Mrs. Broccoli Guy

We are now officially on Summer Break. Let the jollification begin!

I was going to write a summary of our long and tortuous school year but then I decided, I don’t even want to go there. Let’s just say it’s been a bumpy ride and leave it at that, okay? But we made it. R~ is now officially a first grader; A~ is at the top of the heap in his elementary school as a 5th grader; and K~ survived her first year of middle school. Even better, she got all A’s and B’s (okay, mostly B’s) on her report card. I am so proud of her. And on this her very first day of summer break, she’s already asking me to homeschool her next year. Ha, we’ll see what she’s saying after a few weeks at home with me 24/7!

No rest for the weary though - it’s Birthday Season around here. R~’s birthday isn’t until Tuesday but her party was today. Yes, I threw a party. Go Me! I took the easy way out and booked a party at a nearby gymnastics place. An instructor had R~ and her 8 friends (as well as Zeeb and A~) running and jumping and bouncing all over the place for an hour. They had a blast. And then we had half an hour for cake and presents. Which actually turned out to be a little more time than we needed (who knew kids could eat cake and rip through presents that fast?). And speaking of the cake, R~ declared she wanted a dragon cake this year, so we ordered a dragon cupcake-cake and asked them to make it a “girly” dragon. I ask you, does this dragon look the least bit “girly” to you?

Yeah, I thought not. But R~ liked it anyway. In fact she decided maybe she should have asked for a Darth Vadar cake. (an idea prompted by her brother A~’s current obsession with his Lego Star Wars computer game) Such a dainty sweet little thing she is.

For the most part, since we started VVAI I try to keep my “soapbox” type posts over there. I mean, I think the discussion of ethics belongs on every adoption blog, but rather than double post it just makes sense for me to save those topics for the blog that is specifically about ethics in adoption. But the rant I feel coming on is more personal in nature, so you get the pleasure of reading it here…

There is nothing that annoys me more than people who profess to be Christians who make immoral, unethical, naive, ridiculous choices and then lay all the responsibility on God. They say God “led” them to do it; or God has “blessed” their choice; or God “opened doors.” If I walk into a room and there is a gun on the table and a person sitting on the couch, I should not then decide that God has led me to pick up the gun, that he opened the door for me to shoot the person or that he will bless me for committing murder. There is such a thing as Free Will and God has blessed us with an abundant amount of it. He has also given us minds and He expects us to use them. (“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”)

What am I talking about? I’m talking about people who choose to work with clearly unethical agencies, accept referrals for children without proper documentation (as in not even an estimated birth date), overlook obvious signs of fraud or other irregularities in their process… all the while talking about how God has given them this child and what a miracle it is that their adoption is going so very quickly. And if there should be problems related to the illegal or fraudulant or unethical manner in which their adoption is being process, well then they just ask for extra prayers and shout “hallelujah” when the proper officials are paid off or otherwise placated and they bring the child home. I am absolutely disgusted and embarrassed at how often I see this happening. Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I beseech you: Open Your Eyes.

Adopting a child is a miracle. It is not a right, it is not a charitable act, it is not a means of rescuing a child. And it is not an excuse to break moral, ethical and civil laws. The ends do not justify the means. Yes there are children in need of families. But there are also greedy corrupt people who prey on naive, ignorant people by telling them that there are “hundreds or thousands of babies waiting for homes.”

James 1:27 says this: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” If you are involved with an unethical lawyer and/or agency who is using fraudulant means to procure babies, create fraudulant paperwork and pay officials to look the other way, you are being polluted by the world. If you are not taking one second to think how that teeny tiny baby with all the adorable pictures but very little in the way of real documentation may have come to be available for adoption, you are not looking after widows in their distress.

It is not enough to pray and ask for God’s blessing. It is not enough to look for “signs”. It is not enough to quote the parts of scripture that suit your needs. If your agency is making promises that seem too good to be true; if you have seen one referral after another fall through, only to be replaced by yet another young baby with abandonment paperwork; if your agency is giving you custody of a baby that has not been legally adopted by you (in an official giving and receiving ceremony); if your agency or lawyer or facilitator gives you answers that all sound like “it’s just the way its done” … you can not close your eyes, plug your ears and sing praises to God. You need to do something. You need to leave the agency, report their behavior to local authorities and the embassy, you need to speak up. Yes, you may lose the referral. But then, it was never a proper referral in the first place. For all you know, that child may still have a family that loves her and wants to raise her. At the very least, you owe it to that child to speak on her behalf, to protect her from selfish and corrupt people who use babies for their own profit; to safeguard his birth history, his very identity.

There is no excuse for naivity, no excuse for ignorance. All the information needed to make wise and ethical choices is there to be had. I’ve posted the links before, but here they are again:

The US Embassy in Vietnam - This page has many important and helpful links!! including:
Adoption Agencies Licensed in Vietnam There is NO excuse for using an unlicensed agency. There are currently 42 agencies licensed - not all are good or ethical, do your research!
Procedures for American Citizens Adopting an Orphan in Vietnam If your agency’s process is different from what is spelled out here, or the timelines are significantly shorter, those are red flags - take them seriously!

Other helpful websites:
Voices for Vietnam Adoption Integrity Yes, I’m a contributor, but that’s not what makes it great. We take on hard topics, the things most people don’t want to talk about. Our goal is educating prospective adoptive parents, and we have nothing to gain financially speaking.
Adoption Agency Research - A Yahoo Group for PAP’s to openly discuss agencies.
Ethica: A Voice for Ethical Child Placement

**For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.**2 Timothy 1:7

The day I started bonding with my Daddy.

The day Zeeb started bonding with his.

Happy Father’s Day to the two special Dads in my life. I love you both.

Last night at about 1am, our smoke detectors went off. Which set off the whole-house alarm. (Which, thankfully, is not hooked into one of those services that calls the fire station for you). I don’t even remember getting up, I was out of bed so quickly. Hubby hit his snooze button which made his radio go off, so I remember trying to turn that off. The thought of there being an actual fire didn’t even enter my mind for a good ten minutes. Partly, this is because there was no smoke or burning smell. And partly it’s because in my whole life the sound of a smoke detector has never signaled an actual fire. Every single time, it’s because of a dead/dying battery or other mechanical problem. (And why is it these things always malfunction in the middle of the night?) Our smoke detectors are all linked, so once one goes off then they all go off… and then the whole house alarm goes off. Amazingly, R~ and Zeeb slept through the alarm. Apparently it’s not uncommon for little kids to sleep through smoke alarms. When I went with R~’s class to the fire station last year, they told us to do a full scale fire drill every single time a detector goes off, even if you know it’s a false alarm. And while I know this is very good advice because it’s the best way to insure your kids will do the right thing in a true emergency, there was just no way I was getting them up at 1 o’clock in the morning to go outside in the cold, dark, rainy night to huddle under a tree wondering what creatures might be watching us from the woods. So instead we did a room by room inspection (starting with R~ and Zeeb’s room, of course) to make sure there truly was no fire and then to try to isolate which alarm was going off. (It went like this: detectors go off, house alarm goes off, we shut off alarm and then guess which dectector is the culprit. Husband pulls said detector down, fiddles with the battery. Alarm goes off again, start whole process over because clearly we didn’t find the right dectector yet.) It took about thirty minutes and probably 5 rounds of the Alarm Game to figure it out. Such fun. I sat on the couch with A~ and K~ and muttered curses at our builder who chose to install the world’s cheapest smoke detectors (this is not our first experience with the Alarm Game). Before we went to bed I made Hubby go outside and make absolutely certain that no flames or smoke were coming from any remote corner of our house. And as I fell asleep I thought how pathetic it is that our smoke detectors are basically teaching us to ignore them and if my life were a movie last night would have been the set-up for a real fire later (ending of course in tragedy because we’re all lulled into complacency). Thank goodness my life is not a movie.

But wait, the fun doesn’t end there. Today I was sitting at the table having a cup of tea and reading blogs while Zeeb played nicely in the family room when out of nowhere the power went out. Seriously. Out. of. nowhere. It wasn’t windy or storming or anything. And then? The carbon monoxide detector went off. I kid you not. Apparently the stupid thing goes off when the power goes out… gee, that’s handy. And not at all training me to ignore a CO2 emergency!

It was at that point I decided our house is definitely in revolt. Apparently it wants to be kept cleaner or something?

My little boy is four years old today. In honor of his special day we went to McDonald’s for dinner and then took Zeeb to Build A Bear to make any stuffed animal he wanted. Out of all the creatures there, he chose the very same bear that I made and sent to him in Vietnam last year. I was so disappointed that Zeeb didn’t have the bear with him when we adopted him. (and a little embarrassed because I recorded myself singing on one of thoese chips they put in the bear which means somewhere in Vietnam I’m still singing “You are My Sunshine” to a perfect stranger) I don’t think it’s a coincidence he picked the same bear again, I think he recognized it. Which is cool.

After we got home from the mall we had homemade cake (decorated by Daddy) and he opened the rest of his gifts. What Zeeb wanted most of all was an “m-bane” (airplane) so once he opened a small toy airplane he was content and everything else was just gravy. It was so funny, as he ripped away the wrapping and saw each new toy he’d get this serious look on his face and say “I want that!” in the same whiny tone he uses at the store. We were like, “well good, because it’s yours!”  At least we know he liked his gifts. 

I almost gave myself a world-class guilt trip this morning, thinking that I should have thrown Zeeb a big party and invited all our friends who waited and prayed with us. It being his first American birthday and all. Shoot, might be the first Birthday he’s ever actually celebrated. Yeah, a party would have been good. But honestly it didn’t even cross my mind until today and there’s just no way I’m capable of throwing together a shindig in time for this weekend. And the mere thought of it made my stomach hurt. And the truth is, I’m overwhelmed with life, with managing the needs of my four kids, with just getting through each day. And while it would have been nice to see everyone and for them to see how great Zeeb is doing, he was perfectly happy with his special birthday dinner at McDonald’s, new Build-A-Bear and homemade cake. So I’ll pass on the guilt, this time. My little boy is happy, and that’s all that really matters.