Gotcha!

After months of waiting, the big day is finally here!  We got up early in the morning, put on our Sunday-Best and headed down to breakfast.  Marelena, one of the many caretakers here got breakfast ready for us.  We were joined by our new friends from Virginia; John and Nancy, and their kids, Louis and Viktor.

Luz Clara, our representative here met us for breakfast to take us over to Los Pisingos.  She is amazing.  She had to tell us about a hundred times that whatever we want, she will meet that need.  She cares about all the kids and the families of Los Pisingos.  She is knowledgable about the whole process, and has only been in her job since January!

We met Carlos, the director of Los Pisingos and one of his assistants.  They told us through a little bit about Los Pisingos, while someone got Francisco ready.  And then we got to meet him.

He greeted us with huge smiles.  He is such a happy baby.  So much love already.

We hung out with him for a while until the doctor arrived.  She wanted to give us an update and some historical information on his medical file.  Everyone was really concerned about some mosquito bites - they don't realize he's headed to the mosquito capital of the world!

We fed him in front of the caregivers - he gobbled down most of his bottle in a few seconds.  Then we were off!

Luz Clara and Reinel brought us back to Betty's Place with our guy.  Luz Clara took me to the market to buy a few things, and then we were back to feed Francisco.  His morning meal - papayas! Seriously, I was a bit jealous.

The first feeding was messy! I held him and became a wash cloth.

We played a bit after food, and then he was down for the count.  That's all for now.

Bogota, day one

We arrived at our guesthouse late on Saturday evening after a day full of travel. Our taxi driver was Reinel, a very smiley and patient man.  Angie and I fumbled through a conversation with him, and he seemed to get most of it.

We met a nice couple at our guesthouse from Virginia.  They had adopted four children eleven years ago.  Since Betty, the owner of the hotel was not there, we were able to ask a few questions about the layout of the town and how to use the wi-fi before we crashed for the night.

This morning, we slowly made our way downstairs, not entirely rested. It is difficult to make up for weeks of not sleeping well in one fell swoop.  The couple and two of their sons greet us and we joined them for breakfast.  We had a wonderful meal of pineapple, bread, cheese, eggs and coffee.  I am now spoiled - I don't know if I'll be able to eat store-bought pineapple ever again.

After breakfast, Angie and I went for a short walk.  There seemed to be some sort of festival going on - some of the streets had been shut down, and thousands of people were riding bikes in them, or running/walking with their dogs.  The air is fresh and cool.  We are so close to the equator, but the temperature is comfortable. You can definitely tell we are at a higher elevation - we both started to get light-headed after about a half an hour. 

We stopped at the super-market on the way home to pick up a few essentials, and then headed back home.  As Angie drifted off to sleep, Luz Clara, our contact in Colombia stopped by to explain how tomorrow will work and to say, 'hello.'

Tomorrow, meaning the day we meet our son.  It's been a long time since we first heard of him - 2/23/11. And it seems even longer still since we accepted the referral -4/1/11.  But the long wait is coming to an end - Gotcha Day - 5/16/11

Adoption

Life is so amazing. It throws you many hoops, but when you choose to you remain undefeated...and can do anything. Charlie and I are becoming parents. A little boy awaits us in Colombia as many of you know. He is so beautiful and I already love him...

Repeating life all-over-again.

Hear we go again.

Hard to believe, but it has almost been a year since our home study.  Our social worker contacted us a few weeks ago to set up another home visit.  A lot has changed in our home since that time, and we haven't cleaned up much from it, so we will be spending nights and weekends rearranging furniture and painting and cleaning to get ready for her to come out to Chateau Lafond early in December.

I really feel like I've been living in a trance.  Time has flown by very quickly.

Since our social worker came out last time, the biggest shift in our home has been our room.  We had been in a smaller room, and our plan was our child would live in our master bedroom.  At some point, the dogs revolted against this plan.  We had had them sleeping in a bedroom on the main floor of our home, with us living on the second floor.  Beginning a month after they moved down there, they started waking me up in the middle of the night to go our, and wouldn't be sated until they were allowed into our bedroom to sleep the rest of the night.

Our small room, already packed with 2 humans and a lot furniture, was bursting at the seams.

So, we made plans to remodel the master room so we could fit everything and 2 dogs.  After a lot of paint, sanding floors, and staining, our oasis has been completed.  We really like how it turned out.  And a big plus is that our room faces east, and we get a lot of morning sun.

The major draw back is that I injured my back with the sander, and it has bugged me off and on since then.  Not fun.

I've deliberately resisted posting anything for the past few months because I knew it would be mostly full of complaining.  After the high of completing our homestudy came the joy of completing paperwork.  Now, don't get me wrong, I like doing paperwork - when I'm in control.  But a lot of what we needed to do involved sending a document into one government agency, and getting it back from another.  The worst was the FBI - they required 13 weeks to complete our fingerprinting.  From what I understand, the FBI is pretty busy - I know from watching the crime drama, Bones - but still.  One quarter of the year?  To find out we're squeeky clean?  It was really maddening to wait.

The good news is, as of Friday the 30th of July, our Dossier was on it's way to Colombia.  Good luck, little paperwork.  Now we wait for a child to be identified.  Timeline - 3 to 24 months.

Fly-by-night Weekend!

I have been waiting ever-so-not-patiently for the next step in the process to begin. Ever since we got the call from our primary social worker that the game was about to change, I feel like I've been at the starting blocks, waiting to take off racing, but no one can seem to find ammunition for the starting pistol.

Notice that I said 'primary social worker.' I got a call from another nice lady at Children's who is also our social worker. From what I gather, she oversees yet another social worker who will help us prepare our dossier for Colombia. So much for corporate structure! Or, we have confounded Children's so much that they require three social workers to keep up with us.

I have no idea who's who at this point. Just give us a map, folks, and we'll get at it.

She did give a bit of hope about the various processes - social worker #2, that is. We will be handed our child almost immediately when we get to Bogota. Then, 1 week later, we will meet with a social worker from the orphanage who will evaluate the bonding process. She said it generally takes the courts a week to review our file and confirm we are okay to adopt. However, she confirmed we will be there for 6 weeks, so I don't have my mind completely wrapped around the process.

So, we busy ourselves. This weekend was no exception. Friday started out with a dinner party with some very good friends. Sarah, the best man at my wedding, had suggested a good way to force ourselves to all get together would be to do some common good. We have formed a group under the organization Kiva, which provides small business loans in poor and underdeveloped nations. We will all pitch in a few bucks so that a baker in Afghanistan or a tailor in Uganda can start their business. They will pay back their loan, and we will reinvest in another person's business. I have heard the idea before, but kudos go out to Sarah for getting us to action.

So, there was good works, but there was also food, wine and beer: The breakfast of Chumpions. A fun time was had by all. The only problem - Joe ate all my tapioca! Kidding. I'm glad the dessert I brought was well received!

Saturday started out a bit more laid-back. I caught up on some laundry. Angie did some cleaning around the house. Our front windows tend to take a beating, because our beautiful cattle-dog tends to snarf on them as he stares longingly outside, looking to run free.

I had a piece up at the mosaic shop that I was looking to finish. I popped up there around 2pm, and made the rounds to look at other peoples work. It's part of the unwritten code of the studio that you must compliment everyone before you start working - plus, it's a good way to get a few ideas for new projects.

My project was another colored-glass type piece. My only disappointment with my last piece is that it looks a little dark. I wanted the next piece to be back-lit. My idea was to put the piece on a shadow box and wire a light behind it. So, I grouted the piece at the studio, and brought it back to my garage workshop. I had an old table leaf that I had saved from the scrap-heap that I chopped up to make the box. The light wired in easily - I had picked up a 'Make your own lamp' kit from Menards. A couple of screws one quick Snap, and it was all together. Check out the finished product below:

The photo doesn't really do it justice - thank you, cell phone camera.  But I am really happy with how it turned out.  I think I will try to do another soon.
 
Sunday was a day that I was first worried about, but it turned out very well.  We've never had a real dinner party over at our house - so I got a bit nervous.   But I've always wanted to show off a few dishes I had up my sleeves, so I warmed up to the idea.  I whipped out a basil-marinara sauce I'd played around with over the summer, and let it simmer for a few hours.  I had been experimenting with a stuffing for chicken - onions and celery, with apple for a bit of sweetness, and cranberries for a bit of tartness, with some sage thrown in for good measure.  A LOT of sage.  At the last minute, I decided the only thing it was lacking was walnuts.
 
The last dish is the eye-popper - celery-root casserole.  What is celery root?  This:

Ugly.  And tasty, when shredded and boiled in whipping cream, and baked with lots 'o parmesian cheese!
 
Suprisingly, all the dishes were finished at the same time, a few minutes after everyone arrived.  My favorite comment was from my father-in-law: 'That was some stuffing.  Really nouveau."

Worn out!

Wow, with all the blogging we're doing lately, I'm getting worn out! Heh!

meh.

I really am going to try to do this more, if anything, just to keep a good record on where we've been and where we are going.

Recap: In the beginning of January, we were confident we were headed to Ethiopia to round up our future kiddo. It seemed like a go. We bunkered down expecting a 2 year wait, which would give us some time to wrap up some last-minute projects. Wow, that seems like a lifetime ago now.

As I've alluded to before, while we we're meeting with our social worker, she mentioned the possibility of Colombia for a quicker solution to adopt. She mentioned that the wait could be anywhere from 4 months to 24 months. So, it would either be quicker or just as long. Seemed like a good angle, and we asked her to pursue it for us. The only catch would be we would need to be open to African-Colombian children - which, seriously, why would we be against that? But, apparently people are. The other side catch is that we have started to form a group of friends who are pursuing Ethiopia. So, our support group of adoptive families has shrunk to null. C’est la vie. She shipped us via the internets a packet o’ paperwork and we started getting truckin’ on it.

This past Friday, I got a call at work from our social worker. She's really neat, and was full of energy for making a 'Let's change the game again!!' call right against the weekend. She had news that another orphanage in Colombia was begging Children’s for adoptive families, and she wondered if we would consider the option. The orphanage is known for placing younger children, so it is likely that we could get an infant quickly. The catches? It would cost about $2500 more. Seriously, after all we paid so far, not a big deal. We would also be guaranteed a six-week stay inside Colombia waiting for the adoption to be finalized. Which we expected anyway. Oh, and catch number 3? Stop all paperwork, ‘cause we’re sending you a different packet to start filling out.

So that’s where we’re at. I sent a confirmation email to our social worker, which she forwarded on as: "Meyerson/Peterson-Meyerson is a go for (insert orphanage name here)!"

In the mean time, we’ve started attending a monthly support group for families in the ‘waiting’ category. We felt like fish out of the water attending, because most people had their plans set, and we have had our plans put through the blender. One woman had just received notice that she was referred a child from Ethiopia – she had been waiting 44 months. Yikes. She was single, so it was likely that we wouldn’t have had to wait that long, but still. Another woman (again, single) was in the final stage of adopting from Kazakhstan. Stop thinking about Borat.

So in the mean time, we are starting to plan adventures to keep our minds off of the business. We have a vacation scheduled over Ang’s spring break to beautiful Bonaire, so we can get the last bit of scuba diving in before parenthood sets in.

And I went for my first Ice Fishing Tournament in what should be known as downtown Brainerd during winter: Gull Lake!

The fishing tournament is an annual event for my brother-in-law. He and a couple of buddies do it every year. He’d asked me to go last year, but some fertility junk came up and I couldn’t go… boy does that sentence look bad now that I’ve written it, but I think I’ll leave it as it is. I was lucky to not go last year, because downtown Brainerd had a high temperature of -35 degrees during the tournament.

I was happy to note that the temp was a balmy 25 degrees this year when we got rolling on tournament morning, but happiness melted during the day thanks to the addition of freezing rain that lasted for 3 hours, followed by the equally buzz-killing weather called ‘blinding sleet.’ The weather was not fun. At the beginning of the event, before the ‘soaking to the bone’ set in, I asked my compatriots if they would rather have -35 degrees, or freezing rain, to which they all shouted, ‘RAIN!’ I polled them again a few hours in to the event. The most memorable response was, “This. Is. Miserable.”

Truer words were never spoken.

I had received as a gift some pocket warmers that really helped keep my hands warm for a while. They stop functioning when they get filled with water. I know this, because they stopped working.

There was one fish caught in the 50 yards surrounding our fishing holes, and it was a half pound perch, caught by my brother-in-law. Good on him. The winner of the event was a man who nabbed a 6 and a quarter pound walleye. It was a beast!

The highlight of the event for me was tracking down the food booths. I knew I was in heaven when I found a little bit of ambrosia: cheese curds fried with slices of jalapenos. That warmed me up for about an hour.

The insult of the weather added to injury as we were leaving. They had bused us in from several points surrounding Gull Lake, and we were supposed to exit at the same place we entered. The problem being that everyone apparently chose to park at the same park ‘n ride we did, but the event organizers failed to recognize this population explosion. So, we sat in line trying to get off the ice for 2 hours, while other lines empty much more quickly. Oh, and for kicks, it started raining again. At some point as we reached the exit, they had fixed the problem and added a few more busses, but our moods had soured beyond repair. I don’t think the Brainerd International Fishing Tournament is in my future again.

Other than that, Angie got me interested in a bit of art she was doing - mosaic.  We have a mosiac shop down the road from us. It's fun and easy to do, and a good release. If you are in the area of Snelling in Midway, check out 'Mosaic on a stick!"  Here's my piece.  I grouted the left side, so it looks a little different now.