Adoption Musings are old blog posts journaling our Ugandan adoption.
Like most little girls I dreamed of one day marrying my prince and having babies. Now, as an adult, I’m happily married and over the moon about becoming a mom. I’m expecting a baby, but not the old fashioned way. Instead of a doctor’s appointment to hear a heartbeat, I’m getting my fingerprints scanned at the Pierce County courthouse to complete an adoption home study. I’ve always dreamed of adopting my children and when my husband and I felt like it was time to grow our family we chose the most expensive and difficult way to do it.
We set out with a dream to adopt from Uganda and started researching homes or orphanages where we would find our son. Once we found a baby home in Uganda we started our home study process. If you’ve ever done an adoption home study you know that it’s a redwood tree worth of paper. After writing answers to one hundred twenty pages of personal questions we cleaned every square inch of our house in preparation for a home visit from our social worker. In addition to that we installed extra smoke detectors to ensure every room would pass a child safety inspection with flying colors. My house had never been so clean and ready for early fire detection. Our social worker asked every question under the sun about our personalities, families, jobs, finances, and parenting methods. After our interview we had the instructions to wait, wait, and wait some more. In this season of waiting we are preparing to travel to Uganda for six weeks to seek approval from the foreign court system to adopt our son and bring him home.
When we bring him home you won’t question if our son is adopted. My husband is Caucasian, I’m East Indian, and our son on the way is Ugandan. Our family will look more like the United Nations Delegation than a traditional family and we wouldn’t trade it for the world.
We are so humbled to be in pursuit of adoption. It’s interesting to find that as we have begun this process we’ve started to see adoptive families all around us. It’s like when you buy a neon green Ford Focus you start to notice everyone else who drives a neon green Ford Focus although you’ve never noticed them before. It’s as if they popped up out of nowhere. We’ve found it the same with adoptive families. We’ve been blessed to see how many different families have chosen to bring in a son or daughter and raise them as their own. I’ve had conversations with people at the grocery store, coffee shop, church, and the mall who have either adopted or been adopted. Wherever I go I seem to encounter adoption. I’m encouraged to see so many parents who have been patient to wade through the red tape for their child. These are parents who have saved every penny and invited their friends and family to be a part of their journey. Some have even waited years to finally bring home their son or daughter. I take my hat off to those parents. They earn a blue ribbon in my book. I’m eager to join their ranks.