Browsing the Internet today I thought I'd share some really cute things I've bookmarked for a 'later date'.
I have been reading about slings and baby carriers a lot. I never used them with either of my other children but because travel in Vietnam will require alot of carrying and because it clearly fosters bonding and attachment, I am looking into them. Also in Vietnam it is very difficult to navigate a small stroller on the sidewalks there. Much better to have the baby close and avoid weaving in and out of traffic and crowded sidewalks. I won't buy one til we know if we be referred a baby or a toddler (not sure my back can handle carrying a toddler all day) but aren't these "Hotslings" just the cutest... and they are really fashionable with beautiful and fun fabrics.


Found some really cute tshirts for the whole family (As well as bibs, etc) at Cafe Press. That place is such a fun place to turn to when needing unique and creative clothing. I especially liked these ones:
Born in my heart
Loving Family

These quilts, made by the women of Vietnam and sold out of Ho Chi Minh City, VN would be adorable for Chloe's & Keaton's beds (and their brother or sister, ...one of them will share their room). After referral time I may have to buy two in either pink or blue.
Children Size Vietnam quilts

This website has some fun tshirts: http://www.adoptionmama.com/
Lucky Momma

Home Study #3

Finished. Our Adoption Practioner came this past long weekend and finished up most of the work involved in our Home study. Our final appointment will take place once we recieve our fingerprints back from the RCMP as well as medical forms, and other paper work we are waiting on. Fingerprinting from RCMP can take up to 6 wks from Ottawa so now we just wait.
As more people learn of our adoption plans the more excited we get. But, there really is a long wait ahead of us and very rarely do I have anything new to report to them. I am trying to make contacts with other families in our area of Ontario and would really love to find a multi-cultural playgroup within our Belleville area that we can be involved with when we return home from Vietnam.
That's really all I have to report. We are keeping busy, enjoying our new pool and running to one sporting event after another. I am mulling over the idea of joining Keaton up for baseball... which would mean taking the kids to 4 different sports activities a week. I'm torn :)... I love our time at home in the evening - I hate to give it up. (SELFISH ME).

A night out...

What fun! I drove up to Toronto yesterday and had the pleasure of meeting 22 other waiting mommies. Most of the mom's are adopting from China and it was interesting learning the differences in the process between China and Vietnam. There were 4 of us adopting from VN and I learned some great information just speaking with them... all of them are further into the process than we are with their Dossier's already in VN. One girl Nicole from Buffalo, NY received her referral of a tiny little baby boy a few days before the dinner. She had photos and he was beautiful. He was only 6 wks old in the photos and she expected to be traveling to Vietnam in July to bring him home. SO EXCITING. I also sat across the table from another mom who had just recieved her long awaited referral from China, a beautiful baby girl that was 8 months old in her referral photos. She will hopefully travel to China in the summer as well to bring back her pretty little gal.
The dinner was held at the Pickle Barrel in the Yorkdale Mall, Toronto. I managed a quick run into Disney store to get the kids each a pair of pjs but the rest was just a social night with some new friends. With 23 women we took up a good chunk of the back of the restaurant and were split up amongst 2 large tables so I wasn't able to meet and talk to everyone. I was lucky and got to sit beside 2 moms that had their babies with them. Olivia and Samara (both 14 months old) ... omg they are adorable and were so good during dinner. Olivia is just starting to walk and was showing off for us.
I feel lucky to have found a group of women that I can hopefully stay connected with long after we have come home from Vietnam. It is important for me that we find families like ours so our daughter/son can experience friendships with children that have some things in common with her/him. My heart goes out to all these lovely women as they face a long wait and dream of the day their children can be in their arms.
Thanks for a fabulous evening! (photo by Catherine)

Home Study #2

Our social worker came to our house today. It was our 2nd appointment and our first 'home' visit. He was a bit early and I didn't even get a chance to brush my hair. Ha, talk about making a good impression. The kids got to meet him and he spoke with them briefly about having a new child in the home and how they felt about that, etc. Chloe made it fairly clear to him that she would only accept a 'baby girl' ... but Keaton is more flexible, bless his heart. 3+ hours later and we were finished for the day. Our 3rd appointment is scheduled for 2 wks from now.
We have been doing lots of reading on all the unique things international adoption involve. This is in many ways a learning process and we are learning a lot. Our hearts are open and ready and the time cannot come soon enough, even though we know we have at least 1 yr to wait and be patient. Next on our to-do-list is finger printing, police checks and reference letters. Fun, Fun, Fun! :)

Mini Vacation

Shaune is up at a conference in Kingston. I tagged along and with no kids with us - wow - so much time to talk and talk and talk. That is something parents of 2 young kids aren't always able to find time for. Shaune and I talked the whole way up to Kingston about this journey, about the decisions we are making, about how they'll affect our family. We are geniunely excited and of course nervous at times also.
We are making big decisions and are still wavering on what child we feel is waiting for us in Vietnam. Is it a young baby? A boy or a girl or maybe it is a toddler that has been waiting for a mom and daddy way too long. The truth is I want to help them all and that is just impossible. I feel kind of helpless about all the children of the world that live without the love of a family... it really is so unfair. We can only do what we can do though, and what is right for the child we will adopt and our 2 wonderful children we are already blessed with.
My wonderful brother in law and sis-in-law gave us such a beautiful book last weekend. It is called "A treasury of Adoption Miracles" by Karen Kingsbury (adoptive mother to 3 Haiti children) and it has been beautiful to read. I stumbled across this passage in the final chapter of the book and thought I'd share:
"There's a story often told of a particularly rough storm that came up one night and left a sandy beach strewn with starfish. The next morning a child walked along the shore, stopping every few feet to pick up a starfish and fling it back into the sea. An old man watched the child and finally shouted at him "Why bother, son? There are too many starfish to make a difference." With that the boy picked up another starfish and looked at it intently before heaving it out to the sea. Then turning to the old man, he said, " It makes a difference to that one."

I know the child that we adopt will make a huge and amazingly wonderful difference in our lives and we will be there to do the same for her/him. We can't help all the children, or even 2... but we are following our hearts to a place where every ONE child matters. I know that we were pointed down this path for a reason and I feel truly honoured and lucky to be blessed with the chance to do this.

Photo Montage

This photographer captures the 'then and now' ... i smiled through the whole photo montage. Watch it - it is only a few minutes long. I loved seeing the babies at referral time (photos from the orphanages) and then seeing updates on them as toddlers and young girls. Makes my heart smile!
Link: http://www.davidclapp.com/main.htm
after music intro you will see at the bottom: "some babies come by plane". Click on that.

Paperwork

Our paper work fun starts. On Friday we had our first of 4 home study appointments with our social worker. He is a funny guy and he made us feel at ease. We decided to drive 1.5 hours west to a social worker that came highly recommended. He was very helpful and on our first meeting covered all areas of adoption including CAS, private/domestic adoption and international. After we went over all the information we confirmed that international adoption is the direction we wished to follow. He gave us some great information and some honest feedback on what to expect along the journey to our little girl or boy. We talked about children that are raised and cared for in an orphanage environment. We spoke of trans-racial and trans-cultural families. We spoke of honouring our childs culture and how we would go about doing so. It was a lot to take in and we left with lots of reading material and a plan to start searching our community for the resources we may need after our child comes home. We also are beginning to learn more about the culture and country of VN and all my extra time right now goes to researching on the internet it seems.
Our next homestudy is at our house, I guess I'd better get cleaning. He will meet Keaton and Chloe and see how we live. Should be interesting :)

Our homestudy

begins on Friday. We will drive to Whitby for our first meeting with our social worker. We are hoping the homestudy can be complete in 2 months time, there is paper work we need to gather and complete too which can lengthen the process. Glad to be getting started!

A little video clip

All I have today is a little video clip I found on You Tube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqZOe1EuCo0&mode=related&search=

I've been humming this song...

for the past few days, ever since watching this little video. Thought I'd share.
This is in China (look at all those little girls!), not Vietnam but I still get emotional thinking of the time we will finally be at this point. Such blessings ahead for our family!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yHTaxn_aDM

Here we go...

A special little blog to record the long process we are heading into, to adopt our 3rd child (from Vietnam.) It has been something Shaune and I have discussed many, many times over the past 10+ yrs. Before we ever were blessed with 2 biological children, we have always talked about our shared desire to perhaps... someday, if we could make it happen - adopt a child that needs a loving family. A child that would complete our family and bring us great joy and happiness just as Keaton and Chloe do every single day.

And so it begins. The past 2 months we have been quietly gathering information at home and researching all the ins and outs of International Adoption. We also looked into CAS and decided that we were not able to adopt a child older than our youngest daughter. We wanted to add to our family but we feel that a toddler or infant is best for our family dynamics. There are so many children in need of a family of their own and our hearts are drawn to them. It isn't really something we've chosen to do, it is something we feel called to do. A want deep inside both of us that we cannot ignore any longer.

It is going to be a very long road. It is not like we just decide we want to adopt & then get to go pick up our child. It involves months of homestudy appointments with our social worker, it involves applications to our agency, it involved waiting lists, tons and tons of paperwork, finger printing and criminal checks, preparing a dossier to send to Vietnam. It involves waiting months and months and months waiting on your child to finally be matched to your family. It means we will be holding our breaths for months waiting for our referral to come through and the moment we finally get to see which amazing child will become a part of the Lightfoot family. After we see a photo of our child we will then have to wait months before we can travel to Vietnam to bring her/him home. That I'm sure will be the hardest part, knowing and loving a child that lives half a world away and putting your trust in God and the orphanage that she/he will be okay until you finally get to go and bring them home. Travel to Vietnam involves 3 wks in country. That means K & C will either travel with us (which I am hoping we will be able to do, but doubt it is an expense we will be able to handle - air flight arranged last minute to Vietnam is very costly... not to mention the 20+ hr flight/transfers we will have.) The thought of leaving Keaton and Chloe for 3 long weeks is another thing I've already been thinking about a lot. The stress begins already!

We decided to keep this blog seperate from our regular family blog, as I plan to hopefully keep it very detailed and almost like a diary of events for the next couple of years. I have gained so much knowledge from the blogs and family websites on the Internet. Maybe someday someone will be able to look to this blog for hope and understanding along their way.

As we head into this, we are hopeful that our adoption from Vietnam can be complete by next Fall. Of course, with International Adoption things can be pretty unpredictable so nothing is set in stone at this time. Our agency is hopeful that by summer we could be traveling to Vietnam but I know that probably means closer to Autumn.

And so it begins. With the support of family and friends and a wonderful on-line community of Adoptive parents, we hope that the time won't go by TOO slowly and we know that in the end, it will all be so worth it!