Two Hearts of Mine

My travel to Ind*a and the prep for it all seems like such a blur now. It all happened so quick, despite the anticipation and wait all along. The reason was that the unpredictability of adoption makes most parents put a shield around their heart, as I did to my poor heart as well. It is so sad to think about how I was afraid to be happy and excited, just in case something went wrong. I did not want to even start preparing for travel. In fact, I held off on any of the travel shopping too till I was 200% sure. Usually I am easily excited, but close to my travel time, I found myself extremely calm! That was new for me and I am not really sure why that was the case.

Once my tickets were booked, I allowed myself to be a bit excited. We shared our news with our extended circle of friends. Our family and close inner circle of friends could breathe a sigh of relief at this point. The day we all anticipated would soon be here! I had a week and a half left before I flew to my baby girl. I wondered how she was being prepared for this by the orphanage staff. I wondered if she listened to the recorded storybook that we sent her. I wondered if she looked at the photo book with all of our photos. I wondered if the staff pointed to our photos and told her who her mummy, daddy and brother were.

I had decided that I would not do any shopping till my tickets were booked. I went through many of the blogs for a list of things to take with me. I guess I over shopped and did not use many of the items, so when I came back, I had to take them back and return them to the store as I never needed them. I made sure I kept the receipts with me and was able to get about $60 back after I returned the items.

After receiving the guardianship written order I was allowed to work out the details of my stay at the orphanage, directly with them. I think this was more because the country coordinator was going to be out of the office and I needed to get things coordinated soon, and this was the best option. So during the few weeks prior to travel, I was able to speak with some of the orphanage staff. I was able to get some updates on my baby girl too. They gave me her shoe size and her dress size. They told me how much she weighed and how tall she was. That helped me with her diaper/pull-up size, etc. I realized that in my head I imagined her to be much younger than what she really was. She was far more independent than I thought. I learned that she likes fruits, so I was able to take some Gerber graduates snacks. I was thankful for being able to call them and learn of her likes and dislikes. Those last few weeks of communicating with them was a blessing when it came time for my travel and mental preparation. It really helped me get a better idea of what she was like. On one of my calls with them, she happened to be in the same room, and they tried to put her on the phone hoping that she would talk. They asked her to blow me a kiss and I heard a faint voice saying "Umma" followed by the sound of phone dial being pressed... by my daughter! Oh, my heart stopped! How beautiful that "Umma" sounded to me! Even the pressing of the phone dial sounded pretty awesome. The whole world could have stopped at that moment... What a wonderful feeling it was... Since we were not given any videos of her, and very few photo updates, it was amazing to hear her voice. The more I heard about her, the more familiar she became to me, and I felt closer to her, if that makes any sense at all. I think it really contributed to the comfort level I felt with her when I met for for the very first time. I imagined my heart would beat out of my chest when I met her, but to my surprise, that's not what happened at all...

   

Continued...

#8. Once the orphanage received the NOC, they filed for guardianship in the local/regional court on July 16th. The guardianship hearing with the judge was on August 24th and the written guardianship order was received on September 5th. At this point, our agency gave us permission to communicate with the orphanage as we made plans for my stay/travels etc.


#9. Once the orphanage had the written guardianship order in hand, they applied for her passport. The passport was issued on October 8th. Yay!!! The final step, or so I thought...

#10. I was supposed to get my clearance to travel at this point, but sometime toward the end of August, my local home study agency indicated that I should really get one more document from the local county courts that essentially is their version of NOC. Guess what, as with everything adoption, another hitch arose. Our medicals and background clearances required for submission to the county courts were expired and needed to be redone. All that took about a month and a half in parallel with the rest of the paperwork going on in Ind*a. That document finally was approved on October 16th. We were never asked for the document anywhere, but it just gave us the peace of mind of having all the documents in place. Honestly, I could easily have been upset that this was allowed to be expired, but then that would not make things right again, so I made a conscious effort to not be mad/annoyed at the situation, and rather got working on it at lightening speed. See what adoption teaches you?!!!

#11. Over the next couple of days, I chalked out my travel plans to and within India and on October 19th booked the flights. Thankfully I had family in Ind*a that helped me to book my domestic tickets within Ind*a.


#12. On October 19th, the agency emailed (and cc-d me) the US embassy for the visa appointment. We requested it such that we could have the medical appointment on Monday Nov 5th; the TB test could be read on Wednesday Nov 7th and I could pick up the confidential packet the same day; and have the visa interview the next day morning, Thursday Nov 8th. Since it was the weekend when the agency sent the email, we received a response on Tuesday October 23rd with a confirmation of my appointment date as we had requested.


#13. I had to take a notarized power of attorney signed by Daddy J, as he was staying back home with Brother J and I was traveling alone. The agency advised us to take it, in case the US embassy asked for it. They did not, but I was glad that I still had it.  


#14. I was all set to travel, Finally!!! I left on October 29th and we returned home on Nov 14th.

Continuing....

#4. As soon as our agency found that our i-800 was approved, they emailed the DS-230 (application for immigrant visa and alien registration) to the US embassy in Delhi on June 15th. US embassy responded back right away (within 12 hours!) acknowledging the email and application and photo that the agency sent them. The response time and efficiency of USCIS has been extremely impressive.

#5. In the meantime, the National Visa Center (NVC) transmitted the i-800 provisional visa approval to the embassy in New Delhi. This allows the Embassy to now issue the article 5 to C*RA. I was told that this article 5 tells C*RA that the US government has approved "provisional" visa for the child.

 #6. On June 22nd, a week after the agency had sent the email to the embassy with the visa application, I received an email from the embassy indicating that the article 5 was sent to C*RA. They had scanned a copy of the article 5 as well. At this point, things seemed to be going quickly and it was all so exciting. This is what the email read:


U.S. Embassy, New Delhi, India"
#7. I was told that at this point C*RA will start processing the file for  No Objection Certificate (NOC). It is "supposed" to take 15 working days to issue an NOC for a child with special needs. But I was warned by my program coordinator that this is the most unpredictable stage, and can take several weeks and sometimes even months to come through. Thankfully, exactly 15 working days from the article 5, on July 12th, the agency emailed me to say that the NOC was approved by C*RA.  I have heard of NOCs being issued in 1 week, and even one day! On the other hand, there are many still waiting for months for the NOC approval. Every time I think of this stage, I pray for those parents (some of them my friends) stuck and waiting in this stage. This wait is so very tough and I hope that this stage will be streamlined well for quick and efficient approval of NOCs.

The agency asked me to anticipate 2-3 months before I could travel. They sent me travel notes! I was so excited to read through it. I have been to India many times to visit family and had decided that I was going to skip all the vaccination recommendations, and I did perfectly fine. Perhaps I retained some immunity from my younger days spent in Ind*a.

.... to be continued.

Honestly, this back story compulsion of mine has become a monkey on my back. I think I have OCD, which makes me want to go back and document all of this. Well, part of it is that following other people's timeline during their journey helped me hang in tight as we went through the difficult stages of waiting these past few years. So I want to do the same for others that are reading my blog and are waiting for their babies to come home.

Here are some of the basic forms on the US end that are required:

i-800a: USCIS determines if the family is suitable to adopt a child within the parameters indicated by the home study.

Supplement 3 to i-800A: Requesting to make changes/adjustment to the existing i-800a, including age of child, special needs, etc.

i-800: Based on the i-800a approval/adjustment, the family is given provisional approval for visa for a specific child. National Visa Center (NVC) will send this approval to New Delhi embassy so they can issue the article 5 to C*RA


i-864: Affidavit of support that shows that we (sponsor) can financially support our child. I think this is routine for most general immigrant visa applications.  This is sent along with the i-800 application.

When we received the referral for our sweet baby girl, our home study and i-800a were not approved for "special needs".  The worrier that I was/am, I went into anxiety overdrive. I did not know then, that sometimes families may not even have their home study (HS) ready when they find their baby on the waiting children's list. Thankfully, our HS agency and our international adoption agency had a conference call and helped chalk out a plan.

#1. We needed to update my home study

#2. Submit my supplement 3 for my previously approved i-800a so it could be updated to include special needs.

We got to work quickly on getting our home study updated and also send off our supplement 3 that would make changes to our existing i-800a. Even though our i-800a was just approved few weeks ago, the supplement 3 was required and the fee for it was $360. At this point, none of it mattered, I just wanted to get things moving so we could bring home our daughter!

We looked into the possibility of sending in the supplement 3 and the i-800 application at the same time, but then decided to err on the side of caution and do things in the correct order so as to not disrupt any particular flow that USCIS may have. USCIS officer also recommended the same.

#3. As we waited for the newly approved i-800a to arrive, I worked on the rest of the dossier, i-800 and i-864 application and sent it out to the agency.  Once the i-800a changes were approved, the agency mailed out the i-800 and the i-864 forms to USCIS.

Between the HS update and approval, the i-800a supplement 3 approval and the i-800 approval, it took about 2 months time. I know that this is a long tie to wait, but somehow the time flew by so fast, probably because of all the paperwork that needed to be completed. I really had to trust that this will all take the customary time frame. I had already waited for so long, since June 2009. I had to remind myself that we were nearing the end of this chapter soon.

Continued....

Just recently we celebrated Brother J's ninth birthday. Over the years, we have made mistakes, learned from them, grown tremendously as parents and most of all, enjoyed every bit of this adventure. It has been a beautiful journey that we have been privileged to embark upon. I know we will continue to learn things, and have different experiences with each of our children.

We are so blessed to have been chosen to start our parenting journey with such a wonderful child who truly has a heart of gold. He made things so easy on us right from the beginning. As new parents, we often remarked that if all babies came this way, we could have a dozen of 'em back to back to back! HA HA! Even when it came to adoption and adjusting to it, both of our children have been truly a dream. She really went with the flow, and he has been very kind, patient, understanding and very loving with his sister. Sure he has the usual, normal, annoying big brother habits.  But when she needs him, he is right beside her, taking care care of her and teaching her new things and showering her with his affection. Early on in the adoption journey it was clear to us how his unselfish, gentle and loving nature would make him a great big brother to his new sister/brother.


Brother J wanted to do two things for his birthday. He wanted to skip the usual children's party places this year, in favor of a party at home with our close group of friends, and also go to a indoor water park. We managed to do both! But due to scheduling reasons we had to have the party a day before his actual birthday, which is usually a big No-No in the Ind*an culture.


Most Indi*ns do not celebrate things ahead of time. I am not sure the exact reason why. My guess is to not celebrate too early. In our home too, that's how it works for the most part. However, we had set up Brother J's room and crib well before the due date. That almost never happens in Ind*a. Especially with birthdays, the party always comes after the actual birthday. We had some of our friends over for dinner, about 15 children and 15 adults. Sister J got along well with the kids and played with them as she is now familiar with them, having seen them at other weekend family parties. The older kids played on the Wii upstairs, while we the parents stayed downstairs eating, chatting, and watching and dancing to the Bollywood songs. This is quite typical of our family weekend parties, and it usually goes late in to the night, and the kids are also used to it by now. If a party ends early, the kids wonder what is wrong. Sister J surprisingly stayed up too. Our friends helped out with Sister J while I set up the food buffet etc. She is such a trooper! For the first time, I managed to cook all the food for the night in large quantities. I must admit, I was a bit nervous especially about the amount etc., but it turned out ok. I had made fried idly for appetizer, chicken curry, eggplant curry, cabbage curry, mixed vegetables curry, papadam, Kerala-yogurt-kadhi dish and sambhar to go with the rice. We ordered some delicious home made chapati too. The kids of course got their pizza and mac-n-cheese as well. 

Our friends insisted that we wait till after midnight to cut his cake, just so we are not celebrating "early". We gladly agreed and soon after midnight Brother J cut his ice cream cake. That's right, in the middle of winter, ice cream cake. Don't ask! By the time the last guest left home, it was around 2 am. Again, this is not very unusual in most of our Ind*an family parties, unless it is a school night, of course. Our friends helped with washing the party serving dishes and even had a small assembly line to pack the food in ziplock bags. I froze some of the left over food for a later time and many of the friends took some food home as well.

The next morning we all woke up late of course, sat around in our pajamas and sang the "Happy Birthday" song to Brother J. I made Sister J repeat the words too. Usually she repeats the single words in the same tune, but not the correct sounds. She hardly puts two words together. So we were pleasantly surprised when she actually strung not 2, but 3 words together. She had a sentence! WooHoo! We all cheered and encouraged her along. She has since then been walking around singing "K-appy to you, K-appy to you" over and over again.  I was so thrilled, out came the video camera to capture yet another one of her "firsts", and most importantly because this first sentence was for her brother. What a wonderful gift she gave her brother. My heart is all swollen up with joy and pride and oh so much love for these two sweet babies! 


Happy Birthday Brother J. You will always be my baby boy no matter what number birthday we celebrate.  

It is almost 2 months since Sister J joined us at home... We have been busy getting along with life. We have been adjusting, getting used to the new schedules with homework, housework, dealing with toddler tantrums, battling the war of the wills, and re-learning some of the toddler parenting methods.

Over the last few days I have become increasingly aware of this "feeling". It's not a pain, not an ache, not a heaviness, not pressure... maybe a kind of longing... I continue to have this need to keep holding baby girl. Is that kind of strange? I love how she sits in my lap, especially when she wakes up in the morning or after her nap. These are my favorite moments with her, mainly because that's the only time she will sit still and let me hold her, feel her soft skin, and smell her beautiful brown hair. Every single time I have these moments, I have this feeling in my heart,or may be in my stomach (in that general area, you get the idea!)... Once she is up and running during the day, I try to steal a few of these moments. When I am getting her dressed, laying her down to sleep, putting her in the tub for a bath, or lifting her up to a high seat, I steal a few hugs. I hold on to her a few moments longer and close my eyes.  The wonderful feeling returns each and EVERY time. It is like I miss her even when she is standing right in front of me. It got me thinking if this was strange, and I'm going looney. So what is the diagnosis?

I thought back to the many times I felt I just had to leave work early for an early daycare pick up simply because of something Brother J had said/did that week. Thinking of it often made my heart go mush and I missed him so bad. I couldn't stand much longer without seeing him and would call Daddy J at work to chit chat about the sweet incident. Well, then that would make daddy J want to come home early too. Just somethings that these babies do to tug at your heartstrings so hard that you just have to hold them or see them right away. Honestly, it sounds like a description from a romantic novel... Well, I wonder if that kind of feeling spreads over to the parenting realm as well.

So this feeling with Sister J, I was not sure exactly what it is. It is sort of like the feeling where your heart goes mush when it falls in love. Wait a minute! That is exactly what this is like... I love this child so much, my heart is a big goopy mess. I can't even remember if this is how I felt when I met her for the first time. Perhaps this grew over time? I am not even sure if this is strange or perfectly normal to feel this way 2 months into having her home. I'm not even sure when this started. Perhaps I will feel like this for years to come. Perhaps this is the "maternal" feeling "they" talk about. I sometimes wonder if this stems from my fear for her safety or well being with all the crazy stuff around in this world. Is it my fear of failing as a mother? Is it my sense of loss of having missed out on holding her these past 3-1/2 years? I don't know what it is, but this feeling makes me want to hold her and just squeeze her. Am I crazy? 

Why, yes I am crazy. Crazy In Love, again. Because I still find my heart aching and go mushy when my almost 9 year old does me the honor of his extremely rare cuddle sessions... (He is going to kill me for writing this... in a few years). I am so in love with my babies. That is the only explanation. There is no other diagnosis for this kind of feeling, and it may be chronic. Uh Oh!

I know this is a lousy post that no one will learn anything from. But I figured that my babies will read this when they grow up. They must know how their sweetness melted my heart over and over again! That they enrich my life in more ways than my words can ever describe.

PS: I promise I will go back and complete the backstory so I can start posting about some requests that I have gotten, including arranged marriages, my educational experience in India, my daily cookings, etc.

This year, we celebrated Sister J's first Christmas and first New Year with us in our home! Last Christmas I hoped for it and am so glad that that prayer was fulfilled. We did not plan any vacation trips because we did not know how she would handle things so soon after coming home. Well, who would have known she would take things so well in her stride.

Christmas Eve:
We went to the Ind*an church for the midnight mass for the first time since Sister J got home. It is about an hour long drive to this church but totally worth the extra effort so the kids get to attend mass in our native tongue and socialize with children of our community as well. Plus there is lunch every Sunday after the catechism classes (mom loves this)! Sister J did great at church and followed the cues for standing, sitting, kneeling, and even the prayers and seemed very familiar with it all. It was such a joy watching her. After the mass we all went downstairs to the community meeting hall where food was being served. It was crowded and noisy while the children performed a Christmas skit and sang Christmas carols and danced on the stage. Sister J clung to me the entire time, and I could barely eat. Daddy J came to the rescue and held her for some time just enough for me to finish eating. Our friends who had known of our adoption journey were happy to see Sister J and she played around, laughed and giggled with them, all the while in my arms. These friends had prayed for us during those difficult days of waiting and were thrilled for us. There were many people who did not know that we had just adopted. So there were many curious looks with many questions, but were afraid to ask least it offend us. You see, adoptions are extremely rare in our community, let alone adoption in a family that already has biological kids. We were prepared for this, so it was fine. Those that asked us questions, I was able to happily share how amazing, albeit long, our journey was. We took Sister J to meet our parish priest who also knew of our journey and advised us well regarding the adjustment phase, the travels etc.    

Christmas Day:
On Christmas morning Sister J came down in her cute Christmas pajamas, while Brother J decided that Christmas pajamas were not his thing. Brother J as sweet as he is, brought her downstairs and helped her sort and open her presents. Before we knew it, there was wrapping paper all over the place, and Sister J just sat there in the middle of it all, not moving, and not knowing what to make of it all. She sat there holding a new doll present she had received. It was quite a sight. We also wrapped her with the torn off wrapping paper and put a bow on her head. She was truly our Christmas present this year! She has not shown much interest in a lot of the toys, except the dolls, and we are introducing toys to her slowly, once at a time. Brother J had a long list that he prepared for Santa on Christmas eve and only some of the toys made it under the tree. Somehow he starts believing in Santa just around Christmas time. Yeah Right! I can't wait till next year when Sister J understands more about Christmas.

Under the Christmas tree, we have a nativity scene and as soon as I told her that the baby was "Eesho (Jesus)", she touched the face of baby Jesus and kissed it. She was used to it at the orphanage. During the Christmas break we visited friends and she did just fine even though some of these visits went late into the night. This Christmas, as a new ornament adorned our tree and we had a quite little celebration at home, we gave thanks for the very many blessings in our lives, including our childREN and our health.

Our sweet dog is game for anything!

Brother J always ready to help.

Beautiful Messy Morning

Our new ornament hung on the tree exactly at her One Month Home anniversary

Happy New Year:
For New Years eve, we went to a friend's house for a birthday party and we had our group of friends there. As usual there was Bollywood music and dance. Brother J is usually shy and he just took off to play with his friends. Sister J on the other hand started putting her hands up in the air and rocking. But I guess it got too loud for her, so she clung onto me and watched the rest of the dads and moms dancing.  At times she even let other friends hold her and I got a break to go eat. But somehow she always knew that I was her go-to-person. Once upstairs, she sat around with the other kids and played with them. Clearly, large crowds and loud music is too much for her right now. It was still a wonderful evening, ringing in the New Year with our friends who welcomed our sweet daughter so warmly.

We were so thankful for being able to celebrate with Sister J home this year. I hope and pray that for all of the families waiting for their babies to come home, next year this time will be a sweet moment with each of their children in their arms. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and wishing everyone a new year filled with happiness and health. God Bless.