Category: adoption

The Resistance is winning.

If you’ve never read Stephen Pressfield’s amazing book, The War of Art, you probably have no idea what that means. If you have read it, you know exactly what it means. Basically it means I’ve been super lazy when it comes to blogging.

Something about sitting in front of a blank WordPress dashboard on my laptop makes me run screaming. But blogging from my phone when I’m bored is far less intimidating. So here I am!

I post on Facebook constantly, so much that it probably annoys people, but most thoughts and doings feel unworthy of a whole blog scribe. So here are a few things I’ve been up to lately:

Soccer season has started which means practice on Tuesday and Thursday nights and two games on Saturdays. I generally enjoy it because the boys love it and are both doing well and getting exercise and I get to make new friends with other parents. I love making new friends! Right now is a great time to meet people because one of the first questions is “how many kids do you have” which flows immediately to our adoption, which everyone loves to chat about. It makes conversation easy.

Then I have cool things like my local social media lunch group, where we do stuff like brunch food sampling at the new Dunkin Donuts in Katy. Have I mentioned how Dunkin is my fave and I missed them so much because they were virtually nonexistant in Houston till now? Besides the food, this group of ladies are THE. AWESOME. We spur one another on to blogging greatness. Or try, at least.

And of course I’ve been continuing with caring for my grandparents, which has shifted some from keeping them happy and healthy to cleaning out their old house. This is a huge undertaking since the house is five bedrooms, 3500 square feet, and they saved everything for the forty plus years they lived there. I mean EVERYTHING. Borderline hoarders. My great-grandmother lived with them for awhile but she died a loooooong time ago, but all her stuff was still in the house. Every stitch of clothing, every card she ever received, every medical bill.

So I’m working my way through a few hours a week, room by room. Not getting very far yet. Meanwhile the real estate market in their hood is scorching hot. Hope it stays that way awhile.

Of course there’s Rose too, who occupies my thoughts and heart always. Soon, sweet girl, soon.

As of this morning, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The tunnel of the adoption process, that is…not the adoption journey itself of course, that will only begin when Rose comes to live with us. Then the job of waiting turns to parenting which is much much harder, make no mistake.

Since we came home from Haiti everyone has been asking how soon till Rose joins our family. Because there are a whole bunch of steps in the “legalization and courts” process, steps I really couldn’t identify clearly and understand, I didn’t have a good answer. We were told maybe four months by our lawyer and creche director (creche = orphanage) but our agency coordinator said that was unrealistic and to expect longer.

This morning I got an email that we are through all those “courts” steps and on our way to the MOI, the Ministry of the Interior in Haiti! That means that our adoption decree has been issued and legalized and now Rose has our last name and is legally part of our family!

You might think that means we can go get her now…ooooh good heavens, no. The MOI can take anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months to review the file and give permission for immigration to print her a passport. We hope and expect 3 weeks. Then it takes 1-4 weeks to actually print the passport. Friends received their’s recently in just a week, so we hope for that. At that point, everything is done on the Haitian side of the process.

Then things flip back to the US government side of things to grant her permission to enter the US. The Department of Homeland Security has to do an investigation into the adoption to make sure it is ethical and there is no child-trafficking involved before they will grant Rose a visa. This is a super important part of the process, which we have actually already begun. But they can’t start reviewing the file in earnest until they get her passport and the full dossier. This last part can take anywhere from 3 weeks to months. Sometimes USCIS decides to request a DNA test to prove a family member who dropped her at the orphanage is really a family member. That adds considerable time. Sometimes they request extra official documents from judges who signed off on the file. We believe everything is in order so I’m not expecting any of that, but it certainly can happen.

After the US grants approval for a visa, they give a visa appointment and Rose has to actually go to that. Then it is printed and we can go get her and bring her home!!

So the quickest timeline I could see would be 8-10 weeks. I’m not really expecting that though, 12 to 14 weeks is more likely. But oh my gosh, we are talking about weeks now. I’m thinking about June-ish.

Suddenly I’m freaking out a little. There’s still so much to do to get ready for this little princess to join our family. I wanna learn more Creole!! She talks a lot, in babyish Creole, and the few phrases I was able to pick up in Haiti were so helpful. She responds so well when I speak to her in her language! I know she will switch to English soon after she’s home, all toddlers do, but I understand the importance of connecting with her quickly on her level.

Y’all, she is a joy. Her smile lights up the room. Her chatter is adorable. She’s a cuddle bug, loves nothing more than being held in my lap. She sleeps hard and eats a ton. I gotta learn to cook Haitian rice and beans!

So today I’m praising Jesus for the incredible, amazing, perfect timing of this roller coaster journey he has brought us through. I know He goes before us, every step of the way.