Theeeey'rrre Back!

The referrals are back! I am so excited to announce that two fellow adoptors through our agency received referrals yesterday! I am so happy for them and expectant of this coming week. Now that the months long drought in referrals is up, we are optimistic about meeting our son soon! We are right at the top of the list and there has been news out of our agency that paperwork has been prepared for lots of children and they are currently matching them with couples. So.... we are getting so close! Please keep praying for my sanity!

No news is.... bad news

Well, its the end of yet another week and as we approach 11 months of waiting for our son, we still have no news. We had high hopes for this week but have once again been crushed as the week passed by without any contact from our agency. There is now no chance of traveling to get our son before the new year.

Could we really be close?!

Well, today I got an email from our agency asking that we email in copies of our passports (for what reason, I am still not sure since we already sent these in with our dossier). The email asked that we get these copies in ASAP, and that they must be turned in within 7 days and are required before we receive a referral. Sooooo trying not to get my heart to excited, but I am reading the email like we may be 7 days away from a referral!!!!! Ohhhhh I sure hope so. I can't wait to meet our son!

Ignorance, outrage, and stupid people...

I came across this story about a family who adopted HIV+ children from Ethiopia. I found the story to be very uplifting and educational.... that is, until I hit the comments people posted after the article. As I read through some of the comments I was appalled. No, outraged would be a better word. After this wonderful story about people who are helping the least wanted children in the world for no gain of their own except the love of family and child, here are people posting the most outrageous and ignorant comments. Here are a few exerpts:

- "I hope these adoptive parents will be able to pay the $100,00 a year for treatment and not throw their "responsibility" on the taxpayers."

- "This is messed up. There are plenty of kids here that need to be adopted. I don't want my son exposed to some foreign strain of AIDS. Why on earth would we bring sick people here when we're trying to make a better life for our families and our country"

- "This is wrong. We have or should have immigration laws against bringing infected individuals into this country. I have a 3 year old and don't want anyone infecting here. We should take care of the sick kids here first."

- "We need to help our own children first. To help our children would only serve to strengthen us as a whole- in order to help others we must first help ourselves"

- "Leave the sick kids in Ethiopia. Leave the Africans in Africa"

- "These guilt ridden white liberals bringing these disease ridden animals into this country should be killed and their birth children given to healthy, sane white families"

Wow! And there are over 300 more comments just like these you can read... if you can keep from retching.

 If I were a person on the outside (of the US) looking in I would think that Americans are selfish, ignorant, stupid, and disrespectful people. But, maybe that does describe a majority of people in America. I wonder if any of the people making these comments have ever seen true poverty, or travelled outside the US to witness how over 90% of the world lives (on less than $2.00 a day.... and I don't mean to some rich, white tourist destination). I doubt it. 

What gets me is the common themes to the comments made after this article. People think A.) we should take care of America first B.) not adopt to begin with, and C.) have no clue about the HIV virus in general! I can't tell you how appalled I am. Part of me is scared about what my son will face in this country. 

A fellow parent adopting from the same agency we are wrote the following, which pretty much sums up my thoughts:

"There is something wrong with your sense of humanity when you start to talk about anything in terms of "us" versus "them". It draws the line in the sand where someone loses and someone wins. You only draw that line if you are on the winning side. We are all human. We all laugh. We all cry. We all feel loss. We all feel pain. We are all born and we all will die. You were lucky enough to be born in the USA and with whatever circumstances that allow for you to be an "us" and not a "them". You did not do anything righteous to deserve it. You did not work harder then "them". You did not love stronger, give more, sacrifice more. If you were a "them" and by "them" I mean a three year old who was born with HIV in the middle of rural Ethiopia. If you, as a "them" heard stories of a place across the world where there were medicines that would take your pain and keep you alive another day. If you laid inside a muddy room and held on for your life after watching your mother, the only person you ever loved, die. If you struggled in pain and poverty every day of your life, you might wish that one of "them" (meaning the lucky and rich Americans who were somehow granted the blessings of being born HIV free, the men and women who get onto web forums to condemn the people who have reached out to help you, the same people who believe the word "american" is synonymous with "more deserving") would pull down the walls of their heart and get over their irrational and selfish fears that you would hurt them and find it in themselves to help you the way you want to be helped. I can not imagine walking around this earth and not knowing to simply treat others the way you want to be treated. The Golden Rule is really not that complicated. I can't imagine living life without compassion"

Neither can I. 

More crappy news...

Well, the latest news from the adoption agency is now putting a referral in mid October. So... we have gone from April or May as an original date given to October. For all of you math challenged people out there, that is 6 MONTHS! I think I will stop anticipating anything and call us lucky if we meet our son within the next year.

We got our trash cans.... oh goody (with sarcasm)

Ok, this may sound a bit crass to most of you reading this, but Aaron and I have had a sort of joke-like bet going for the last 4 months revolving around a baby and a trash can. What you may ask?! Well, I will explain... our lovely city (it was voted the #1 place to live by Forbes a few months ago, but I digress) switched trash carriers in the spring and we were told that we would be getting new, bigger, better trash cans delivered to our house. Much like our wait for our adoption referral, months passed with no new trash cans. I know what you are thinking, it's just trash cans. But we are the type of people who get excited about little things, especially new things. So, it became the running joke between Aaron and I as to which would come first, the referral for our son or the trash cans? MONTHS passed by... and I am sad to say that Aaron was correct and our stupid new trash cans arrived yesterday. Still no referral. I did find out that 26 children were just brought into the children's home in Addis and are receiving their shots and medical exams. Usually, there is about a 1 to 2 week wait after the medical exams before children are matched with families. Soooo we may know something in a couple of weeks. Keep praying for us! I need to go now and put out the trash in my cool new automated trash container (again, sarcasm).

The Elephant in the Room

I was reading a blog on racism today and wanted to quote this exerpt:

"Oh, and you say you don’t see race? That’s B.S. You do. We all do. Our brains are hardwired to seek out those differences. It’s what you do after you see race that makes all the difference.

Talking to these people–the ones who won’t hear one mention of the word “race”–is kind of like complaining about an elephant in my living room to someone who doesn’t believe in living rooms. I say that I can’t get this danged pachyderm out of my living room, and the other person replies that living rooms are passe; that the more functional family room is where it’s at. What thinking person would still have a living room in this day and age? And I say: But…but…I still have this elephant problem."

Just something to think about.