Texts from Uncle T

We love that our friends and family are getting excited about the adoption. A couple of Steve's friends came over a few weekends ago and they started asking him about the adoption and what's involved. It was funny to see grown men getting excited about the whole process. I left them in the man cave to watch TV and went to the living room to watch a movie. 

About 15 minutes into my movie, I get a text message from one of Steve's friends (he was in the man cave when he sent me the message). The picture was hysterical, but also moving in a way. The picture showed that our friends did care about what we were going through and were already considering what we'd be like as parents. Uncle T, as I'm calling him, is Steve's best friend. He'll be around Tiny Human A LOT, so he'll be known as an uncle. He knows that Tiny Human is going to be raised by some (pardon the language) bad ass parents. 

So here's the picture in all of it's perfectness. We wouldn't paint Tiny Human's face blue, but when he's older, we may give him a tiny Nerf sword. ;)

My Reaction to the Moana Trailers

I am a die hard Disney fan. I've been working on obtaining the movies and gradually expanding the titles we have. Somehow my husband tolerates this obsession and will even take me to see Disney movies when they come out. He surprised me one weekend and we actually watched Frozen in theaters. Have I mentioned that he's a great husband?

So, Disney has a new movie coming out called Moana. The story is about a young girl who comes from a family of navigators. The story takes place in the Polynesian islands or as it's called in the movie Oceania. The story goes that Moana sets out on a journey to help the people on the island where she was raised. Along the way, she meets the demi-god Maui,voiced by Dwayne Johnson. Maui ends up helping Moana on her journey. It looks like it's going to be a really good movie.

The first trailer that came out was about Maui and gave just a little insight on what the movie was about. It made me excited for the film that's launching on November 23rd of this year in America.

The second trailer, which came out last week, was intended for the Japanese audience, but quickly captured the heart of EVERYONE around the globe.

Who knows if it was the soft music in the background, the adorable giggles coming from baby Moana, or the realization that I was looking at what Tiny Human could very well look like. Break out the hankie. Every time I watch it now, I become more entranced by baby Moana and the possibilities of what Tiny Human may look like. It moves my heart a little.

I really can't wait to see what this film has in store. One goal that I would like to achieve is to immerse the Polynesian/Samoan lifestyles, morals, and stories as Tiny Human grows. We want him to know where he came from. 

Every day we think about Tiny Human, though he may not even be born right now, we do wonder about him. We wonder about his features, the color of his eyes and hair, his laugh and what his voice will sound like. Thanks to Moana, I've gotten a lot more excited about this journey and bringing home our Tiny Human.

Do You Believe in Fate?

The world is a funny place. Things fall together, bad and good, and somehow things just work out. Sometimes it's as simple as a long drive on an the back-roads and a gift that makes things make sense.

Today, I went to my mother in law's house to work one some donations that she received for the yard sale. That's a whole separate post on its own, but before we dove into the bags of donations, she gave me 2 small gifts. She and Nana, hubby's grandmother, where out shopping and she saw these two turtles. She thought of me and gifted them to me. The smaller one's shell opens and she suggested putting a keepsake, like a small locket of Tiny Human's hair, inside it. It was a moving and extremely thoughtful gesture.

A sea turtle and a snapping turtle to add to my collection.

My love of turtles started many years, back when I was in college. I have a good sized collection of turtles on my bookshelves. Many have been gifted to me by various people. Hubby got me a stuffed turtle the first month we dated. I've gotten a few from friends, added paintings, and vinyl stickers to my car. I even painted a large wooden turtle to go on our living room wall.

A sample of my collection.

My affinity for turtles seems to know no bounds. I went through a major transitions in my life prior to meeting Steve. I designed this tattoo to represent the break and change that was occurring in my life. In the center were 2 turtles. I told Steve that he could never leave me because he was permanently on my back.

Where am I going with all of this turtle talk? Turtles are known for their slow, quiet demeanor. As an animal totem, when they're seen in our lives, it's a sign to slow down. The turtle totem, so to speak, has been with me for a number of years and the idea of slowing down and taking my time to learn, are slowly coming to me.

However, sitting on the couch this afternoon with my mother in law, I pointed out that green turtles are native to Samoa. Do you believe in fate? I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Was my fixation on turtles leading me to this much larger journey? Did my turtles guide the path to where my husband and I are now? I'd like to believe that fate offered a hand. The coincidence is all too strong to be ignored.

Yes, I believe in fate.

Answering Questions

As mentioned in my first post, we'll try to answer as many questions as we can. It's a lot for some people to take in, ourselves included. There are a lot of things we do know, but almost double that in what we don't know.

Why now? - When the hubby and I first started talking about adoption, there didn't seem to be any urgency in the process. When we took a closer look at the referral times (the wait period between submitting your paperwork and the agency finding you a match child) and how long the process would actually take us, we realized that we were looking at a 4 to 5 year process all together. This is the case for most international adoptions, but potentially longer for Samoa due to the newness of the program. We had an idea of where we wanted to be in 5 years and we knew we needed to start the process sooner rather than later.

Why adoption? - Hubby and I don't want to go through the natural birthing process. It's something that we spoke about at length and decided that it's just not for us. There are enough children in this world that needed their own forever family. So, that's why we decided to adopt.

Why international adoption? - There are over half a million kids in the foster care system. So, why didn't we go with foster to adopt? In America, the foster system is flawed and has more red tape than an international adoption. The trouble and heart ache that come with a foster to adopt program is not something we wanted to go through with our first child. While saving any child's life is important and key, we want to sleep at night knowing that someone isn't going to try to "come get" their baby. With international adoption, we know that won't happen. When we land in Samoa to bring Tiny Human home, he'll be ours. We're not knocking the foster system, we're actually giving major kudos to anyone who can do it! As first time parents, we knew it wasn't for us.

How long does it take? - This is a tricky question and a lot of our wait time depends on payments and paperwork. Home study takes 3-6 months, filing of that paperwork can take a few weeks, and the government side of things can take another several months. We have to be approved by both the home study agency and the government. 3 different agencies have to prove that we'll be fit parents. We know that from the time we're approved by the US government till the time we're matched with a child is between 36-40 months.

 Why does it cost so much? - Unlike a normal pregnancy and birth, a lot of birth parents don't really "see" the cost of having a baby. Rather than stretching the dollar amount over several months or years, our fees come very quickly over a short period of time due to the large amount associated with the various attorney fees. Health insurance takes care of most of the medical fees with a pregnancy, but with adoption, there are no medical fees. We have to pay everything up front.

Boy, girl, age? - Tiny Human is going to be a little boy and that's the only parameter we have. He could be months old or he could be as old as 5. He could be a perfectly normal child or he could have mental and/or physical health concerns. As long as we can can bring him home, we'll be content. We can tackle those concerns once we get settled back in the US.

Will you have to travel? - Yes. We'll spend up to a week in Samoa, getting to know our child and filing whatever paperwork needs to be done in the country. From there, we'll fly to Auckland, New Zealand and will stay there for up to 3 weeks. This is where the adoption paperwork is finalized and to obtain Tiny Human's orphan visa.

Are you both excited? - Yes, we're both very excited about this journey! We're trying not to get too excited because we know we're in the very beginning of the process and that things can and will go wrong at some point.

Is there a way that I can help? - There's always a need for help! As we work through the process, we'll need help from friends and family as we do fundraising events. We'll need people to help us put events together and bring more awareness to our cause. Share our posts for us! If you see a blog link post on my Facebook, please feel free to share it. If you see me on Instagram, please re-post it! The larger the audience we can reach, the better! A lot of people don't know or understand the process of international adoption, so we're here to share our story. If you have a little boy and you would like to donate hand me downs, we'll be needing those as soon as we get our referral.

First Yard Sale Load

We picked up our first donation load for the yard sale. My husband's Ford Focus, Stella, managed to fit everything in it, including the bed rails. My husband and his friend even managed to get a head board and foot board strapped down on the roof racks. It survived a 30 minute trip on a major highway from one city to the yard sale location. I was pretty impressed by their handy work. Who knew we could fit so much stuff in Stella? She was turned into a pickup truck for the day.

3 more weekends till the yard sale and I'm pricing stuff like crazy! There's still lots to do and things to go through. If you have anything you'd like to get rid of, we'll take it off your hands. :)

Much Needed Good News

On Monday, Steve and I applied for a credit line through our bank. We found out this morning that our application was accepted and we've received the full amount we asked for. This is such great news as it will help us start the next leg of our adoption journey!

We're still collection donations for the yard sale, so if you have anything let us know. We'll be happy to take it off your hands.

The next part is agency fees which are essentially costs for lawyers and the agency to start our paperwork and our home study. We've already begun to talk about the home study process and have even sought out information from one agency. Now begins the process of getting all of our official documents together. We're so excited!

"We're going to be parents!"

Taking a Lesson from Dory

This weekend proved to be eventful and nerve wracking. It seemed as though every time I turned around, something seemed to be going wrong (unrelated to the adoption process). I was annoyed and frustrated, not to mention hot because our A/C went out for 48 hours. Throughout the weekend, my husband reminded me that these things happen and yes, it causes a delay in the process, but there's nothing we can do about it. So, I take a page out of the book from Dory and we 'just keep swimming.'

Image found through Google

Donations & Fundraising

A key part of adopting is raising funds to help make the process happen. I am too prideful a person to ask for handouts, so we're trying to improvise. Steve and I have come up with a few different ideas that we'll put into process over the next few months. Right now we have 2 big ideas.

The first one is a big yard sale in August. I've already started pulling stuff out of closets, emptying drawers and bins. We have bags full of clothes and shoes as well. We need your donations! If you have stuff just lying around and live in the Piedmont area of NC, please e-mail me (n.denny1031(at)gmail.com) and we can work out details on getting the stuff to the sale site. We need anything you're willing to donate and every little bit helps out. I'll be posting more information about the date and time of the yard sale as it approaches

The small pile of stuff we currently have for the yard sale.

The second big initiative we're doing is asking small and locally owned businesses to donate to our AdoptTogether site (link in the side bar) and we will publish the company's logo or banner with a direct link back to the company's website. If you own a company or know someone who does, please let them know about this campaign. For any company willing to give a more substantial donation, we will provide other incentives. If you are or know someone who might be interested in this, please reach out to me at the e-mail address above.

Asking people to help us is going to be a long endeavor in this process, but we're willing to get out in the community, meet with people, and generate more buzz about our cause. Please share the blog as you please to help us spread the word. We gotta bring home Tiny Human!

There is No Knowing Where You Might Be Swept Off To...

We were the kind of people who said we would never have children. All three and a half years of our relationship, we always said that having children just wasn't for us. We enjoyed traveling, movies, going out with friends, and throwing parties for the people closest to us. It seemed inevitable that someone would always ask when we would be having children. It was a question that we always managed to evade. We became experts at giving rapid responses to people who were persistent in finding out about potential offspring. It just wasn't for us and what mattered was, we were okay with not wanting a child. We knew that we weren't destined to have a child biologically and quite frankly, it was no body's bee's wax as to why.

It wasn't until after we were married, in the Spring of 2016, that we first started talking about adoption. There seemed to be so many different options. With all the options available, we realized that all options were risky and costly. We encountered a lot of questions daily. Is this really for us? Could we make this work? Would even be good parents? We continued to discuss it and then we started to get more serious. We looked more closely at international adoptions and soon found ourselves enamored with all the possibilities. We were actually going to do this.

As luck would have it, one of my fellow co-workers is from Russia and I approached her with a question about international adoption. She gave me some valuable information. After 2 months of doing research, looking at different agencies and programs, late night conversations, and talking to new friends, we decided on an agency and the program we wanted to work with.

We were accepted by MLJ Adoptions on July 1st and joined their Samoa program. It was some much needed good news after several months of asking 'what ifs.' We are over the moon excited about bringing home a beautiful child, who we've currently dubbed 'Tiny Human,' to call our own. We've begun to research the culture and aspects of the Samoan society. Our days are spent texting back and forth about different random pieces of information we find regarding the adoption process and what we're getting in to.

MLJ has been an exceptional wealth of knowledge for us. Granted, the initial influx of paperwork was a little overwhelming (boy, how are we going to feel when we get to the dossier?), they were there to answer every single question we had. They painted a very clear picture of what to expect, the problems we may encounter, and offered us a number of tools and contacts for us to utilize. I cannot say enough good things about their outreach coordinator who's been in contact with us since our first inquiry.

We're sure that many of you have lots of questions and we'll try our hardest to answer them. Many of them may be answered in upcoming posts.

We know that there are many, many more steps as we begin this process and that we're only at the beginning. We need the support of our friends and family to help us get through this great adventure. So, now we begin the next part of our lives.