Parameters



With Ethiopian adoption through AGCI (All God's Children International), we as the adoptive parents will set our parameters for our adoption.

AGCI has three waiting lists: girl, boy, and siblings. When we finish our dossier, AGCI approves it, and it is sent off to Ethiopia, we will be put on a waiting list of our choosing. Some families choose just one category, but you can choose two or three and see which one gets you your referral first!

The parameters Colin and I will be setting:

one child or siblings (and how many)

a boy, girl, or which combination

 age range of our child/ren 

health conditions

The process of choosing parameters is both exciting and challenging. We have changed our minds several times! Also, AGCI has several requirements for adoptive parents to be able to adopt multiple children or multiple sexes (financial qualifications, size of home, bedrooms in home, etc.).

If a couple has a child or children already, they must be a certain distance apart age-wise from the new child/ren. And adopting out of birth order is generally frowned upon (example, adopting a child older than your other child/ren). We do not have children, so this does not affect our parameters.

For both AGCI and our homestudy agency, Colin and I have had to fill out two separate documents stating health conditions that we are open to considering for our referral. Let me tell you, this was difficult for me! Part of me wanted to be open to all health conditions, while part of me struggled with thinking about costs of surgeries, medications, or therapies. At one point, we started it and I had to tell Colin I could not continue with it that evening. It almost made me sick choosing the health parameters. These, we will not be sharing. Down the road, our child/ren's health will be his/hers/theirs to choose whether or not to share with others.

Once we got through these difficult documents, we discussed scenarios of how many children, what age/s, and what sex/es. This was fun, but also difficult! It seemed every month our minds changed.

We think we have our parameters set!

What are our parameters?!?

You, our friends, will have to wait to find out!

We are choosing to share our parameters when we are put on the waiting list. I know, we are leaving y'all in suspense! We are over-the-top excited and bubbling over to share our happy news.

But, you will have to wait several weeks/months. Hopefully definitely by the end of November (we have six months total to complete our homestudy and dossier).

Prayerfully sooner!

Any guesses?