Court date

Our attorney just called with our finalization date for Emma's adoption: April 30th at 8:45am!  Hooray!
When we were waiting to finalize Harrison's adoption we were both a bag of nerves.  We wanted so badly to know that he was officially ours in the eyes of our agency, the US government, and the Korean agency and government.  I think I spoke with our old attorney's paralegal twice a week every week during that time (as our hefty bills could attest).  We had issues with that attorney and we had to battle our county court for a copy of the full and final adoption decree which took forever.  Our county has laws on its books that were written for closed domestic adoptions, but which encompass each and every adoption they handle.  Those laws state that it is illegal for the court to let the adoptive parents know the names of the birth parents, which is information that is included in the full and final decree, so they will not release the full and final decree without you first petitioning the court for that documentation.  Petitioning the court can take months, as we found out the hard way.  The funny thing is we have to provide certain documents to the court for the finalization, and those documents that WE provide have the names of our kids' birth parents on them.  (It is really messed up.  Someday I will take the time to write a post about adoption laws, who they actually serve, and why we should be more active in trying to change them.)  If we lived ten miles north, in a different county, it would be standard practice to receive a full copy of the final adoption decree. 
With Emma's finalization we're using a new attorney and we've been very calm about everything.  I think with Harry we were nervous that something would go wrong or that we would lose him somehow.  This time I have much more faith in the system, no matter how strange it all is.  We had to petition the court again, but I think it will work out just fine.  We've had to wait a long time again, but when you have two kids under the age of four you much less time to focus on the micromanagment of details that are really out of your hands.  All of that being said, I did feel a huge weight being lifted when I got the call this morning telling me we have a date and time. 
Once we have her adoption decree in hand we can then apply for Certificates of Citizenship (COC) for both kids (we stalled on Harry's and now it just seems to make more sense to file both of them at once).  At over $600 apiece, the COC is another undertaking in the maze of adoption, one more hoop through which we will gladly jump on behalf of our kids. 
If you are a part of our family and friends and would like to attend Emma's finalization leave me a comment and I will give you directions. 

In The Early Morning Light

Yesterday we had the delight of spotting nearly ten purple finches on our sunflower seed feeder.  They sat and consumed for nearly an hour, pausing only to quarrel over whose turn it was to hop into the tube through the opening where the lid used to be, the lid having gone by the way of rogue squirrels.  Backlit by the sun the finches' crests were a blazing red seldom seen in nature.  My Grandpa used to call goldfinches "Pig Birds" due to their lack of inhibition when it comes to eating.  They can put away some serious seed!
Harrison slept in this morning and while he finished his breakfast Emma and I snuck outside to take a quick look at the purple crocus blossoms in our dooryard garden.  It has been a year since the last crocus bloom, and Emma had just come home the last time.  I think I missed them entirely last year, such was my exhaustion and preoccupation with our new daughter.  This year my daughter runs around the yard and points them out, happily tromping through my garden, leaving a trail of tiny footprints in her wake. 




The air is still chilly so we didn't stay out for very long, but Emma stopped for one last pose before we could go inside. 

Mother and Daughter Day

Today is the one year anniversary of the day I first met my girl, my Emmy.  One year since my hand first brushed against her soft baby cheek, one year since she first sat on my lap, one year since my heart swelled with the joy of a daughter. 
One year later, we are going on a picnic.  One year later I know this girl by heart.  I know what each look means, I often know what she wants before the thought has even formed in her own head.  And she knows that she is loved beyond measure, here and on the other side of the world. 

If The Eighties Return She Will Be Ready

 



Fine hair can go BIG, just so you know.  Ems had double french braids all day, and when we took them out her hair went poof! 
We've been spending our days in the sunshine, and sunblock has become the new official smell of childhood for me.  I love breathing in the faint scent of it on my babies' necks as I tuck them into bed, as if the sunshine is still there on their skin even in the dark of evening.  We spent this morning at Gavin Park (with our friends the Wests), where parents of small children flock during the weekdays when the weather is nice.  Harrison loves it there, and he is more of a blur than a boy as he runs from swings to slides or dashes from rock climbing walls to tunnels.  His athleticism continues to amaze me; he just never stops moving while we are at the park.  Emma is working on building both her strength and her bravery.  She longs to keep up with the bigger kids, but her keen sense of caution keeps her hanging back a bit.  With a little prompting she will go down a slide on her own, and by the end of our time there today she was climbing to the tops of the towers all by herself.  I spend my time holding my breath, running after little ones, gasping, counting heads, and praying that no one falls headfirst to the ground.  The more seasoned moms sit at a table in the sun; dressed in dark blue jeans and black shirts, they drink their takeout designer coffees and chat about the latest preschool foibles, but I am not there yet.  I just might be one of those dreaded helicopter parents the rest of the moms whisper about.  Ah well, it's a little late in life to try to identify with the cool crowd, anyway.
I'm off to enjoy more backyard sunshine.  I just can't sit still when the weather is good!

Presents from Korea

Emma received Christmas presents from her foster family a couple of weeks ago.  The headband with curly pigtails is adorable, and she knew just what to do with her new purse: hang it off her arm and parade through the house.  She has been carrying it everywhere, but lest you think she is becoming too much of a girly girl, she usually has her handbag filled with matchbox cars, tow trucks, and her steamroller. 

Small Framed Portrait

A long time ago, when I was young and naive and determined more than educated, I thought I would change the world.  I thought I would do something that would be hugely meaningful to humanity as a whole, or something that would rescue us from our own obvious destruction of the planet we call home.  I was idealistic and outraged (and maybe had a bit of a super-hero complex?) and wanted nothing more than to storm out the front door of my house and get started.  I was also 14. 
That is not to say a 14 year old cannot change the world, it is just to say that particular 14 year old did not change the world.  Somehow love and life and children and houses and dogs and jobs and other goals and aspirations nudged their way into the space between myself and my outrage, and suddenly I was 3o and had not changed the world. 
I am ok with that because life took me in different, beautiful directions. 
But I sit here in my middle class life, with my warm safe house around me, my healthy children tucked soundly in their beds, my husband due home from his good job soon, and my two well-fed dogs asleep at my feet, and I feel...not guilt, exactly, but a renewal of an internal pull in the direction of change.  I find myself wanting to to DO something.
What does a middle class stay at home mom do to change the world?  She looks to the need most close to her heart: children.  This SAHM, also an adoptive mom, looked in the direction of the world's orphans.
Written a few weeks ago (details changed for privacy):

It came in the mail today, a thick envelope with many stamps that had traveled across the country from Seattle to reach my mailbox. I knew what would be inside the moment I saw it. Half of me wanted to rip it open and read the papers within to absorb the information and feel good about what we had done, and the other half of me wanted to set it aside unopened, suspecting that unimaginable sadness was enclosed within it's white paper pages.
I opened the envelope carefully, and as I withdrew the folded paperwork a photograph fell out of it and landed softly on the kitchen counter. I picked it up and examined the face looking back at me. A boy. He has short, dark hair. He is thin and looks tall; he has the most beautiful skin, and eyes that bear the sadness and early wisdom of incredible, unfathomable loss. His cheeks look as though they would have wonderful dimples if he smiled, but he is not smiling.
I unfolded the stack of papers and held his photograph with my thumb at the top of the page as I read so that I would be able to look at him as I learned the hard facts of his life, the details that brought bits of his file, his life's story, to my mailbox on the other side of the world. He lost both of his parents to AIDS. Then his extended family, stretched too far with their own troubles (perhaps poverty and HIV/AIDS?) could no longer care for him and his younger sibling. They were brought to an orphanage, and then the boy in the photograph fell ill, too. He was tested. Then he was moved to an orphanage for HIV+ children where he is able to get treatment, but is separated from the last bit of family he has left, his younger sibling.  All of this happened to a ten year old boy within the last six months.
And here is what I know: the boy in this photograph in one of the lucky ones.  He is in a place where he will receive the miracle drugs that will turn his HIV+ status from a death sentence into a chronic disease.  He will be educated.  He is not begging on the street, and there is some hope that he and his sibling will find an adoptive family.  His odds are good. 
I put the papers back in the white envelope, but I tuck the picture into a small silver frame that had been kicking around our loft for some time.  I put the small framed portrait of a boy I will likely never meet on the sideboard in our dining area.  I can see his face when we eat dinner.  I see him when I sit and have my morning tea, and he is still there when my children are raucously eating their lunch.  I think about him, and I cannot help but be outraged that there are 5  million orphans in Ethiopia alone, a country 2/3 the size of Alaska, a country where generations of doctors, teachers, clergy, leaders, and parents are being wiped out by AIDS, and children line the city streets begging, being sold into prostitution, and dying alone.  It is unfathomable.  The sheer magnitude of the math goes beyond what my brain can comprehend.  But this is math that I can do: for $180 (or three nice dinners out, one night in an ok hotel, one day of Christmas shopping, one trip to the vet with one of my dogs, two weeks worth of groceries for a household of four...) we were able to help provide food, clothing, school materials, and anti-retroviral drugs for one orphaned boy in Ethiopia for six months.  SIX MONTHS.  That math seems simple, really.

Right before I turned 31 this year, we sent in our donation to AHOPE for Children, an organization I first read about in Melissa Fay Greene's book There Is No Me Without You.  Since then I have been in contact with people who volunteer at the AHOPE orphanages in Ethiopia and I know that our money, our expendable $180, is being well spent. 
And so I didn't turn out to be a super-hero; I didn't save the world.  But maybe we have made a big difference in the life of one child, and maybe when his updated picture and bio arrive, the boy in the small framed portrait will be smiling  and I will get to see the dimples I know are there beneath layers of heartache and loss. 
Maybe he will save the world one day.