of that money goes.
- Travel/airfare (2 trips to ET): approximately $10,000
- Homestudy/post placement social worker reports: $4,000
- Placement Agency Fee (for facilitating the adoption): $2,400
- International Fee (paid to Ethiopia for visas, lawyers, processing, care of existing orphans): $11,000
- Miscellaneous fees for fingerprints, governmental forms, etc.
The fact is that international adoption, or adoption in general, exists because of some sad and thoroughly unfair realities of our global world. It sucks that it has to exist at all, and Brent and I could donate the money we will spend on this adoption to try and fix those realities. But those are some BIG problems, that will take more than our money to solve or even the money of all the families that will adopt internationally this year. It will take a paradigm shift of the world's priorities and values - human health and dignity to be more valued than consumption and profit making. In the meantime, we know we can make a difference in the lives of a couple of kids that have found themselves in a less than optimal situation as the result of these big world problems. This is a topic that I think about a lot. I would love to hear your comments and thoughts. Maybe we can address is more specifically in another post...
How are you guys going to deal with childcare?
This one is still up in the air and will probably be until we know how old our kids will be. We have some ideas though. First, I will stay home with them for the first 3 months under the Federal Family Medical Leave Act. I am saving all of my vacation time so it should be paid, depending on how long the adoption takes. Once I have to go back to work, we think we might be able to arrange our work schedules so that the kids will only need childcare 3 days a week. Regardless of the number of days needed, we will find a childcare provider that only cares for a few kids (likely in their home), as our kids will need extra nurturing and attention that they won't be able to get at even the best run daycare. Brent and I both have co-workers who's wives care for children out of their homes that could be good options.
We are also still trying to convince my parents that California isn't such a bad place to live and that taking care of their grandchildren would be a reward worth the hassle of the move. Feel free to send them words of encouragement :)
Will the kids speak English?
Probably not. They might pick up a little bit depending on the orphanage they are in and how long they are there. However, the age kids we would like to adopt learn English VERY quickly. Most adoptive parents will tell you that this really isn't something to worry about. Things other than language will be more difficult.
Will the kids be healthy?
By third world standards, yes. Sadly, adoptable orphans are usually survivors. Less healthy kids don't make it in ET. The kids will be tested for HIV, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. They will have likely suffered from at least mild malnourishment at some point in their lives. They will likely have parasites. They will likely be small by American charts (ET growth charts are different than American growth charts, as Ethiopians are smaller in general), and small in general due to lack of optimal care early in their lives. They will likely be delayed developmentally. However, most adopted kids make HUGE gains once they come home to proper nutrition and a nurturing environment. They will likely show some signs of attachment issues. We are currently taking all kinds of adoptive parenting online course (required to adopt and we are taking extras) and reading lots of books so that we can be prepared to help them make as many gains as possible. This means that we may end up parenting our kids somewhat differently than many kids are parented in the US, but that is a topic for another post because this one is already way too long.
Any other questions you might have?
Ask away. I hope this blog can be an open forum for discussing adoption in general and our specific adoption. Don't worry about whether or not your question is appropriate or not. Many people are curious about adoption and don't have a good place to ask questions and learn more. Plus, if you understand what we are doing and where we are coming from you can also help support us and and our kids and MAYBE even consider adoption for your family someday...
