Lux et umbra vicissum…

It’s taken me longer than I like to post this, but I hope most of you will understand why once you’ve read the whole thing. As most of you know, our two new daughters will be arriving home with Daddy tomorrow morning. Yay! Now for further news…

When we started this adoption process, Joel and I talked about someday having another biological child once the girls were here and settled. We thought it would be nice to have one more baby, and it might also help our family bond a bit over the common experience. But I wasn’t absolutely sure I wanted to go that route. My pregnancies have gotten progressively harder each time, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to go through another one. But seeing as we wanted to get the girls home and settled which would mean having them here for a year or so, and then with the fact that it usually takes us a year or so to conceive once we start trying, I figured I had plenty of time to put off thinking about it.

And God laughed.

Baby H will most likely make an appearance in late September or early October.

Now to explain why we’ve waited so long to announce. As I’ve said, this news was a surprise to us. We weren’t trying for it this time, and since we usually have a little trouble conceiving we were doubly surprised to find out we were expecting again. When we did learn of the situation, we discussed it for a while to figure out how to handle it given our current adoption. We finally made a decision which may very well irritate our agency when they find out, but which we felt at the time was appropriate: we would hold off on telling them at least until after the first trimester. I’ve lost two babies to miscarriage, one of them quite late in the first trimester, and I simply couldn’t deal with the idea of our adoption being delayed and then losing a baby on top of that. Remember, we weren’t sure how old the Ethiopian court would say Liya was, and we were afraid they might decide she was too old to adopt out. The longer we waited, the more real that danger became. By alerting the agency to the pregnancy at that point, I risked losing both our older girl we were trying to adopt and the baby I was now carrying. It was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

We probably would have told them when I entered the second trimester, but as God worked it out, our court date ended up being assigned earlier than expected and my first trimester led us right up to it. Once the court date had happened, the girls were legally ours. Technically, we could have announced then, but we chose to be paranoid. We’ve heard of some strange things happening in adoptions, even after the court date, so we decided at that point that we would wait until the girls were on the plane on their way here before we made any official announcement. They’re on the plane now, so here’s the news!

A short summary of my condition so far: everything seems to be going ok. We had a scare around 15 weeks when I randomly started bleeding, but it didn’t last long and an ultrasound showed that all was well. I did have a really incredibly rotten first trimester (some of my facebook friends may remember that I suddenly disappeared for a little more than a month) where I couldn’t move for being sick. I couldn’t even use my laptop because the warmth and the sound of the fan made me more nauseous. It was crazy. Once that passed, I had a lot of energy trouble, partly because I had been stuck in bed for at least a month. It’s only been in the last few weeks that I’ve felt mostly back to normal, and even now I tend to have good days and bad days. That’s somewhat expected, though. We’re praying at this point that my disk injury in my lower back won’t act up like it did in my last pregnancy as I got bigger. So far it hasn’t been too bad, so maybe it’ll be ok this time. Prayers are appreciated.

And there you have it! Three new children for the Fouse family in the year 2009. Wow. Certainly not our plan, but it must be in the plan of the One who knows better than us. I’m trying to rest in that. (From five to eight! Ack!) Forgive us for not announcing sooner! I hope all of you understand (including our agency when they find out!).

Ok, so those of you going through Ethiopian adoptions right now will understand the full magnitude of this miracle.  Let me try to spell it out for everyone else…

There are two judges who hear all of the adoption cases in Ethiopia.  Because the adoption laws in the country have changed a bit recently (requiring different paperwork than before, etc.), the judges have had to request more paperwork on several of the adoption hearings that have come through, which has increased a backlog in the cases.  In addition, there are now 40 some (?) agencies working in Ethiopia, so there are a lot of court date requests going in.  The wait time for a court date has been steadily increasing since at least last fall.  As of last week, we were informed that court dates were being assigned 10 to 12 weeks out, so whenever we were told of a court date, it would most likely be 10 to 12 weeks from the date we were notified.

It was odd, though.  Back in… oh… January, I think, Joel felt very strongly that the Lord was telling him we’d adopt in March.  I’ll be honest.  I doubted even then.  I thought maybe he just had an optimistic feeling.  But I told people that, as unlikely as it seemed, when he got strong feelings about these sorts of things they tended to pan out.  As the weeks went by, I grew quite certain that the feeling he had was his own and not of the Lord after all.  Joel still held onto that March word until just in the past week or so when he started thinking maybe he was wrong after all.

We got an email today.  With absolutely no known reason, we were assigned a court date of March 25th.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have prayed and prayed and asked others to pray for a miracle in the process to speed it up, but I never really had faith that God would do it.  Oh, I knew He could, but I questioned why I was important enough to warrant this particular intervention when so many other families would like to speed things up as well.  Well, I don’t pretend to understand His reasons and they’re probably more complex and far-reaching than I’ll ever know, but I am humbled and in awe of the way He has consistently moved this particular adoption along and helped us to bring these girls home.  All glory be to Him!

If this court date is successful, we believe travel will be in the beginning of May.  This would be another answer to prayer since Joel would be able to go over and come back before airfare costs go up in June.  Please continue to pray with us that the court date will be successful and that we’ll be able to bring our new daughters home soon!  Oh, and stick in a prayer for the necessary travel funds while you’re at it.  I have absolutely no doubt that God can take care of them just fine.

This’ll be brief because… well… you know, life.

Our dossier should be in Ethiopia now.  Yay!  We don’t know how long it’ll take for them to assign us a court date, but when they do set the date it’ll be about 10 to 12 weeks away.  We don’t travel for the court date; we travel for the embassy date which usually happens about 5 weeks after the court date.  We’re praying that things might speed up a bit (as are all of the other adoptive families in process), so we’ll see what happens.  We did hear that one of the judges in Ethiopia is now hearing only adoption cases and is hearing them five days a week, which might help a bit.  Apparently a lot of court cases are being postponed because the judges decide they need more paperwork which is one reason the cases are getting so backed up.  Things will even out eventually.  We’re just praying it’ll happen sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, you can pray with us that God will bring in the necessary travel funds.  We don’t know exactly how much it will be yet because airfare changes based on the time of the year, but we can be sure it’ll be more than a couple thousand dollars since that’s about how much it is for one round-trip ticket.  Joel’s going without me this time, so that’ll save some money, and he’ll stay at a guest home which is cheaper than a hotel.  So the main costs will be the plane tickets - one round trip for him and two one-way for our girls.  God has provided so much already that we have complete faith that this last little bit will be there when needed as well.

I’ll update as soon as I can when we find out our court date.  Thanks again for praying us through our journey!

We got our authenticated documents back in the mail today!!  Yay!!  I had thought we would be able to send off our dossier at this point, but after looking through the home study I discovered that our social worker hadn’t included the agency license and such that we need to send with it.  She said she should be able to get them in the mail today, so I think we’ll have them by Monday at the latest.  In the meantime, we’ll scan all of the forms we do have so we can print of copies whenever they’re needed.

We got our USCIS (immigrations) fingerprints appointment in the mail today!  It’s January 13th in the afternoon.  I’ll have to work out someone getting the two oldest from school if not babysitting for all of them, but it’s well worth it.  Please pray with us that the results come back quickly so we can get a court date in Ethiopia.

As of today, we have the money we need to send in our dossier.

AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God is SO good and has blessed us so richly!!!  I had no idea where these funds were coming from, and now He’s brought them in from all over the place to give these beautiful girls a home.  PRAISE THE LORD!!!

If anyone was giving adoption money to us for Christmas, no fear!  We’ll still need to save money for travel.  Anything the agency receives above what we need to send them for their expenses is reimbursed to us for travel.  Since airfare isn’t cheap (though at least we might catch it in the off-season… fares to Ethiopia go up in June), and Joel will also need in-country money for the kids’ visas, medicals, and any other expenses that may arise, donations are still welcome.

God is so good.  I know I said that before, but I can’t say it enough.  God is so very good and His blessings are abundant.  Glory to His Name.

What gift is there that’s better than life with a loving family, a chance to live and grow?  We only need $4000 more to give that gift to our two future daughters in Ethiopia.  Please consider helping us to that goal.

A friend just came back from picking up her Ethiopian children, and she had a chance to meet L & B while she was there.  She sat down with L and told her that we were close to being able to get them.  L began to cry.  She said she loves us and misses us, and she wants to come home.

Please help us to bring our girls home.  I don’t know how God will reward you, but I truly believe that He does bless people for helping the orphans.

To give online, go to http://www.cwa.org and click on the link to donate to CWA or CWF.  Fill in your info, choose “CWA/CWF general fund”, and in the optional field choose “A CWA Family”.  Put in the name first name Joel or the first name Rebecca and the last name Fouse.  Input your credit card info and be sure to click submit.

God bless you this season and always, friends!

We only need about $4000 now to bring the girls home!!!  If anyone wants to donate, it’s tax deductible!  You can get one more tax deduction for this year if you do it this month.  And what a fabulous Christmas gift for two lonely girls…. a family!

We’ve been expecting to hear that the home study was complete any day since we received and corrected the draft a couple weeks ago, but we haven’t heard anything yet.  I think we’ll call our social worker today and check on it.  We’ll miss the December deadlines for grant applications, unfortunately, but it’s all in God’s hands.  Perhaps He’ll lead enough people to help us that we won’t have to apply for the grants.  That would be wonderful since it would mean more grants available for other people.  Most of the people who go through the adoption process don’t start out with all of the funds they’ll need, so there are plenty of people applying for the grants that are out there!

On a completely different note, the kids are using their birthday money to Christmas shop for their siblings (my suggestion, but they all liked it).  I think it’s wonderful that they get a chance to use their own money to buy something for someone else, but since they’re all pretty young it means I have to come up with a lot of inexpensive (they don’t have that much birthday money) gifts for each of them.  That isn’t a problem for Eli who loves cars (matchbox cars are cheap), but the others can be more difficult.  I think I’ve managed ok so far, but I was trying to think what I could suggest to Charis for Alexis.  I think I know something she’d love, but I have a dilemma…

Early in our marriage, Joel and I swore we would allow no barbies to enter our house.  The idea behind this is simply that they promote an unrealistic and unreachable view of beauty.  Having so many girls in the house now, I think it was a good decision.  There’s such a high rate of eating disorders and such things out there, and anything we might be able to do to prevent our kids from going through that is worth it.  (Don’t know if the anti-barbie stance will make a difference, but it’s one small way to try.)  Anyway, Alexis is now at the point where I think she would love to dress up dolls and play with them like I used to play with my barbies.  But I can’t find any of that type of doll that’s any better proportioned and whatnot.  I found some “Bible character” dolls, but I’m not sure if they’re meant to be undressed and redressed in different outfits - there certainly weren’t any clothing sets on sale with them.  Besides, it would seem odd to have “Queen Esther” going shopping with her girlfriends or losing her pet dog.

So my question is this: does anyone know of any dressable dolls out there that aren’t as oddly proportioned as barbie dolls?  I’m not looking for dress up baby dolls, because she’s mostly past the age where she would enjoy them.  I’m looking for ones that look more like young adults, but real young adults and not freakishly shaped ones.

The 3 AM results of having a wakeful, imaginative, dramatic five year old -

Branwen: daddy…. Daddy…. DADDY!!!

Me: (hobbling groggily into her room) Daddy is sick.  What do you need?

Branwen: (with no fear in her voice but plenty of drama) I saw a CIRCLE OF DARKNESS!!!!  And I’m SCARED!!!

Me: (still groggily) There’s nothing to be scared of.  Go back to sleep.

(I leave the room, get back to bed, and after a bit of a struggle begin to fall back asleep…)

Branwen: mommy… Mommy… MOMMY!!!!

Me: (still groggy) What is it, Branwen?

Branwen: (once again, with drama) Something TICKLED my SIDE!!!  And I know it wasn’t my blanket!  And I was LAYING ON THAT SIDE!!!!

Me: (rather at a loss, I go over and rub her side a bit, briefly) There, now go back to sleep.

Branwen: (calmly) Good night, Mommy.

- It’s a good thing that was the last time.  If it had continued, I don’t think even my half-asleep state would have kept me from getting mad.

The other night we had a pretty typical toddler boy quote, but it was still terribly cute.

Joel had gotten Eli ready for his bath, and Eli entered the bathroom where Branwen was brushing her teeth.

Eli: Bwanwen!!!  I NAKEY!!!!

(He was apparently very proud of this fact, though, oddly enough, if you suddenly need to take care of something while helping him dress, he gets very upset at his lack of pants.)

Desta’s trying to understand the whole Christmas thing -

Desta: Christmas is Jesus’ birthday?

Me: Yes.  That’s when we celebrate Jesus’ birthday, anyway.

Desta: Do we sing happy birthday?

Me: We can.

Desta: But Jesus is in heaven.  Do we sing it to heaven?

Me: That would be fine.

Desta: But our tookis will be dead in heaven. (note: tookis is our word for bottom)

Me: (silence)

Desta: How can we go to heaven to sing to Jesus?  Our tookis will be dead.

Me: Um… we don’t have to go there to sing to him, honey.  We can sing right here and he can hear us.

- I decided not to bother trying to address the dead tookis issue right then.  Where did she get that?  Well… that’s another story.

We are all finishing a very yummy dinner of turkey, gravy, sweet potato casserole, and cranberry sauce.  Alexis really liked the cranberry sauce, but apparently not enough to remember what it was called.

Alexis: May I have… um… may I have some more… um….

(pause)

Alexis: May I have some more New Zealand?

Joel gave her a questioning look.

Alexis: Well, I couldn’t remember what it was called, so I called it New Zealand.

Yes, my children are goofs.