Adopting Our Little Angel: March 2009

Hey Everyone!

Thanks for viewing our blog! It is our hope that through this blog we can keep our friends and family updated on our joys and struggles as we navigate through the process of the adoption of our son, Trey Amos, from God's Littlest Angels Orphanage in Haiti.

Just for some quick background info...

We started our adoption process in May 2007. We attended an international adoption course put on by Christian Adoption Services. We soon decided that God's Littlest Angels (GLA) was the orphanage we wanted to work with. You can check out their website at http://www.glahaiti.org/.

For the next few months we took on the daunting process of creating our dossier, which is a compilation of all kinds of information that is needed by that Haitian government to adopt from Haiti. Some of the paperwork included:

Our homestudy--which was put together by our social worker, Carolyn, who wrote all about us, our families, our upbringings, our relationship with each other and our families, our jobs, our education, our beliefs, our ideas about child-raising, events that affected us in our lives, etc, etc, etc.

Original copies of our birth certificates and marriage certificate

Our medicals, bloodwork, and tests for all kinds of strange diseases

A psychological report

Reference letters

Employment records

Copies of previous income tax information

Criminal records checks

A bunch of important legal documents such as "Power of Attorney" and "Affidavits"

Our permission form from Alberta Children's Services to adopt internationally from Haiti

And more!

Once all of this was compiled we had to send it off to be translated into French and we had to get it all notarized so that the Haitian authorities know it is true and legal.

WOW! That took a long time!

Finally, we sent our completed dossier down to God's Littlest Angels and it arrived there on March 27, 2008.

Then, we waited...

and waited...

and waited some more!

Finally, on March 19, 2009, we got THE CALL!!! GLA had a little boy for us, and we are so thrilled to announce that we accepted the proposal!

Our Little Angel is named Trey Amos. Amos was the name given to him in Haiti, and Trey is the name we picked out for him. Trey Amos was born on December 29, 2008, and arrived at GLA on January 6, 2009. He weighed 6lb 12oz upon arrival at GLA, and is a very healthy baby!

We are so excited about Trey and we think he is the most adorable baby in the whole world! (Although we realize probably most new parents think this about their firstborn child regardless of what they really look like!)

However, we still have a long wait ahead of us, unfortunately. The first step is that our Dossier and Trey's paperwork need to be combined somehow and then head into IBESR which is the Haitian Social Services. It looks like at this time the pre-IBESR wait is about 2-4 months.

So as we wait for that to happen, we are just focussing on getting ready for Trey Amos...reading books about adoption, attachment, etc.; buying books and baby items for him (especially kids' books that are about adoption or mixed families).