We're still here!
2 days ago
Monday, February 8, 2010
Happy Monday!
Not a big fan of Mondays - but I'm a super fan of new Lily pics! Especially when we get a peek at our girl, with hair! I hope we can get her home before they have to cut the kids' hair for summer.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Today's Mail...
Today's mail brought us a letter of receipt that our USCIS paperwork is now at our state office, sent along from the federal office in Texas where we sent it originally.
Hopefully we'll hear from them again soon, with a date for our fingerprinting appointment!
After fingerprinting, we'll be waiting for our I-171 letter, which gives us permission to bring Lily into the country. The estimated time our state gives for this paperwork process is 2 1/2 months - and this is the last piece of the puzzle! This is our last paper we need to submit our dossier overseas!
Hopefully we'll hear from them again soon, with a date for our fingerprinting appointment!
After fingerprinting, we'll be waiting for our I-171 letter, which gives us permission to bring Lily into the country. The estimated time our state gives for this paperwork process is 2 1/2 months - and this is the last piece of the puzzle! This is our last paper we need to submit our dossier overseas!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Lera Needs a Family
We were so heartbroken to hear that the family adopting little Lera will not be able to complete their adoption & bring Lera home. We're so attached to Lera - if not for her sweet little face popping up around the Internet, we wouldn't be on our journey to adopting our Lily. Let's help this beautiful little girl!
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
Lera
Girl, Born August 7, 2005
Russia
I LOST MY FAMILY!!
Lera is a gorgeous little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.She is 4 years old. She is quite high functioning, and doing very well. She has flat feet and a systolic heart murmur, but no major heart conditions. She is able to walk and climb, she eats by herself, dances, and understands and follows directions. She has also been transferred to the regular class, so she is living and learning with her typical peers.
- Adoption requirements at www.reecesrainbow.org/waitingchild2.html
- SINGLE MOMS ACCEPTED!
- Upfront costs: $3000 agency fee + homestudy
For more information please contact Andrea (bamaroberts at comcast dot net)
I have $8605 in my grant fund towards the cost of my adoption!
__________________________________________________________
This is a desperate situation. Lera will be placed in an institution, and will no longer be available for adoption, if a family doesn't commit to her in the next few days. Her adoption is partially funded already. If you or anyone you know might be interested in adopting Lera, please contact Andrea at Reece's Rainbow at the contact information above. Please feel free to copy and paste this post to your own blog as well, to get the word out.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Look! Pretty Art!
Morgan, the illustrator who offered to make art for our fundraising sent pictures of the illustrations she made for me today ... they're not really for me, they're actually for LILY and RUBY!
Morgan, they're amazing! They're going to look wonderful in the girls' room! Thank you!!
Happy New Month!
This morning as Ruby & I were leaving for her gymnastics class, Braden called out, "Happy New Month!"
I can't believe it's already February!
It's been 2 1/2 months - just over 11 weeks - since we committed to bringing Lily home! And I can't believe how fast the time has flown by. In this short time, we've done so many things I had no idea how to do before we started - like finding a home study agency, and getting fingerprinted for the state. We've done mountains of paperwork - including writing autobiographies. We found the money for Lily's adoption - and received so many generous donations and a ton of support from our friends & family.
Now, keep your fingers crossed - we're hoping to take our first trip to meet Lily by April!
I can't believe it's already February!
It's been 2 1/2 months - just over 11 weeks - since we committed to bringing Lily home! And I can't believe how fast the time has flown by. In this short time, we've done so many things I had no idea how to do before we started - like finding a home study agency, and getting fingerprinted for the state. We've done mountains of paperwork - including writing autobiographies. We found the money for Lily's adoption - and received so many generous donations and a ton of support from our friends & family.
Now, keep your fingers crossed - we're hoping to take our first trip to meet Lily by April!
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Questions
We've received a lot of questions about our adoption, and I thought I'd try to answer some of them here - in case others were thinking the same thing. If you have any more questions, feel free to leave a comment & I'll try to get to those, too. It'll help pass the time here as we wait, wait, wait on our immigration paperwork!
Why adopt another child with Down syndrome? Why not adopt a "normal" child?
Why not another child with Down syndrome? Who better than us!? I think people often think that raising a child with DS is scary or hard - but it's really not. Ruby needs a little extra time to learn some skills, but we also get to enjoy each stage a little longer, and celebrate each success a little longer.
Besides - we know we're not a typical family. We already have two girls with unique needs. When they grow up & venture out on their own, we're never going to be far away; we'll always keep a watchful eye and a guiding hand. We're never going to truly be "empty nesters." I think adding Lily to our family will be exciting and challenging and a million other things - but we're not worried about Down syndrome. We're already immersed in that world.
Why not adopt a younger child, or a baby?
We had planned to, actually. In our previous conversations, we'd always talked about "maybe someday" adopting a baby with Down syndrome. But the more we looked over Reece's Rainbow and thought about it, the more we wanted to bring home an older girl - someone who was more at-risk of heading to an institution. And once we read Lily's bio, we knew we had to bring her home and give her a family.
Does she speak English?
Not yet! But she does speak some, so we know she's verbal. I'm confident she'll be able to pick up language & understand us fairly well, and we'll start teaching her sign language as soon as we can (like we've done with Ruby). Also, We've been learning a little Russian* - just the basics, and we have access to pages of common phrases, spelled out phonetically into Russian. Hopefully our Russian isn't atrocious & Lily can understand us.
(*I am not saying we are going to Russia; but we are going to a country where a lot of Russian is spoken)
Why adopt internationally? Why not domestically?
We've often heard there's a waiting list for families who are willing to adopt children with Down syndrome in the US. Whether or not there is such a list - there definitely is a large group of people who would bring home a child with DS to join their family. I've seen the call go out on the adoption boards, and they get tremendous response. Are there children with DS in the foster care system here in the US? Yes. There are. But they have a chance. There's a greater chance that they will be adopted and be advocated for than a child in Eastern Europe. If children like Lily aren't adopted by the time they are 4-6 years old, that's it. They are moved from their 'baby home' (orphanage) and sent to an institution. Did you know that in some of the countries, 60-80% of the children don't survive their first year in an institution? It's grim. And this path just seemed to make the most sense for us, for our family.
Aren't adoptions very expensive?
Yup. They sure are.
Where are you going to get the money?
Well, that's been answered recently, and we have our money. I just kept telling myself, "The money will come," and "It's only money," so I didn't freak out about the actual amount. At first, it was a daunting amount, but once we got started & had Lily's sweet face on our fridge, it was easy to keep that in perspective. We had a plan - we have excellent credit, we were fully prepared to take out a loan if we needed to.
Why would you fundraise for an adoption? People pay for their own adoptions all the time.
I think this is where being a part of Reece's Rainbow gives us a unique experience. We've followed along as other families brought children home, and donated when we could. It was exciting to be a small part of it, and to watch their journeys unfold.
When we announced that we had committed to Lily, we didn't go into it expecting people to give us money. People offered to help, and we told them how they could - many people donated really cool items for our blog auction. Our auction was a HUGE success - we made over $1500! I was hoping for $1000, so that just blew me away. We have put a lot of our own money into bringing Lily home and we were prepared to do it all on our own if needed - but we're so grateful & relieved that we no longer have to worry about the money!
Are you taking your other children with you when you travel?
No, we're not. It's very complicated to bring along other children when you travel for adoptions - and it would increase our expenses A LOT. Luckily, my mom is willing to come stay with the kids while we're gone. Let's just hope she doesn't come to her senses and change her mind!! :)
When are you going!?
This is the question I get most often (not even including the fact that my mom asks me almost daily! Haha!) - but we don't know. We'll go as soon as they let us! Right now, we're waiting on our immigration paperwork, which is the last piece we need to complete our dossier. Then, we send the entire dossier overseas & they tell us when to travel. We're hoping we travel in April, and would love to have Lily home by summer!
Why adopt another child with Down syndrome? Why not adopt a "normal" child?
Why not another child with Down syndrome? Who better than us!? I think people often think that raising a child with DS is scary or hard - but it's really not. Ruby needs a little extra time to learn some skills, but we also get to enjoy each stage a little longer, and celebrate each success a little longer.
Besides - we know we're not a typical family. We already have two girls with unique needs. When they grow up & venture out on their own, we're never going to be far away; we'll always keep a watchful eye and a guiding hand. We're never going to truly be "empty nesters." I think adding Lily to our family will be exciting and challenging and a million other things - but we're not worried about Down syndrome. We're already immersed in that world.
Why not adopt a younger child, or a baby?
We had planned to, actually. In our previous conversations, we'd always talked about "maybe someday" adopting a baby with Down syndrome. But the more we looked over Reece's Rainbow and thought about it, the more we wanted to bring home an older girl - someone who was more at-risk of heading to an institution. And once we read Lily's bio, we knew we had to bring her home and give her a family.
Does she speak English?
Not yet! But she does speak some, so we know she's verbal. I'm confident she'll be able to pick up language & understand us fairly well, and we'll start teaching her sign language as soon as we can (like we've done with Ruby). Also, We've been learning a little Russian* - just the basics, and we have access to pages of common phrases, spelled out phonetically into Russian. Hopefully our Russian isn't atrocious & Lily can understand us.
(*I am not saying we are going to Russia; but we are going to a country where a lot of Russian is spoken)
Why adopt internationally? Why not domestically?
We've often heard there's a waiting list for families who are willing to adopt children with Down syndrome in the US. Whether or not there is such a list - there definitely is a large group of people who would bring home a child with DS to join their family. I've seen the call go out on the adoption boards, and they get tremendous response. Are there children with DS in the foster care system here in the US? Yes. There are. But they have a chance. There's a greater chance that they will be adopted and be advocated for than a child in Eastern Europe. If children like Lily aren't adopted by the time they are 4-6 years old, that's it. They are moved from their 'baby home' (orphanage) and sent to an institution. Did you know that in some of the countries, 60-80% of the children don't survive their first year in an institution? It's grim. And this path just seemed to make the most sense for us, for our family.
Aren't adoptions very expensive?
Yup. They sure are.
Where are you going to get the money?
Well, that's been answered recently, and we have our money. I just kept telling myself, "The money will come," and "It's only money," so I didn't freak out about the actual amount. At first, it was a daunting amount, but once we got started & had Lily's sweet face on our fridge, it was easy to keep that in perspective. We had a plan - we have excellent credit, we were fully prepared to take out a loan if we needed to.
Why would you fundraise for an adoption? People pay for their own adoptions all the time.
I think this is where being a part of Reece's Rainbow gives us a unique experience. We've followed along as other families brought children home, and donated when we could. It was exciting to be a small part of it, and to watch their journeys unfold.
When we announced that we had committed to Lily, we didn't go into it expecting people to give us money. People offered to help, and we told them how they could - many people donated really cool items for our blog auction. Our auction was a HUGE success - we made over $1500! I was hoping for $1000, so that just blew me away. We have put a lot of our own money into bringing Lily home and we were prepared to do it all on our own if needed - but we're so grateful & relieved that we no longer have to worry about the money!
Are you taking your other children with you when you travel?
No, we're not. It's very complicated to bring along other children when you travel for adoptions - and it would increase our expenses A LOT. Luckily, my mom is willing to come stay with the kids while we're gone. Let's just hope she doesn't come to her senses and change her mind!! :)
When are you going!?
This is the question I get most often (not even including the fact that my mom asks me almost daily! Haha!) - but we don't know. We'll go as soon as they let us! Right now, we're waiting on our immigration paperwork, which is the last piece we need to complete our dossier. Then, we send the entire dossier overseas & they tell us when to travel. We're hoping we travel in April, and would love to have Lily home by summer!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
New Illustrations
Remember the illustrations fundraiser we have going? I wanted to show you a couple beautiful pictures Morgan made for a friend of mine:
Morgan wants to continue helping us raise funds (since technically we're at 98% and not 100%). If you're interested in Morgan's work, please contact her - and please don't think we're greedy, with the fundraising aspect of it; if we don't use the money to bring Lily home, we'll absolutely pass it along to another Reece's Rainbow family.
For my friend's daughter
My friend's family farm where she grew up
Morgan wants to continue helping us raise funds (since technically we're at 98% and not 100%). If you're interested in Morgan's work, please contact her - and please don't think we're greedy, with the fundraising aspect of it; if we don't use the money to bring Lily home, we'll absolutely pass it along to another Reece's Rainbow family.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Fully Funded!
When we first committed to Lily, we sent in our $1000 promise money and hoped for the best. Our savings was low after a summer vacation and a fall filled with home repairs, but our credit was excellent and our debt is manageable. We knew, whatever happened - the money would come, even if the entire amount came as a loan from our credit union.
Lily had a grant of $2000 when we started; money that had been donated to her before she even had a family. We put aside what we could, and cashed in some savings bonds. Donations seemed to pour in from our friends, our family. People offered so many beautiful items for our blog auction - and we raised over $1500 from that alone. So much support, more than we had ever imagined, more than we had hoped for. By Christmastime, between Lily's grant, and our money, and the many, many donations we received - we had come up with over half our funds. We had over $13,000 for Lily.
Lately, things got rockier. I realized our tax return was going to be about 1/2 of what it was last year. We were running out of things to sell on eBay & Craig's List & at the used DVD store. We started planning new fundraisers, and I was constantly thinking of ways things could add up to fill in the rest of our fundraising thermometer.
And then last night, we found out that we had received an anonymous donation for $10,000.
TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.
We have our adoption money. We have money to bring Lily home.
We are FULLY FUNDED.
THANK YOU - to those who donated to Lily before we ever saw her sweet little face. THANK YOU - to those who donated to our family fund. THANK YOU - to those who donated for a calendar. THANK YOU - to those who donated items for our auction, and shipped them out to the winners. THANK YOU - to those who purchased items in our auction. THANK YOU - to those who sent us checks, and donated through our PayPal.
THANK YOU, to all of our very generous friends, family, and strangers, and our Anonymous benefactor - every single one of you is helping us bring Lily home. Thank you, truly, for making this journey a little smoother for us, as we bring Lily home - home, to her family.
Lily had a grant of $2000 when we started; money that had been donated to her before she even had a family. We put aside what we could, and cashed in some savings bonds. Donations seemed to pour in from our friends, our family. People offered so many beautiful items for our blog auction - and we raised over $1500 from that alone. So much support, more than we had ever imagined, more than we had hoped for. By Christmastime, between Lily's grant, and our money, and the many, many donations we received - we had come up with over half our funds. We had over $13,000 for Lily.
Lately, things got rockier. I realized our tax return was going to be about 1/2 of what it was last year. We were running out of things to sell on eBay & Craig's List & at the used DVD store. We started planning new fundraisers, and I was constantly thinking of ways things could add up to fill in the rest of our fundraising thermometer.
And then last night, we found out that we had received an anonymous donation for $10,000.
TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.
We have our adoption money. We have money to bring Lily home.
We are FULLY FUNDED.
THANK YOU - to those who donated to Lily before we ever saw her sweet little face. THANK YOU - to those who donated to our family fund. THANK YOU - to those who donated for a calendar. THANK YOU - to those who donated items for our auction, and shipped them out to the winners. THANK YOU - to those who purchased items in our auction. THANK YOU - to those who sent us checks, and donated through our PayPal.
THANK YOU, to all of our very generous friends, family, and strangers, and our Anonymous benefactor - every single one of you is helping us bring Lily home. Thank you, truly, for making this journey a little smoother for us, as we bring Lily home - home, to her family.
Shots
A week before Christmas, Brian & I loaded up the kids & headed south about 2 hours (to the Milwaukee area) to the Passport Health office in our area. Looking into immunizations was one of Brian's "to do" items for our adoption paperwork, and he spent a lot of time on the phone, finding out what - if any - immunizations we needed before our trip.
After a nurse consult over the phone, we called around to get prices for immunizations. Our insurance does not cover adult immunizations, and our county health department only gives immunizations to children under 18 and a couple other groups - we didn't qualify.
Passport Health was about 1/2 the expense of our local physicians offices, so it was worth us making the trip. We both needed a polio booster, Brian needed both Hep A & B, I needed Hep A and we both got a meningitis vaccine.
The weather was nice, the trip was actually very peaceful & uneventful (thank you, DVD player). We took the kids out for lunch (a rare event!) and they were so wonderful. I was so proud of them - and Ruby even drank out of a straw for the first time ever!
Brian has to make two more trips down, and I only have to make one more. In total, these vaccines will cost us over $1000 - that's money we don't have in our adoption budget, but we thought it was an unavoidable expense. Given our history of bizarre medical issues popping up out of no where, we thought it would be irresponsible for us not to take every precaution we could!
After a nurse consult over the phone, we called around to get prices for immunizations. Our insurance does not cover adult immunizations, and our county health department only gives immunizations to children under 18 and a couple other groups - we didn't qualify.
Passport Health was about 1/2 the expense of our local physicians offices, so it was worth us making the trip. We both needed a polio booster, Brian needed both Hep A & B, I needed Hep A and we both got a meningitis vaccine.
The weather was nice, the trip was actually very peaceful & uneventful (thank you, DVD player). We took the kids out for lunch (a rare event!) and they were so wonderful. I was so proud of them - and Ruby even drank out of a straw for the first time ever!
Brian has to make two more trips down, and I only have to make one more. In total, these vaccines will cost us over $1000 - that's money we don't have in our adoption budget, but we thought it was an unavoidable expense. Given our history of bizarre medical issues popping up out of no where, we thought it would be irresponsible for us not to take every precaution we could!
Woman's World
If you're at the grocery store this week, standing in line - pick up a copy of Woman's World magazine. Our friends from the adoption world are featured in this week's issue!
I can't wait to see Lily's friend Bella, & Bella's new family, in their magazine appearance!
I can't wait to see Lily's friend Bella, & Bella's new family, in their magazine appearance!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
