What is this strange salty discharge?

A fairly catchy song by Phil Collins, in true Disney fashion.

If you feel like weeping yourself into a mushy puddle of tears, feel free to imagine yourself holding a little Ethiopian boy while you listen (instead of watching the video (the cinematography! the editing techniques! (Yes, I did use triple nested parentheses))) he he....

In case you'd rather read than listen...

Come stop your crying, it will be all right
Just take my hand, hold it tight
I will protect you from all around you
I will be here don't you cry

For one so small,you seem so strong
My arms will hold you keep you safe and warm
This bond between us can't be broken
I will be here don't you cry

And you'll be in my heart
Yes, you'll be in my heart
From this day on
Now and forever more
You'll be in my heart
No matter what they say
You'll be here in my heart
Always

Why can't they understand the way we feel
They just don't trust what they can't explain
I know we're different but deep inside us
Were not that different at all

Don't listen to them, cause what do they know
We need each other, to have and to hold
They'll see in time, I know

The things we do for love (the things we do for love)

On Wednesday's, during the summer, Zack and I try to have lunch together. It's a nice little break in the middle of the week and it's always fun to meet Zack at work and then have lunch. This past Wednesday we spent most of our lunch hour at the credit union getting our pile of papers signed and notarized.

Here's a list of the things we were able to check off our list during the visit:
Notarized copies of our birth certificates and marriage license. (Why they can't use a certified copy is beyond my reasoning. We have to photocopy the copy and get it notarized. Ah, the power of the notarization.)
Notarized bank statement. It had to include the dates we opened our accounts. We found out that our parents opened up accounts for us exactly one week apart when we were both 9. What are the odds of that?
Notarized family letter to the government of Ethiopia.
A few notarized powers of attorney to two different people.

It sure felt good to walk out of the credit union having all of those things done. Felt so good we decided to celebrate with one or two of the 31 flavors at Baskin Robbins.

Yesterday I took a walk down to the court house to get a notarized police clearance from the Chief of Police. The entire time I was walking down there I had "The things we do for love" by 10cc in my head. Ah, the things we do for love. If anyone says it's easier to adopt because you don't have to go through the pain and sickness of being pregnant, just come talk to me. Although it took two trips to the courthouse, the ladies in the office were very accommodating and took care of everything.

Today I drove up to school to get my employment letter signed and notarized. Because school is out for the summer that means regular hours are not kept. My principal came to school, unlocked the office, printed out the letter on good ol' South Clearfield Elementary letterhead, and then drove over to his credit union to have it signed and notarized. Even when he knew that helping us adopt meant that I would quit teaching he went out of his way to help us. Now that's a nice guy. Or he's happy to finally have a reason to get rid of me. ....Hey!

AAAAAnd here's our most recent bit of information.
When we got our Dossier packet we immediately called the Dr. to set up appointments to get physicals and get our medical statements signed. The earliest appointment times they had were on the 23rd for me and the 28th for Zack. Ugh. Zack just called them and, using his superior powers of persuasion and his uncanny ability to tap into someones sympathies he was able to get my appointment cancelled (my last physical was recent enough) and his moved to this Tuesday! Woot! We are celebrating like crazy inside our heads right now!

My Fingers Must Be Broken

I have yet to type 'Ethiopia' correctly on my first try. It always comes out as Ethipa or Etipain or Ethiopa or Ethipia or Ethiopa or Ethiopia. Woo Hoo! I did it! One more thing I can check off my list.

The Latest: Part II - Dossier

The same day as the Homestudy, we received our dossier packet! Allow me to help you conjure up an image. Picture a nice navy blue AAI folder with a pretty silver logo on the front. Inside the folder, on the right side, is a stack of about 30 papers full of articles, references, and suggestions for someone adopting from Ethiopia (Hey, that's US!). It includes a culture gram, Ethiopia facts, Ethiopian names, tips, guidelines, and even information on how to estimate the unknown age of child. To quote Ross and Elaine's neighbor, "We're going to have his birthday be in September". I never knew planned parenthood could be retroactive!
On the left side of the folder is another stack of documents that is much more menacing, because instead of being helpful, it is a bunch of sample documents that we need to fill out, acquire, or otherwise create. Here's the list:
Dossier Cover Document, Notarized Homestudy, notarized birth certificates and marriage certificate, notarized police clearances, notarized medical statements, notarized bank statements, notarized copy of most recent tax return, notarized employment letters, notarized family letter to Ethiopia government, notarized reference letters (get ready for round three references!), two different notarized power of Attorneys, I-600 Petition, I-600A Application, Post Placement agreement, Passport photos, Statement of Understanding, Basic Information Sheet (because apparently all of the previously collected detailed information isn't enough), and, of course, as our reward for putting all of this together we get to enclose another $2000 check for the translation and processing of the dossier.
I. Am. So... Excited... in an I-am-so-overwhelmed kind of way. I don't even think they should bother asking us why we want to be parents. Anyone willing to go through this process clearly isn't thinking straight anyways.
To top it all off, I'm a skeptic who doesn't like to give anyone ANY information about me. If you call me and I don't recognize who you are, you can't even get me to tell you my name. Those annoying stores that ask for your phone number when you purchase something have my phone number listed as "No, Thanks". And I'm supposed to PAY to give all of this information...willingly, when I know that people have been ripped off in the past and this is enough information to do bad things with? Hmmmm. Time for a bit more research, just to put my mind at ease.
All of that said; if I had to give my baby to someone from another country, and I wanted to know as well as I could that the family would be able to care for ALL of my baby's needs, my list would likely be longer and even more invasive. sigh.
Well, here we go!

The Latest: Part I - International Homestudy

Suzanne from Families for Children came to our house on Thursday afternoon. She was very kind, very complimentary, and very knowledgeable about things we want to know. I briefly considered quitting ITI and working at home on an osmosis machine that sucks selected information from one brain and, with the flip of a switch, injects it into another brain. In the end I decided it would be more prudent, and arguably more realistic, to just listen and ask appropriate questions. I mean, we're talking about a lady who has adopted 11 children, 9 of which (yes, NINE) are from Africa. This lady could do corn rows in her SLEEP!
Unfortunately, the purpose of the visit was for her to ask Carrie and I a lot of questions, so we'll have to find another time to test out the osmosuk knowledge pump (patent pending).
She started out by asking me a lot of questions. I did my best to stick to pertinent information that would be useful to her, but of course, I couldn't help embellishing from time to time. We covered childhood memories ranging from catching horny toads and polliwogs to being baptized by my black muscleman primary teacher. We talked about education and work history, hobbies and sports, my Mom, my Dad, my reasons for wanting to BE a Dad, and my favorite topic; Carrie. How did we meet, what things have we done together, what are OUR hobbies. By the end of that discussion I think she really wanted to meet Nate since so many of our stories involved him. When we added that Nate not only introduced us, but that he was one of our references, she just thought he must be a terrific guy, which i guess is a fairly accurate statement ;o)
Then she turned her attention to Carrie and asked her a bunch of questions. That didn't keep me from embellishing though :o) Suzanne was very impressed with Carrie. She loved that Carrie has taught 1st graders for 9 years at a Title 1 School. She loved that Carrie knew all about correct discipline techniques and how to deal with difficult children, yet humbly recognized that being a teacher, while forming a great foundation, isn't the same as being a parent. She thought it was so neat that Carrie played clarinet in the school band. Apparently we'd be amazed by the number of adoptive parents who are either engineers, or who played in the school band. I'm not sure what that means. Good thing I believe in God, or I'd think Natural Selection was trying to rid our society of Nerds and Geeks ('shudder'). I wish she would have asked Carrie why she wanted to be a Mom, but I think she already knew the answer. Carrie oozes motherhood. On paper, in practice, and by design Carrie is meant for motherhood. I think Suzanne just looked into Carrie's eyes and knew. Uh-oh, maybe she already owns an osmusuk...
The meeting ended with reminders about the next steps and some advice about how to get the items done efficiently. We gave her a brief tour of the house and sent her on her way. It was a good meeting and marks one more thing we can check off of our list :o)

Paperwork, Certificates, Interviews, and Classes (I refuse to add "Oh my!" to the end of this)

Here's an update as to where we're at this moment.

Paperwork: We have completed all the paperwork required thus far from AAI. We're now waiting for our Dossier paperwork to arrive. I have no idea what it is, but they told us to be expecting it. We'll all learn what it is together!

I heard that we need certified copies of our marriage license and birth certificates for the Dossier so I went ahead and got them. (4 copies of each, to be exact. They don't require 4 copies, but I don't want to have to get more copies in the future.) We had to send a letter to Wyoming to get Zack's birth certificates and they should be coming sometime this week. For mine, all I had to do was drive up to the court house in Farmington to get them. That's also where I got copies of our marriage certificate. I was glad I went on the last day of June because prices went up on July 1st. It totally saved us $12!! (On a side note, I renewed my passport and it arrived in the mail last week. I'm totally approved to jet out of the country!)

This Thursday we meet with Suzanne over at Families for Children. She's doing our international homestudy. She'll be coming to our house on Thursday afternoon to interview us and to inspect our house so you can pretty much guess what I'll be doing for the next 3 days. That's right. Cleaning. Nothing like a shot of motivation to help you finally get rid of the pile of stuff that's been sitting in your hallway for the past month! (And, Allie, I'm going to wish I had your foam pieces again.)
In the next month we're expecting to have to go somewhere to get fingerprinted and also go to the doctor for physicals. Other than that, the future is kind of hazy. Hopefully we'll have more direction once the dossier packet arrives.

While we're waiting on paperwork we're also taking an online class that is required by AAI. They give you 3 options for classes. We chose to take the class entitled "Because They Waited: A guide to adopting older infants and children." The class consists of a set of 4 DVDs and a supplemental study guide or what we like to call a "workbook". The class is divided up into 4 modules. You basically watch the DVD on that module (which is basically a lecture), using the workbook to fill in answers and such, and then you go online and take a test for that module.
4 modules=4 lectures= 4 tests.
We did the first module yesterday after church. Despite the fact that Zack wanted to shout "Amen!" and "Hallelujah" several times during the presenter's lecture (she was quite dramatic), it was a really good class.
I won't give you all the boring details because that would take a long time, plus I just don't want to write it all down, but I will list a few useful things we learned.
(A lot of this stuff is scientific, so brace yourselves.)

1. A lot of advice from people with biological children doesn't apply to people with adopted children or older infants. (Note: they didn't say ALL advice, just a lot...)
2. Babies are born with all of the brain cells they will have. Most of these cells are connected, except for in one area of the brain. These brain cells become connected through experiences a child has. We call these connections "brain building experiences".
3. Brain building experiences occur through sensory input and emotional components. In layman's terms, they happen when you combine sight, touch, taste, smell, sound, or movement with an emotion (joy, anger, fear, happiness, etc.).
4. Sensory rich and emotionally nurturing experiences build healthy, good connections in the brain. Sensory lacking and emotionally negative experiences build unhealthy connections.
5. The development of the brain:
Brain stem: Develops pre-natally to birth. Controls heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and temperature.
Midbrain: Develops from birth to about 1 month. Controls appetite and sleep.
Limbic: Develops from 1 month to about 18-24 months. It's the seat of emotion, impulse and affect regulation.
Cortex: Develops from about 2 years to 5 years of age. Controls abstract thought, logic, planning, and cognition.
6. The most important thing for us to know about how the brain develops is that what happens in the early stages has an impact on the latter stages.

So.
After we learn about all of this we then get to apply it to parenting.

When you adopt an older infant you don't have any control over what happens to them during the early stages of their brain development. This means that any negative effects that occurred in the early stages of their life will eventually show up in the latter stages of life. The good news is there are things we can do to prevent or help eliminate this.

Our brains can be re-wired through repetitive, positive, sensory rich and emotionally nourishing experiences. The more you do something the more it is ingrained in your brain. The brain also does something called "pruning" at around age 5 and 12 where it prunes away the weak and less deeply ingrained connections in the brain.
Also, up until age 3 the brain has a "window of opportunity" where it is more open to change.

What does this mean for us?
Well, it means we need to provide as many sensory rich and emotionally nurturing experiences for our child as we can so as to create or reinforce good wiring.

The best way to do this is to have the primary caregiver (the one who spends the most waking hours with the child) capitalize on everyday life to create sensory rich, emotionally nurturing experiences. This can only be done when the parent is THERE. Giving a child an educational toy and then leaving them alone will not do the trick. Sending the child to a great class and then picking them up when it's over won't work either. The key to making any experience a positive brain-building one is that is must be parent inclusive.

Here are a few sensory rich, emotionally nurturing experiences.
-Instead of giving your child a toy and letting them play by themselves, you play with them.
-Classes that involve the parents as well as the infants (mommy and baby music classes, daddy and baby swim classes, etc.)
-Wrestling and tickling
-Holding, singing, rocking and talking to the baby while feeding. They also say for us to hold the bottle even if the baby has been taught to hold it themselves or can take a bottle that is propped up.
-Playing together in the mud.
-Massage
-Showering together (I still don't know how people can shower with their baby. How do you not drop them?)
-Basically any positive thing that involves using the senses and mommy and daddy.

What I'm getting out of all of this is that is looks like I'm not going to have a lot of "Me-time" once our baby comes. I know that's true with every baby, but it will be even more true with ours because we'll be working on re-wiring their brain instead of just wiring it like most people do.

After Zack and I took the class (watched the DVD and filled out the workbook) we went online and took the test. We both scored a sweet 100%. We're totally 1/4 of the way qualified to parent our baby. Woot!

A Quick, Public Thank-you to My Wonderful Wife

You've spent virtually the entire month of June getting paperwork together, interfacing with our newest adoption agency, organizing everything for our international home study, and everything else to make sure the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. But even more importantly to me, you've been getting and reading books about Ethiopia's history, about the situation of the children there, and even getting children's books for our future little one. You've thought of how to decorate the nursery, how to help the baby feel comfortable in a new place with new people, and how to embrace Ethiopian culture as part of our family. You've searched for local groups that we and our child can be a part of to learn and grow, and you're excited to go to an Ethiopian restaurant next week to try the food. Your excitement for, and dedication to, international adoption mean so much to me :o)