A little more about Ben and what happens now

BUMMER DISCLAIMER: Unlike with Lucas, we are not allowed to display Ben's photo on a public sight such as this or facebook until after we have traveled to bring him home. If you haven't seen Ben's sweet little face yet, we are happy to share it with you! Just email us :-)

So here is our attempt at an illustration..



He is already my little buddy. I'm looking at his sweet little face right now while I'm typing this. His little face goes everywhere with me. I still have to pinch myself that this has happened, and that even now he is only 2 months old! We knew that it would take 4-6 months for any child to come home. We expect ours to be on the 6 month end of things (or a little longer) due to the court closure that begins Monday and goes until the end of September. This is a routine annual closure, and we have known that it might affect us from the beginning.

The silver lining of this yucky closure, is that we were blessed with a much younger peanut than we were expecting. The other, is that there is usually a period of 1-3 months of adoption "no man's land" after you accept a referral anyway. During this period of time, your documents that you sign (currently on my counter) have to make it to Holt in Oregon, and then on their way to Ethiopia. That takes awhile. All that stuff needs to get translated into Amharic which is no easy task. We are hoping that all of this can happen and then our papers will be ready for submission as soon as the courts open. Most of my friends who received referrals in May and June have been submitted to court and are waiting for court dates. Sadly, they will not get any news until the end of September and they have known about their children longer. Of my friends that have court dates booked after the closure, they are already moving through October. That makes me think they will submit us at the end of Sept and we might hope to have a court date announced sometime in October and hopefully be traveling to meet Ben when he is around 5 months old in November.

If things go well and we passed court around then, I could hope to return around 2 months later to pick been up and bring him home in Jan/Feb or so..making him 8-9 months old.

Okay, back to Ben :-)

I was expecting a birth parent relinquishment, and that is not his case. We will leave it at that. We all know that terrible things happen to innocent people. We all hear about horrible things that happen to babies, except that this is MY baby. I'm still making sense of it. I am not angry, I am sad. I am sad that a newborn child had to scream on the ground waiting to be found.. and it really rips though my heart. Because I was not there and I couldn't take that pain away from him.

But then.. let us take a moment and let us think about grace and the hands of God. Let's think about how he was wrapped up to be warm and not naked. Let's remember that he did not starve for even one day. Let us remember that at this moment he is on the other side of the world in the care of loving Holt nannies and that God has a plan for everyone, even newborn babies in 3rd world countries.

I feel like we are starting this 2 month wait of no news on a good foot. We have a young young little healthy boy and we just need to keep busy for a few months while we wait for court news. I always knew this would be the hardest part of the wait and tried to prepare myself emotionally for that fact. So far so good. I know there will be hard days, especially after the courts open and I have to wait longer than I think for court news.

Another blessing, is that because Ben is so young we don't have to update our USCIS approval! We can be confident that he will be receiving his immigration visa prior to his first birthday!