Luda turned 13 recently. Soon, I will be parenting a teenager… whaaaat?

I had been stepping forward on adoption-autopilot, taking the next step, then the next, without really focusing on the who and the why. Until her birthday.

Gus doesn’t get all of this paperwork and process stuff. He always expects to find her when we pull up to a notary or to the police station to be fingerprinted, or anywhere adoption-related. His heart is always a bit broken once he comprehends that she isn’t there.

Her birthday was no different. He knew it was her birthday, and that we’d be calling. In the morning, he excitedly ran into her room, and seeing her bed empty, let out a long, sad sigh.

Calling her is quite an ordeal. I’m not sure if she still has a phone, and shares it with others, or if she is simply borrowing other peoples’ phones. We tried calling… no answer. Tried again… no answer. I gave up and let the kids watch a movie, messaging her “happy birthday”. She quickly replied “thank you”.

I asked, “can we call you?”

L, “yes! yes, mama!”

I paused the movie and we called. I said, “hi! happy birthday! i love you!” and passed the phone to Gus.

G: “Hi, Luda! Happy Birthday!”
L: “Hi, Gus… I love you.”

That’s when my heart melted. I could hear it all in her voice– that ache of missing someone so much, but being so glad to hear them again.

It was the same with Reed and Lena too. Each of them just so happy to connect with her… and her them. Those sweet conversations of so few words, but so much excitement just to have a loved one on the other end.

This adoption is different than the rest. It’s not a child joining out family for the first time… it’s a homecoming. It’s finding someone so precious to us who we thought we’d lost. It’s a whole different bucket of emotions.

I won’t make promises about a happy ending… trials will come. Adoption is hard. Picking up and starting over at any age is hard, but I have to think 13 is a particularly difficult spot. But, my kids’ love for Luda reminds me… she is already family. She may not be legally one of us yet, but that doesn’t matter to them.

It doesn’t matter if we share a last name, or a common language, of if we’re thousands of miles apart, because family. Family doesn’t mean that we won’t face hard things, but it means that we’ll face them together.

It means we matter enough to one another to keep going when things are hard. To keep loving, even when that’s not easy. Something worth fighting for.

I was looking forward to September being a bit calmer and more focused after the chaos and stress of our summer. It wasn’t.

At the beginning of the month, we went to Denver for Bekah’s Run. It was a beautiful day– Bekah touched so many lives and seeing everyone come together for this day was incredible. Such a beautiful community of people coming together to remember Bekah and support Love Without Boundaries.

Aaron and I spent that weekend kid-free, so we did lots of hiking. We had a great time.

This is probably one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken. It was on our drive back home from Colorado.

We visited the sunflower field again. I love this place.

The next week, my mom came out for a garage sale. She spend the whole week organizing donations. It was a huge project. Between the two days of the garage sale, we made $600!

I felt relieved to have the garage sale over. And, as I was returning borrowed tables one morning, someone pulled out of an alley and hit our van. Fortunately, Gus and I, the only ones in the van at the time, were totally fine. The other driver was very apologetic. Gus yelled at him, saying “You crashed-ed our car! You shouldn’t do that”. Despite the fact that it was a very minor accident, the damage on our van was enough for it to be “totaled”.

Ugh. We knew we’d need to replace ours soon due to the age and high mileage, but this wasn’t a decision or expense that we wanted to take on during our adoption. It’s been a very consuming and daunting task to find a new van that is a good fit for our family. We bought one this weekend. It was a tremendous relief to have that figured out.

The day of the accident was also the day that our homestudy review was supposed to be done. It ended up taking a few more days, but OUR HOME STUDY IS DONE. Our i600a application is mailed, and will arrive on Monday!

Now we wait on USCIS and fundraise and fill out grant applications while we wait.

We have been majorly blessed by our family and friends this month. I will not tell you that the adoption process is easy, but we’ve been surrounded with the help and prayers of friends and family. We have a community that loves Luda already and keeps me going through doubt and frustration.

Come check out our auction!

Speaking of how wonderful our community is– a friend of mine is putting on an auction for us– there are tons of great items available! It runs until 9pm on October 7. Please check it out!

I asked for questions about our adoption and you all gave me some good ones! I’ve done my best to answer them below.

Rosemary asked: How long have you kept this ginormous exciting secret???

Short answer: a few months if you consider from the time that she first expressed a desire to be adopted. Days from the time we actually started the paperwork.

Long answer: Luda first started talking to me about adoption a few months ago, but I was very cautious to jump in. I felt like I, personally, had just come to terms with not adopting her and… she decided she wanted to be adopted! We wanted to make sure that she was very serious this time. We also wanted to have some conversations with her about how things would look here once she was adopted and some of the boundaries that we would have in place for her.

We considered keeping the secret a lot longer, because we didn’t want to go through telling everyone we were adopting her and then something happen (again). But, a couple of things forced our hands a bit, and enter in the video announcement! All of the clips from the video were taken just a couple of weeks before we shared it publicly.

Erin asked: What changed her mind, if we may know?

Without going into too much detail, Luda has strong ties to Ukraine. As much as she has enjoyed time with our family, I think it’s hard for her to say yes to forever and leaving her life there behind. Partly, I think that she felt that she needed the blessing of certain people in Ukraine, and I also think it helped her to realize that she was basically out of chances. That we wouldn’t and couldn’t keep hosting her if she was uncertain about what she wanted.

Amanda asked: Do you know yet what the timeline might look like for the process of bringing her home?

We are praying that our dossier will be completed by Luda’s birthday in mid-October. A realistic timeline would be to have our dossier completed by November or early December. From that point, it would be 3-4 months, waiting for our invitation to Ukraine, travel and lots of waiting in between trips.

Amanda asked: How can we pray for you and support you during this adoption?

Currently, our specific prayer requests are for the remaining paperwork for our homestudy. Some of it is crawling! We are well on our way with dossier documents, but before we can finish our dossier and send it to Ukraine, we need to send our home study off to immigration and get their approval. This can take MONTHS, or it can be much quicker. Right now, most people I know in process are saying it is slow going. 😦

Please pray that Luda remains committed to be adopted and that she does not feel discouraged with the waiting. That is the biggest challenge– she is ready for us to be there and like any child, has a hard time understanding how lengthy and complicated the process is.

We have just a couple of fundraising opportunities– photo sessions this fall and I will be selling prints. If you are interested in either, please let me know. We also have a link for tax deductible donations through Project Hopeful here.

Chrissy asked: Do you guys have a PO box or anything set up for gifts?

No, you are so sweet, but we do not. I have looked into it in the past when we have done fundraisers and such, but they are too expensive for us to use.

moxiedoesit asked: With much respect to however much you may like to share, what are some things you are thinking about with adopting an older kid? Going into it, what things do you think will be different than adopting younger? 

I think that everything will be different! It’s hard to anticipate the exact challenges, but I imagine we will have more issues like helping her get the support for school, learn English and make new friends here. I am guessing that a lot of our challenges will have to do with helping Luda find her place in a new family, culture and community. We are all excited to have her here, but there is always some adjusting as far as fitting a new person into your life.

Adopting younger kids, we had more challenges as far as having ANY way to communicate– with Luda we can always use a translation app or call a translator. With our kids, physical care, sleep deprivation, sensory needs, etc. were a much bigger factor.

With adopting any child, I would anticipate pushing of boundaries until that child has a strong understanding of exactly how far they may go. I will not be surprised if we have the typical teenage parenting disputes– internet access, cell phones, staying up too late, boyfriends, etc. Obviously, finding those limits looks very different with younger children.

moxiedoesit asked: Will she be attending school, or is “homeschool” for cocooning an option?

We are still figuring out school. She will likely need to go to public school for awhile to get the English as Second Language support that she needs. However, the exact timing of how soon she starts will depend on when she comes home and how she’s doing. Middle school is hard for a kid who has had a stable life and already knows English, so we will be cautious about enrolling her in school until we agree, Luda included, that she’s ready for it. While I have no plans for homeschooling long term, we may homeschool temporarily, working with a translator to build up her English confidence and help her get some basics down.

Jenna asked: Will you continue to host?

No, at least not for awhile. Hosting, even the best experience, is tiring. There’s a financial cost and also a time and energy cost for our whole family. We will take some time to get settled with Luda. I won’t say that we won’t even host again, but we will definitely need some time to focus on our family. However, I will continue to be involved with Project One Forty Three as a volunteer.