Parent Ed meeting 5/14

The latest parent education meeting was much more informal than other meetings we've been to. They had speakers from local community resources talk about what they could offer to us and our families. They had a local group of adoptive parents speak, a group for multicultural familes, and some school and behavioral resources that parents might want to take advantage of once their children are in school, and out someone from Parents as Teachers for younger children. Then we met in our groups for just our country.
Two families have their dossiers in Vietnam waiting for referrals of boys. Hopefully by the meeting next month they will both have referrals. I am excited for them.

They've upped it again and 6 months of waiting done

Just a little update on the situation for you all. Well a week ago we got notification that instead of the 18-24 month wait period we were quoted earlier for girls, it is now "atleast 2 years" So our countdown of waiting starts all over again. Now we have atleast 18 months to go, which isn't nearly as fun to say as 12-18 months left. May 14th was our 6 month anniversary of being on the waiting list.

Also last week CHI got another little girl referral. So in 5 months there have been 3 girls..but better than none I guess. We're still in for a long wait no matter how you look at it.

CHI picnic on 4/28

Our adoption agency had a local picnic at the Deanna Rose Farmstead. There was a decent turn out. Shawn took this (overexposed) photo of a little girl we were sitting with. She turned 3 in April and was adopted from China.

And after the picnic we went inside the farmstead and Shawn had fun feeding geese, playing on the playground, and pumping water with an old fashioned pump. He also really liked the bunnies.

Watching a baby

On April 15th, we watched a little girl for the day. She was 3 months old. Shawn had a blast with her. He wanted to help with her bottles, diapers, and her pacifier. He wanted to hold her too. He really liked having her. And she was a great baby, almost never cried at all, and full of smiles. Here is a picture Shawn took of her.

I am looking forward to seeing how Shawn will be as a big brother. If this is a sample, I think it will go pretty well.

The Parent Education meeting in April

I totally forgot to post about the parent ed meeting in April. I really enjoyed it. It consisted of a panel of adult adultees. One was from Vietnam, and the other four were from Korea. The leader, our social worker, asked some questions, and then we (the parents waiting to adopt) got to ask them some questions. Some of the adoptees parents were in the audience too. An interesting impression I got from some of them was that they felt 'white'. They grew up in white families, even if they had adopted non-white siblings. One said he was in a restaurant with his wife one time and said to her along the lines of "wow, there is not a single non-white person in here" and his wife told him, uh, what about you? Also all of them had white spouses. It was just interesting in that aspect. I got to ask a couple questions, but I wanted to ask a few more actually. Our meetings usually have around 80 people so I couldn't hog up all the question asking. But it was my favorite meeting so far and quite educational.