grrlTravels

Will I ever fit in? Probably not...

It's a select group of people who adopt a child. A subset who adopt internationally. A smaller group even still who adopt from [insert chosen country here]. And then there are those of us who are fertiles and yet choose to adopt. It seems that we are a very small group indeed (albeit with some very good bloggy company).

Sometimes it's disconcerting. Sometimes you feel like a fertile wandering around with the infertiles, a bright red "F" emblazoned on your chest, a small goat in a herd of sheep, eating the grass along with everyone else and hoping not to get noticed.* We were quite astounded at how much of the adoption process was geared to address fertility issues. You see, we had just never made that strong a connection between the two. Perhaps because we had always considered adoption as a possiblity for us, and we were fertile, and it didn't seem all that strange.

One of the bigger issues in the adoption process revolves around the degree to which prospective adoptive parents have dealt with the pain and grief surrounding their (presumed) infertility. I have had a hard time finding a comfortable place to stand on this issue. On the one hand, it's my belief that a baby doesn't fix anything, biological or adopted. On the other hand, how many of us honestly would have children if the requirement was that we had to have every issue related to becoming parents resolved beforehand? I am strong in my beliefs that infertile couples should try their darndest to work through enough of their pain and grief and disappointment so as to be able to make a good, clearheaded decision about adoption. I am equally strong in my beliefs that fertile couples have the exact same responsibility to take care of all personal issues which will have a negative impact on their families and children. (Almost 10 years of therapy to back that assertion up.) Today on a favorite blog of mine there was a beautifully written entry discussing this exact topic. Thanks, Karen, for some much needed honesty and clarity. Suddenly I feel indescribably lucky to be the goat that the sheep invited along for the ride, because what a ride it is!

*Please Note: No criticism is implied by my use of sheep imagery. I love sheep. And from a Biblical standpoint, sheep imagery is positive and comforting. Reading Psalms 23 helps me identify with my inner sheep.

Some advice, if you please

My good friend has alerted me to the fact that Gymboree has a new line of baby girl clothes out which is "asian" flavored in that it has little paper lanterns on the clothes. I am a sucker for paper lanterns. Throw something at me with a lantern on it--I will love it for sure. (I'm also kind of fascinated with a color called "barely green".)

So I am going out on a limb and buying clothes for our daughter. Trouble is, I still am endlessly debating on what size to buy. I am mighty afraid that I will buy 12 months, only to end up with an 18-month-old. But the way Gymboree moves the lines in and out of its stores I don't dare wait too much longer. I guess I can either buy 12 months and hope for the best, or buy 18-24 months and wait a year for her to wear them. Or buy a few things in each size?

Anyway, if you are out there and you've already been to China to pick up your girl can you please tell me how old she was and what size she was wearing? I'm paranoid about showing up with a whole bunch of clothes that are all too big (or too small, but I think that possibility is much lower). Yes, today I'm paranoid and obsessed today. Mostly I just want to buy something for her already.

A little less chicken-y

Folks, I finally watched the National Geographic Special which aired on...(hold on a minute while I look it up)...JUNE! June? That long ago? Anyway, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It was heartwrenching at parts and I did get very emotional and cry a bit, but really it was just so darn interesting. I may try to buy a copy of it to keep for our daughter as I think at some point it will be very interesting to her and a good starting point for some talking.

The part that really gets me is the part where all of the adoptive parents are waiting in the little room all together, waiting to meet their children. It hits me like a ton of bricks every single time that I see that scene. Or a similar scene. Or read about. Or think about it.

I've actually lived it, to a point. Twice K. and I were privileged to wait in a room full of people including my sister and her husband and watch as they were introduced to their son and later their daughter. It is a breathless moment to be sure. And the joy that enters that room along with the baby is palpable. There are gasps and tears and clapping and happiness and cooing and all sorts of good things. It is something to remember forever.

I try my darndest to imagine myself and K. in that room, with all of the noise and confusion and strangeness and uncomfortableness and impatience and fear and longing and hope, and I can't. It's something you can't hold until you are there, in the moment. I think you prepare for it as best you can and then you just get through it the best you can. And you really don't care about any of that stuff anyway because at the end you have your daughter and who really cares about the rest of that stuff anyway?

Side Note:
I really do want to have a video of it, but it would be K. videoing and he says he wants to be concentrating on her and not on the camera. I think back to my wedding day and how it is all a complete BLUR with silly little moments standing out clearly (like the bird trying to eat my hair and the bad Thai food when it was all over) and I want to remember the day as best as I can and the video would really help with all that. For a brief time I thought that my cousins perhaps could be present and they could video while we met our little girl, but alas that is not going to happen. So I don't know what we will do. Perhaps it is best left to the memory, and the apocryphal stories that will grow up around our own personal Gotcha Day.

Ghost in the Machine

There is something terribly wrong with my oven. The terrible part is that I can't put my finger on just what it is that's wrong. Everything I put in there enters some type of alternate universe wherein the outside of the item to be cooked becomes burnt while the inside remains gelatinous. (A yucky word, but you should see the roast beef that is produced by this oven...) It seems to me that my oven forms an impenetrable barrier around said item so that while the outside may get hot, the inside is firecely protected from all attempts to permeate the item with heat. Perhaps the technology could be studied and utilized on the space shuttle. But all I want to do right now is cook dinner.

My baking impulses come on strong in the winter, when it's chilly outside and generating heat by turning on the oven doesn't seem like a bad thing. Last weekend I had some canned pumpkin to use up. It was sitting in the fridge looking like something covered by orange mold so I decided to get rid of it by turning it into something edible. I made some pumpkin bars (meaning it was probably a recipe for cookies, but isn't it easier to make bars instead?). I tested them THREE TIMES in several different places with a toothpick and when finally assured that they were cooked sufficiently I removed them from the demon oven. And I let them cool off. And I was feeling all Betty-Crocker-y in a good way and proud of myself for using up something in the fridge for once rather than using the icebox simply as a holding area until the item is covered by mold and therefore suitable for the trash bin. And then I went to cut them and the bottom fell out because they were mushy and not done. Which means that my oven sucks AND I have lost my talent for testing things with a toothpick. Betty Crocker is turning over in her grave. I mean, the toothpick thing is supposed to be basically intuitive, isn't it?

After the Pumkin Bars Incident K. got himself on the phone post-haste and made an appointment for the repairman to visit our house. For my own response, I'm considering a hunger strike in the sense that I am going to refuse to cook until the oven is adjusted or fixed in some way. I don't care what the repairman does to it as long as he does something. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of feeling like a "dumb broad" when attempting to explain exactly what is wrong with the appliance in question to a repair guy while your husband is safely at work and not subjected to the raised eyebrows and the long sighs and the significant amount of time spent out in the truck so as to make it look like the repairman is doing something when all he is doing is thinking about how dumb you are because the symptoms you are describing aren't even possible on this model.

Just like Dad

I was really hoping that E. got his father's sense of humor. I don't think I have to worry about it any more.

What a sweetie. And he cracks himself up.

What a boy!

Yesterday E. and I were making gingerbread men with our Aunt. Actually, my Aunt was making gingerbread men, I was watching and yacking as usual, and we were pretending that E. was helping. So we let him help roll out the dough, we let him push down on the cookie cutters, and we let him decorate the cookies. We didn't have any jimmies here so we decided to use raisins. E. was greatly enjoying pressing the raisins into the cookies.

And then for no discernable reason, he pushed a raisin into the little gingerbread boy's crotch. Instead of ignoring it, I said, "E, is that his p-nis?" And I probably laughed, because it was kind of funny, the placement and everything, you know, and after that it was all over. All of the cookies got p-nises, including the gingerbread girls and the snowmen. Some of the men got two and three raisins in the crotchy area, becoming even more lifelike.

I'm going to need to take this up with his father.

In other news, we are not potty training, per se, but we are sitting on the potty. For a L-O-N-G time. It seemed smart, now that E. is two, to buy a potty chair and start talking about going to the potty. That way, when spring rolls around, the groundwork will be done. So we casually ask, "Do you want to sit on the potty?" and E. looks kind of excited and says, "Yes, Mommy-Daddy. Sit. Potty." So we sit him on the potty and say all kinds of nice things about the potty and using it for the purpose for which it was intended. And E. becomes mildly obsessed with sitting on the potty, but much of the time sits there looking worried. And so I try to explain to him that we are not really expecting him to actually go on the potty, but that sitting there is enough. And then I realize that there is no way to help E. to understand the differentiation between casually sitting on the potty with no ulterior motives and Sitting On The Potty Like A Big Boy. So where does that leave us?

The perfect excuse to fatten up a little

I am having a very strong and somewhat unbalanced urge to wear a fake pregnant belly.

I have two good friends right now who are pregnant and due this summer. My cousin H. is due in July, and my friend D. is due in September. I feel a kinship with them that isn't 100% rational. If you know me, you know that my pregnancy was bad news from the get-go and I really didn't enjoy much of it. Lousy pregnancy coupled with The Worst Labor and Delivery Ever. Period. was enough to give us that last little leg up and we climbed over the fence and began to frolic with the international adoption community. We were wandering over that way anyway.

Anyway, I've been pregnant and I have the pictures to prove it. The girls got extra large and my belly got much bigger than I ever thought possible and there was the usual poking from the inside. E. was a good sized baby with an enormous head (still enormous, it's genetic, poor guy) and I labored and cried and had a c-section and then we met E. and all was forgiven. I am not at all sad that I will never be pregnant again. In fact I took matters into my own hands to ensure that it would be so.

But. My new baby will be arriving home around the same time as the new babies of my friends. (Of course she will be at least 9 months old and already sleeping through the night, but those are just details. Wonderful, miraculous details.) I want my friends to be my pseudo-pregnancy buddies and as such I feel it is only right and fitting that I too am unable to bend over or see my feet or sleep on my stomach, as a show of solidarity. So I am contemplating an empathy belly. Suitable for teens, men and women alike. I can probably handle the weight gain of 30 pounds all by myself, but why deprive myself of the shortness of breath, bladder pressure, low back aches, and irritability? (I'm a little foggy on how the belly simulates true gestational irritability but here's a cheer for trying!)

We are about 14 weeks into our pseudo pregnancy. It wouldn't be time for the belly quite yet, but in another month or so... Perhaps it's best to content myself with the "I'm going to China soon to adopt my daughter but all I've got now is this lousy t-shirt" or something along those lines.

More Good News, Well Almost the Best News

We have a log in date! The log in date (LID) is the date that your paperwork is logged in at the CCAA in Beijing (China Center of Adoption Affairs). From this I am going to surmise that we also have a dossier to China (DTC) date, although this was never officially announced by our agency.

DTC: December 15, 2004
LID: December 21, 2004

Referral times are running about 6 months (maybe 5!), so if I'm not mistaken we can hope that our referral will arrive in May (or April). Wow.

For those of you who don't know much about the process, this is great news. It means barring anything unusual our paperchase is DONE! And with the referral times so much more reasonable these days, we are close, close, close to getting our girl.

Late Breaking News

We have some exciting news here in our house--we are winners. We have been declared winners of the township holiday decorating contest. And not just winners, but the Grand Prize Winners!

I've mentioned that tacky is not only not offensive at Christmas but even preferable. We didn't really achieve the level of tackiness that we wanted, but told ourselves that it's our first year, and we need to have some room for improvement. And we still won!

And what exactly did we win for our efforts? A Trophy and dinner at the local country club with the Lions club members from our town, who sponsored the contest and did the voting.

(Picture coming if we can get a good one. It's been hard to take a photo.)

Where does he get this stuff?

E. has a new trick. It is certainly a trick he didn't learn from me. I have some very strong, well documented phobias in this area. So this must be from his father's side.

Whenever we leave the house he does stinkers. (I'm pretty sure that I don't need to elaborate on stinkers.) Personally, I mostly need some privacy and a bit of time (less now that E.'s part of the picture). Apparently E. can use the time, but doesn't feel the need for the privacy. In fact, in an effort help him avoid certain hangups, most of the time when he is squatting and pushing we smile at him and say brightly, "Good job! Nice stinkers! Keep pushing!" And he grins and keeps pushing with no noticeable embarrassment, so perhaps it's working.

Of course yesterday he answered the call of nature in Organized Living while I was busy shopping for storage containers. I decided to drive to the grocery store and change him in the parking lot there. We arrive. I grab the diaper bag and get...well, nothing. So, in one of my very worst moments as a mother I wrap him back up in the stinky diaper, go inside and purchase diapers. Back outside to change him. I am trying to get him lay down on the front seat which is reclined. He keeps trying to sit up, and I keep scolding him until I realize that he feels like he is falling off the seat, and we both dissolve into giggles. It's great to finally be laughing at the same joke at the same time. Even if it is bathroom humor. He gets that from his dad too.

One of my favorite OCD behaviors

I am back to the naming thing. I've been able to procrastinate to this point because the paperwork took precedence over everything else. But last week I drug out the baby naming books and jumped right in.

The First Time
I am mostly overwhelmed. I remember feeling like this when we were choosing a name for E. We had a long list of girl names. We found out we were having a boy. We had no boy names that we liked. We went through the books over and over. I declared that naming a boy was much more difficult than naming a girl. We felt powerless. We vowed not to show up at the hospital without a name chosen for our son.

The priorities for naming a boy are different than when naming a girl. You want something masculine and strong, but not nerdy or stiff. None of the names we liked felt right. Some were too "cowboy" (Carson), some had no good nicknames (Hewitt), some were just too far off the radar (Radcliff). Mostly, my naming preferences were complex and hard to satisfy.

The story of naming E. did have a happy ending. We found a name that we both really liked. There were a few minor drawbacks, but no deal breakers. We named him fairly early in the pregnancy (about 5 months?) and kept the name a secret from almost everyone until he was born, not allowing for any "helpful" comments. We did saddle him with two middle names (one is a family name from my family) but I still love his name. So we were successful once.

Amy's Love of Words Backfires
I will admit to having quite a few personal "rules for naming things". So many rules, in fact, that K. threw his hands up in disgust at one point and decided to leave the naming to me.

Personal Rules for Naming

1. The name cannot start with D (like our last name)


2. The name cannot start with K


3. The name cannot start with A


4. The name cannot start with E


5. The name must not be popular or common


6. The name must be unique, but spell-able and pronounceable


7. The name must mean something meaningful

Personal Preferences about Names

1. The name must be more than one syllable, and preferably 3 or more


2. The name must have a good nickname


3. The name should not be too strongly tied to an ethnic origin which we ourselves do not possess as part of our DNA


4. The name must not rhyme with any bad words


5. The name must not have belonged to someone who I did not like at any point in my entire life

So there's a lot to consider, first and foremost being that I am a total freak. But once you get past that, it's hard to find the right name. I have never not liked my name, except for the passing thought that it was a little too common for my tastes. It was embarrassing for a very shy third grader to have two other girls in her class with exactly the same name. But other than that I have always felt comfortable with my name and liked it. I want the same for my kids. I want them to have good strong names that they can like and be proud of. Names that I can stand to say approximately 751,000 times per day under many unique sets of circumstances.

Amy is definitely neurotic
So here I sit, trying to name another child. I am sorry, and I deeply appreciate the feedback from my lovely readers and friends, but I can't, can't, can't make any headway on deciding whether or not to consider a Chinese name for a first name. It is a complete given with us that our daughter will have a Chinese name, either the one from the orphanage or one that we choose ourselves. But will it be her first name or a middle name? Will she hate us for an extremely unusual first name, or appreciate the cultural significance? Will it cause her school life to be even more painful?

I am discussing this issue with a lot of people right now because I want to make the right decision and also want to get on with choosing a good name for our daughter. I mentioned all of this to my cousin who is a teacher (in an admittedly non-diverse school district) and said, "But you probably have lots of kids with all kinds of unique names, right?" She replied, "Hmmmm... I think there's a kid in the 4th grade named Ali..." Not really the answer I am looking for.

Solution: Move to Hawaii already
We have always had it in the back of our minds to move to Hawaii at some point. Perhaps to retire, perhaps before then. Hawaii has a very ethnically diverse population:

Honolulu is renown for its diverse ethnic mix. Forty Six percent of the population is Asian and twenty one percent are Whites. In addition, 19.9% of the population is comprised of one or more races. Native Asian and Pacific Islanders form 8.9% of Honolulu's diverse ethnic mix. African American's constitute 2.4% of the population and the remaining 1.3% is made up of the population is made of other races.

taken from Enterprise Honolulu
Ok, perhaps a bit extreme, but you could look at it as killing two birds with one stone (a distasteful saying to be sure).

Figure out what's really important and get on with it already
I am committed to a name with an Asian flavor, whatever that might mean. For me, it's important. Unfortunately all of the Asian names I am drawn to are Japanese in origin and I believe that the Japanese and Chinese don't like each other very much, or didn't for a very long time. And anyway, if I'm going to give her a Japanese name I may as well just give her a straight American name and be done with it for all of the similarities between the Japanese language and Chinese. I mean, who am I really fooling?

So here I am whiling away the winter days reading baby name books. It helps to pass the time as we wait months for our referral. Also, I am further clarifying my Personal Rules for Naming and may be close to excluding 95% of known names. That should make things easier.

Like swatting flies

I'm feeling a little annoyed. Not a lot, just a little. Like when the gnats are buzzing around you but they aren't landing on you necessarily or dive bombing your eyes.

I am ASSUMING that our paperwork was sent to China in December. We submitted it in plenty of time and the last time I spoke with the agency they said that we were definitely on track for a December submission. And then the silence. So I don't know if it went or not. Perhaps I am just overly anal about this stuff (well really there is no perhaps about it--I am overly anal about most everything in my life) but is it too much to ask for the agency to notify us that the paperwork did go?

Also, this provides an excellent opportunity for me to express my paranoia, as in, "I guess the paperwork didn't go to China in December because if it did they certainly would have notified us that it did."

I know the easy answer is to just call and check, but I'm feeling grumpy and I'd rather rant here about it.