Orlando Afterthoughts

We just got back from Orlando - I had a professional conference there so Jacek came with me. We had a great time. We flew in on Sunday and drove to Clearwater Beach to walk in the sun. The Gulf water was crazy warm - not refreshing at all. Still, it's a nice beach. We spent an afternoon at Sea World in the rain. After the storms cleared up we rode the Kraken - a very fun roller coaster - 7 inversions, 144 ft. drop, up to 65 mph and it's floorless - all this without getting motion sick - look ma! No dramamine! I hate the high hills, but love the loops!

After a few days of conferencing we made our way to the Magical Midway, where Jacek braved the Sling Shot. And yes, we have video to prove it. I have to say it's the scariest amusement ride yet and the one in Orlando is the biggest - the towers are 115 meters tall and it shoots the rider up to way higher. I think the people who ride it are nuts. And yes, that includes Jacek.

Before flying home on Thursday we spent the day at Discovery Cove. It's a beautiful park and they really do it right. Clean, comfortable, relaxing and a lot of fun. Their aviary and reef are way cool. They have several large southern sting rays and spotted eagle rays among the tons of fish. The birds inlcude the colorful, friendly and downright wacky. They really cater to you while you are there and we agreed it was worth the cost.

So it was a really fun work week and we got home feeling relaxed and ready for the weekend. I used to cringe at the thought of taking our kids to Orlando but after this week I'm kinda looking forward to it.

We're Out of Review!

According to CCAA our dossier is officially out of the Review Room! This means they've gone through our information with a fine toothed comb and think we're A-ok to adopt a child from China. Now our dossier sits on the very bottom of a mountainous pile in the Match Department waiting for a child match. Even though our referral is a long way off, it feels great to reach this little milestone in our journey!

14 month LID

Today our official wait turns 14 months or 427 days old. As far as gestation periods go, if I were a giraffe I would be ready to pop out my calf. But I'm not a giraffe. So the wait goes on.

17 Year Cicadas

They won't be back in this area until 2023, so I've been making the best of the 17 year periodical cicada invasion. I had to - I work in an area where they are heaviest and I'm outside with them quite a bit. It's a pretty amazing life cycle and in just a week or two they'll be gone. I've discovered them in my desk drawer, on my shoulder, down my shirt, up my pants the whole way to the knee and buzzing in my ear. They're loud, clumsy and cartoonish and I've actually come to like the litte guys. Here's a shot of me with one on my nose...my family won't believe this!

Actively Dating

Jacek and I have made a commitment to ourselves to get moving again and take advantage of all the fun this city has to offer. Over the past couple of years our activity levels have dropped and we've gotten in a bit of a rut with our social choices - it seemed our priorities changed and by the time we were done with our weekend errands and cleaning it was time for whatever evening get together (read: sitting around) was underway. We shifted our priorities back where they need to be - activity first. There's too much fun to be had in this city if you just get moving.

We kicked off our new adventure on our Friday date night. We started at the bike shop where I got a new seat, lock and handlebar extension to comfy up my ride. Jacek brought out the magic tools, got everything in place and off we went. We biked about 6-7 miles to our new Whole Foods - they have wine tasting Fridays at 5, plenty of dinner choices and live music. One the way home we stopped at our favorite ice cream shop and enjoyed a cool treat and biked on home. It was the perfect evening and it felt great to move.

Today we got up early and took Tuesday to the dog beach - as usual she had a blast with the other dogs and had a nice swim. One the way home we had a light lunch at a place with dog-friendly outdoor seating then hit a nearby street festival - Tuesday's first. She loved the attention and met a couple new dog pals. It felt good to be out in an urban social environment again.

It's really important to us to be good role models for our future child and that includes a healthy, active lifestyle. We talk all the time about how we can't wait to do this or that with our child and finally realized we don't have to wait - we can be doing those things now. And we still got the house clean this weekend...

June Stork Alert

Congratulations to all families logged in November 2 through November 7, 2005 on your long-awaited referrals!

6 days of referrals means there are now 163 LID days ahead of us to be matched. Though we haven't received official word, we're pretty sure we've cleared the review room at CCAA and our dossier is now sitting in a pile in a very very long line waiting for child match. Based on this assumption, I told my boss about the adoption and gave him my best guess as to when we'll be in China. He doesn't strike me as a pro-kid type so I was nervous about telling him, but he seemed supportive and I feel like a huge weight is lifted.

The Big Green Explosion

Summer's here and our gardens are back! The native prairie garden is exploding and there are already butterflies flitting around in anticipation of the flowers to come. The woodland natives miraculously emerged after being trampled and buried by the fence installers last year. Our strawberry patch has already produced about 2 pints of the best strawberries we've ever had and there are many raspberries on the way, too. We foiled the birds by putting a netting over the berry patch - doesn't look all that pretty, but I wasn't as willing to share this year. The herb garden is planted and we're already harvesting chives and dill. The veggie garden is in and reaching for the sun: tomatoes, banana peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, pickle cucumbers, zuchini and mesculin mix. I changed up my big patio containers this year - alyssum along the outsides with mint in the middle of one and lemon balm in the other...I'm thinking it'll be a good year for iced tea, lemonade and mojitos! I have to say the front lawn is looking smashing, too - the pride of the 'hood.

All of this without the use of chemicals. Earth rocks! I'll post some photos after we take the fence down - we keep it up until the veggie plants grow a bit to keep the dog from trampling them. Stay tuned!

It's so exciting to see the perennials return, the leaves come out on the tree and watch things grow...we love to relax on the patio with the birds and the butterflies with the warm summer breeze...our little urban oasis...

So-Cal Meet

I recently attended a conference near San Diego and discovered that a fellow ALT would be in town the same week. We were able to meet for dessert and drinks. It was great to see fellow waiting parents and connect. It was kind of funny, though because my coworker was with me and I hadn't told work yet so we couldn't talk about the adoption...I was thrilled that the evening was still full of conversation and a few super-secret glances.

Looking forward to the next ALT event!

13 Month LID

May 20 marked 13 months LID for us. The pace of referrals continues to creep along. We had our homestudy update this month and met our new social worker - she's very nice and told us that she was adopted domestically and that it was a closed adoption, meaning she has no way to search for her birthparents. It was interesting to hear how that did and did not affect her growing up. She coordinates the waiting mom meetings at our homestudy agency that I'm looking forward to attending. So far they've fallen on days I've had other obligations.

One bit of great news for us we received from CCAI today...Starting July 30, USCIS (immigration) will extend one free renewal of our I-600A/I-171H. Since our I-171H doesn't expire until mid-August we can postmark our I-600A refile for August 1 and save nearly $900!

May Stork Alert

Congratulations to all families logged in October 27 through November 1, 2005 - referrals are here! Best wishes to you and your new additions!!!

6 days of referrals means there are now 169 LID days ahead of us to be matched. Current guesstimates are that our referral will come sometime between April and October 2008. There is still no word on us clearing the review room at CCAA. In fact, we're holding our breath - we heard of two families with April LIDs being asked for updated medicals including bloodwork because they were "too old". These people's medicals were completed a month after ours. Our agency hasn't had any such requests for April families so far. Fingers crossed!

Earth Day Every Day!

Welcome to Earth Day 2007! Earth Day is every day, really...ever since the Big Blue Marble, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and the anti-litter commercial with the crying Native American I was hooked. Hooked on a place so incredibly beautiful with never ending things to discover. I wish more people were hooked on nature. We're destroying it...fast. We need to embrace it and preserve it for ourselves and future generations...

We've all heard "if every person just does one thing". I'm calling BS on that one. Why can't each person do more than one thing? Why can we all do lots of things? Environmentally conscious options are nearly mainstream - they're everywhere - they're affordable and often free! So I'm calling out to all my blog readers - don't do "one thing" - do as much as you can starting now so that when we visit the parks and preserves with our children they can experience the wildflowers and trees, the frogs and the fishes and all else that creates that sense of wonder in all of us...

• Recycle paper, cans, glass, plastics - most communities have pick ups or drop off locations to make it easy;
• Change your light bulbs to the new energy efficient kind - and don't forget to recycle them or include them with your household hazardous waste - do not throw them in the trash;
• Shut off the lights when you leave a room;
• Turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth or shaving;
• Use Energy Star appliances;
• Drive a high mileage, low emissions vehicle - doesn't have to be hybrid to make a difference;
• Use organic lawn care and gardening methods and products - they work just and well, and in the long run they work better than hazardous chemical based methods;
• Plant native grasses and flowers - after establishing they are far hardier than other ornamentals because they evolved for your climate - that means they ultimately use less water and work to keep them beautiful;
• Buy organic and locally grown produce as much as possible - buying organic sends a message that we don't want all of those unnecessary chemicals in our food and buying local supports local family farms and reduces the pollution needed to get that food onto your table;
• Don't litter (major pet peeve);
• Collect roof run off in a rain barrel to water plants and gardens;
• Take your kids outside, show them nature, let them explore;
• Ride your bike or walk instead of driving - to work, to the store, to the park.
• Eat less meat and eat naturally, humanely and sustainable raised meat - meat production is very resource intensive.

What are you all doing to reduce your footprint on the Earth?

Jacek and I drive a low emissions vehicle. It even qualifies for conservation parking at work! We're selling our second vehicle. We try to bike to the store to a friend's house when we can. We are almost done replacing all of our light bulbs with high efficiency bulbs - even our outdoor floodlights on the patio. We bought a small dishwasher for our small kitchen so we use less water to wash our dishes. Our neighborhood put a huge recycle dumpster in a nearby park so we started recycling everything - and reduced our trash by about two-thirds! We take our old paints, chemicals and florescent lights to household hazardous waste collection sites. We shut off the water when we brush our teeth. We collect rain from our garage roof to water our plants and gardens. We now have 2 compost bins and are considering adding a third. We have a native prairie garden in the backyard that attracts lots of birds, bees and butterflies. We grow and organic veggie garden every summer. We use organic lawn care methods and products. We buy organic and local produce. We eat far less meat and when we do eat it we buy naturally, humanely and sustainable raised meat and seafood. We spend time outdoors as much as we can.

Here's to Earth Day - Every Day!!!

ONE

One. One year ago today, on April 20, 2006, our adoption dossier that we had taken so many hours, days and months to prepare was officially logged in at the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA). This is the date we began standing in the growing line that is China adoption. One year. Twelve months. Three hundred sixty five days.

We started the adoption journey in January of 2005. We honed in on China later that summer. Due to the "speed" of our first homestudy agency, it took us twice as long as it should have to have our homestudy complete so our dossier didn't go to China until April 2006, resulting in our Log in Date (LID) of 4/20/06...the start of our "paper pregnancy".

At that time the wait from LID to referral had just started to grow from 6-8 months to 8-10 months. We fully expected to be home with our child by now.

But here we stand. One year into our wait and we may only be half way there...or less. Ahead of us in line there are 175 LID days to be matched. Last month, only 2 LID days were matched. Referrals are sent about once a month. Right now there are far more parent dossiers ready to be matched than baby dossiers. Yes, there are still many many children in Chinese orphanages, but not all are eligible for international adoption. It requires paperwork on the part of orphanage directors and either they are not willing or do not have the resources to do more.

So we wait. We're still guessing we'll be matched this time next year. It's just a guess, of course and it could even be later than that. But we will continue to wait because at the end of this journey is our first child.

Say What?!

It comes with the territory. You choose to adopt you open yourself up to a seemingly endless array of inane remarks. Jacek and I are no exception. Since we first announced our intention to adopt we’ve heard a great variety of negative comments, judgments and directives from friends and family. While we don’t believe any of them had bad intention, we present them in our “Say What?” series as an educational opportunity for those outside of the adoption community.

By far the number one crazy comment we’ve received has been “You’re adopting – now you’ll get pregnant for sure!” (Um, we don't want to get pregnant!) The person then goes on to tell us of a friend of a friend of a coworker who adopts and then magically conceives and births a biological child. If you said this to us, don't feel bad - almost everyone did. Other not-so-innocent related comments we’ve received include “Just have your own!”, “I think you should [have your own]”, and “I was really hoping you’d get pregnant and forget this whole adoption thing.”

Some emotions that ran through my head in particular when I heard the comments included amusement, anger, annoyance, disbelief and sadness that there are people who will be in our child’s life who might think that she is second best because she does not share our genetic material or that we "settled".

We don’t see having a biological child as preferential to adopting. In fact, quite the opposite is true for us. Completing our family through adoption is our first choice. We’re what some call “preferential adopters”. We chose to adopt because we want a child (or two) and honestly don’t see the point of giving birth when there are so many orphans in the world in need of homes. We are not attached to our DNA and I have no desire to experience pregnancy or childbirth. That’s right, none. Never have had the desire, never will.

For others in the adoption community who have struggled with infertility, I’m guessing that the emotions associated with "now you'll get pregant" and related comments sting extra hard.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Say What?! when we'll discuss comments based on misconceptions about adoption...

April Stork Alert

Congratulations to families logged in October 25th and 26th, 2005! Your referrals are here!

Yes, you see that right - only 2 log in dates referred this month. Apparently there were an unusually large number of dossiers logged in at CCAA during these 2 days. The snails pace continues...

Birthday Surprise

Check out what Jacek brought home for my birthday! The flowers took my breath away and swept my frazzled mind back to Hawaii...perfection!

Thank you honey! I love you!

Beautiful British Columbia

We recently spent a long weekend in the pacific northwest - flying into Seattle then driving up to Vancouver to visit Jacek's dad. Our favorite was the day we spent at Whistler-Blackcomb - wow! Jacek and his brother spent the day skiing and his brother's girlfriend and I went on a dogsledding adventure. A rickety old bus took us down a dirt path, chained tires and all to the meeting spot. The sled trail went along a river. There were no sounds other than people and dogs - no planes, no cars, nothing but the river and trees and snow. It was peaceful and exhilirating at the same time.

We all met at the end of the day on the deck of one of the pubs near the bottom of Whislter mountain - it was great sitting outside under the table umbrella in the drizzle sipping beer and watching the skiers. The next day we ventured to Steveston docks in the rain to choose our fresh catch for dinner. We spent another day in the parks of downtown Vancouver and had a great seafood dinner.

BC is just beautiful with all of the evergreens, mountains, rivers, lakes and ocean harbors. Can't wait to go back for more!

11 Months LID

Our dossier has been logged in with the CCAA for 11 months. Next month perhaps we'll celebrate our one year LIDiversary - can't believe we're that close to a year!

Fur Kid Fiasco

Some of you already have heard...for those who have not, we have had to return our foster dog Zoey to the rescue organization. I came home last Wednesday to 2 terrorized cats and cat urine and feces all over the house. Odette was fine, just very afraid and soaked in her own urine. She is back to her normal self. Cleo did not fare as well. I suspect she tried to defend her sister against Zoey, who may have been trying to play as she did with her previous cat friend.

Cleo suffered a broken mandible (lower jaw bone) and a couple of puncture wounds. The break was right in the middle of the bone and according to the vet is not all that uncommon in cats. I took her to the emergency vet and the next day she had surgery at her regular vet to wire her jaw. The vet was unsure if it would work due to her age and bad teeth but said it was worth trying. She was able to securely wire the jaw and Cleo was up and looking around shortly after surgery. She came home that same day. She is doing well, and is eating. She's resisting her meds which tells me she's feeling as well as can be expected. She's a tough kitty. She will have the wire sugically removed in 6 weeks (well, 5 now). When I returned from my weekend trip to Vancouver (more on that soon) Cleo cuddled up to me and was purring as loud as ever and as usual couldn't get anough petting.

Tuesday suffered a yellow stinky head. Apparently one of the cats peed on her while sitting on top of the crate Tuesday was in. She got a quick head shampoo and is fine. She's being extra gentle with the cats like she knows something major happened to them. Other than that she's her regular happy go lucky self.

As for Zoey - we chose Zoey based on her profile listed with the rescue organization and based on email verification that she met all of our criteria for fostering. The night before this tragedy I received the relinquishment form Zoey's former owner completed when she gave her up. To my surprise and anger I discovered that none of the criteria were true. To make a long story a little shorter, Zoey was not crate trained, was not housebroken, had severe separation anxiety, was fearful of strangers, and although she lived with a cat before, she played rough with him.

Had these things been revealed to us initially we would not have chosen Zoey to foster. We were responsible enough to limit our acceptance and the rescue made a huge mistake by not paying close enough attention to the relinquishment form - perhaps it was because Zoey isn't a bully breed someone assumed they could take a short cut, I don't know. What I do know is that the rescue is waiting for my full explanation and documentation so that they can use this experience to better train their volunteers and avoid something like this from happening again.

As for me, last Wendesday and Thursday were the most traumatic days I've had for a long time. I still feel bad for Zoey and think that had she been evaluated and placed in a correct foster home she could have succeeded - I hope she will have that opportunity soon. The heartache I experienced driving Zoey back to the boarding facility was horrible. The heartache and guilt I experienced taking Cleo to the ER vet was even worse. It took me several days to recover and while I still feel sad for Zoey and Cleo I find strength from my little six pound black cat with the powerful will to survive.

If you are considering fostering or adopting a rescue dog, please do not let this discourage you - there are many wonderful dogs and cats in need of a good home. I truly believe this was an isolated incidence of someone in a rush. Both of my cats are rescues and are wonderful. Tuesday is a rescued pit bull and is the most amazing dog on the planet.

We're Foster Parents!

Today we became foster parents to Zoey. Here she is with Tuesday (Zoey is the one with freckles). She was relinquished to the rescue organization by someone who said she didn't have time for her because she's so high energy. We went to the boarding facility housing her to meet her just today. There we were in a HUGE play room alone with her. She circled us without coming anywhere near us then hopped up on a box in the corner shaking. She wouldn't even take her favorite treats from us.

Her favorite human eventually came in and she started warming up to us with the security of his presence. We took her for a walk and she met Tuesday and one call to the rescue organization and she was in the car with us. We adopted Tuesday from the same rescue 2.5 years ago.

We've been home for an hour and a half and already the girls are loving each other - they're chasing, wrestling, playing tug and giving lots of kisses. She likes us now, too. I'm so happy we were able to get her out of the kennel - kennels are just not good for dogs long-term. She had already been there for 2-3 months.

We'll keep you posted on the new adventures of fostering Zoey!

March Stork Alert

Congratulations to families with LIDs from October 14 through October 24! Your referrals are here! The China adoption community is abuzz with excitement and anticipation to see your babies' sweet faces!

For the rest, the referral pace continues to inch along, slowing like the freight train on the morning commute - you know the one that comes just as you approach the crossing with only minutes to make your first meeting...and after the gates are down it slows, mocking you...and now it's slowing even more and you can almost hear its evil chuckle...it's barely moving...a mile long string of cars inching along the tracks ever. so. slowly. You wonder if you'll even make it to work today...yup, that's what our wait is feeling like right now.

3/7 Update: Dossiers logged in through March 31, 2006 have been reviewed. Looks like we're definitely in the review room! Someone at the CCAA is going over our dossier with a fine toothed comb to judge whether or not we are worthy to adopt from China. This also means they're look at our photos - and several of you family and friends out there are in them! Smile!