False “Contractions”

So with every pregnancy there comes a time where the new mom thinks she’s in labor.
Ok this is it we’re having a baby! Only to be told by the doctor nope, not yet. These are just “False Contractions”. Well who knew it was true of adoption too?!?

We got all our paperwork completed, every “t” crossed every perfect blue “i” dotted and submitted by late October. We had hopes of traveling for our first trip around Christmas and being able to celebrate our daughter’s sweet 16 with her in her country. By mid November we felt sure we would not be able to travel until after Christmas so we pulled together enough money to host our girl one more time before she was “officially ours”. This would be a bitter sweet hosting.

During this waiting period we were told again that yes indeed there is a little brother but again he is NOT available for adoption. We moved forward with celebrating Christmas with our girl. She had began to get more comfortable with us. Calling us mom and dad. Telling us a little more “special” things about her life. We enjoyed our time with her all while holding our breath that our documents would be accepted and we could begin the process in Ukraine to finalize our adoption.

The day after Christmas we received a crushing blow. We had stopped to pick up a few things at the store. I had waited in the car to just have a moment to breath and be alone. My phone rang. It was our adoption agent. I answered with excitement. “Tell me we have a travel date!” But that was not what my agent had called to tell me. She slowly answered, “I’m so sorry. But your documents have been rejected.” Tears filled my eyes. I felt my face flush. I don’t understand, why? We did everything to the letter. I was mad, sad, devastated and every other emotion all at once. The only answer she could give me was “they changed some of the rules and you are the first example they are making.”

My husband came out to find me in a puddle of tears and I told him the news. We sat in silence for a while and after some more tears and time we drove home. Now, we had to tell our girl. She didn’t fully understand, but we tried to assure her we were still coming for her just not on the schedule we had hoped for. I saw doubt fill her eyes and we watched her “put her walls back up”. Deep sigh. Not the holiday we wanted. Needless to say putting her back on the plane after hosting was extremely painful.

So what now? Well we started over with several documents. We had to re-do fingerprints, physicals, and a lot of signatures. Another trip to Raleigh to make it all official and then we waited to submit our papers one more time. This would put us at the end of January as many of the offices we needed were closed for holidays.

That was a painful “false contraction”…

Labor pains begin

Yes, I know I will catch some flack for this phrase but there are labor pains in adoption. You start with the pain of wondering if the child will say yes or the court will say yes. Then you move to the pains of the background checks, the home study, the physicals and the money requirements. And the paperwork; oh the mountains of papers! Then there are court proceedings and if adopting from another country there are multiple trips. So while these are not physical labor pains they are in deed pains!

The mental and emotional energy that goes into filling out, the what seems to be NEVER ending, forms is uncanny. I don’t think I would have that much information printed in one place about my life if I wrote a book. They now own my biography. Heck they ask questions about me and my past that I wouldn’t ask myself! I mean Really! Who needs to know if I stole a pencil in Kindergarten? hahaha Okay, it wasn’t quite that bad but it certainly felt like it at times.

Of course every adoption is different and the requirements are different for every country and state. We were adopting from Ukraine. This is just our story, every story is unique.

When last we “visited” I had just finished our home study and began the next series of forms. We had to have multiple sets of fingerprints and background checks completed at the state and federal levels. We had to have complete physicals and full blood panels for every disease known to man. We also had to have all these forms notarized. An additional fee and form for us were our USA passports.
Every document in our package of papers would also need to go the the state capital for apostilles. If you are like me you may wonder what the heck does that mean?
This ensures that the foreign country will recognize our documents as valid and authentic. And it added up to about $250 American bucks and two trips to Raleigh. Insert sigh here.

We spent all summer and a large part of the fall chasing down proper documents, signing and re-signing because the signature was smudged or the notary was in the wrong place or my favorite “this is in black ink you need it in BLUE ink”. I kid you not! We also spent every “extra moment” fund raising to pay for this addition to our family. We sold things, we had BBQ and Pizza sales with our family’s churches. We raffled off pottery from my friend who owns her own business. We used every single penny in our savings account and took out a small loan. By the end of the process we would also max out our one credit card. Oh the things one will do for children.

During this part of the journey we thought we were only adopting one kiddo. Our sweet 15 year old girl that we had hosted several times now. At the end of hosting for the summer she told us a “secret”. “I want to be adopted but I’m scared for my brother.” Um Brother?!?!?!? Now we had to do some digging. Multiple phone calls to our adoption agency and the answer finally came. “Yes, there is a brother. However, you may not adopt him. Sorry. He just is not available to you.” We then had to explain this to our girl. Did I mention I don’t speak Russian and her English was not so good? Thankfully we have a friend that does speak Russian and she helped us as best she could. It was a painful conversation.

We carried on…

Let’s Do This!

Alrighty then! I had a bit of encouragement to start the blog back up, so here we go!

Today will be a short “spoiler alert” of what’s to come.
I plan to write about the adoption process, our adoption story, our travels during said process and continue with a few of our “we’re home now what?” story.
I also plan to throw in a few adventures of teaching our non English speaking kiddos with homeschooling then public schooling and once again back to some wierdo version of homeschool/public Zoom classroom learning. Deep sigh.

There will still be Titus stories, of course. Some Holiday traditions unraveled, yikes! And me trying to be more housewife/mommy-ish. Yeah, it gets complex.
I have my own mom words of advise now. hahaha And I have heard the words of my father come out of my mouth so many times it isn’t funny.

And because I have so much free time as a working mom, homeschooling my kids and running a business, I will also include some of the teaching adventures with our Ranger outpost. Shoot, I may even throw in some “ah the good old days” adventures of romping around North Carolina.

So stay tuned. Grab a snack. Prepare to laugh, maybe cry, and be amazed at this crazy thing I call life. You may even find yourself saying “Is that true?” hahaha Cause you can’t make this stuff up!

Until next time.

To Blog or Not to Blog… That is the question.

Well, hello there!
Yes, I do still exist. I am a bit more crazy than when I last wrote a blog but I am still around. I am currently trying to figure out if I should pick up my blog again or just let it die a quiet death. A large part of me yells “I will not go quietly into the night!”, while the other part sighs “does anyone want to hear my saga?”.

So I will just leave this here for a bit and see what response I get.

My life has dramatically changed in three years. I now have two teenage children, I still work my job, still have my silly needy dog, have more stuff going on in life and use my psychology degree at home instead of for pay. I often feel like I’m insane, I have done things, said things and acted in ways I NEVER imagined doing. And to top it off I hear myself saying the same lines my father and mother said when I was a kid! Seriously?!?!? Come on! But now they make sense to me, which is the scary part. hahaha

So I will think on my story… maybe tell of our adventure getting our kiddos. Adoption is a Wild ride and not for the faint of heart to be sure.

Y’all let me know. Blog or no?