Category Archives: Adoption

First Adoption

YAY!

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Today, our Child Specific Petition and Power of Attorney forms arrived in the country we’re adopting from. This is the first bit of the paperwork that announces that we’re coming! That we want to adopt Erika and Ilya. Once it is submitted, no other family can try to adopt them internationally, I think. Another family in their own country could still adopt them though. Or they could be pulled into foster care, like Quinn was.

We’ve completed 3/4s of our homestudy. Just one meeting left! So, right now, we are waiting on our passports, waiting on our fingerprinting appointment for immigration and waiting to finish up our homestudy. We’re also looking into loans to get the money we’ll need to complete the adoption.

Does anyone need a cute photo? Hmm… I could always use one…

First Adoption, Fundraisers

So Much (and another fundraiser!)

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I have so much I’d like to share with you all, so much I’d like to post about, that I don’t even know where to begin. I am so grateful to the two donations which we got recently– our largest donations yet, from two awesome people.

One of these donors, when I thanked her, mentioned that she would have donated anonymously if she had known how, so let me tell you how! You can donate directly to Erika & Ilya’s fund, which I believe we get after our dossier is submitted. You can either donate via Paypal to Reece’s Rainbow OR mail RR a check, but be sure to note that it is for Erika and Ilya’s family or Aaron & Molly… there are currently 3 families with our last name. Also make a note that you’d like to be anonymous. I am not sure about their policy on that… someone will see it is from you, but we will not.

My dear friend Amy has so generously offered to hold a fundraiser for us! She is hoping to hold an evening of family photography sessions here in Lawrence, which will benefit our adoption. Amy is a fantastic photographer and a great person to work with– she has two little boys of her own and she’s a real Southern sweetheart, so I promise that she’ll be a pleasure to work with. Please email me at MMorris87 at gmail dot com, if you’d like more details.

I thought it might be interesting to break down for you where we are cost-wise, what we’ve spent so far. I’d like this blog to benefit other folks adopting, so here is a list of our up-front costs.
$225 Voice of Hope Fund Donation to Reece’s Rainbow
$2000 Promise Trust Fund Deposit to Reece’s Rainbow ($1000 per child, which we will get back as long as the adoption goes through)
$150 ($75 for each of us) for passports– yes, we both just needed changes so this is a bit cheaper than the usual fees
$8 (paper for passport photos)
$830 for USCIS clearance (for the i-600a, $670 for the i-600a, plus $80 per adult in household)
$22 for FedEx for send our Child Specific Petition and Power of Attorney forms to Eastern Europe (my mom actually paid this for us, because she is fantastic and gets a great FedEx discount, otherwise it would have been much much more)
$700 deposit for home study
$50 ($25 per person) co-pay for physicals
$15 ($10 for Aaron, $5 for me) for fingerprinting for KBI
$150 ($75 per person) for KBI fingerprinting clearance
$20 for SRS clearance
$10 for reference letter from Bank of America
$56 for marriage license copies
$40 for my birth certificate copies
$56 for Aaron’s birth certificate copies
$37.50 for apostilles
About $5 in postage for things we’ve needed to mail

I *think* that is all of it. Total $4374.50 to start the adoption process. I tried to note where our costs might be different than the average person’s. I do think that they tend to be a bit lower than the average person, partly because we live in Kansas, so the homestudy costs a bit less, partly because of things like my mom’s FedEx discount and the fact that I just needed my name changed on my passport and Aaron had a passport card. It costs A LOT to start an adoption.

One last thing, can I make a request for donations of clothing for Erika and Ilya, if you are local or would be willing to mail them to us? I’d love donations of clothing in good shape from sizes 12 months to 4T. I read on the Reece’s Rainbow Yahoo group that someone’s 2 recently adopted 2yo and one 3 yo all wear size 12-18months, so if you have those sizes, please consider saving them for us. We are not too proud to have our kids wear hand-me-downs!

Adoption, First Adoption, Orphan Care

Sacrifice and Trust

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I get so excited whenever someone donates to our adoption fund… it makes me feel one step closer to hugging Erika and Ilya. Seriously. I feel that way each time I drop something adoption related in the mail, too. I also know what it’s like to donate, especially when times are hard. It can be so bittersweet… when I donate $20, I am well aware that $20 could have bought me a meal out to eat. Sometimes it’s a lot more than that…

A couple of months ago, I read Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I read the book in two sittings and I loved it so much that half way through, I ordered my mom a copy. Shortly after I finished it, our small group was looking for a new study, and I felt strongly Crazy Love should be our study. It’s just THAT good. There is one part which really stuck in my mind…

We get an incredible promise from God: “‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows,'”


This is the only place in the Bible where God invites His people to test Him, to try to out-give Him. He knows it is impossible, that no one can out-give the One from whom all things come. God knows people will realized that “we have given you only what comes from your hand” (1 Chron. 29:14). Nothing that strengthed my faith more than seeing God bless what I give back to Him, what I surrender at His feed.


If you really want to experience God’s supernatural provision, then do as He says. Test Him. Give more than you can manage, and see how He responds.

(page 109-10)

That’s just a short part of this chapter, but it really stood out in my mind. Why? Because, I think that most of us plan, we know how much we can give. You know, Dave Ramsey taught us to put $1000 toward our mortgage, $600 for groceries, $500 for our car payments, blah, blah, blah. So the very idea of giving more than we can manage? Crazy. But, it’s beautiful too. The idea that God provides what we NEED. Maybe not everything we want, but all that we need. And, the idea that we can give up things that we want but don’t need, and help someone else out who desperately needs it. That $20 meal I didn’t eat? Means that someone else can have clean water for 20 YEARS. Those of you who have so generously sacrificed something to donate to bring Erika and Ilya home? You are helping give them a family! The other thing that I’ve learned in this whole process, of giving more than I can manage and also sacrificing things I don’t need? I really DON’T need them, and I don’t really want them that much either.

To really drive the point home, for those of you who know me well, one of the things I’ve given up as a challenge to myself, as well as just to understand what it’s like to sacrifice something that I really loved, something that was a part of my routine, I gave up Diet Sunkist. I apologize if you don’t know what a big deal that is, but let’s just say I was an addict…

Adoption

Devastating

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Danielle shared a link to this incredible post on her blog the other day. I hadn’t read it before, but this sums up why we not only chose to adopt international, but why we chose to adopt at all. It’s truly heartbreaking…

“Imagine a Different Life” from Garden of Eagan, written by Leah:

Imagine you’re a newborn baby. Born in a land far different than where you are now. A place where the value of human life is much different than it is in developed countries. Now imagine that you were born with something like Down Syndrome, or something as minor as a hand deformity.

Your parents will be told to send you away, that there is no care for you, and you’re going to die anyway. So your parents follow the advice of doctors and bring you to an orphanage. But remember, this is an orphanage in a 3rd world country. You spend your days, weeks, months and years cold, hungry, and without medical care. If you’re lucky, there will be one caregiver who takes a liking to you and tries to give you some extra attention each day.

But there’s something looming over you. Something that most children in the world celebrate…your 4th birthday. Only for you, this birthday brings a death sentence, because in many of these countries, if you turn 4 and have not been adopted you’ll be moved to a mental institution where you are no longer available for adoption. For all intense purposes, to the rest of the world you are dead.

There you well spend your days like this

You will be straight jacketed in sheets. Why? Because of the intense boredom and lack of human physical contact you will resort to desperate measures, even if it means gouging your own eyes out. The only contact you will get with people is if you’re lucky, someone will notice that your sheets are full of urine and feces and decide to change them. You will never see sunshine. You will never smell fresh air, only the overpowering odor of urine and feces from several hundred children just like you crammed into the same building getting the same lack of care. You will likely die within the first couple of years from some terrible illness, severe dehydration, or hypothermia from lack of heat in the decrepit building.

Or perhaps you would be like this little girl. Bound by her wrists for years already, left alone in a state of severe dehydration. TIED TO HER BED!!!!!


If you don’t die within the first couple of years, your body might continue to grow. But don’t think it will get you a bigger bed. Instead you’ll be forced to spend more years in the same crib, just like these TEENAGERS have been crammed in.
 

But it doesn’t have to be this way! It doesn’t! While governments and organizations like Mental Disability Rights International will have to deal with the indidual countries, there are ways to save these children! Reece’s Rainbow is an adoption organization dedicated to rescuing children with Down Syndrome from certain death in these countries. There are many children who are approaching their 4th birthday. While not everyone is in a position to adopt a child, Reece’s Rainbow has established a fund for each child to help with the adoption expenses so that nobody can say, “I would do it if I had the money.”

Even if you can’t adopt a child, can you spare $5, $10 or more so that someone else can? Please…this makes me sick to know these children are dying. Read through the child profiles. You’ll find children that have nothing wrong with them other than an eye that needs surery, or a hand that has a mild deformity, yet they have been thrown away. But we can save them!!!!

I shared this post with you, because I want you to know that children live like this RIGHT NOW. We want to be certain that Erika and Ilya don’t have to. I don’t know what countries these photos were taken in, what orphanage they were taken in, but it is a reality in Eastern Europe. A family who has adopted from the same country we are trying to adopt from noticed that their adopted little girl did not like being restrained for medical procedures… then they realized that she too had probably been tied down and when they asked her, she said that she had. It is so devastating…

Adoption, First Adoption

LONG day

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Today was a long, tiring day. I got up earlier than usual to drive over to Topeka, which is about a half hour away, to get some documents apostilled. I had another errand to run in Topeka, too, so that took up my morning.

I headed back to Lawrence to get my physical done for the adoption paperwork. That took quite a while, over an hour. Which might not seem like that long, but most of that time was waiting, only 15 minutes or so was actual time with the doctor/nurse/phlebotomist. I got done there around 2, drove home, across town, stopped for another errand, got home about 2:30.

BUT, at 3:15, I had to leave to go to our home study appointment, which was at 4 in the KC area. Fortunately, Aaron came home and drove over with me, because I hadn’t eaten lunch… I had spent my 45 minutes letting the dogs out, making phone calls, responding to emails, and printing things off.

4-6 was our home study appointment. That was good, fortunately she asked us lots of questions, or I don’t know how well I would have stayed awake. Then, after the home study, I had to go by FedEx Office and mail our apostilled documents from earlier in the day. Done by 7:30. Finally, home by 8:15. Ate dinner. Sat on the sofa. Then, had to take the dogs out to the park, of course. Because, they had literally spent almost the whole day in their crates.

WHOA. So much got done today, but I’d prefer not to repeat it. At least any time soon. I am working my way through the paperwork… waiting on Aaron to get the cashier’s check to mail the USCIS paperwork, waiting to get our passports back to do much of the dossier paperwork…