Counting the Days...and Pennies

No, we still haven't heard anything. But each day that passes is, well, another day passing, so in reality we are getting closer, right? We are assembling funds from all sorts of creative means, including some garage sales we held way back when we were supposedly adopting from Vietnam. All that change has been stashed away, quite appropriately, in our baby girl's room-to-be, for a good year and a half now. With our change drive we're holding at our church, its adding up to decent amount of change. Every little bit helps. It really does. You may have noticed our nifty donation contraption on the side bar of the blog. I figured it couldn't hurt, though we don't expect much to come through it -- the main readers here being members of our church, family, and other adoptive families. But you never know if Bill Gates might just google his way here some day or something. (I actually did have a comment one time from someone who claimed to be in the upper-management of Microsoft. It was a very generic comment and I didn't give it much credit, though it was on a post about autism, and Microsoft is a big supporter in terms of autism funding...but I digress.) Anyway, it was an interesting tool somebody somewhere created.
I also wanted to address two of the most common questions we have been getting these days. The first question we hear is "Why can't you post her picture?" The answer is honestly, I don't know. It is an ethical issue mostly. Referred children aren't yours until the courts say they are, and in many cases, not until a family disembarks in the United States. It is vital to an adoption agency to be found above reproach and to avoid any activity that might be misconstrued as unethical. (ie taking advantage of or selling children, or taking advantage of birth families and their rights, as well) Pictures that are posted online can quickly end up in places they were never intended to go. Now, there are agencies (and countries, because sometimes the countries themselves set some of the guidelines) who are more lenient about posting of pictures and identifying information. But, to be perfectly truthful, I am so much more comfortable being a part of a program and with an agency that has strict guidelines and that does all it can to protect all parties involved than an agency that waffles on issues and bends the rules to please their clients. I can live with not publishing my daughter-to-be's photo online for three months if it means that Ethiopia agrees to let me bring her home! Then everyone will be sick of pictures!

The other question we've been getting is "What are you going to name her?" or variations on that theme. That's another tough one, and what follows will be our opinion only and is in no way meant to be a judgment on other families who do things differently. When we first began the adoption process three years ago, we intended to give our baby a first name of our choosing and have her middle name be her given name. Of course, at the time we were intending to adopt from Vietnam and felt her given name would probably be more difficult to pronounce. Fast forward to our switch to Ethiopia and you'll find that our feeling on that matter has changed. For one thing, many children who come out of Ethiopia have familiar, and often biblical, names such as Abel, Lydia, Miriam, Elias, or Sara. Names that are more Amharic (the main language in northern Ethiopia) in origin are a little more challenging, but not impossible. We were moved by the thought that her given name might be the only thing she may have from her birth mother, apart from DNA, and felt that we may in fact want to keep her given name as her first name in tribute to that fact. Of course, in the case of abandoned babies, which is so often the case in Ethiopia, their name could have been given to them at any point, by any person. All that being said, we haven't really decided what we are going to do. The name she was given, (which I can say starts with an M!), isn't too hard to pronounce, has a lovely meaning, and most importantly, is simply her name. We also have the nickname "Jo" which we have been using for years now, simply so that we wouldn't have to just call her "the Baby." We will likely incorporate that into a longer name, which will either be her first name or her second name...but we haven't completely decided. Actually, we've decided about 5 times now since we got her referral...only to change our minds each time. If we do finally make a more permanent decision, we will let everyone know. And we will release as much of it as we are able -- see the paragraph above! I suppose we technically have until we arrange for her passport in Ethiopia (??) so you may be in for a long wait!