Update on Ethiopia

Now that I've finally blogged about bringing Noah home, I can get back to talking about all the inaction that's been going on with our Ethiopian adoption!

When we started the process to adopt from Ethiopia we didn't have any children. NONE. Our dossier was sent in September of 2009. We found out about Caleb in early October 2009 and then we brought him home in December 2009. Caleb and our Ethiopian baby can be twins! ...we thought.

Fast forward to August 2010. We need to adopt a baby NOW! was the thought we got. October 2010 Noah enters the world and finds his place in our family. Noah and our Ethiopian baby can be twins! ...we think.

Who knows when we will get a referral for this little one? We thought he was going to be our first child. ...then we thought he was going to be our second child. ...now we're almost positive she'll be our third child.

Did you catch that? I said SHE. We are officially going to wait for a girl! Yea for girls! We called our agency and told them that, even though it says we'd take either gender, we really only want a girl. It just feels right. What also feels right is increasing our age range from 0-18 months to 0-24 months. Not a big deal, but when you feel prompted to do something, you best just go ahead and do it. We are also now open to mild to moderate special needs. That also may or may not be a big deal. But you never know.

We are also in the process of updating our dossier. Turns out that the Ethiopian government has decided that if your paperwork is older than 18 months then it's too old. So you have to redo it. Basically, we've had to re-apply all over again. That means getting reference letters, police reports, bank statements, power of attorney, medical statements, employment letters, etc. ALL over again. And ALL notarized. So we've been busy these past few weeks getting all that stuff done. Turns out it IS easier the second time around. All we have left is updating our homestudy. And, as of this morning, we are almost done with that! Yea!

Where are we in terms of waiting now? Well, if we were okay with getting a boy, then we'd be about #2 on the list. That means we could get a referral in the next month or so. However, since we are now waiting for our little girl, the wait will be longer. And we are totally okay with that. Noah is only 4 months old and I would be lying if I said I'd be okay with adding another child by summer. As it is, hopefully we'll get a referral by summer. Then the REAL wait begins.

So, that's where we are in a nutshell. Happily waiting for a girl! I'm excited! Hopefully, someday I will be able to do cool things like THIS to her hair. :)

I guess I need to start practicing.

The Day it Rained and Homecoming (October 14-15)

Let me just start this post by saying that we are home. In fact, Noah is four months old today! This post is just describing our last two days in Pennsylvania.

Wednesday night Zack and I decided to indulge ourselves and paid to see "Toy Story 3" on our hotel TV. It took us probably 4 hours to watch it because Noah kept waking up crying. (We discovered later that Noah and his infant formula did not agree with each other.) We probably didn't get more than 3 hours of sleep that night.
We woke up Thursday morning to rain. Despite the rain we decided to go into Philadelphia and do some sight-seeing. We were only planning on seeing a few things anyway. We drove into the city and decided to splurge on the underground parking attached to the visitor's center. I think it cost us $10, but it was worth not having to walk through the rain with our boys.

We enjoyed all that the visitor's center had to offer, namely, gift shops (we are now the proud owners of a Philly Umbrella) and snacks.

Enjoying a snack.

After we purchased our grossly overpriced umbrella we headed across the street to see the Liberty Bell.

Here it is in all it's glory.

This was totally worth the trip.

Then we walked down the street to Independence Hall only to discover that we needed a ticket to get in. The tickets were free, but you had to get them at the visitor's center. Bleh. We decided to bag it. We ran through the rain and ducked into a mall of sorts where we got some Philly memorabilia.


We called it a day and headed back to our hotel. We spent the rest of the evening packing for our flight the next morning.

The next morning, while we were waiting for the airport shuttle, a nice lady in the hotel lobby took our picture for us. I think she said she was with the government or military security preparing for the President's visit to Philadelphia later that day. We missed the President by just a few hours!


Our flight was as uneventful as we had hoped for. Aside from Caleb's usual flirting with the flight attendants and all of the fawning over Such A Tiny Baby!, we were pleased that nothing much happened.


We were met at the airport by our parents. Much love to Noah and Caleb was had by all.

Caleb, showing off his "touchdown!"

When we pulled up to the house we were greeted by these awesome signs that our family had made. (I'm positive that's my mom's handiwork on the garage door.)

The inside was decorated, too! We have such an awesome family. And I haven't even mentioned the fact that they had dinner ready for us that evening, too. They thought of everything. I mentioned the awesomeness, right?

Welcome home, baby Noah. We are so so so happy you are here!