Eden turned 16 months on the 12th! She is running, jumping, talking, kissing, and hugging all the time! We recently counted her vocabulary: she can say over 50 words already! She can climb on and off the couches and dining room chairs by herself! …and we had to lower her crib down a notch last week to prevent her from reaching a leg over the edge. She has no fear! (yet)
I just posted five new videos! Go check them out to see Eden showing off and a two month old video from Andy’s birthday!
Meghan neglected to include a few important points from the magistrate meeting. First, we actually made a date to see her back here on Sept 2nd 2010. Second, she said that at that time she will do everything she can to help us with the adoption and that no one will deny us an adoption of Eden! We’ll still need to worry about getting her adopted in the US and/or getting an immigration visa for her…but as Meghan keeps saying: “one step at a time.”
We had our second ultrasound of Baby Andy yesterday. We had the same bed-side ultrasound machine as last time, so I took our video camera and recorded the entire thing. You can watch it here or find one of the HD versions over on the http://wolfes.blip.tv site.
Just to cheer you all up after my last post, I uploaded two more videos of Eden today to http://wolfes.blip.tv. Sorry about the lighting on this first one. The power went out right before I got the camera. For the second one we were smart enough to realize we could open the curtains to let in more light! 🙂
Power outages here are actually rare. Pamela says that that was the first one in the year she has been there. Apparently they were repairing a transformer on a main power line that was coming out of town. Not sure why they chose a Sunday night to do that…
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!”)
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