Birth certificate... check

One more hurdle passed... we are in possession of an official Ethiopian birth certificate listing us as the parents of Feyissa Thomas. This, obviously, is an artist's rendering.

Age... 4, 5 or 6?

Whenever people hear about our adoption plans for little Thomas, they invariably ask "How old is he?" A sensible question, right? And one to which we invariably answer along these lines: "Ha, ha! Well, we heard he was four in December. But we thought he seemed older than that, and the bone scan and doctor in Ethiopia said he might be six. So we thought we would say that he's five, and everyone agreed. But now some people in Ethiopia say he can be four or he can be six, but he can't be five unless we want to go through court again. So now we are saying his birthday was in December, and he turned four, just as the original data suggested." By now the questioner has had his or her eyes glaze over and is walking away. Some more intrepid individuals question why in the world you would question the birth date in the first place, which is probably instantly regretted as that segues into another long answer about the Ethiopian calendar, lack of reliable data in the third world and possible deliberate under-aging of children made available for adoption.











Can your four year old do this? None of mine could... and he can jump rope well, too.







I was pretty set that being five would work out the best, so it's frustrating to have this change. I am fairly confident that Thomas is older than four and a half. So why did we pick four instead of six? Well, if we leave his birth age at four, he will enter kindergarten at age five plus and will have a whole year of home life in America under his belt. My plan before was to try to homeschool him for kindergarten the first year, and I was beginning to worry that this might be too stressful for both of us the first year home anyway. The second major consideration was birth order. We really think it is best for the family as a whole and the twins in particular to have a younger brother, not a same age sibling. So four it is. It's worth noting that due to Thomas's small stature, he won't be noticeably different in size from his grade level peers.

I know the artificiality of "picking an age" just seems crazy to most people. It is. But what can you do? Choose, and hope for the best.

Moving forward from painful

I have one of those gadgets on my computer side bar that randomly circulates photos from my vast collection stored on my hard drive. Lately, this photo of Candace has been showing up a lot. It was taken about a week or so after we got back to the United States.

This picture is almost painful for me to look at. This is the face of a child who is trying desperately to please someone she can't communicate with, she doesn't know and who is making her wear this horribly ugly dress (in her opinion... I myself thought it was adorable.) Tom and Emily were away for an overnight trip to Iowa State for orientation, adding some uncertainty to the mix as far as the twins' minds were concerned. I was trying to take pictures of the twins to use on adoption announcements, and after about fifteen minutes of trying, I think we were all in tears.

This is about when it sunk in to me how challenging these girls were going to be and that our family was forever altered in a drastic way. It was a very low moment, and there were many more over the next months.

It has now been not quite two years since the twins were added to our family, and we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our son. I think we are all more prepared this time. How couldn't we be? I am a little afraid. But I also feel stronger. Most of the time, my pictures of Candace these days look more like this one:

It was a long hard, journey to get to this point. It is still an upward climb... not just for Candace and me, but for Sarah and Tom and all of our family. There is still pain to manage and understand. It was, and is, so worth it. I am grateful to God for setting us on this path and giving my life a new purpose. I am eager to embrace Feyissa Thomas as my son and to continue to work on just being a family, all of us together under God.

Easter

Candace and Sarah with their new Easter bunnies.

Spears kids ready for Easter Mass.

Tom and I are dressed for Mass too.
We don't usually look this crazy; I blame the fact that
the photographer was less than four feet tall.

May the many blessings of the day be with you and your family.

Pictures I love

Four sisters and a mom.
This is at my sister Laura's house in 2003.
From left to right: Johanna, Laura, Mom, me and Teresa.

The birthday girl goes to prom

Anna, the youngest of our three "bigs", turned 17 on Friday. We celebrated with dinner and cake at home, then she went to the movies with two of her friends. Here she is with her birthday cake, little sister Sarah and good friend Jessica:



It was a big weekend for Anna. On Saturday, she went to the prom with her friend Bobby and several other kids from school. Here they are at our house before the festivities:


It's hard for me to believe that my darling little Anna is 17 years old and going off to the big dance with a date. Seems like hardly any time at all since she was as young as the twins... I know it will be the blink of an eye before they are doing the same thing. Bittersweet, for sure.

Introducing our new son!

We passed court today. Here is our beautiful new son,
Feyissa Thomas Spears!

Our first photo with Thomas, taken at the care center when we were in Addis last month for our court trip:

We are eagerly counting the days until we bring him home!

A taste of summer

With temperatures in the upper eighties today, we got a summer preview... well, okay a late spring preview, it will be much hotter in the middle of the summer! Summer at our house means swimming, boating and playing on the trampoline. The lake is still far too cold for swimming and the boat isn't quite ready, but Daddy put the "jumpoline" up today.

Jumping!

Anna does a back tuck flip

Candace does a straddle jump

Sarah's front flip

Sarah's straddle jump

Moving in the right direction

I got the news today from a reliable source (our agency caseworker) that our letter from MOWA has been issued. She said we would still need the court order signed by the judge on April 15th, but all of the paperwork is done. With the drama surrounding the slowdown of paperwork processing by MOWA (which is actually MOWCYA now) I was afraid that our case would be delayed by months.

So happy to report that isn't true. Just nine days to wait. :)

Good-bye to my best buddy

He was a really good dog and I loved him very much.
Today was a really hard day.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Pictures I love

My mom and Anna at Dana Point, California in 1996.

Kirill's story

This is such a horrible miscarriage of justice and an outrage toward special needs children everywhere.

Kirill's story (click to read)

I'll be praying for this family. I encourage you to read their story and join me.

The family far away

Long before we had ever actually contemplated adopting children, I can remember thinking that international adoption must be so much easier than a domestic one because you would never have to deal with the child's birth family. Boy, does that seem dumb now. Or maybe just extremely naive... anyway, I was wrong. Birth family matters a lot, as we discovered along the way, and by time we actually brought our daughters home, I was in quite a turmoil over the lack of information we had regarding their history and their family. You could say I was obsessed. Luckily, through the grace of God and the help of some lovely new friends, we were able to find the birth family, culminating in this day:

We were able to meet with the twins' birth mother, their great aunt, aunt, little cousin, various neighbors and dogs for lunch and coffee in the house where the twins spent most of their baby and toddler years. We were so amazed at how accurate their memories of this place are, despite the young age at which they left. I feel so much peace after conversing with all of these women and sharing with them how Candace Selam and Sarah Fikir have grown and how much we love them.

Through our current agency, we were also able to meet with Feyissa Thomas' birth father after our court hearing. He was a very quiet and unassuming person, and the meeting was very emotional for everyone. We could see how much he loves his son, and we did our best to express how much we would love him too, and that we would always make sure that he stayed in his son's heart.

These people aren't strangers who we hope to never see again... they are part of our family; just a part that lives far away. Although they won't be involved in the day to day aspects of our children's lives, we want our children to treasure them, love them and respect them. We plan to take them back to Ethiopia to visit and hope to keep their birth land and families alive in their hearts.

There is not enough thanks in the world for the Stutzman family, the Meyer family and dear, dear sweet and wonderful Yosi for making this a reality for us.

A silly but special gift

If you have kids, you probably know what I have on my wrist:

They're Silly Bands, of course. Why is a 47 year old woman wearing these with pride? Because her new little son in Ethiopia took them off of his own little wrist and put them on hers. Very sweet, because he had just gotten them not long before, and children in orphanages don't get very many things to call their own. I plan to wear them until he is in my arms again. With the slow down in processing of Ethiopian adoptions, I don't know when that will be... it makes me very sad and very anxious.

Birthday girl

Our beautiful Emily is 20 years old today.
Happy birthday, sweetheart!