New additions

What do you think of my new additions to the blog? I'm getting better at this blogging thing.

Shaving cream adventures

I can't believe it's the last day of August. They way I feel the passing of time has really changed. The days don’t seem nearly as long. I am never bored. It seems like just yesterday that Mike left to go home (in reality it was the 11th). I really think that even though we are away from home, he is having the much harder wait.

We've had an interesting couple of days. On a tip from our friend Bonnie, thanks Bonnie, we contacted Dr. Joseph from Northwest Haiti Christian Mission to see if he could help us in any way with our paperwork debacle. Fortunately, he was coming into Port-au-Prince that day (yesterday) and came directly to the hotel to meet us. He said that he did have some friends in the various offices that we were dealing with and offered to take us down to the offices immediately. We talked with Barb and ended up meeting with her down at the Ministry of Justice where our birth certificate is currently waiting for another signature. After a lot of running around from office to office, we found that there really was not much we could do that day. However, Dr. Joseph is friends with an official in the Ministry of the Interior. So, perhaps when our documents get back there, a phone call from him might do the trick. While we didn't actually make any headway with our paperwork that day we did accomplish several things: Denny got to see downtown, Barb got to meet Dr. Joseph who may be able to provide a contact within the MOI, and we have a much better understanding of what is going on with our paperwork (and maybe a little more hope). Even if nothing is moving with the paperwork you just feel more powerful having an understanding of what is happening to you. I appreciate Dr. Joseph's kindness and generosity very much.

We had great news today about one of the other adoptive families that is here, the Grays (www.randallandemily.com). They received David's visa today and are traveling back to Indiana on Wednesday. We have also heard that 40 files were signed out of MOI and have made it to Immigration. This is also good news for a lot of families.

We had fun playing with shaving cream today during school. We've been working on writing capital and lower case letters, learning to separate things into categories, we just started learning a few reading sight words (yes, no, dog, cat) and working a little bit on letter sounds (he can make p, b, f, v, and m with lots of help). Then Kerwin went for a really long swim. Lawanna, the two girls and the babies have gone back to Barbara's village. So Kerwin found some other girls to play with today. There are three girls here that are being adopted by a family from Scotland. Kerwin had a nice time playing with them in the pool.

Kerwin has just started to get the sniffles and sneezes. I think he picked up a cold from one of the girls that was here. They all spend a lot of time playing together in close quarters so it wouldn't surprise me if it got passed along to him. I hope he doesn't get too sick.

Well, it's Friday and Monday's a holiday so we don't expect much movement on things here until Tuesday. We are praying for our papers to be out of the Department of Justice on Tuesday and on to Foreign Affairs.

Paperwork Update

Just a quick paperwork update for you. It justs gets worse everyday so it pains me to sit down and write it. But here's what I know. Our new birth certificate made it out of Archives. However, MOI will not accept it this way. It now has to go through legalization which is a three-step process: Parquet, Judgement, and Foreign Affairs. We got through Parquet today and will be out of Judgement (they say) next Tuesday. No word on Foreign Affairs.

I did find out something helpful today. Vera, another adoptive mother has a blog (www.adoptivemomhaiti.blogspot.com) with lots of specific and up-to-date information on the Haitian adoptive process. On her July 10th entry she gives a readable synopsis of the procees once your paperwork gets to Haiti. It was helpful for me for see it written out that way. Thanks, Vera.

In other news today, my mom is coming down next Thursday. We are looking forward to having her here. I'll try to do better with the pictures in the next few days.

Another cute picture

Quick update

We had a nice day today. Nothing really new going on. We swam, has school and played with the other kids. We are all going to watch a movie tonight after dinner.

The update from Archives is this. The document is signed but it will not be ready to pick up until tomorrow. If someone understands this please write me back and let me know. So, we are planning to have the document picked up tomorrow morning and taken to MOI. Kind of what we thought was going to happen today but instead it's going to happen...all together now...tomorrow. Then we will go in to MOI on Wednesday and see if we can persuade them to sign our dossier and get us out of there.

Sports of all sorts

The pictures are of Rachel and Kerwin before she left, Kerwin playing football in the room with Grandpa, and Kerwin playing Zingo with the kids in our room.

Another "weekend" day here. We took it easy most of the day. Kerwin played with all his new toys. He played football, basketball, baseball, painted, put together a puzzle and watched his new Air Bud movies (Air Bud Plays Football and Volleyball). His grandpa brought him a football which he loves and he's never had one before. He also brought a really cool basketball goal that sticks to the sliding glass door with suction cups. It's the perfect size and surprisingly, it stays up really well. I started a new knitting project today. I asked for knitting needles and yarn so that I could at least have something tangible to show for my time here. I've begun knitting Kerwin a scarf. He understands it's a "scarf" but I still don't think he can quite wrap his mind around what it's for. He keeps picking up the needle with the scarf hanging off of it and waving like a flag. This morning we swam with the other kids that are staying here. Then after diner they came over to play games again. They love playing that Zingo game. They are all so competitive. But it's great for the kids learning English. And I love that Kerwin is playing competitively in an organized game with his peers.

Tomorrow is back to school and back to Archives to see about our paperwork. Please pray that that document will be signed and ready to go when Mirlande walks in the door. If it were to come out of there early in the day, we could conceivably be back to MOI tomorrow. That would be wonderful. Thanks for all the support and encouragement. It's fun, I keep meeting people here and they say, "Oh, I feel like I know you already. I've been reading your blog." Such a small world after all.

Safe and sound

My father-in-law has made it in safely. We have heard that my sister has boarded the last leg of her trip home. We are gland to have grandpa here. We had a fun day today. We had a play date in our room with some of the other adoptive kids and families that are here. We have a pretty good supply of "kid's stuff" in our room. They all had a really good time. They played with the Nerf gun, Playdough, watercolors, colored pencils, and then we all played Zingo. It was great. All four kids played together. I used the game to teach the three other kids English and Kerwin used his sign language. The kids were so into it. It was really nice to have other kids around for Kerwin to play with, and on our turf.

The word from Barb is that they spoke with the director of Archives on Friday afternoon and he said that he will sign the document and it will be ready for pick up on Monday. My new favorite song to sing is "The sun will come out tomorrow." Except I make up my own words and they never would have made it into Annie. Besides that, we are happy, healthy and extremely well fed. I think Kerwin has gained 10 pounds since we got here. I could write more tonight but I think I'll make you wait until TOMORROW.