Decisions

Well, I guess our last post left a lot of people stumped as to what we are going to do. Needless to say we are still stumped. Our social worker has been wonderful and made calls and according to the embassy we should proceed with the adoption. We are still waiting on our approval from USCIS and figure we still have several weeks before that even gets here. Right now we are hestitant to proceed with Rwanda. We are thinking we would be fine on the adoption end but proceeding without an agency when changes may be coming is a little scary because of the risk of getting stuck in country. This would be an extreme burden to us because we have two little girls at home. So we are going to wait, pray, and in the mean time work on some other options of how to expand our family. We are seriously weighing going to infertility treatment options (Oh No the I word) and also going through a local agency to work on a possible state adoption. A state adoption is something we have always kicked around and will not enter one without serious consideration. We know there are many issues with adopting a child in foster care but we want to explore our options and have doors open for us. Who knows maybe we will wind up with more than just one, or more than we could even bargain for but basically we are going to leave everything up to the man upstairs and see which direction he leads us in. We are not necessarily closing the door to Rwanda but just going to hold onto the work we have done and move further along if we feel like it is meant to be.

The past week and a half or so has brought a lot of sleepless nights and fun days with it. Delylah is in a big girl bed after trying to climb out a week and a half ago. Let's just say that was a rough transition with two toddlers up half the night. Finally, she has settled into her bed and for the past two nights has slept straight through. WHEWWWW!

This past weekend was a great one. We had two birthday parties to celebrate. One with Lynn Marie who just turned two and one with Zubin who turned 3. It is great to see all these children growing up. We also had a Princess and Frog movie night with Lennah and Delylah's little friends. It was a great night and the girls had a blast. Delylah's old cribmate Meron came for the fun and it was so cute watching them hug each other like they are just age old friends. I hope these two little girls will always share this bond and be joined for life. So many do not realize that adoption not only helps build families but it brings so many other people into your life and we are so thankful for all the relationships we have formed throughout our journeys.

Not Good News

Today we heard some potentially bad news for independent adoptions from Rwanda. It appears that they will be ratifying the Hague treaty. This is great because it strives to ensure that all adoptions are completely ethical however, one requirement is that you must use an approved adoption services provider. We are not quite sure where this leaves families like us who are working on independent adoptions. We chose this route for financial reasons, because we have experienced IA before and felt like we could handle flying solo, and lastly because that is what the Rwandan government preferred. We are still waiting for confirmation on all of this but if this happens it will more than double our expenses which realistically we cannot afford right now. Going solo still was a ball park 12,000 with travel and expenses but having to switch to an agengy would be more around 25,000. Right now we are in limbo and of course it is not a great feeling.

Homestudy done and spring is coming

Lennah and Delylah giving Charlie a big hug

Cribmates Delylah and Meron

Delylah and Emebet

Last week we met with our social worker and finished our homestudy. It should be approaching the USCIS office any day now. We also had our fingerprints done a week and a half ago so hopefully it will be about 2 more months until we get our approval. From there we will finish off our dossier and go through the several rounds of state, country, and embassy seals we need. We also made another change and decided to leave our gender open. As much as we think a son would be great another girl would also bring joy to our lives (plus the cost would be less since we are a house full of girls with lots of girly things). So we are excited. We are still thinking that we will have our paperwork to Rwanda by the summer, wait about 5 months for approval, another two months for a referral, then a court date two months later, and travel a few weeks after that. Hopefully, it will correlate with the end of the school year so I would just roll into summer next year. Plus we need this adoption to happen after January next year in terms of travel because I will have more paid time off accummulated and Keith will finally be at 3 weeks vacation time paid.

On the homefront we have had some great times recently. The weekend before last Emebet our lawyer from our Ethiopian adoption was in town. It was wonderful seeing her again and getting together with the other Illien families who are locals. She helped bring our family together and just to see how much she still loves all our children was wonderful.

I took the girls to have their Easter pictures this weekend and meet the Easter bunny. Lennah was very cooperative but Delylah was not having any part of the Easter bunny. She did not want to take one single photo with him. Oh well there is always next Easter.

It was also a beautiful weekend here in Georgia and we had a nice day outside with the kids yesterday. This year we have had some crazy weather here in GA and I am kind of sick of it. THe fall was full of rain and the winter was cold and for this part of the country a lot of snow. I am ready for spring.