an introduction

we've decided to begin a blog that will document the ups and downs of our international adoption process. In December of 2005, after many discussions and much thought, we decided that we were ready to begin building a family. Adoption was always something that we had considered, and we ultimately decided that we wanted to pursue this option first, before attempting to give birth to biological children.

adoption is nothing new for jayme and her family. jayme's uncle was adopted through a private, domestic agency in the 1950's, and her sister was adopted through dcfs in the 1990's. additionally, she has cousins who were adopted internationally from bulgaria, and several family friends who have adopted in the past or who are interested in adopting sometime in the future. in a sense, our choice to build our family through adoption is a continuation of a long legacy of which we are very proud.

once we had decided to adopt internationally, we had to choose a country that we were interested in. after doing the requisite research, our choices narrowed. some countries that we were interested in had age requirements that we do not yet meet. others just didn’t appeal to us as cultures that we could truly find connection with. it is extremely important to the both of us that we look at this adoption as not only adopting a child, but also that child’s birth culture. we were drawn to ethiopia because of the beauty of the country and her people, the rich history of the nation, and the strength of the ethiopian community. the children are incredibly well cared for(care center ratios are 1:2 for infants and 1:3 or 1:4 for older children), the adoption process is efficient(and actually serves as an example for other countries on how international adoption should work). it also helps that the food is amazing – being vegetarians, we’re excited to integrate ethiopian meals into our cooking repertoire!!! finally, jayme has always felt an inexplicable connection to africa, so after learning more about the ethiopia program, on some level, it just felt “right”.

we officially sent in our applications to our homestudy agency (the cradle in evanston, where jayme's uncle was adopted 50+ years ago) and our placement agency (children's home society and family services based in saint paul, mn) in early february 2006. we're hoping to travel to ethiopia by christmas.