Michael Franti

Michael Franti is a successful African American musician adopted domestically by a white family. In December, he performed for the Dave Thomas Foundation special "A Home for the Holidays". You can watch his video here. Also, I find his song "Say Hey, I Love You" quite catchy (video also on YouTube)!

It's There!

According to the tracking information, our dossier was delivered to Addis Ababa yesterday at 4:47pm, US time!

True to form, some new developments in the world of Ethiopian adoptions since we started our second adoption. We were notified last week that the Ethiopian Federal Courts now require both adoptive parents to be present for the child's first court hearing in Addis Ababa. Then, only one of the adoptive parents is required to return to Ethiopia 3 to 6 weeks later to bring the child into the US. That's right, 2 trips to Ethiopia instead of 1. The reason behind this is to create an additional level of transparency in the adoption process and to protect the integrity of the program. We are completely in favor of this. Although an unexpected twist, we will figure out a way to make this happen. Our first adoption was so uncharacteristically smooth by international standards that we are not surprised this change has come up! We prefer to think of it as "getting to go twice" rather than "having to go twice".

Paris!

This morning we were notified that our dossier, all 1.5 pounds of it, are currently in Paris, France. It's on schedule to arrive in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia shortly!

Waitlist!!

On Friday March 4th, we were notified that our dossier is off to Washington D.C where it will spend a leisurely week at the Ethiopian embassy getting translated. After this layover, it is off to Ethiopia. It will take approximately one week to get there via Fed Ex, so that means it should land in Addis Ababa by the end of this month. In the mean time, Gladney has informed us that we are officially on the wait list! At this point, Gladney is telling us that families have waited an average of 9 months for the referral of a child age 0-12 months. From there, it's an estimated wait of 2-4 months for a court date, which is when the adoption is finalized in the Ethiopian courts. Then, travel is expected 2-6 weeks after that. This gives us time. Time to prepare for the arrival of the fourth member of our family.