Zoe's getting wheels!

Y'all.

That baby girl in Taiwan who wasn't expected to walk?

Today, she's being fitted for one of these.

{photo from the Rifton website ~ not our Zoe girl,

but I'll post pics of her in hers as soon as we have it!}

Zoe will be rocking the "mini" size, which is the smallest and which she is FINALLY tall enough to use. Given her strength and supported walking skills and desire for mobility, we're expecting Zoe to be in her wheels for a whole lot of her waking hours.

Church friends, you might want to watch your ankles. 

While I usually just call it a walker, it's technically a gait trainer. Gait trainers have more bells and whistles and support than walkers. Zoe is expected to graduate to a walker  (and maybe one way graduate to independent mobility sans wheels), and this gait trainer is the first step to getting to that. She'll have the chest support and hand loops, but she probably won't need any of the other accessories they offer. 

Feel both excited (and completely unprepared) for our girl to be MOBILE!

on disruptions in adoption and “re-homing" children post-adoption

If you don't live in adoption-land, you might not be familiar with the word "disruption." I didn't know it before we began researching adoption. It means stopping or reversing the adoption process. While it sounds terrible, I know cases in which disruption turned out to be in the best interests of all involved. I also know cases in which better pre-adoption screening or post-adoption support could have prevented disruptions. Even then, every story I know of disruptions have been hard all around, because no one goes into an adoption planning to disrupt. (See Shaun Groves' blog post here about the adoption of his son after a disruption.)

In other words, not all disruptions are terrible, but many could have been preventable.

Monday was the first time I heard of the idea of so-called "re-homing" a child in a more informal way. NBC and Reuters have an ongoing story (and now all 5 parts are up) about online chat groups in which desperate (and, I'll add, neglectful) adoptive parents offer their children informally into other parents' care, often using power of attorney paperwork rather than formal adoption legal proceedings.

This re-homing practice, as reported this week, is not okay.

Why? Home studies are done by licensed social workers to evaluate a prospective parent's emotional, physical, and financial ability to care for a child. When a second adoption occurs after a formal disruption, then a home study is required. Then courts evaluate the evidence, including that home study, and finalize (or don't finalize) re-adoptions following disruption.

This idea of re-homing without formal adoption means no one - no social worker or agency or judge or governmental entity - is providing independent oversight to ensure that the new home is a safe place in the child's best interests. (Don't ask me how on earth the mother in this story from NBC managed to eventually adopt Nora. A lot of safeguards failed, and the legal system did not work as it should have for her to be adopted by that family.)

Side note: The majority of adoptions don't end in re-homing or disruption, so please don't confuse news about exceptions with the norms experienced by most children who are adopted. With disruptions estimated to occur at a rate of 10-25% of all adoptions, though, this is a topic we must face directly rather than dismissing.

When we had our visa appointment in Taipei, one of the American officials presented us with a paper she called a special needs waiver. Here's what I wrote about it on Facebook then:

Re-homing isn't an ethical or compassionate response after adoption. In rare cases, disruption might be necessary, but it must be done legally and formally. The best solution in all cases is for adoptive parents to research, research, research before and during the adoption so that they are not naive, ignorant, or unprepared. Agencies and social workers can go a loooooooooooooong way in making that happen, through rigorous and thorough screening of potential adoptive parents, pre-adoption preparation for those who make it through the screening, and post-adoption support once a child/children are added to the family. Churches and pastors and ministries advocating for orphans can help by not romanticizing adoption and by being a true community by rallying around those who do adopt children from hard places.

(Side note: Friends from Providence and our broader faith community, you did this with excellence for us. You continue to do so. Thank you.)

I'm hoping to be able to share a document here soon that is a comprehensive tool for parents considering adoption. It's a lengthy questionnaire of  "what if"s, including "where would you turn for help if," for parents to fill out together. I can't share it yet, because it came from an agency and I'm waiting for their permission. Truly, this lengthy parenting plan is the most helpful piece of pre-adoption prep we've encountered, and I hope to be able to publish part or all of it here to help others.

I can't help but wonder if the families who opted to re-home their children would have made a different choice if they had been better prepared before their adoptions.

Finally, please join me in praying, God, our Redeemer and Restorer, bring beauty out of the extreme brokenness in the lives of these kids who were adopted out of one hard place and into another. Amen.

when the wifey is weary with the wait, the husband...

...makes sure the interwebs are available, because he knows she'd go cray cray without them.

Yes, that's a car battery. And our modem, whose power supply was fried in the storm last weekend when lightning hit a bit too close. The service tech wasn't going to be able to come out until Thursday {yesterday}, and my man knew this was not the week to cut me off from the outside world. (Yes, #firstworldproblems...)

I love my engineer. 

(And I love that we have a legit set-up now, after the tech fixed us up yesterday.)

when travel in late August to early September becomes I have no idea when we're going

When that happens, as it has, I get quiet.

Or I talk about a slew of other topics.

Anything other than the uncertain timeframe to bring home our newest three. Anything other than the Halloween costumes that I'm not sure they'll be here to wear. Anything other than empty car seats in Pluto, taunting me with "not yet." Anything other than the expectation that our precious one with HIV will thrive once we bring all three home to all the medical resources our area has to offer and the reality that we're not sure when that will be.

The Ugandan courts played musical chairs this summer. Okay, that's probably a poor metaphor, but every three years, the judges rotate in their court system at the end of summer recess. This is one of those years. Rumor has it that it took a few months for court dates to start being issued after the last rotation like this.

Obviously, the late August to early September time frame is out the window. 

And we don't know what the new one will be.

That's all I have to say about that (for now, at least).

oh, how I love this little girl I've never met!

Why #HelpOneClassroom? Because my kids here are no more deserving of education than kids there.

I was a fresh-faced and somewhat naive 20 year old when I arrived as a teacher on the Tex/Mex border, with my Mazda laden with high expectations, school supplies, and Payless shoes. 

My school was on an old Mexican-American War fort, literally bordering the Rio Grande River. While the name Starr County sounds flashy, it was - at that time - the poorest county in the United States. 

I took this picture from my front yard. The tree line was the river, the physical border between our countries. The sign, though - "Dead End Street" - described the reality for many students there, students whose educational opportunities were often limited by the place where they were born.

In Starr County, though, teachers were paid. In Haiti, that's not usually the case. Perhaps that's part of the reason why roughly 50% of adults are illiterate and classrooms lack basic resources. (I bought a lot of supplies for my students out of my own income, but that wouldn't have been possible if I didn't receive a paycheck!)

In Starr County, kids received a free education. In Uganda, fees are required, fees that many families can't afford. That's why 75% of kids drop out, nevermind that those who stay are taught in classrooms with a pupil to teacher ratio of 48 to 1.

Two of my children were born here in Raleigh, one was born in Taitung City in Taiwan, and the three-to-come (soon, we hope) were born in Uganda. Despite being born in three different places and cultures and first families, all six of my darlings dream. All six hope. All six can learn.

I've talked with the folks leading up Help One Now. They're legit. I wouldn't be writing this and offering myself up as an ambassador for #HelpOneClassroom otherwise. 

Chris and Nick and the rest of their team agree with me that education can be a game-changer for many of these kids, just as it was for my kids in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. When we all consider what doing justice for orphans looks like in Haiti and Uganda (as well as many other places), education is part of the equation. 

So what is #HelpOneClassroom? Great question. It's a campaign to sponsor 25 teachers in Haiti and Uganda for the upcoming school year, with a goal of $62,000 - that's just $2500 per teacher for an entire year - by October 1. In Haiti, these teachers will be in a brand-new school, built by Help One Now to replace the post-earthquake tent school that was there. Truly, #HelpOneClassroom was born out of a desire to equip the teachers who will educate the 400 children ready to learn there.

As you know, we're adopting three siblings from Uganda, orphaned by AIDS. We love them, and if circumstances had been different and allowed them to grow up in their first family, we would have still wanted them to have the opportunity to go to school, whether or not they posed with chalkboards marking each year's grade. Why? 

Because my kids in the US are no better or more deserving of education than kids in Uganda or Haiti. Kids here and there were all born into a world in which the effects of sin are apparent in heartbreaking ways, including in kids here having access to excellent education while kids there don't.

It doesn't have to be that way, though. 

If you agree, would you consider joining with Help One Now in their goal to sponsor 25 teachers in Haiti and Uganda? Learn more - or donate - at www.helponenow.org/helponeclassroom.

I might not be a fresh-faced and naive 20 year old at the start of her teaching career, but I'm still passionate about education. And now, as a mom, it matters even more to me as it did then.