No News...

We will have been waiting officially for a referral for 7 months starting tomorrow and really there is no news to report. We receive weekly email updates from the agency with referrals and there have been no new referrals for 3 weeks which is hard for those of us waiting. January of 2007 saw a lot of referral activity in contrast to January of 2008 which saw a small number. Everyone knows what referrals are right? Referrals are when families get matched with children and receive their picture and medical information which can then be evaluated by doctors who specialize in international adoption. There is a doctor in Boston who has been reviewing a lot of referrals from Ethiopia so we may get in touch with her. She is out of New England Medical Center. There is also an international adoption clinic in Minnesota that will review medical information and I have heard very good things about that particular clinic. We did host a gathering for Central Mass Ethiopian families this past Sat. We were a small group, all waiting for referrals and representing 3 different adoption agencies. We are hoping to make connections with other families in the area for support and to help our children have friends they can relate to. We discussed a variety of issues and had some Ethiopian food as well. It was really fun.
We'll keep everyone posted when there is any news...

Asmara

Tom and I tried another Ethiopian Restaurant on Monday. We went to Asmara in Cambridge. The food was excellent! Although the atmosphere was not as interesting or inviting as Addis Red Sea, the service was much better. The staff was very helpful at making suggestions and everything was delicious and it turns out we were there on Ethiopian Christmas (so I guess I have an excuse for still having our tree up) and that seemed fitting. Then we got some Herrell's ice cream for dessert. Sweet cream is my favorite, Tom got the malted vanilla. As for the adoption, I've been sort of feeling that we are never going to get our referral but you have so many ups and downs in international adoption and I try to take the philosophical approach that it will happen when it is meant to happen. There is a family ahead of us waiting for a sibling group with the same ages we are looking for and they have been waiting for about 9 months so far. When they get their referral that may give us some indication of how long we will be waiting.

6 months & counting

We have officially been waiting for our Ethiopian Adoption for 6 months. For the month of December there were a good amount of infant referrals at our agency. The wait for an infant has actually gone down to 15 months for the moment. We are still on the single infant list as well in order to cover all bases. There was a lot of referral activity in December so that is exciting. There were however no sibling group referrals. We are expecting a weekly and maybe a monthly update tomorrow sometime, can't wait to see what's going on. The waiting is hard. I have to admit I picked up a couple of adorable Gap (Red) items. One of the outfits has an outline of Africa on it. We remain busy here though, anxious to hear from the 6 colleges that A has applied to and we still haven't taken down our Christmas tree...

Our first try cooking Ethiopian food.

Since we are all (for the most part) on vacation this week we thought it would be a good time to try making some Ethiopian dishes for dinner. Last night Tom and I made Doro Wat (chicken stew), Ye'abesha Gomen- a dish with green peppers and collard greens, Ethiopian Ginger Vegetables with potatoes and green beans, and Injera (the bread that you use to pick everything up with). The kids tried everything and seemed to like it (except A didn't eat the chicken since he's a vegetarian). Our injera came out more like pancakes than traditional injera so we'll work on that for next time. We also didn't have the Berbere spice that they use in Ethiopia so we're going to order some online, couldn't find it even in Whole Foods. Though they do have Teff flour in whole foods which is what they use to make injera in Ethiopia so we will use that next time. Overall we were happy with the dinner.

It's official!

We're now waiting to be matched with 2 little siblings. Either twins under 18 mos. or more likely one child under 5 years old and the other an infant. We are told the wait is about one year from official wait date of July 6, 2007. In other adoption news we are getting to know others in the area who are waiting to be matched with their children and who have already brought their little ones home. The Central Mass Ethiopian families group is expanding and we will have the next parent meeting at our house. We will discuss parenting/adoption issues and hopefully watch an adoption or Ethiopian related movie and try to make some Ethiopian food. It's a great group of families and we are excited to get to know everyone. Until next time...
Laura

More on siblings...

Last Friday we met with our social worker to discuss changing our request to a sibling pair. The meeting went well. We have fulfilled all the other requirements and are waiting our final approval for the switch but don't anticipate a problem with our request. What is our request? Right now we are thinking a sibling pair with one child being under 5 years old and one child being 0-12 months. We are also requesting to be put on the list for twins up to 18 months old. There is still a long wait for these requests. I believe the wait is about one year and as you can see from our ticker at the top of this blog we have been officially waiting just over 5 months so we probably have about 7 months left to be matched and then we would travel to Ethiopia 1-3 months after that. There are no concrete estimates for wait time though as it is impossible to predict what the ages of the children that will come into care at any given time. The current wait time for infants is about 16 months. We'll keep you posted!

An Ethiopian Film in the area.

Hi everyone, We recently found out that the award winning film "Black Gold" will be shown at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church located at 40 Church Street Northboro, MA at 7pm on Friday December 7th. "Black Gold" is a film about one
man's struggle to improve the life of the Ethiopian coffee farmers by educating the public and encouraging the purchase of Fair Trade products. Entrance is free. Fair trade Coffee and Chocolate will be available for purchase during intermission. In case anyone is interested...you know where we'll be on the 7th!
Otherwise nothing new, still working on changing our request to a sibling pair. We'll let you know when it's official and what kind of timeframe we are looking at for a referral when we have more info.
Take care for now,
Laura