Settling In

Thank you for your continued thoughts, prayers, and support! We are thrilled to be home with Lucca. He has learned to crawl and is exploring the ground level world. We find the life altering change Lucca is going through inconceivable. He may not consciously remember the events of the last month, yet is experiencing immense loss including feelings of trauma and grief. He is struggling with feeling safe and secure and developing his trust in us.

We need your support now more than ever to promote our attachment with Lucca. We as parents are currently disposable to him. He has no healthy stranger anxiety and seems to be looking for his next Mommy to come take him away. Until he has learned that we are his parents, we will need to be his primary caretakers at all times. It is essential that we always hold him, feed him, and do all of the nurturing. It may appear that we are spoiling him, but have been advised that we need to meet every need quickly and consistently. We are unsure of how long this will take.

You can support our attachment work by doing the following:

• Do Not pick up, carry, or hold Lucca
• Do Not: nurture him, baby talk, cooo-chee-cooo, or engage him in games like peek-a-boo(hard not to do, he is so darn cute!)
• Do not try to establish a special personal relationship with Lucca
• Disrupt long periods of direct eye contact or gazes with him
• Redirect Lucca back to his Mom and Dad if he is overly friendly, waving at you, smiling for long periods, reaching out to you, trying to be cute and entertaining. This is likely to occur with other women. You can say, “Where is your Mommy? Oh. There she is”…

We have waited excitedly for the arrival of Lucca but he has not been waiting for us. We trust that you as our family and friends will help us to do what is best for our son. We thank you for your support and understanding and apologize if we have offended anyone. We can’t wait to achieve attachment so Lucca can establish loving relationships with all of you who make our lives so rich! Please let us know if you have questions or would like additional information regarding our attachment work.

Happy New Year!

WE ARE HOME!

We are home! And rejoicing!! Our time in Guatemala was life changing! And our journey to Lucca too!! Thank you to everyone who has traveled this journey with us. Your thoughts, prayers, and support have lifted us and lead us along our path to Lucca. We are so blessed to have all of you in our lives and now Lucca too!

Lucca's Pink Slip and Pick up Date Have Arrived!

Wooohooo and Hallelujah!

The Pink Slip includes the date and time of our appointment at the American Embassy in Guatemala for the Visa Interview. Our Visa Interview is Monday. We will travel this weekend to Guatemala. This is such a time of mixed emotion, two of which are relief and excitement. We are so blessed and thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, and support. They continue to help us through this journey and mean so much to us.

Out of PGN

Hooray, we are out of PGN (please see Adoption Process post below for a full description of PGN)! The Birth Mother has signed off for the 4th and final time and we have received our Adoption Decree. Now the Guatemalan government considers the adoption final. This is a huge step taken towards bringing Lucca home.

Next.....
A new birth certificate with Lucca's adoptive name is requested and issued. This is expected to take 4-8 weeks.
Then..... A second DNA test is taken and compared to Lucca's original sample. This is a US requirement to be sure he has not been switched during this process.
And then.... we wait for our "Pink Slip". The Pink Slip includes the date and time of our appointment at the American Embassy in Guatemala for the Visa Interview.

Lucca is 9months old. We are blessed to have him cared for by a wonderful Foster Family. Thanks to everyone for your continued thoughts and prayers. Please keep them coming, they help a great deal.

Visit Trip and Pre-Approval

Our visit trip to Guatemala was wonderful. It was great to meet our baby boy who we have named Lucca. Lucca is healthy and is loved very much by his Foster Family. How truly blessed we are!

We have received Pre-Approval. The next step is PGN. PGN is the Public Ministry or Attorney General's office of Guatemala. This office reviews our file and grants us approval of the adoption and authorization to issue the Adoption Decree. The birth mother signs off for the 4th and final time. Guatemala considers the adoption final at this step. PGN takes a minimum of 8 weeks. Right now we are seeing it take as long as 6-8 months. Thank you for the continued thoughts and prayers as we work our way through this process.

We will keep you posted on our progress!

DNA is a Match

The DNA test between baby and Birthmother are a match. Hooray! We feel like we can breath now. The next step in the process is waiting for Preapproval. This comes from the American Embassy. Simultaneously our file is working its way through Family Court (this is an evaluation of the Birthmother and child, the Birthmom will sign off for the 3rd time that she wants to relinquish the child). Preapproval and Family Court are expected to take 6-8 weeks.
We have made arrangements for a Visit trip in August to meet our growing boy. We are very excited about this and will be joined by Chrissy's Mom Cheryl.
Thank you for all of the prayers, thoughts, and support. They help and mean so much to us!

DNA Authorization Received

Our DNA Authorization request has been granted at last! Now the DNA testing between our little guy and his Birthmother can take place. This step in the adoption process is to insure the child is in fact born of his Birthmother. DNA testing is expected to take 30 days to complete. Please see the DNA section in "The Adoption Process" previous posting for a more detailed explantation of this step.

Thank you to all for your continued thoughts, prayers and enouragement.

IT"S A BOY!

We received a referral (please see posting below titled The Adoption Process for the definition of a referral)! Hooray! Here he is, our baby boy! He was born just outside of Guatemala City, on February 21st, and weighed in at 6lbs 12oz. We are so happy and feel so blessed.

Next step in the process to bring the little guy home is DNA testing (see posting, The Adoption Process, for more info) between the birth mother and baby. This will take about a month to complete.

Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and continued support!!

Dossier Complete

At last our Dossier (paperwork packet that is required by the Guatemalan Government, please see previous posting for a more detailed definition) is complete. Ahhhhh, a sigh of relief. Thank you to those who have helped us complete this packet and those who continue to provide support and a listening ear.

What happens now? Our Dossier has been sent to the Guatemalan Consulate in the US for authentication. It will then be sent to Guatemala for translation and processing. A clipboard with our photo and adoptive request for a boy or girl will be placed and the search for an infant referral begins. We can expect a referral in 2-4 weeks.

Where Are We Now?

Where are we now in this process? We are just about done with our paperwork requirements to complete our Dossier (packet of documents required by Guatemala, please see previous November post for a more detailed definition), for submission to Guatemala. We are waiting on two more documents to be state certified. A state certified document receives the approval of the Secretary of State and receives a pretty and official gold seal as seen in the photo on the left.

We received our I-171H form which grants us approval from the U.S. Government to proceed with international adoption.

The paperwork trail has just about ended! Hooray!