An overdue announcement 3/19/2007
Things have been so busy in our household. One of the reasons things are so busy is because we have decided to adopt again. That’s right, Adelina will be a sister, and she is very excited about this prospect!! This time we are adopting from Russia through a special program offered by WACAP (our agency). We have been impressed with them so far, though right now we are just finishing up our home study. We had to start the whole process over again because our state certification had expired last April. So we have been busy filling in endless questionnaires and visiting with the social worker and attending pre-adoptive training.
Our plan is to adopt another deaf kiddo, but we have not yet been matched with a particular child. We are open to siblings, but we’ll just have to see what God has in store for our family. Since we don’t know whether our next child will be auditory (like Adelina) or more visual and sign-dependent, we have gone back to school at our local community college to more formally develop our ASL skills. This has proved very rewarding but much harder than we could have anticipated. We are taking a level 2 class and our vocabulary is at or above the rest of the class, but our ASL grammar is weak and our fingerspelling skills are pretty horrible (Steve is doing quite a bit better than I am in this area). Still, we are able to apply what we learn with Adelina and practice with one another, so that is a benefit. Thankfully, we also have some friends who use ASL and are deaf, so that is a huge help.
So, we’re on the adoption journey again! We hope you will join us for the ride, though I can’t promise to update as frequently as I did with our Ukraine adoption. I didn’t have a kid at that time, nor was I taking a 4 credit college course! Any deaf (or ASL fluent) readers who have a VP and want to help us master our ASL skills, contact me by e-mail and I will share our number. We recently reconnected our VP so we could use it again.
Wow!! Congratulations and good luck on this new giant step forward!!!
Hi Jodi, I was just checking in.(I check in every month or so to see how sweet Adelina is doing) Congratulations on your upcoming adoption! I am so happy for you. Our second was tough, but worth eveything we had to go through.
You are so blessed!
Kathy Barber
PS - My daughter will be 6 in May!
I’m so excited for you guys! What a wonderful thing. We’ll be praying that the process is as smooth as possible, and that Russia will be re-allowing American adoptions by the time your paperwork is done. But as we both know…God’s timing is perfect, and he uses everything to help guide us to the child(ren) meant to be in our home.
Adelina will make a wonderful sister, I’m sure of it. Vitya has just started campaigning for siblings, but it will probably be another year at least before we re-engage in searching out our options.
Do keep us posted. It is so exciting to know you’re embarking on a new incredible journey.
Oh! I can’t find the words to say how happy I am for you all!
LOVE TO ADELINE from us!
Jo (and Kenny and Veech)