Just learned some big news from El Salvador this week that does very much affect our adoption – in fact all adoptions there. 

At 8:45 on Thursday night, Sonia Cortez de Madriz was sworn in as El Salvador’s Procuraduría General de la República [Attorney General].

The process to select one has been going on since last April, in anticipation of the new administration under Mauricio Funes.  When the government turned over last June, no one was named, so there has been an acting Procurador with limited powers ever since.

Why is this important to us?

Our referral must come through the Procuradora’s office.  Once the file on our family gets approved by OPA, where it is now, it is the Attorney General’s office that will match us with a waiting child (or hopefully two waiting children).  They will then send us the information on those kids, and we will respond back to them about whether we will accept that referral and thus adopt those kids.

Without a named Procuradora, all adoptions have halted (not that there were that many moving along at all smoothly to begin with).  Our file hasn’t been effected directly because we’re not out of OPA, yet.  But it’s been effected indirectly, since the folks at OPA knew that there was no hurry in getting files approved just to have them sit there waiting for a Procuradora.

Until now.

Hopefully, Cortez de Madriz will make sure things move along smoothly so that the children who truly do need adoptive families will be matched with them more quickly than they have in the past.  She has said she has a heart for families, children in need, and women in need.

We’ll see how this plays out, but at least we know our file has someplace to go after the phase it’s in now!

When we began our current adoption process, we found ourselves working with two separate agencies.  Our placement agency – the one connected with El Salvador – is in Kentucky.  But we were required to get our homestudy done by an agency here in Maryland.

So we have a second agency this time (last time we used one for everything).  And with a second agency comes a second set of personalities and some extra expectations to meet.

So as I mentioned in my prior dossier checklist post, I compiled a checklist table in Word for both agencies’ paperwork requirements.  I laid it out so I could check off each stage for each document (since many of our homestudy docs had to be notarized prior to submission)  And then I highlighted the items on each list that were duplicates, so I could collect them simultaneously.

It took us two months to get everything submitted – not bad considering how many of the items involved waiting on government entities.  When our homestudy report “expires” this Spring, we’ll have to re-submit a portion of these as part of an updating amendment we’ll be required to submit to El Salvador to remain in good standing there.

So I’ll be referencing this checklist again all too soon!  Hope it’s a helpful concept for someone else out there, in the meantime, too!

[Note: when compiling paperwork for your own homestudy, please reference your own agency's particular requirements.  They should be similar to this list, but may vary slightly.]

HOMESTUDY DOCUMENT LIST

Compiling a dossier for an international adoption takes a lot of time, a lot of attention to detail, and a lot of patience (especially since several of the items involve waiting on government entities).

A new friend of mine has hit just this stage.  It seems overwhelming at first.  There’s a long list, and the very first item is a homestudy report which comes with a separate but similar checklist all its own.  And then every document must be notarized, authenticated by the county in which that notary holds her/his license, and then apostilled by the state in which that county is located.  So some people are looking at a whole bunch of notaries, multiple counties, and several states in order to compile their one family dossier.

Here’s my method of keeping the madness to a minimum.  As soon as I got the lists for both our Homestudy and our Dossier, I created tables in Word that would allow me to track each document and also mark off each level of progress for each document.  The checklists served both a practical and psychological purpose for me.  The practical:  there are a lot of documents to collect, and they each need to have every seal on them!  But secondarily, I felt like I was accomplishing something.  Even if I had merely obtained a document, I put a little clip-art check-mark in the box in that column.  Somehow, watching the check-marks’ multiply made me feel better, even during the early stages when I knew I had months to go until our whole dossier was complete.

With the two lists side-by-side, I highlighted which items overlapped, so I could collect copies for both lists at one time as much as possible.  Having been through an adoption once before, I was ready to ferret out any efficiencies I could.  And this dossier compilation still took me about 10 months.  Again, patience is key!

So here it is – the Dossier Checklist for our El Salvador Adoption.  I’ll post the Homestudy Checklist in a separate post.  Hope these are helpful to someone out there! 

[Note: Please refer to your own agency's list of requirements when compiling your own dossier.  We reside in Maryland and are adopting from El Salvador.  While most items should carry through for all Salvadoran adoptions, requirements do vary from country to country and even vary slightly from one agency to another.]

Dossier Docs Checklist – El Salvador

Adopting from El Salvador is going to be a long process, but I figure it’s never too soon to get buy-in from the sons we have.  They love little kids and babies, but it is going to come as a shock when they realize they have to split our attention even further.  And we have no idea how well or how quickly the new members will adjust to joining us.

So I decided I’d have H & J “adopt” the kids with us.  I’m usually the one to run the paperwork around and schedule appointments, so rather than drop them off at Mom-Mom’s house, I always take them with me.

And at every stop, I’ve told them, “and when we were adopting YOU, we did this too!”  Which they know, ’cause they have pictures in their adoption albums of Fred and me doing the paperwork rounds. 

But when our next kids flip through their albums, this is what they’ll see:

Dunno where Mamá is; looks like the big brothers are doing all the work!   (If only I could actually delegate!  sigh…)

I hope the twins remember this, how excited they are right now to be getting little siblings.  And I hope their siblings realize that they were wanted by all four of us long before we even knew their names.

Hi, I’m Fred, the Papa here at American Mamacita. I guess that makes me American Papacito, although I’m not very small… so maybe just American Papa.  Just like Kim, our boys named me. I had planned to be Dad, the name I call my father, and the name he called his father. But adoption shakes things up, and for me, it brought a new name. I love being a Papa; it sounds more personal to me–not sure why. I’ll have to write more on it in the future.

As you probably already know, we’re in the process of a second adoption, this time from El Salvador. And I’m a bit nervous about it. If you asked my friends for a list of traits that describe me, you’d probably get a bunch. Most of them I’d be proud of, and some of them I’m sure I wouldn’t. But one trait I wouldn’t expect to hear is fearful. It’s usually not me. Yet that’s at least 50% of the emotion I feel when thinking about bringing home our new kids.

When we adopted our first boys, I was a bit nervous. I guess it was fear of the unknown. But I really wanted kids. Kim and I knew there was a chance that things would be difficult, or maybe even really difficult. We had done all of the reading (well, she had). But we didn’t have a complete family yet, so I felt prepared to tackle anything. I could allocate whatever emotional/financial/spiritual/time resources that were necessary to make things work. If God wanted to give us challenging kids, he’d give us the energy and insight we needed to work through their issues.

It’s now three years later, and our kids are wonderful… and not just an ordinary wonderful. They are fun, energetic, exciting, full of joy, and downright fun to hang out with. They are growing in new ways each day. When I come home from work, they make pulling into the driveway joyful in a way I never anticipated. (For instance, most recently I’ve been playing a game with Jose where he calls me a girl, and I tickle him until he admits I’m a boy. He’s insisted on playing every day for the last two weeks.)

Our family isn’t perfect, but it’s perfect for me. What man can ask for more than a good job, good friends, and a great family? I can already see my boys growing up into strong, Christian young men… and there is no greater joy in parenthood for me.

That joy is also the source of my fear.

See, our family is awesome – just the four of us, and just the way it is. I not only feel like my boy’s father; we’re also friends. And when they grow up, I’m confident that God will honor the efforts we put in now, while they’re young. I can see us enjoying holidays with them, watching them start careers, and likely marry (no doubt to upstanding women!)

And these new kids? Well, I just don’t know them. Will they adjust like our boys have? Will they love Kim and I as much as our boys do? Will we love them as much as we love Jose and Bear?

We know that our next children will have their own set of experiences, including potentially very deep hurts that we neither completely know, nor can fix. We know they may experience serious attachment disorders that could make life very hard for us and for our boys. In fact, with an adoption from El Salvador, these risks are ever more real, since adoption-eligible children grow up in orphanages and generally do not form attachment to a single caregiver. We know there’s a chance they will have been abused, and that we’ll deal with all the issues that come with that.

When I think about it, it seems like the odds are stacked against us. How can our next children live up to what our first have already become? Will our family life be much harder when we get them?

Maybe so, I think.

But, as I pray about the next kids, I am reminded: our current kids, and their personalities are a gift from God. While we (especially Kim) have worked hard to raise them well so far, the results are in God’s hands. And so it will be with the next set of kids; the results are still His, along with our whole family’s future.

But, I don’t feel that way yet… I just think it. And perhaps that’s the root of the problem.

Or perhaps the root is my selfish enjoyment of the life we have today, a life that I can seldom imagine to be better. The whole situation reminds me of an analogy C.S. Lewis used to describe those who settle for the pleasures of this world instead of seeking God’s rewards for their lives.  They are “like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

Not that my family life is making mud pies in a slum… but you get the idea. Maybe the next kids will bring even more joy than I can imagine?

That would be awesome.

For any parent, picking a child’s name is one of the most personal decisions we make in the beginning.  Bedding can be changed, rooms repainted; but we’ll be calling our kids by their names for the rest of our lives.  So we want to get it “right.”  Something that fits with our last name, something with a good meaning (if you’re into name meanings), something that doesn’t conjer up images of elementary school bullies or weirdos for either parent.

But what if your child comes pre-named?  Ours did, and so, like most adoptive parents, we had to make a different kind of naming decision: keep it? change it? modify it?  What’s the right answer?

We know adoptive parents who have done all three, and with great reasoning behind each choice.

1. Keeping the Child’s Original Name – With older children who know their names, this is the simplest way to keep something consistent amidst all the changes that they experience.  It stands as a marker of  their life story – that they are the same children throughout, and that the past and the adoption are open for discussion.  While adoption is a joyous thing in many ways, it also involves the loss of the birthparents, foster parents, and/or orphanage caregivers.  And with transracial adoption, it involves the loss of culture, diet, and sometimes homeland.  So the name may be the one thing that doesn’t have to be lost.

2. Changing the Name – On the other hand, giving a child a whole new name can symbolize a new beginning, the complete belonging and acceptance of that child in the new family.  I have friends who have known what names they wanted to give to their kids ever since they got married.  Then they discovered they had an infertility issue, and so they adopted their two kids.  And gave them those two names.  For them, it’s a way to say to their children “you are the ones we always wanted.”  Other times, name-changing is just the practical choice because a child’s name is hard to pronounce or doesn’t translate well in the new family’s language.    Rather than have the child go through life with his name constantly fumbled over or mispronounced, it seems more considerate to give him a name everyone knows.

3.  Old Name/ New Name Combination – I’ve encountered this choice most often in our circles.  The new daughter’s original name becomes her middle name, and her parents pick a new first name.  It make a lot of sense, meeting both the acceptance and consistency benefits of the first two choices.

With our sons, we went with keeping their names.  Their birthmom gave them to them, and she did try to parent them for the first couple of years of their lives.  There was no abuse or anything like that; she was simply a single mom in a socioeconomic position that made it hard to care for twin boys.  So out of respect for her and the very hard choice she had to make and the gratitude we have to her for the lives of our sons, and out of respect for their culture and the fact that they knew their names and each others’ names, we’ve kept them. 

Frankly, calling my sons by their names is a daily reminder to me that they are a gift.  We could have ended up with a different pair, but they are the ones God gave us.  They match us so well it’s uncanny, and when I did go back and look up their names’ meanings, those meanings suit them so well it’s uncanny.

And as they get older, their names also remind us that they do have a heritage that is different from mine or Fred’s, and that we have a responsibility to educate them about it.  WE made the choice to adopt transracially; they didn’t even know what was happening.  So the burden is on us to make sure they know people who look like them, have a sense of their cultural identity, and are prepared for strangers to approach them out of how they appear despite the fact that they’re being raised by white parents and fit comfortably into Anglo-American culture.

So what’s in a name?  All that, for us and our kids.  And while people do mispronounce their names sometimes, both boys are very proud that they still have them.  One right choice down.  So many more to negotiate!