Big Step

Hello, Family and Friends! 

It's been awhile since our last post, and we know you are dying to know what's been going on with our adoption process, so here's an update since there's actually something to tell. 
Our social worker, Kim, came to our house tonight to meet our children, tour our humble little home, and ask us some important questions to help her in writing our home study report that will be sent over to Ethiopia with the rest of our paperwork. She could not come over until the things on the list from the previous post were completed. Initially, we came with guns blazing to get this paperwork completed and notarized. And then we had to wait for our background checks and child abuse checks to come back. 
That happened last week, and we got Kim over here as quick as we could. I feel really blessed to have such an amazing social worker. She has 3 children of her own who are teenagers now, but she remembers what it was like to have 3 young ones, and was very understanding and patient with us tonight. The kids gave her the grand tour and showed off all of their rooms and toys. Riley informed her that his room is never that clean. 

Kim had previously told us to not worry about cleaning our house- she wanted to see how we normally live... Well, Nathan can tell you that I am a bit of a clean freak, especially when people are coming over. And this was a big one! This lady was coming over for the purpose of seeing our home and meeting our clan to write up a report on whether or not she recommends us to be adoptive parents! So, what did I spend my Thursday doing (my "mommy" day, the day that ALL 3 of my children are in school)?! CLEANING the house from TOP to BOTTOM! I even put some apple cider on the stove so the house would smell amazing (she showed up with 3 skinny mochas from Starbucks- like I said, she's awesome). This might be too much information, but after dropping the kids off, I came home and put on my "vacuuming outfit" (Mom, you know what this means- don't worry, the blinds were all shut), and I put on my tunes, and got to it- no children to put toys right in the path of my vacuum, or whine for a snack, or yell for me to wipe their butt, no husband to grab my bootie as I bend over to get the crumbs/dog hair from under the kitchen table... It was what I would call an ideal day, which will be lame to many of you! 

Sorry, I got off subject there for a bit... 
So, Kim was asking the kids about the adoption and about how they feel about it. Addison just keeps telling her that she wants a baby girl. And Riley is telling her that he doesn't want another sister. Really, 5:00pm on a Thursday is not the best time for someone so important to meet my oldest child- he's grumpy, he's tired after a long day of learning, and he's hungry. Luckily, we have a few years to prepare our children and the rest of our family for the new arrival in the Gronberg house. It's going to be an experience for all of us, but one that we believe will change us forever. For the better. Some people think that life is all about them, however, life should actually be about others. Sacrificing things that you DON'T NEED to give someone else a chance at life. This is the lesson that we are hoping to teach our children, and everyone else around us. 

I wanted to share with you some facts that we have learned in our training that we have done so far. When I thought about adopting, I thought no big deal, we have 3 children already, we are pros- this will be no different. However, that is far from the truth. Back at our first meeting, Kim made a comment that we will not be able to parents our adopted child with the same methods that we use on our biological children. I thought yeah whatever, that can't be true. But, I've learned some things since then. Think about your children when they were babies. When they cried, you attended to them immediately- giving them the nourishment or attention that they needed. Children who are being raised in orphanages are in an unfortunate position. When they are hungry, or scared, or need a diaper change, for example, they cry and cry and cry... the orphanage workers are not ignoring them on purpose- there simply are not enough of them to attend to each baby right away. After many instances of this lack of care, their internal alarm goes off, and become exhausted. This is called the cycle of unmet need. This results in lack of trust, poor self-regulation, poor impulse control, lack of empathy, and a weak sense of cause and effect. For our babies, they had a need which was met by timely effective nurturing, and they learn to trust (the cycle of need). So, even if we adopt a baby, we will have our work cut out for us! And it makes perfect sense, we just had not thought of this. Another very likely obstacle is sensory input issues. This is due to the lack of positive sensory and emotional experiences in the orphanage, which can result in her being under-reactive to sensory input or over-reactive. So much of our brain development occurs with our early sensory experiences! And the last obstacle I'll mention is attachment problems. Our daughter will bond with the caregivers at the orphanage, and a bond has the potential to become an attachment, if the cycle of need is met, which it usually is not in orphanages. So, our daughter will need to attach to us- this will take time, but after many cycles of meeting her needs and promoting attachment, she will learn to trust us. We will be doing training to learn the procedure of "cocooning" upon returning home with her. This will involve us basically hunkering down in our home with few visitors and no one but Nathan and I caring for her every need each time for a good few months.  These are the basics from our training, but this is just to give you an idea of some of the challenges that we will most likely face as adoptive parents. This sounds like a lot looking back over what I just wrote, and many people will read this and think why would we want to do this?! I can tell you that we genuinely know in our hearts that we were chosen to be her parents because we have the patience and willingness to fight for her- to do whatever it takes to be her family, and show her the kind of love that every child deserves to be apart of. 

Kim will write up our home study, and we will meet face to face one more time (until after the adoption when she checks in on us about every 3 months for a year). Once that gets approved, we will be able to apply for some grants to help with funding. As you can imagine, there are not many grants, but a lot of applicants. There is one through our church that does a matching grant, and we are hoping for that to be a good way for us to get one big step closer to bringing home our daughter! More on that later. We will continue to push forward in getting our paperwork completed to send our dossier over to Ethiopia in early 2013! Like I've said before, this is the most work we've put into "conceiving" a child!

This is a song that we have come to love over the last few weeks- it's by Audio Adrenaline. Here is the video and lyrics. 
http://youtu.be/U64bongHqYU?hd=1

Kings and Queens song lyrics:
Will we leave behind the innocent too brief
On their own, on the run when their lives have only begun
These could be our daughters and our sons
And just like a drum I can hear their hearts beating
I know my God won’t let them be defeated
Every child has a dream to belong and be loved

Chorus:
Boys become kings, girls will be queens
Wrapped in Your majesty 
When we love, when we love the least of these
Then they will be brave and free
Shout your name in victory
When we love when we love the least of these
When we love the least of these

Break our hearts once again
Help us to remember when
We were only children hoping for a friend
Won’t you look around these are the lives that the world has forgotten
Waiting for doors of our hearts and our homes to open

CHORUS

If not us who will be like Jesus
To the least of these
If not us tell me who will be like Jesus
Like Jesus to the least of these

Boys become kings, girls will be queens
Wrapped in your majesty
When we love, when we love the least of these
Then they will be brave and free shout your name in victory
We will love we will love the least of these
We will love the least of these
We will love the least of these
We will love the least of these
We will love the least of these 
We will love the least of these

We are not alone in this, and having that knowledge changes everything.

‘Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand. ’Isaiah 41:10

We thank you for your continued support and prayers as we continue on in our journey. Prayers and positive thoughts are always welcome and much appreciated! We could not do this without the love of our family, friends, and church family!

"Unless someone, like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. ~Dr. Seuss

Reminders:
Our agency, America World Adoption, has a program called the "Eternal Family Program" which enables family and friends to contribute toward the cost of our adoption. Of course, we present this to you as an opportunity and not an obligation. If you feel led to partner with us financially, America World will accept contributions on our behalf and will provide a letter or email to you which will substantiate that the funds have been received by AW. Go to https://www.awaa.org/forms/payment.aspx and in the box "notes," please type "Nathan and Jennifer Gronberg Eternal Life Fund." Thank you!

And don't forget about our fundraiser! Go to http://www.adoptionbug.com/thegronberg6/ to order a t-shirt. We receive a commission for each one sold, AND you would be raising awareness for adoption and orphans around the world!

Moving along... slowly.

I realize that it's been awhile since my last post. I don't have anything big to tell, but we've had a busy month slowly paper chasing. Since meeting with our social worker back at the beginning of October, we've gathered these things:

Our finger prints, police reports, and criminal background checks
Child abuse and neglect registry report
4 Reference letters for the Home study
3 Reference letters for the Dossier- all notarized
A school reference
Child medical reports- notarized and TB tests for all 3
Adult medical reports- TB tests, AIDS tests, and notarized
Employment verification letters- both notarized
Birth Certificates for all
Marriage certificate
Health Insurance and Life Insurance verification- notarized
Financial Statements- notarized
We have both completed 10 hours of online training
I got my passport (Nathan has one)
I have completed my 8 page autobiography (Nathan's is almost done)
So, as you can see we've been quite busy! There's much  more to do to complete our dossier to be sent over to Ethiopia- we'll be working on those things for the next few months. Now that we're knee deep into this process, it's eye-opening for us just how intricate the process to adopt is! Every aspect of our lives is being investigated. Once the criminal background check is complete (and Nathan finishes up a few items of paperwork), we'll be scheduling a time for our social worker to visit us in our home. She will be talking to the kids at this time (in age-appropriate language) about the adoption. After that, there will be one for face-to-face with the social worker, she'll write up the home study, and it'll be sent in to our agency for approval. Once the home study is approved, we can start applying for grants! It makes me excited to think about the possibility of getting help from various agencies that help people to adopt. We can definitely use that kind of help, so the minute the home study is approved, we'll be applying for those. We hope to have the dossier paperwork complete in March to be sent over to Ethiopia, and that's when we'll get put on the waiting list for a child. (not because there aren't enough kids to adopt right now... but, because of how long it takes to get the paperwork completed on the children and looked over by the governments). I really don't know exactly what all goes on behind the scenes, but there's a lot of waiting on others- much will be out of our control after collecting the paperwork.

The frustrating thing, too, is that our home study will only be good for 1 year, and so we'll need to get this re-done at least one more time in this process. You don't start from point A, but the social worker has to come visit, re-write a home study report, which you guessed it... costs us more money. There are other things that will also expire, such as our physicals- those will need to be re-done next year as well. 

Along with the paperwork and things listed above, I've been busy building up support in the adoption community, and in the wonderful people at our church who have adopted as well. They have a lot of pointers and words of wisdom as far as the paper chase and then in the issues that come up after bringing our child home. We are feeling very blessed to have these people in our circle! We particularly enjoyed an activity at our church last Thursday- the Adoption Network came together to put up Christmas trees with foster kid's names as the ornaments. This past Sunday was Orphan Sunday, so those who came to worship were encouraged to choose a name from the tree- all of the foster children in the KC area will receive gifts this year! Addison bonded with Ava, a 3 year old, beautiful girl who recently was adopted from Ethiopia by some members of our church. Here they are posing by the trees, in all of their preciousness!

Sunday was a special day, and I'm excited about the great things our church family is doing to help take care for the fatherless and the motherless children in our country and around the world! It's inspiring to see evidence that people realize the depth of this problem, and that no matter where they are from, they are God's children, all deserving of love, and a family to call their own.

 

Since Sunday was Orphan Sunday, and we realize that we care getting close to that home visit by our social worker, we attempted to have a conversation about orphans and our intent with Riley and Addison. After talking about what an orphan is, Nathan asked the kids what they thought we should do about it, and Addison, our almost 5-year-old said, "We should help them to find a mommy and a daddy." This is such a simple little statement, but she seemed to understand how sad it would be to not have a mom or dad to read you bedtime stories, or to kiss your boo-boo when you fall off of your bike.

 

When I think about the "things" that we all think we need to have (material things, fancy vacations, etc...), and then I remember that there are people in the world without running water, sharing sleeping quarters with livestock, and many other terrible living conditions, it reminds me that there are so many things that we take for granted, or even find a way to complain about. The fact that we have the resources to get an education, and to have freedom make all of these things that we have possible. In Ethiopia, and many other countries around the world, poverty is the norm- they aren't worrying about what store they should purchase an iPad from, or whether they should go to Jamaica or Hawaii for their next vacation. They are hoping to live through the day. As a kid, I had fun birthday parties, went on family vacations, and went shopping with my mom- I took all of these things for granted. I remember pouting my way through the mall when my mom wouldn't buy me some shirt that I wanted. There are so many children in the world that would just love a hug, to have the feeling that someone cares about them. How bratty I feel now! I am prayerfully thankful every single day of my life for the blessings I have been given, and will continue to give back, and to show my children that this should always be a priority in their life as well.

 

Here is a self portrait from Orphan Sunday- this is the shirt I purchased from our online fundraiser (info below).

 

 

Reminders:
Our agency, America World Adoption, has a program called the "Eternal Family Program" which enables family and friends to contribute toward the cost of our adoption. Of course, we present this to you as an opportunity and not an obligation. If you feel led to partner with us financially, America World will accept contributions on our behalf and will provide a letter or email to you which will substantiate that the funds have been received by AW. Go to https://www.awaa.org/forms/payment.aspx

And don't forget about our fundraiser! Go to www.adoptionbug/thegronberg6 to order a t-shirt. We receive a commission for each one sold, AND you would be raising awareness for adoption and orphans around the world!

 



The Paper Chase

We have officially started what those in the adoption world call The Paper Chase.
There will be 2 sets of paperwork we are "chasing" in the next few months. One is for the home study, and the second is for the dossier (the big stack of paperwork that will be sent over to Ethiopia). Many of the documents are the same, so we will be doing a lot of scanning and copying. To give you an idea, some of the documents that we are tracking down are: all of our birth certificates (can't be more than 5 years old), our marriage license, passports, background checks (we'll be getting finger printed), all of us getting physicals (Nathan and I have to get ours notarized), employment verification letters from our employers (also must be notarized), proof and copies of health insurance, life insurance, a living will, etc... Nathan jokes that all documents have to also be signed by President Obama. The list seems daunting (it's much larger than the few I listed above), but we are taking it a few steps at a time. We are also required to read at least 5 books on adoption, and complete a 10 hour online training. Those are just the required trainings by the state, our agency, and Ethiopia. We will continue to learn about issues concerning adoption throughout our adopted daughter's childhood!

Today, we met with our social worker, Kim, for the first time. We spent a few hours together at a library meeting room where she went over the requirements for the home study with us. She is going to be a part of our lives for the next 3+ years, as she will also be conducting our post adoption visits (those are at something like 3,6,12 and 18 months after bringing our child home). The country and agency requires these post adoption visits to make sure that everything is working out with our child.
The next visit with her will be in about a month. She will come to our house to see where we live and meet our kids. And no, it's not like what you see in the movies! She just wants to see how we live day to day, and how we are naturally together and with our kids. We feel very comfortable with her, but I am sure that this will still be nerve-racking. Hopefully our kids don't air all of our dirty laundry!

I also wanted to share a few neat things. On Riley's soccer team, there is a boy named A.J.- his parents, Traci and Bill, have adopted 3 children from Ethiopia. They came home with A.J. and his little brother just 4 months ago. Also, after posting my blog on Facebook, a few neighbors informed me of a couple that lives right up the street- they are currently on the waiting list for a little girl from Ethiopia! There is also a family at our church- they just adopted 2 children from Ethiopia. We don't think that these connections are a coincidence- it's obvious to us that God has put these people in our lives because we are going to need this kind of support.

Something we were discussing earlier is that we have been blessed with 3 healthy biological children- conceiving them was pretty easy. Adopting our daughter from Ethiopia will be the hardest (and longest) we've waited for a child! This is going to be some journey!

Reminders:
Our agency, America World Adoption, has a program called the "Eternal Family Program" which enables family and friends to contribute toward the cost of our adoption. Of course, we present this to you as an opportunity and not an obligation. If you feel led to partner with us financially, America World will accept contributions on our behalf and will provide a letter or email to you which will substantiate that the funds have been received by AW. Go to https://www.awaa.org/forms/payment.aspx

And don't forget about our fundraiser! Go to www.adoptionbug/thegronberg6 to order a t-shirt. We receive a commission for each one sold, AND you would be raising awareness for adoption and orphans around the world!

Next Steps

We are pleased to be moving along in this process. The latest is that we have signed the agreement, and have been assigned a social worker and a family coordinator. These people will help us get through the home study and the paperwork chase that is our next step to adoption. The dossier will be ready to be sent over to Ethiopia in 4-6 months (the dossier is the collection of the paperwork and home study results necessary to adopt internationally). After that is received and translated, we will officially be on a waiting list for a child. We will also be starting some required training soon. There are a lot of considerations when adopting internationally!

Our agency, America World Adoption, has a program called the "Eternal Family Program" which enables family and friends to contribute toward the cost of our adoption.  Of course, we present this to you as an opportunity and not an obligation.  If you feel led to partner with us financially, America World will accept contributions on our behalf and will provide a letter or email to you which will substantiate that the funds have been received by AW. Go to https://www.awaa.org/forms/payment.aspx and in the "notes" section include this info: Eternal Family Program and our name so that they know who the payment is for. We appreciate any financial support we can get as the financial considerations are significant! However, simply keeping us in your thoughts and prayers would also be an awesome way to support us! We feel so blessed to have a big circle of friends and family who are so supportive!

Good night!

Our Journey Begins

Hello Family and Friends! This is my very first ever blog post. I am exciting to be writing about a very cool topic, and to be sharing our journey with our nearest and dearest. Nathan and I are pleased to announce that we have made a decision to start the very very very long process of international adoption! We have received acceptance from an agency called American World Adoption (www.awaa.org). We did a lot of research and contacted a lot of references before choosing an agency. We also did a lot of praying and researching about which country our hearts were feeling drawn to, and based on the countries that we qualify for, we feel a strong pull towards to Africa, specifically Ethiopia. The number of mother and fatherless orphans over there is daunting- about 5,000,000. The age we applied for is 0-3 years old, and we had the opportunity to also chose gender, and decided that since Addison still wishes little Chase was a girl, we'd bring her home a little sister!

We want to give a child the love and support of a family that we are so blessed to have! We know that there will be many challenges and risks, but we know that God has chosen us for this task, and that he would not abandon us! We also realize that we have 3 biological children, and that this will affect their lives as well- we are excited for them to experience a deep connection to another part of the world. Skin color should not matter, and we, as a family, are going to help the world to learn this basic truth.

This process will take approximately 3 years, give or take a few months. There were some unfortunate events surrounding the adoption process in Ethiopia, and their program has slowed down by 90%, making the waiting time almost unbearable. We are okay with this, as we know that things will happen in God's time.

How did this craziness all come about? Well, I have always had the desire to adopt, I just never thought I'd actually do it. When I brought it up to Nathan, thinking he would not feel this same "calling", I was pleasantly surprised when he expressed the same desire. I am so thankful that we are on the same page! Since I had no knowledge about the process, I started some research about 3 weeks ago. After what we learned, we were able to be confident in our decision for an international adoption over domestic. And once we learned how long it would take, we felt a real urgency to start the process!

It's funny to think about the fact that our daughter most likely isn't even conceived, but yet, we already love her. And while I won't carry her in my belly like my other children, I already carry her in my heart, and that's pretty special! I know with all of my heart that this little girl is going to change our lives, and our family forever- we won't look at things the same. I look forward to experiencing this with my family- including our siblings, and the grandparents!

There is an excerpt from a book that Nathan has been reading with his early morning Monday men's group at church. The book is called S.H.A.P.E by Erik Rees. It says,

"Don't ask yourself, How?' How? is never the right question; how? is a faithless question. How? is God's department. He is asking you what? What is written on your heart? What makes you come alive? if you could do what you've always wanted to do, what would it be?  

Sometimes dreams get buried by jobs that are unfulfilling, situations that are unraveling, "to do" lists that are unending, and finances that are overwhelming. When our attention is on all of the "stuff" in life, our dreams get stifled."
 

This was the question we kept asking over and over again. How? How will our kids adjust? How will our new daughter adjust? How will we pay for this? How will we fit a 4th child into our 3 bedroom house? And the answer we keep receiving is that it will all work out, and stop asking how. (Another question we've asked is 'are we crazy?!') Currently we have signed the agreement, and we will be sending that in along with our first payment this weekend. Once that is received and processed, we will be assigned a Family Coordinator, and then the Home Study, training, and insane amount of paperwork begins. I will post throughout our journey to our little girl and then after as we become a family of 6.

We appreciate all of the prayers, love and support from our amazing family and friends as we begin this process!

We will be running a fundraiser throughout this process. There are some pretty cool t-shirts you can order, and we receive a commission for each one sold, AND you would be raising awareness for adoption and orphans around the world!

www.adoptionbug.com/thegronberg6