We’re all doing well now with Eden home. She sleeps through most of the night now…mainly because we’re letting her stay in our bed. We’ve switched to a room in the new house that has two double beds pushed together, so there’s plenty of room!

Just a reminder that our road ahead is long and laborious. The adoption process in Kenya is quite difficult. For international adoptions you 1) contact and agency in the home country 2) The agency picks out a child 3) You travel to Kenya and start living with the baby for three months (aka obtain guardianship) and then 4) After 3 months you must have three visits to the High Court to get approval. You can then get a US visa for the child and finalize things in the US. Unfortunately, the High Court is always booked 3 months in advance…so that fourth point above takes 9-12 months. :-/

For domestic adoptions you 1) obtain guardianship 2) live with the child for 3 months (maybe less) and then 3) see the high court once for the adoption. Unfortunately, the US won’t grant visas for children adopted this way. However, the US does grant visas if you can prove you have been taking care of the child for 2 years.

Due to this announcement about Kenya not really following all the Hague Convention rules, that first method isn’t really an option. At least it isn’t for the forseeable future. The goal right now is to get a temporary visa for Eden to come home with us while baby Andy is born and come back next summer/fall. If we can do that, we only need to stay in Kenya for about a year before hitting that 2 year mark (“only”!). The US embassy in Nairobi has yet to respond to my emails or answer any phone calls, so its hard to say how likely getting her a temporary visa is. It looks like a group interested in OpenMRS is going to fly me to NBO on Friday, so I’ll take that opportunity to just stop by the consulate and ask whats up. 🙂

With that out of the way, check out our video of cute little Eden from last week feeding herself. FYI: I re-encoded all of the videos on our wolfes.blip.tv video site, so now they should be faster, cleaner, and skip less. (“New and Improved! Now with less skipping!”)

I also posted a few other videos from Cape Town South Africa and the 20 min walk from the IU House to the edge of downtown Eldoret.

There are also some more pictures on the photos page, but you can probably tell that from the little box in the upper left.