Thai fact

"Thailand is roughly the size of France and shaped like a tall tree leaning to the right.  Thai school children are taught to describe the shape of their country as an elephant's head with a long dangling trunk."

fashion cents

I love this project.  It's from Feed the Children and it's a pretty basic concept.  You buy one of these supercool reversible totes for around $60 and the money is used to feed a hungry child for a year. Now that's smart fashion.  

To read more about the project (of which I have no affiliation, just admiration, click here.

Thai fact

We have recently started reading the book "Culture Smart! Thailand" and it is full  of all sorts of interesting facts on Thailand and Thai culture.  I thought it would be fun to share some of them on this blog. 

here goes... 

The Kingdom of Thailand was known as Siam until 1939, when it was changed to Muang Thai or Prathet Thai, which both mean "Land of the Free".

whiplash

here's how it went down:

-we decided on Thailand.

-we decided on Holt.

-we signed on with Holt.

-Holt closes their Thai program.  Estimated re-opening of December 2008.

-We sign on with WACAP.

-We begin the home study process with one of WACAP's Texas home study agencies.  

-We are fully pleased with WACAP as an agency, but I remain unsettled because I prefer that Holt primarily cares for their children through foster care while WACAP cares for their children in orphanages.  (Different things are priorities to different people and this apparently is a priority of mine as I could not get past it.

- A couple of weeks ago I call Holt to check the status of their Thai program.  It has still not reopened but a spot has just become open as a family switched from the thailand to the Ethiopia Program.

-We are offered their spot.

-Much home study agency drama ensues as we are not working presently with an agency that Holt works with. 

-I think (and hope and pray) that all is going to work out as we head back to Holt.  Though the home study process will be a bit more complicated, I think that it will be worth it for our family.

Ultimately we are really excited as we continue to try to navigate God's weird and wacky ways.  

we have a home study date

Our home study agency just sent us the itinerary and our social worker will be arriving at 7:45 on July 10th.  Yikes! This feels exciting and scary and very official.  It's nice to be moving forward.  

  photo of Pataya, Thailand 

back from Sabbatical

I haven't written for a couple months but we had what felt like a big day yesterday.  We finally got all our documents in the mail to our home study agency.  Once they receive them we can book a date for our home study.  It was nice to actually make some progress.  Truth be told I have been pretty discouraged the last couple months.  Seeing how long of a process this is, it's discouraging to be discouraged so early on.  The process is really long if you can afford to just move straight through it, but when you have to keep pausing to save up for the next step - it becomes a very loooong journey.  Ultimately though, God is in control.  He is faithful and He is extravagant with His gifts.  And He loves our new baby even more then we do.  

God grant me grace for this journey.  Amen.  

awesome.

Saw this on youtube and was just so moved...

Happy Birthday baby, maybe.

Lately I have been working through the fact that our child will probably be around two years old by the time we meet him. Oliver, my youngest is turning two next week. I look at him and he seems so old to me. He loves to say his name and tell me who loves him. This next child will already have a name, and may know someone who loves him - but doesn't know any of the many people that are about to love him. It also feels eerie to me that along with him be about two at our arrival into his life, this process is said to take about two years. Therefore I wake up each morning thinking - is today the day? Is this your birthday? Or perhaps you will be born tomorrow. I won't know for a long time, but Happy Birthday baby. Any day now, happy birthday.

My Fancy Family

I had a dream a couple of days ago that has really stayed with me. In it we had a family made up of children from different nations. One of my children was talking to me about it, asking why our family looked so different from other families. In the dream I said something to the effect of "I guess God just got really fancy with our family. He brought us together from all these different places and we have all these different needs and all these different gifts to meet those needs and we just fit. But no doubt about it - we're pretty fancy." As I've thought about it these past couple days, I've come to realize that God is the parent in that dream, and I'm the child with the questions. He's slowly answering all of the questions in my child heart. I'm just grateful that He adopted me into His fancy family and has given me all eternity to learn His love.

Hi, we're the Cleavers. I mean, Pabens

On Friday we signed and initialed our contract, wrote a check that felt a little painful and put it in the mail. It should be arriving at our home study agency today. For those of you who don't know what a home study is - it goes something like this. A social worker makes a few visits to our home to spend several hours checking us out, checking our children out, checking our home out. A trifle intimidating. Though I know that these people are for us and for adoption, it is still hard to not want to appear perfect...or whatever that means to an adoption social worker. In the end though,we trust that as flawed as we are, we are "good enough" for this thing that is in essence, loving a child.

i heart amazon

Really. It's a little bit sick. I hear the doorbell ring and my heartbeat increases. I hope it's my amazon order arriving. It must stop or I will spend all of our adoption funds reading about adoption. I must get a library card. The problem is that when you have small kids it is far more enjoyable to hit click, click with children yelling and thrashing in the background then head into a silent library with children thrashing and yelling in the foreground. Do you see why I love amazon? Here are my purchases and opinions over the past few months:





The Complete Book of International Adoption by Dawn Davenport : Very Helpful







Love in the Driest Season, a memoir: by Neely Tucker.
Excellent whether or not you plan to adopt





CultureSmart Thailand: Sean is reading it now, I'll keep you posted






"Are Those Kids Yours?" by Cheri Register, Chapter 1 - so far, so good.


Please feel free to leave a post of books that you recommend - I love reading and I love research. Also if you have any insight into the amazon/library dilemma...

HIV - AIDS Quiz

Get this widget!


Thailand is actually considered somewhat of a success story in the education & prevention of the spread of AIDS - click here if you are interested in learning more.

April Fool's

I emailed Sean at work this morning and told him that the Thai Government had officially put all adoptions on hold for the time being. He called a few minutes later and was not amused when I said "April Fool's!". I thought it was so clever. Guess not.

why Thailand?

People may wonder why we are drawn to adopting from Thailand, especially considering the long and relatively tedious process. There are lots of reasons and I will try to share those in future posts... but there's one that feels very highlighted to me right now. Thailand carries the dubious honor of being called the sex tourism capital of the world. You, like me, may have never heard of sex tourism, but yes - it is a real thing. And a great threat to the children of Thailand. You see, sex tourism hardly just involves adults. Imagine the threat this could pose to the orphans there. There are lots of reasons why we want to adopt from this beautiful nation, one that has much to be proud of. But it would be untrue to say that this not so beautiful fact hasn't played a large part for me. To read more about this thriving industry in Thailand, click here.

t-shirt musings

Last night I was working on some ideas for a t-shirt fundraiser for some of our adoption expenses. This was my favorite design that I have come up with so far...Sean has been trying to help with feedback but that has made it a bit more trying. It's not like I know graphic design or anything. Here are my weak attempts at it.


This would be across the front of the shirt:


And then this would be big on the back:

baby steps

Yesterday we mailed in our application to our home study agency. This is all beginning to feel very legit other than the major financial obstacles that stand before us. Well, what else is new? God owns it all anyway, and He longs for this child to have parents even more then we long to be them. So I am choosing to have faith that He will make a way. Slow and steady...

bump in the road

I probably could have waited for our first bump in the journey to come a little later but no such luck. Just after I turned in our application I headed out of town for a girl's weekend in NYC with Sean's mom, sister, aunt and close family friend to celebrate Nancy's 60th birthday. As soon as I got back in town I found my email inbox full of posts from the Yahoo Thailand adoption forum that I am a part of with this heading : "Holt not accepting new applications". Gulp. Talk about timing. It seems that just as I was turning in our application, Holt was putting their Thai program "on hold" until the end of the year due to a huge influx of applications (mostly people moving over from China due to the long waits there.)

It only took my a few seconds to rebound and check what other agencies had Thai programs. We had already gone through this process but had quickly settled on Holt both because of it's stellar reputation and because we like that it was a Christian agency.

There are only a few agencies that do Thai adoptions (it is a really small program to begin with - usually less that 100 Thai kids are adopted into the US each year).

I started making calls and things were looking really bleak. Some other agencies had closed their programs for the same reason as Holt. Others were talking about a mandatory letter of infertility. I had never heard this before and felt funny about it since I have 2 biological kids! I was feeling really confused and discouraged. It was looking like Thailand was not going to happen. Both Sean and I were feeling pretty sad about it. I asked him what to do with our ceramic white elephant nad he said to smash it as good closure. I didn't really appreciate that response.

We talked and prayed about it some more and decided to move ahead with Ethiopia. The next morning when I was going to turn in an application to the agency that we liked best for Ethiopia, I just couldn't do it. I decided to call the Thai agencies back and ask some more questions. I could lay this all down, but not before I knew the door was really shut. This was the direction that we felt God was leading and so I had to keep going until I was sure that we were to move in another direction.

I called back WACAP (World Association for Children and Parents), my next favorite agency after Holt, and talked with a woman for awhile. She explained that the Thai government doesn't really understand why people would want to adopt internationally if they were able to have their own children. She said the letter of infertility helps them understand the parents desire to adopt internationally. She asked if my pregnancies were difficult and for the first time I felt really grateful that they were. I also let her know that I had my tubes tied because my pregnancies were so hard. She said that if I got a letter from my doctor explaining this - it would be all that we needed. Isn't it crazy how something that has felt like such a curse can really be a hidden blessing?! God truly works in mysterious ways!

So...we just turned in our application with WACAP. We are so excited that it seems as though the door to Thailand hasn't closed after all. We will tread lightly, knowing that things can change so quickly...but for now we are rejoicing in what might be - a Thai child of our own!

Back in the saddle...

Well - I haven't written here for quite awhile. I realized that we have along road ahead of us and I couldn't let this process consume my thoughts, especially at this point, or I was never gonna make it through this sane. So...I laid it aside for awhile until we were able to actually move forward some. And I just finished turning in our application to Holt International. I am really excited that we are official. Or almost official - we still have to turn in tax forms, photos, a notarized something or other....I can tell that we have quite a paper trail ahead of us. But it's what waits on the other side of that trail that gets you through it. Just wanted to check in and say that we are at last, officially beginning the process.

Even though you probably haven't been born yet - I can't wait to meet you sweet baby!

something to hold onto

On Sunday we were at Target, at our weekly post-church grocery shopping trip. We wandered over to the Global bazaar section and I must admit I had my eyes peeled for something from Thailand. Instead I quickly spotted this white elephant. I remembered something from 'Anna and the King' about the important symbolism of White Elephants in Thai Culture (really Siamese culture in the film). Sadly, a large part of my Thai education at this point comes from that film and a brief trip there 2 years ago. I need to get some books! But, I digress - I grabbed the figurine and gave Sean that pleading look, the 'I must have this!' one. Even though I wasn't exactly sure of the significance, I really am just needing something to hold at this point. A concrete reminder of things to come. I've since read up some on elephants and white elephants and though some regard these as a good luck charm, my little white elephant is a prayer reminder. I look at it and remember to hope and believe for the little Thai someone that God has for us.

To read more about the importance of elephants in Thai culture click here.

Happy Birthday to the King of Thailand

So, I've started reading up some on Thai culture and it seems that today is the King of Thailand's 80th birthday! Not only is that a big birthday to celebrate, but this King is a really big deal. He is the world's longest reigning monarch.

Click here to read more and get a fascinating glimpse inside Thai culture.

So I guess we are really doing this?

On November 29th I put $29 in an envelope earmarked for adoption. It sounds silly, insignificant. But when I did it, it almost took my breath away, the enormity of the moment. We were stepping onto the path, choosing the journey.

We had been talking primarily about Ethiopia and there are a lot of things I really like about the Ethiopia program but then out of nowhere Sean started talking about Thailand. We weren't even sure if Thailand was open for adoptions since you hear so little about it but he kept talking about it...so I started to look into Thailand. And something about it just feels right. There were a lot of things that just clicked. We are going to continue to pray about it but seem to be heading in that direction. I guess it still may not be time for me to get my black babies. We never even discussed brown babies!

Today I called Holt, the agency we would like to use. I had a few basic questions though really I think I just wanted to talk to someone official. Do something official.

And...we can't make it official until Oliver turns two. Thailand has a rule that if you already have children, the youngest must be at least two at the time of application. So we have some time, which is good because we need to save up money anyway and Sean is wanting to take this slow. (Part of what was confirming for us about Thailand is that the process takes a loooong time. Ethiopia's program is pretty quick.) So we are in the 1st of many 'waits' that lie ahead.

the baby debate

We have talked about it for years. Years. In fact it was one of the initial debates before we married. Black babies or white babies? As politically incorrect as that sounds - that was the official name of the debate, and has been referred to as such many times since then. Though doctors had told me for years that I wouldn't be able to bear children, I wasn't that fazed. I have always wanted to adopt. My would -be husband, understood the diagnosis but still wanted to try for our own. We felt content with the compromise. We would have any and all color children that we could. Whatever God was willing to send our way. Well, I ended up being ridiculously fertile, and two shocking pregnancies later we are just now getting to the non-white baby part of the deal. I love my white babies, but I cannot lie, there is something in my heart that will never be at peace until we get to experience the heart of God through adoption.