Update

It's been a while since I posted anything. This will be my last post as this blog was to update our status on adoption. Our adoption status is now complete (since November 2011) and we're in love with our baby girl. Isabelle (aka Izzy) is a happy girl. She is super ticklish and smiles at everything. Her older cousin Silas will do anything she wants him to, he treats her like a princess. It's adorable. Izzy loves her brother Gai, she imitates him, Gai was her first word. She also knows mommy, poppy, no, yeah, amen, and the list continues. She's having some issue's with speech (nothing major) so she will attending our local school districts early childhood development program in the fall. Our life got so much crazier with 2 kiddo's, I don't know how anyone manages more than 2 - my hat's off to you!! 

Initially she had major intestinal issue's which took a couple months to clear up along with a long time cough. These are common to the orphanage she was in and fortunately they cleared up, I know some of the kiddo's really struggle with these. Our time in RW and Kenya were stressful and I was sick for 3 weeks but we didn't have as many struggles as some families have experienced. In any case, God was really good to us. We had a multitude of people praying for us and we FELT those prayers while we were there. It was amazing. I don't think I've ever felt prayer before, it was powerful.

In Nairobi

I haven't posted anything while we've been out of country, things have been stressful. We arrived on a Sunday. This first week in Rwanda we visited Isabelle every day and all the paperwork and court procedures went smoothly. We didn't get our travel letter on Friday but we asked for special permission to take her until we had the travel letter since we already passed court. My husband left on Saturday so he could be at home with our 4 year old at home. My mom is here and she stayed. We took Isabelle to the hospital on Saturday to have her ears checked out because she was pulling at them. The hospital was great and we left with 4 perscriptions and were told to come back and see the ENT. When we came back and saw the ENT he cleaned out here ears, good times, and she had wax, a bug, and a seed in her ears. Ewwww...

I waited multiple times at MIGEPROF that second week for the travel letter which seemed liked it wouldn'tever appear. And still, no travel letter. We needed the travel letter to get her passport which we needed to have our appt at the embassy. I got sick, very sick. Oh the stress. We got the travel letter on Thursday early morning, picked up the passport at 2:30 after much begging and pleading, had our appt at the embassy at 3:30 and leftfor the airport from there. I was sick at the airport and we thought they wouldn'tlet us get on the plane. Oh more stress but they did and we arrived at our hotel in Nairobi during a very hard rain about 10:30pm. More sickness all night long so my mom took Isabelle to her appt at the IOM for the TB test. On Monday we waited 5 hours to be told her TB was negative but she needed A blood test and a chest x-ray. So another 3 1/2 hours later we were sent home onlyto betold on Tues thatshe needed another test. She gets to have sputum taken 3 days in a row. Tube down the nose to get the sputum. Oh yeah, more fun. I'm sick once again.

Enogh of down in the dumps because Isabelle is perfect. She is more and more comfortable with us every day. She is chubby and adorable. She laughs at everything and is very snuggly. The sisters at HOH are amazing, taking care of all those children and loving every single one. They are very involved in the community as well. Awesome women.

So that's a short synopsis of what has been happening. We go to the embassy on Tues and leave tues evening. Can't wait to get home.

Referral!

We received a referral in our email this morning. We're very excited - it's a girl. We'll be traveling in about 2 1/2 weeks, we can't wait to meet her.

We have our approval letter

We received our approval letter on 8/26. It is dated 8/8 and states that we should be receiving a referral within the next 2 months. We're so excited to be moving on to the next step. Of course the next step is more waiting but we only have one more thing to wait for - to see our beautiful baby's face! We're getting all the paperwork ready that we'll need to bring with us and trying to finish all the projects around the house that we've put off. It seems like this adoption is actually real now.

Update

We heard from our agency yesterday that we have been approved. The letter is waiting for a signature before it can be emailed to us. This is fantastic news. I'm now stocking my email to see if we have the actual approval. Once we have that we will be waiting to be matched with a child from Home of Hope. SO excited about the next step!

Update

Adoption update:
I'm excited to hear/read about the families traveling to meet their kiddo's and bringing them home, seems like a pretty steady stream of referrals recently. I haven't heard about too many approval's in the past couple weeks but that doesn't mean they aren't going out. We wrote the Ministry personally about our case last week and they stated they were working on files up to #110. I know that Jean Marie, the lady that was heading up all the adoption work, resigned recently which was a bummer to hear. She was wonderful and cared so much about the kiddo's, but it's awesome that she will be able to spend more time with her family. The 2 ladies that are now processing everything are also wonderful, just unfortunate that there is one less to help out. We want all the kiddo's to be meeting their families and going home as soon as possible! :-}

Surgery update:
Everything went well. The pain was intense for about 24 hours. I have stitches in my eyeball, interesting. The surgery has left me with residual double vision which should subside in the next few weeks. I can do most things without my eye patch which is nice (can't work or drive without it). However, in the last 5-7 days I have noticed the movement coming back. It's not as bad as it was before but it's still there. The surgery was to remove the superior & inferior oblique muscles off my eye. If she left any of the superior oblique muscle fibers on my eye then I would still have movement. She said she checked multiple times, guess there's still some there. Not sure what that means yet, I guess I will find out at my next f/u appt in June. If it's another surgery then it's another surgery. Ugh. My upper eyelid is slightly droopy also, another side effect from the surgery. 

So those are the updates!
Christa

Yeah for movement!

More approvals and referrals continue to come from the Ministry and that's so exciting. I know of review of dossiers of up to at least #103, of course not everything through 103 has been approved but it's still awesome that things keep moving. I hope that all the families waiting so long get news soon of approval/referral. I'm hoping we are going to be traveling by August, that's an estimate and of course estimate in adoption are probably crazy to make (very crazy) but it's just a dream...

In surgery news, I saw my surgeon on Monday (best neuropthomologist out there as far as I'm concerned, and I've met a few) and yeah, I get to have surgery. We both decided that after 8 years of trying to see if there was anything to do for my wobbling eye, there's not. Surgery is a good option for me so I'm having surgery on 4/29. I'm beyond excited about this. Right now this screen is wobbling and double but after surgery, not so. When we travel internationally I will not be looked at like a terrorist for wearing an eye patch. I can't say that I've enjoyed my pirate days, they were interesting, I've learned to not care what people say about my appearance (I guess that's still a work in progress), but I'm happy to not occlude, have worsening headaches and neck pain. God has been good throughout and I've very blessed to have found a surgeon willing to perform the surgery. 

So, after that is over I'll be totally ready for our non-objection letter and referral!!