Starting to Day Dream

Unfortunately we have no new news to report. We had hoped to receive some updated pictures by now from AoH but haven't received anything yet. So I will just share some random thoughts.

We headed up to Door County this past weekend and picked apples and pumpkins. It's become a tradition my mother started several years back and so it's fun to get together with all my siblings and their families. It was a nice day to enjoy each others company, and to take in the early fall colors. While we were there we made friends with another trans-racial family there also picking apples that had an older daughter and adopted a boy from Chicago and 2 other children from Haiti. Haiti is where our adoption journey began, so it was great to connect and hear their journey and get some practical advice from parents who are 3 years past their homecoming. The greatest info they shared with us was about a salon in Green Bay that does African hair very reasonably.

Until we hear otherwise, we are still trusting we will be traveling in 8 short weeks. Kim is starting to get us prepared by making copies of all our important documents. We bought two large storage bins on wheels that we are hoping to fill up with donations and supplies for the orphanage. Mentally I'm going through travel arangements and coordinating where our existing children will be during our 10-12 day journey. It all still seems very much like a dream. I'm sure reality will hit very quickly once we pick up Josiah and Gabriella. In my mind I was even working through saying their names. Because in reality they are Boimah and Kimberly. And so our plan is to address them Josiah Boimah and Gabriella Kimberly, and then eventually drop the second name once they make the association. I wonder a lot how they are going to respond to us and being ripped from their culture and being dropped in the middle of northern Wisconsin at the start of winter. I wonder how they will greive that loss, and how long it will take them to trust us and know that we are here to stay. I wonder how well I will do at sheltering them initially. My nature is to want to show them to the whole world, but I know that during that initial transition, they'll need time to process it all and adjust. I wonder what their personalities are like. I wonder how it will change the dynamics of our existing family. I wonder how noisy meal time and bed time and van time and getting ready for school time will be. I wonder what it will be like the first time they call me "papa". I wonder....

As I shared last month, Kim and I just celebrated 15 years. So we are hoping to take advantage of this trip to Liberia by way of Brussels, to schedule a day in Paris before we pick up our children. Being such a romantic city, it would be great to experience that and connect in a special way before our lives are completely changed by Josiah and Gabriella. Lets face it, there are not too many baby sitters interested in caring for 6 children these days. And not many would we trust with 6. So the days of Romantic get-away weekends are going to be much more infrequent and more difficult to pull off.

So those are just some random day dreams. For now it is all one big question mark. So as we wait for it all to play out, we look forward to sharing the highs and the lows of this journey called adoption.