24-7

Not a football score, but a "new normal." We now have guardianship of the children around-the-clock. Our official week for observation started this afternoon, and continues for one week. We will be visited by the psychologist at least twice during that time. However, we know it won't be for the long weekend. With the All Saints Day holiday on Tuesday, the government declared Monday a holiday too. There will be no doctor visits, paperwork, or other official business until Wednesday. In case you wondered, children in Lima do celebrate Halloween by going trick-or-treating. Maybe we'll just buy some candy and let them ring our apartment doorbell a few times.

We are in the condo in Lima (Miraflores district). This weekend, we will do some shopping for shoes, socks, jackets, etc., visit the park along the seaside, and other fun things. By Monday, we plan to have the house filled with Post-it notes with the English and Spanish words for items.

Here are some things we have found that are the same for the children as what we are used to:

• skipping stones in a lake
• eating Chinese food (sauce taufi is remarkably similar to Green Jade's chicken and broccoli flavor)
• wanting to watch television more than read books
• looking around a little fearful when the earthquake hits and your 16th floor apartment starts swaying
• laughing when someone spills food on themselves
• wanting to drink soda more than water
• pretending to cheat at Uno
• falling asleep quickly when you're very tired
• being afraid of heights
• getting bored fast on taxi rides

Here are some things that are different:

• using hot water to brush teeth
• eating such a big meal at mid-day that all you have at night is a banana or roll
• wearing the same clothes every day (at the orphanage)
• reading everything aloud, even if other people are reading in the same room
• not just taking your plate into the kitchen, but also wiping down the table after a meal, and helping put everything away
• wearing underwear in the shower (because you're used to communal showers)

Can you guess which one of these we hope will continue when we get back to the US?

Speaking of heights, here's the view from the taxi coming into Andahuaylas from the airport.

The weather was nice all week. It rained often at night, which helped drown out the noises outside when sleeping. It was jacket weather in the morning, and t-shirt weather the rest of the day. We nearly had a glitch when the hotel didn't take credit cards, but between us we had enough cash to not have to look for an ATM when we left at 6:30 a.m. Friday.

A week in Andahuaylas

Things are going well so far. We left Lima early Monday and arrived at the orphanage by late morning. Our little girl was playing in the yard, and saw us through the gate. We were brought into the office to meet the orphanage director and staff. With us were our attorney, Maria Elena Baldassari, her husband, Raul Alva, and a psychologist from the Secretaria Nacional de Adopciones, who we met last Friday in Lima.

We played with the children for a while at the orphanage, with other children around either on their lunch break from school or at recess from the preschool on site. Then we all went to lunch at a restaurant in the plaza de armas (main square) of the town. The children liked chicharron de pollo, sort of like popcorn chicken, but not as spicy. At lunch, Alex started to feel sick, so we went back to the hotel and he laid down while we colored and read books with the kids down the hall. He was feeling a little better after a few hours, so we gathered around a table in the lobby and taught them how to play Uno. They learned quickly, and it is now what the oldest boy wants to do all the time. We dropped them back at the orphanage around 5. Then, we all went to a cafe for pastries and coffee to discuss how it went. Alex was more sick in the evening, but while unpleasant, it was just due to the altitude, so he recovered by the next morning.

(Since the adoption is not final, we cannot post names or pictures online. Also, I am purposely not saying much about each child's personality.)

Yesterday, we picked the children up in the morning and headed off campus right away. Chrissy and Maria Elena played with them in the park while Doug and Raul went to three different offices in town to order additional birth certificates and get papers notarized. We had lunch at another restaurant. We first went there because we were all thirsty, and just ordered drinks. But Maria Elena met up with a friend who used to work at the orphanage, and they joined us late. By the time the soup came, the children had drank so much Inka Cola they weren't very hungry. So, the lunch we ordered for them became their dinner instead. The oldest boy carried the boxed meals around until we got back. He wanted to be sure he got the beef dish--the other two were chicken and "pappas blancas." There are several hundred varieties of potatoes in Peru, and each dish has its own specific potato. Thankfully, the restaurant didn't have chuno on the menu that day--smelly potatoes that are naturally freeze dried, thawed, and washed several times. The children like them fried with onions, but when they're put into a soup, apparently the smell is overwhelming to the uninitiated.

We spent the afternoon playing and coloring again. Then we gave them each a small gift, which we will keep at the hotel until they come with us permanently. It looks like the clothes we brought will probably fit them well enough to at least wear on the flight to Lima Friday morning. The psychologist had us sign a letter in which she approved us to take custody of the children to go to Lima. She had a few concerns about how the children were bonding with us, because she only observed us for a short time, and it is hard to pair up so that Mama gets time alone with each child, etc. But by the second day she saw it was all fine. She will continue to observe us for a week after we get to Lima.

Today we are all going to the lake called Pacucho. It is supposedly the most beautiful lake in Peru, and we really wanted to see it. The children have been there once before. Maria Elena and Raul did not get to visit it the last time they were here, about ten years ago. We are hiring a taxi with plenty of seats and it is only costing 100 soles (@ $40) for the round trip, and the driver will wait for us.

Travel Plans: Lima Tomorrow!

Doug, Chrissy, and Alex are flying from Bloomington, IL through Atlanta to Lima tomorrow, Oct. 20. We arrive at 10:15 p.m. and our friend Geoff Ingrum will pick us up and take us to our condo. Friday morning, we have an appointment at SNA where the person handling our case will welcome us and give us an overview of what will be happening the next few weeks. We will have dinner with the Ingrums Friday night, and get to know their children a bit. Then, Saturday we will go with them to their ministry to children in a very poor district on the outskirts of Lima.

Monday morning we will arrive at the Lima airport very early and fly out to Andahuaylas, up in the mountains. Our agency's attorney and her husband (who is also an adoption attorney) will accompany us, and we will be joined by a government social worker before we head off to the orphanage.

Then, the culmination of this 2 1/2 year process: we finally meet the children Monday, October 24, 2011.

A beautiful lake near Andahuaylas

From that time on, they will be staying with us, first at a hotel in Andahuaylas (until Friday morning), then in a condo in Lima. We hope to complete the adoption in Peruvian court by November 4, because I have to fly to Miami for a work conference from Nov. 5 to 8. The Ingrums will help Chrissy out if needed that weekend. Our friend Sam might also be in Lima around that time. When I return, we will celebrate our little girl's 7th birthday on Nov. 9.

The town plaza in Andahuaylas

Then, we hope to be back in the US before Thanksgiving. Andrew and Aaron are staying home, and neighbors and friends from church are going to bring them some meals and help them as needed. We plan to use skype regularly for video chats so the "new kids" can get to know their older brothers a little, too.

We have gotten so familiar with the children's pictures that we don't even have to look at them anymore to call up their faces in our minds. There's no apprehension at this point, just anticipation of finally finding out what each one's personality is, and how they relate to each other. It may not be easy for us or for them, but we are eager to get going on this journey.

FYI, our phones will be off (or in "airplane mode") because we don't want to pay the international charges for calls or texts. In an emergency, they would work in Peru. To contact us, please send email. We will have wireless access at least while in Lima.

Vamos a Peru!

Pictures!

No, we can't show pictures of the children yet. We do have pictures of their rooms, though. Here is the two boys' room.

If one wants to share with Alex, instead, he has a bunk bed in his room. But we expect the two new boys to want to be together at first. The two twin bed frames were the ones Chrissy's mother and aunt used when they were little girls in the Lithgow household. They are a nice walnut, and we had them refinished several years ago, after removing layers of paint.

This is the little girl's room. Some decorations were given to us by a friend from church who was on our Peru trip in 2009. The bed frame is the one used by Chrissy's dad when he was a boy. We bought the bedspread new and just have to add things to the walls.

The house is ready. We're excited.

The National Benefits Center (NBC) for Hague Adoption has cleared our i-800 application. It is on its way (electronically) to the US embassy in Lima. They will review and confirm the application, then notify the State Dept. to issue an official notice that will allow us to travel. We're currently looking at Oct. 8 or 15 as possible dates to head to Peru. We would then leave very early on a Monday morning to fly to Andahuaylas, up in the mountains, bringing along our attorney and a social worker from SNA in Lima, because there is no permanent adoption office in the city. We will stay there for about a week, then return to Lima to complete the adoption and await clearance to return home.

Boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, girl

That will be our family, by age, in another couple of months! We received a new referral for another sibling group of three children at the July consejo in Peru. It took a few weeks to get all their information translated, and birth certificates and passport photos sent to our agency in the US, but we can finally share that we are close to adopting!

There's no such thing as the final paperwork in an adoption. There is the last application you have to make before being allowed to travel to the other country and meet the children. That is now complete. Our packet for the I-800 application went in to the US immigration office last week. Now, the US officials review the materials and determine that the children are legally available for adoption, and that the parents were previously approved for children with these characteristics. After all the prior checks and reviews, this step is almost a formality, but it still takes 4 to 8 weeks.

The new timeline will probably be for travel sometime between the last week of September and the second week of November, for about a month within that window. Even though we are all "in school" now, we do plan to take Alex with us for the full trip. He really wants to go, and dropped out of a park district theater camp so he wouldn't leave them to recast a part. The later we leave, the more of the cross-country season he can get in, but it is likely he'll miss sectionals (and state, if his team were able to qualify). We will get his schoolwork to bring with us. He might also have some catching up to do over Thanksgiving break.

Andrew is living at home this semester, attending Parkland Community College. He is still pursuing the possibility of an internship with the Walt Disney company during an upcoming semester. He and Aaron will stay home and keep attending classes while we're in Peru. My department is willing to let me ask faculty colleagues to sub for me while I'm gone. Chrissy will take parental leave, and use up some saved sick days.

We don't know much about where we will be staying yet. The attorney in Lima is making those arrangements now. We will order airline tickets once we hear from USCIS, and hope to not have to pay last-minute prices. (We are looking into adoption fares, missionary fares, and other special deals.)

We will arrive in Lima, then leave quickly by plane to Andahuaylas, where the children are living in an orphanage run by a private foundation. The attorney and a social worker from the SNA (national adoption bureau) will come with us, as there is no permanent SNA office in this small city. We will meet the children and stay with them in a hotel for about a week. Then, the social worker will determine whether we have adequately bonded with the children, or if there is a need for more time, or if the children have some objection to the adoption. Likewise, officially we could pull out at that point if there were some information revealed that we did not know about the children. Obviously, we expect things to go just fine.

We will all go back to Lima and a judge there will complete the adoption. Ordinarily, the local judge would conduct the hearing, but again there is no full-time family court judge in Andahuaylas. At that point, the children will be legally ours. The next few weeks before we can return to the US will be spent getting them various medical exams, immunizations, and filling out documents to get their US passports issued. With the I-800 in place, the request is "pre-approved" but you still have to jump through some hoops. Once we have passports and visas in hand, we can book a return flight. We will have round-trip tickets for going there and back, but we will have to get one-way tickets for the children, and probably change our schedule so we can all be on the same flight. Thus, even once we are legally ready to come back, it may take a couple of days to get onto a flight.

While in Lima, we plan to visit with some missionary friends from our church. We've only met them once, because they left Champaign before we moved here, but they are doing great work among street teens and children in Lima. They have four young children and can give us a break from trying to speak Spanish or use translators all the time!

Our next post will probably happen when we get the I-800 approval. Thank you for your prayers, concern, and support through this process. It's been over two years, but there are still joyous moments ahead.

Now what?

As of our last post on this blog, you might have expected that we would write again when we left for Peru to get our three new children. Or maybe when the adoption was finalized in Trujillo. Or when we brought them home.

That's what we were expecting, anyway.

Then something happened that was a first in the 20 years our agency has been processing adoptions from Peru. Our referral was retracted. After we and the children had seen pictures of each other, learned that we would become a family, and started telling friends and family, it all came to a halt. The local judge decided that the children should stay at the orphanage where their birth mother could visit them, although she had lost custody some time ago. We are mindful of the difficulties faced by women in poverty, especially when the men in their life create problems. We will never know exactly what happened in this family, or what new information caused the judge to go back on an earlier decision.

We were heartbroken. We grieved for weeks. We tried every contact we knew in Peru and tried to find out what had actually happened, and if there was a chance this would all be reversed again. We stopped talking to people around us about the adoption, hoping to eventually have better news.

To be clear, the agency's attorney and the government officials in Peru did everything they could to confirm that this was indeed the judge's final decision. We were given opportunities to communicate with appropriate people. Since these events, we have been given updates that the children are OK. Some friends from church will see them later this week when they arrive on their volunteer trip and we hope they will be able to help the children understand.

Our agency finally convinced us that if we wanted to complete an adoption in Peru, we needed to move ahead and write another letter of intent for different children. Without going into all the details about how we chose, we ended up requesting the sibling group in Peru that was most like the children we had just lost. This wasn't to replace those children, but partly because we had been preparing ourselves for three. We also felt the Peruvian authorities would be willing to make that referral, whereas they might ask new questions about our dossier if we switched to a very different profile. The children are two boys and a girl, between ages 6 and 11.

At this point, we have provided all requested information and are awaiting a new referral. Consejos (the national council to grant referrals) have been happening about once a month. Our hope is to complete an adoption this Fall. It will have taken over two years. We might actually have to update our home study and some other forms that will expire in another couple of months. Back to paperwork!

This hasn't been a very upbeat blog post. We are still somewhat numb emotionally, and holding back our enthusiasm until we get some good news. One positive (from the standpoint of the adoption) is that Drew has decided to live at home this year and attend the local community college. He wasn't far away last year at Illinois State U., but is changing his major, and already thinking about a one-year master's degree, so it makes sense for him to take some time to reevaluate where he should go next. Assuming we actually do get another referral, it will be great to have him at home so the new children can bond with him as well as with Aaron and Alex.

Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and support.

REFERRAL!

Finally, we have official word from Peru that the match has been made! The adoption "department" SNA meets every month or so to process applications. This month, they announced the meeting would be either the 25th, 26th, or both. They did not meet on the 25th, so it took until this afternoon to see the results on their website. If you go here, and scroll to the very bottom of the pdf file, that's our kids!

Of course, the most common question now is, "When do you leave?" Well, how about two months from now? Seriously, some documents have to be sent from Peru to our agency and then we have to apply for the final immigration approval. This used to take about a month, but lately has been taking up to two months. You're not allowed to go to Peru until that approval is done. We knew this next wait was coming. In the meantime, the personnel at the orphanage will be preparing the children for adoption: explaining how families are supposed to work, helping them learn a little more English, and talking to them about the separation and loss they will feel along with the happy emotions of joining their new parents.

Let's take the median: six weeks from now would be early June. We would fly down, complete the adoption in Peru in a couple of weeks, and then wait a couple more weeks (depending on holidays, availability of doctors, etc.) to get all the medical checks, forms filed, and other stuff to get the children's US passports.

Could we be there by the youngest's birthday in early June?

Could we be back before the middle one's birthday in early July, or Andrew's birthday in mid-July?

Will we still be in Peru when our church team arrives in Lima on their way to work at the orphanage again this summer? That's in late July.

Or will it take until the oldest's birthday, in early August, for us to be all together back home?

In any case, it will be a memorable summer.