Bitter Sweet--Last day with Tabitha

Time seemed to move so slowly before we went to visit Tabitha. Now we were here and it seemed to fly by! Saturday--this was our last day with her. We knew that at around 5pm we'd have to meet the foster mom again, only this time to give Tabitha back to her. Although she was almost 3 hours late in bringing her to us, foster mom was very prompt today. She came to the hotel alone (no interpreter) only she and her little son who appeared to be about 5 years old. She seemed a little uncomfortable with the whole situation. I had to get someone from the hotel desk to interpret for us. I had a whole bag of things, actually 2 bags; clothing--dresses, sleepers, t-shirts, socks, shoes, hair bobbles, left over diapers, another can of formula, a little Teddy bear blanket. Plus, a gift for foster mom. I think placing Tabitha back in foster mom's arms was one of the hardest things that I've had to do. I sobbed, tears flowed freely from both my and Tim's eyes. Foster mom did tell us (through the interpretor) not to worry, she'd take good care of her. She then gave me a hug and left.
It was so so hard to give her back. I just want her to be home with us forever. We took almost 100 digital pictures, plus 4 rolls to be developed and an hour of video. It will have to get us through until she comes home. I am so glad though that we made this trip, the time that we spent with her can never be taken away.
"Dear dear Lord, thank you for giving us 3 wonderful days with Tabitha. She is so sweet and so precious; you certainly made one beautiful little girl for us. Please Lord, keep her safe, and let the timeline that you have chosen for her to be ours forever, be a speedy one. Amen."

Dressed, and no place to go

Well, it had finally happened, we were meeting and spending time with our little girl. I had brought so many clothes with us because I was really tired of getting pictures with the same little dress on her. Maybe they planned it that way, but I wasn't sure, and I sure didn't want her foster mom to have to buy more things for her. She is our little girl, and we should be responsible for clothing her at least. So I brought a variety of things in a variety of sizes--that way she'll have things to grow into. Of course, I had to see how big things were, how they fit, etc. She was in such a good mood, she let me change her out of one thing into another one, many times without making a fuss. Tim said that it was like I was dressing a baby doll! We of course took many pictures.

Our Visit

We arrived in Guatemala on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at approximately 7pm Guatemalan time--they don't do daylight savings time and they are in the central time zone, so they are 2 hours behind us in the summer time. The plane ride was really uneventful, a good take off and a good landing. We flew Spirit Air, we were able to get flights for a penny each way plus taxes and fees. The only really bad thing was that the flight originates in Ft. Lauderdale, FL which is a good 9 hour drive for us. But, hey we figured why not, it would be our opportunity to visit our little girl.
We were suppose to get Tabitha on Thursday morning at around 9:00a.m. We were told, "expect her to be late, it is Guatemala and people aren't in a rush". So, we really thought that she would be there around 10:00a.m. Well, at 10:00, we received a call from Stephany, the girl who was suppose to be coming to translate. She said that she would be there in about 20 minutes--she was. She told us when she got there that the foster mom was on her way, but there was problems with traffic so she was running late. At about 11:30 a.m. the foster mom finally made it to the hotel. (2 hours later than Stephany had told her to be there). Tabitha looked so tiny and fragile when I first laid eyes on her. She was dressed in a little pink dress with striped bloomers that I had sent her in the "baggie" that Sue took down on one of her visits. They let me hold her first. Stephany translated for us things about her schedule: she eats about 4 ounces of Similac Advance, she only has 1 "poop" a day, she takes her bath at 6 p.m., she goes to bed at 9 p.m. and sleeps until 5 a.m.---stuff like that--I think that Tim was listening more than I was, I just wanted to hold her and cuddle her. Foster mom and Stephany left, and Tabitha was ours!--at least for 3 days.

Preparations

We've decided to go visit Tabitha. We were able to take advantage of the 1 cent sale when Spirit Air was having it. We leave May 23rd, and return May 27th. It's a short little visit, but it will give us a chance to meet and bond further with Tabitha. So today we have been trying to get things done around the house, in the yard, etc. so that we won't have to deal with them when when get home.
I've got a whole suitcase packed with things just for Tabitha! Tim says, she's only 4 months old and already has more clothing than he does! I've become the queen of consignment shops. I was saddened yesterday though to find out that my favorite one is closing their doors of business June 18th. I guess that I just have to find another one.
I'll have more to tell, and more pictures to post once we return. Until then, keep us in your prayers!----I hate flying!

It's a MATCH!!!!!

Well, we had our I-171H and it was received in Guatemala now we had to sit and wait for DNA. Getting a close match is really important in order to prove that the birth mom is really the birth mom. March passed, then most of April, FINALLY on April 25 we received word that DNA had been charged, unfortunately we also learned that part of our dossier had been lost in External Relations. Our birth certificates, marriage certificate and POA were missing. We'd have to scramble to get new ones authenticated and sent. Lord, what challenges you have given us! Please, please, we can hardly take any more!
April 27th--good news, they found our missing documents! Woohoo, at least I could get those silly crazy thoughts that someone would try and become a new Tim and Becky Taylor out of my head.
May 1st, we receive word that DNA samples have been received at the lab. It would 10 more days before we would receive that all important notice---it's a match! 99.79% match between birth mom and Tabitha. We received our snail mail notice actually before the e-mail. In that mail was a picture of the birth mom holding Tabitha. Neither of them were smiling. It was kind of sad. BUT....we could now feel that there is going to be an end, and Tabitha will be ours! Thank-you Lord!

Trouble...where's that I-171H???

We had our referral, POA papers came, we signed them, had them notarized and sent them merrily off to CCI. It was now February 7th. We still hadn't received our I-171H. Everyday, I would anxiously await the arrival of the mail. Days past, then another week, still no I-171H, without it, we could go no further. Yes, we had our referral, but we couldn't proceed with the process in Guatemala. I felt like we'd never get DNA done, and it would end up taking forever to get her home. Finally, I e-mailed Tammy and pleaded is there anything that we can do to speed up this process of getting the I-171H. She made a call to DHEC (they are in charge of adoptions in South Carolina). She discovered that DHEC still hadn't sent out our approved Home Study to Homeland Security. That was the hold up. Immigration had to have that. Tammy said that the lady on the phone was very nice, but seemed very overwhelmed. She promised Tammy that it would be in the mail that day.
February 19th, immigration called my house. Unfortunately I wasn't there, but my mother was. She spoke to the lady who said that they had just received the stuff from DHEC, but they couldn't find the ok on the fingerprints for my mother. Fortunately my mother was able to explain that she had never received her official letter to be fingerprinted like Tim and I had, but the people in Charleston created a document and fingerprinted her the same day that Tim and I were printed. The lady was looking through the computer system, she just didn't see it. Mom then told her that they had her name down as her maiden name and gave the lady both her maiden and married name. Ah hah, there it was, she found it. She said to my mother, "well they have been approved." I waited 4 more long days for that little piece of paper. Finally! February 23rd, it came.

Referral Time

Well, all of the papers for the dossier were safely off to the Guatemalan Consulate. I began to feel a little anxious, I wanted a referral. We had decided that we wanted to adopt a little girl. I looked at the precious little babies all of the time it seemed like. All of the little girls descriptions all stated you needed to be "paper ready" meaning have your dossier ready, submitted for approval and have your I-171H (approval from Immigration) in hand. The boys descriptions mostly said, "must have an approved home study done." I had started to reconsider adopting a boy, but I really wanted a girl. Don't get me wrong, boys are great, but my heart was saying girl. On Saturday, February 3rd, I was looking at all of the little babies like I always do and decided to look at the "Rainbow Kids" website. Sometimes they had babies listed for CCI before the CCI website did. That is when I first saw her. I read her "bio" and it didn't say, "must be paper ready". I couldn't believe it. So, I e-mailed Tammy, our case manager and asked about her. Her name was listed as Lourdes. She said that she would get in touch with Sue, the director of the Guatemalan program for CCI. Later Saturday night, Tammy e-mailed us back more pictures and said let me know if you are interested as soon as possible. I immediately e-mailed back YES!!!Tim and I went to bed, got up and I checked our e-mail again. There was e-mail from Tammy stating, "you have to let me know definitely ASAP in case she (Sue) gets another call. She (Sue) leaves for Taiwan at 5:00 tonight." I e-mailed back again, YES!!!!, Tim and I discussed it, prayed about it and slept on it. We got an e-mail back later from Tammy stating that she was still waiting to hear from Sue. We didn't hear anything else until the next morning...."She's yours, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!" Tammy explained to us later that Sue wants people to sleep on it, to be absolutely sure that it is the baby for them, so that is why she asked not once, but twice if we wanted her. We had a referral!!!!!We were on cloud 9.

Paper Chase

We had our home study done, answered what seemed like an endless barrage of questions. We got our contract from CCI with the list of things that we needed for our dossier. I looked at the list and wondered how I was going to get all of the things done. Who would I ask to do a witness affadavit, who was a notary? It was a little overwhelming at times, but we managed to trudge through it. I actually got most of the papers for the dossier together. I wanted to pull my hair out! The Law Enforcement Agency (SLED) here in South Carolina sometimes makes me wander how they ever catch any criminals. They messed up the form not once, but twice that we needed for the Guatemalan adoption. I maintained my cool---Tim was ready to choke them, and we did finally get all of the forms from them that are necessary for an adoption from Guatemala.
December 20th we went to get our fingerprints done for Homeland Security. That was an experience! I had always pictured them obtaining fingerprints with a messy ink pad. No, they used water and a computer! My mother had to be fingerprinted as well since she lives in the house with us. Getting fingerprints of good quality from an elderly person is not the easiest thing to do. Her arthritic fingers were difficult to manipulate, but by the grace of God they were able to get a good set.
We took a little break over the Christmas-New Year's holidays from working on the dossier. As soon as the holidays were over, I was right back at it. On January 22, 2007 Tim took all of our documents that were obtained here in South Carolina to the Secretary of State's office for their official seal.....
Bad news, one of our notaries signed the wrong date that her commission expired, and another signed only a middle initial (it did match her stamp), but her stamp was wrong because she was registered with her whole middle name spelled out. That meant that I had to get all of those documents done again! You would not believe how fast we got it done! We did them all in 2 days--I guess we knew what we were doing the 2nd time around. January 25th, Tim made another trip down to the Secretary of State's office. This time they all checked out ok. Thank goodness we live in the state's capital and going to the Secretary of State's office is pretty easy. Can you imagine if we had had to mail all of those documents? Fortunately, we only needed to mail our birth certificates and marriage certificate. We were originally from the midwest and those documents needed to go to those states. So we waited only a few days before we received the midwest's documents with their official State's Seal. (I had mailed them before Tim ever went to the Secretary of State's office here.) So it was off to the Guatemalan Consulates for their approval.

The Beginning

Sorry it has taken so long to get this blog together. Let us catch you up as to what led us down this road of adoption.
Both of us were in our 40's when we found each other and well I had gotten "used to" the fact that I wasn't going to have biological children....an ectopic pregnacy, infertility issues, and then becoming a widow. Tim already had two grown children. That was ok, life was good, we had found each other and felt blessed to start over.
Tim began expressing a desire to adopt early on. I dismissed the idea, I had a million excuses "I'm no spring chicken"--too old to have children, it's expensive, then there is the possibility that they will say no. Tim had all but given up, he says he prayed to God to soften my heart to the possibility of adopting.
Well, late in October 2006, we went on an overnight retreat with the kids from AWANA at our church. We went to the mountains on the South Carolina-North Carolina border. It was beautiful. We all had a great time. We returned home late Saturday night. Sunday we had AWANA. While I was talking to our Children's Ministry Director, I noticed that there was this little girl about 4 years old buzzing all around us. I asked our Children's Ministry Director, "who is she, she is just adorable". I came to find out that she was her little daughter. She had been adopted from China. Our C.M.D. and I continued to talk, I found out that she was my age....she adopted....maybe I wasn't too old, maybe they wouldn't say no....Tim was elated to hear about what we had been talking about.... his prayers had been answered!
So began our journey down this road of adoption. Tim and I discussed possibilities and finally decided on Guatemala. There is a large group of families from our church who had adopted from Guatemala. We set up a meeting with our now case manager and another woman who did Home Studies--that was early November 2006. We then filled out an application for CCI (Celebrate Children International) adoption agency. The paperwork chase began!