Three Years Ago Tonight…

We were a family of six, yet the sixth little wonder was 12 hours away from being in our arms!  We landed late at night to the cool, dark skies of Cali, Colombia and met our “already” friend and our translator.  What a blessed relief her welcome hug was to me that night when we got off our third airplane and stepped onto our daughter’s homeland soil.

We broke a few rules with our adoption.  I presume the three year statute of limitations is up and I can freely discuss a few happenstances from our adoption journey that have remained semi-covert until now.

We weren’t supposed to have any contact with our interpreter until we got “in country”, but we needed questions answered ASAP.  It was a Friday night when we accepted the referral and we were to fly out the following Wednesday, so the flights needed to be booked pronto.  I also had 27 million questions.  No one at the agency was available to answer our “last weekend” questions, so I called a gal across the country who had returned from Cali with her little angel a few months earlier.  She put me in contact via facebook with the lady who would be our interpreter.  She was a godsend, for sure!  She helped us with flights. She booked our hotel/apartment for our first few days.  She gave us a list of what to take/what not to take.  And then her smiling face met us at the airport near midnight.

We weren’t supposed to go visit the village where Nora was born.  We were told that this could cause bad memories or frighten the child.  As far as we could tell from the gargantuan paperwork pile, Nora had not lived in that village since she was a baby.  We had the name of the hospital and thanks to adoption blogs, I learned that we could take our final adoption papers to the hospital and ask for records.  So we did.  LaCumbre was an hour away up in the misty Andes Mountains.  The hospital was clean and shiny and had an open air courtyard in the center of the building.  Hanging plants and freshly painted blue trim did my heart good.  We requested a copy of the record from the day Nora was born and were blessed beyond measure to get information about her birth mama (health history, height, weight, medical history, etc.) AND we discovered that Nora’s birth weight was incorrect on our paperwork!  We also found out what time Nora was born and how long she was.  I couldn’t be more grateful for those little tidbits of information that are worth their weight in GOLD to an adopted child.

We were supposed to stay in one of the adoption hotels recommended by the agency.  We contacted three of them and the going rate for a family of six was $330 per night… and we were staying for three weeks. ($6930!) Now we are thrift-loving souls and frankly didn’t have that much to spend on accommodations/food.  The night before we left, my husband found a vacation villa a few miles out of town in the country in a gated community with a pool and a line of shops to meet all of our needs…. for $1,000 for the three weeks!  Thank you, God!  There were four bedrooms, two full baths, air-conditioning, a washing machine and beautiful surroundings.  We hired a wonderful woman to cook and clean for us every other day…. she also went shopping with me and picked lice out of our hair.  She was a saint!

We weren’t supposed to have any contact with the foster family who took care of Nora. We were told they might try to take advantage of us and our situation in the USA.  Unbeknownst to us, Nora came bearing a little heart-shaped notebook minus all the pages that used to be inside. I thought it a bit strange until she pulled out the back lining and revealed all the contact info for the foster family.  We had Nora call them and say one last goodbye the night before we left for Bogota.  We have since been in contact and they sent pictures of their home, Nora’s bed, the family, her friends, the school, the church and the neighborhood where she lived.  Another blessing to an adopted child!  We send them current pictures of Nora and have chatted with them online a few times.  They are very thankful for this contact as she is the only child they have fostered who they have heard from.

Usually I stick to rules like a fly to flypaper, but sometimes there are very good reasons to break a few rules.

The Mother Sash

On facebook I read a post from a pious guy complaining about young mothers posting “ridiculously disgusting” news of children going potty for the first time,  doing their first doody in the potty and so on.  I almost commented that 30-something years ago, if facebook had been around, HIS mother would have been posting the SAME thing!  If you’ve never been a mother, you don’t get it.  At all.

There isn’t a sash with badges for mothers, but if there were, the MY KID WENT IN THE POTTY badge would be worn proudly and loudly in a prominent location on that sash.  It is a rite of passage.  And many other mothers would cheer loudly and proudly right along with the new badge toting mother, knowing what she went through to earn that iron-on emblem!

My eldest turns 20 in two weeks and I remember the day LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY when I would have earned my first of three “My kid went poopy in the potty” badges.  Not trying to embarrass my eldest, but children whose mothers have blogs are stronger for it!  My husband and I conversed on the appropriate bribe before we settled on the much sought after gummi bear.  We bought a jar with a sealing lid for the shelf above the toilet and filled it with gummy goodness.  We explained the rules, because all of life’s great advancements have rules.  1 poopy in the potty = 1 gummi bear.  Easy peasey.

My husband arrived home on the first gummi bear award winning day and the jar was already empty.  M-T!   Unbelievably, he accused me of eating the gummi bears.  I understood his accusation, as I had in the past eaten ALL the chocolate chip cookies in the cookie jar… and all the rice krispie squares in the pan.  (No, wait.  That was HIM!)  Motherhood is stressful at times.  However, I denied the accusation and explained the newly discovered talents of our little bomb-dropping angel.  She could do one little teeny eensy weensy doo-doo and then hop off the potty, “ALL DONE!”  She deserved every gummi bear she ate.  What skill!  What control!  Time for a new rule!

This is facebook worthy news that should be celebrated by at least half of humanity despite Mr. That’s-Disgusting’s opinion.

The other imaginary badge on my imaginary sash that I remember earning with pride was the “All my kids can barf in the toilet” badge.  THAT is an accomplishment!  It saves time, money, hassle, midnight sheet changes, etc. etc. etc.  In the early years of mothering, these tasks are paramount to parenting!  Nothing could make a young mom happier.  NOTHING!  And to be recognized for our accomplishments in bringing about these world changing events would have been awesome.  But no.

The moral of the story is: next time a young mom posts on facebook about a child’s success in the bathroom, congratulate HER with much fanfare.  It is her life.  It is her mission.  It is her mission accomplished at that juncture in life!

(I apologize if you can’t ever eat another gummi bear without thinking about my angel.)

International vs. Domestic Adoption

We have been asked many times why we are leaving our fair country to adopt in a foreign land.  “There are so many kids in the foster system that need homes!”  We’ve heard all the reasons…. and they are valid.  Our answer is, “We are doing what we are called to do.”  If the Lord guided us toward an adoption here, then that is what we would do.  But He did not, so we’re not.  There are also other reasons that we grappled with during our initial adoption inquiries.

Before we chose an agency or a country, I spoke to any adoptive parent that would stand still long enough for me to ask questions.  One such parent was a mom from our daughter’s volleyball team.  She had a young son and daughter whom they adopted…. I thought from Russia.  I’m not sure what made me think Russia?  They did look a bit Russian… brown hair, white skin…. that’s it.  I called her to ask her some questions about their international adoption of Russian kids.  She paused and said, “Uh…. our kids are from the Arizona foster system.”  Oh.  OK.  (Now where do I go??)  She asked if I would mind sharing why we would look outside AZ for a child who needed a home.  We knew each other fairly well and so I spoke my concerns openly… “We are concerned about the psychological difficulties with kids from this system and we don’t want weird relatives showing up at our door.”  Some may say I’m narrow-minded, but hey, we all have our hang-ups. Those were mine.  Her answer not only surprised me, but confirmed our international selection.  She responded, “Oh, well, we’ve had both of those things happen in the first year alone,” and she went on to explain it all to me. 

Funny thing is, last night I found myself on the other side of the weird relative equation.  On facebook we found a niece of ours who had an adoption plan made for her shortly after she was born.  She is now 19 or 20.  She is beautiful…. and looks just like one of her aunties.  My husband and I talked about whether I should contact her or not.  We decided a quick one-liner intro and request to be a friend would be appropriate.  She is “friends” with her bio-mom, sister, aunt and uncle…. all from our family.  So I figured, what’s one more weird relative??  When I went to her page this morning, I discovered that she is getting married in four days.  She is busy and in love and doesn’t need another weird relative this week.  I’ll wait a month or two.