Journey to Amelie-Our brown eyed girl

The CCAA just announced they will be referring babies with folks whose LID is from 06/06/05 through 06/15/05. Once again, they got through just a week of LID's for one month's worth of referrals. Like I said a few post's ago, that has been the trend since the beginning of this year. One exception-back in March, the CCAA did a real bang up job and referred a half day of LID for a whole month. I have heard several adoptive 'rents to be call China adoption "the new infertility". How fitting! Well, with this new "infertility"there is no more Clomid, but I did enjoy taking time off from work to go read the newest People and InStyle magazines. Plus, I miss drinking free Cappacinos in the fancy shmancy IVF office.

On another note- Tomorrow will be our one month LID anniversary-1 down, 35 to go? Gee, for some reason, I don't feel a big need for celebration? Arghhhhh.........

BTW-I am so sorry my posts lately have been downers, the situation for us IA(intl' adoptee) folks just gets gloomier and doomier with no apparent light at the end of any tunnel. I'll post some more quilt squares soon. Speaking of, it's amazing how a little peice of fabric can get me so excited. It's like I need my fix or something. I rush to the mailbox at noon everyday to see if I received any. I ask every time I see a friend if they "got any stuff for me". Hey bud, ya' got any squares? Can you hook a sister up? As I write this, I'm jonesing - bad. 12 down, 88 to go. About how many months I have to go too!

I just wanted to post some of the quilt squares that I have received so far! I can only add 5 pics at a time, so there will be more to come!

I was never a math major. I have always been terrible at it. It took me several times to pass college algebra, and part of the reason I passed the 4th time was because I was friends with the TA.

That said, I just want to throw this out there.

Over the last several months, the CCAA has SERIOUSLY slowed down the amount of referrals given out every month. There are so many reasons, many of them contradictory, why the Chinese Gov't states it is slowing down the amount of babies referred. See previous posts for that, no need to be redundant. I did some calculations based on the referring ten days thing at a time scenario. So if it takes three months to get through every month, those LID in late April 2006(us) can expect a referral in March of…. 2009. !!! I don't know if I can wait 3 stinkin years? We'll definately have to try different means to have a bio baby in the meantime. And that's no small fortune either. Switching countries is not an option at this point. For two reasons-1. our agency is China only and we would lose every cent we have poured into this thus far(which feels like it's approximately the GNP of a small country). 2.-our child-in my heart-is in China. Unless I experience a miracle get pregnant with triplets, we are still going to China.

And what does this mean for people still in the paperchase? They may have to wait until flying cars are in the air and the US is ready for a woman president. Or the next Ice Age. I am thrilled that we are finally DTC/LID, but wish we were much further along in the wait. Seriously, 3 years, wow.

I think at some point, if China wants to continue IA, it does have to pick up. The question is when. Kinda makes me want to go pray to the porcelain god.

A few months ago my friend Wendy introduced me to her friend Gretchen who was adopting in China. I talked with Gretchen fairly frequently since the fall and followed their journey closely. They brought their baby home at the beginning of the year. A few weeks ago I asked Gretchen if she could send me a quilt square. She said she couldn't because she wasn't coping well as a mother. I told her she could always call me if she needed to vent and didn't think too much more about it. I just went on their blog(to the right of the page-closer to Charlotte) and they made the heart-wrentching decision to let another family take her. I have heard our support group(Families with Chinese Children) talk about post adoption depression, but it really hit home. I am just heart-broken for them, and pray they made the right decision for this precious little girl.

Rita and Randy! They sent me my first wish. It's so cute-has little panda bears and other really cute animals on it, they picked up the fabric while on a trip to Arizona. I was so happy when I opened the mailbox. I am going to post the picture when I can figure out what is wrong with my software. I also received two other's from some other adoptive mom's to be.

I am such a dork, I also joined a book-swap group and a secret pal group with other adoptive mom's to be. Kinda silly, but it will make the time go by quicker and getting and giving gifts is always fun-like having a birthday every month. Just without the cake, which beleiveyoume, I don't need. So, why not! Plus, our daughter will have her own little library, how cool is that?

Happy belated Mother's day to all of you moms and mom's to be. David and I decided to celebrate "un-mother's day" this year since we won't actually have her home with us until at least after next mother's day, even possibly after Mother's day 2008. I feel like a mom deep down inside, but my head feels like it's in mommy-limbo. If I was pregant rather than paper pregnant, it would feel much more real, and my timeframe would be much more definate. It was funny, I felt a weird vibe from people at our church yesterday, they weren't sure whether to mention "Happy Mother's Day" or not. Most of the time people ask if there is any updates, or just how is the process going. But not yesterday. Well, one girl did, but that's it. And no one in my family called yesterday to say anything. I mean, expecting is expecting, isn't it? David's brother did, which was really sweet. I figure my family knew I'd be captain cranky pants for the day. But you know what? Surprinsingly, I wasn't. Just a slight headache from the evening before.

Most people in our boat, at least from the many blogs I am addicted to, felt the same way yesterday. I wanted to keep busy, keep moving, and not think about the fact that it could be two more years with just the two of us, I really hope it's just one more year, but two-I will burst. It's way too damn quiet in this house. So, we decided to just thorougly behave like college students again-party like it's 1999 all weekend-and why not? On Sunday we paid the price for it, well, I did at least. We had big plans again that day, but with my constant state of nuesea, those plans never came to fruition. I do have a great hubby, he cooked me a big "un-mother's day" breakfast and even went with me to the fabric store once I got off the couch and picked out fabric for his own square on the quilt. I wonder what we will do for "un-father's day"?

The Empress's Aunt Amy is already spoiling the munchkin. She is, as she would say is "All fired up" to bring the Empress to her first country concert. Our "son" is modeling the hat and ladybug clothing Amy bought her. Love, love , love the ladybug purse. The boots are from Nanny. The other outfits are ones that I am buying, I am allowing myself one a month, with the long wait, that should just about fill her closet!

So, I am hoping that I can get all of the squares from my dear family and friends by say the end of July. To inspire you, I created my own this weekend. Here is a picture of the fabric and wish. I actually signed the wish "Love, mom and dad", that felt strange, yet wonderful. I joined a small group of 5 other adoptive moms and swapped ladybug fabric and wishes. If you haven't got the fabric yet, I am hoping to do her room in bright pink and lime green(think Lilly Pulitzer).

Anyhow, I think this turned out cute!

A few weeks ago I was cleaning out the spare bedroom which is really the storage area for all of the office crap that doesn't fit in the office-I am overwhelmed with manila folders, anyhow... I came across a big box of letters, cards, wedding/baby announcements, ect that I have kept since high school. Amongst letters from old lovers, ex-best friends, a letter from my dad from the year he died which made me cry crocodile tears and a zillion beautiful letters from my darling husband, I found a torn off crumpled piece of paper from probably my sophomore year of high school. On it is a big squiggly line down the center with girls names on the left and boys names on the right. The top of the page says "baby names". Now, I vaguely remember keeping this piece of paper and the names are in different colors and inks meaning I kept this list growing for quite a bit. I don't know why I had a list of baby names, it's not like I was having S-E-X at this age, yet alone wanted to be a mom yet(although remember on a post a few months back I said when I was 16 to my mom I was going to China to get my girl).

There are perhaps 30 names on this list(twice as many girl's names, go figure). Some of the names are purely ridiculous. I must have been watching too much of the Cosby Show and clearly too many soap opera's(I was homebound the last 3 months of my senior year with momo, chicken pocs and tonsillitis-good times although I did go to prom and graduation, I digress). You can also tell what decade it was (BIG 80's) because I had several luxury car names-that was so uber cool back then. Ilch.

On to the list. Please, have a long laugh. Here we go:

Girls: Miriah (M. Carey was just hitting the top 40 then), Simone, Kirby, Asia, India(jeez, why not give Australia a thought or even Bolivia?), Kayla(must have been from Days of our Lives), Audi, Mercedes, Porshe(see, I wasn't kidding and I didn't even spell Porsche correctly), Pilar, Epiphany (must have taken that lovely name from that Mickey Rourke movie from the 80's that I can't remember the name of, it'll come to me), Coral, Chanel, Jordan, Raven, Sade, Ariel(ah, the little mermaid had just come out, gotcha...), Ranada, Maleah. There were a few good ones, well, just two that I would consider now...Maia and Patricia after my mom.

Boys: Trevor, Malcom(Cosby show lover), Storm, Cruz(hello, soap opera network calling, they'd like their terrible tacky names back), Jennings(did I want a baby boy or a butler?), Mitchell, Foster, Brady, Tanner. Ok, the boys names aren't quite as bad, although there are a few doozies. Surprisingly I did list some "normal" boys names such as Christopher, Colin, Stephen, James, Jeffrey, and Gabriel.

Anyone remember any horrid names they used to like and think now "what the hell was I thinking?" Please share!

Hi all, seeing my counter at the bottom of the page, lots of reading, but not too many comments, and I live for them, like my Jack Johnson cd's, key lime martinis and carrot cake....Say hi, don't be shy!

I told you the next post would be more sunshine-ish and here you go. We just an e-mail stating we are logged in as of 04/24/06-that's LID 04/24/06 to us IA er's (International Adoption). This is huge! We are celebrating by going to Naples for the weekend. Woo-hoo! I won't speculate now as to when we will travel because I don't want to jinx us. But, at least our file is now in the CCAA review room. Off to do my happy dance.

Oh, another cool thing that happened today(ok, I thought it was cool but I am a dork)-I received a personalized letter from congressman Clay Shaw(not from his office staff, but actually from him) saying thank you for using his office to expedite our paperwork in the INS(remember that disaster) and that he hopes our little girl is home this time next year (she won't be, but it was a sweet thought). I am definatly keeping this letter. Next election-vote for him, he was the ONLY office to get back to me and I contacted a boatload of senators and congressman.

Well kids, off to go pack! Have a splendid weekend!

Ok, just was listening to Extra while preparing a delicious blackberry, kiwi and goat cheese spinach salad when I overheard what made me want to puke into my homemade raspberry vinagrette salad dressing. Yup, Britney white trash Spears is prego AGAIN. Jeez, her and her a-mullet -would-be-so-fitting husband will have 6 kids by the time we get our referral. And this is his 4th. HIS 4TH! Are you kidding me! I know, I shouldn't get all worked up or even care a smiggin about these people, but it's just making this universe seem so warped. Ah, at least J-Lo is getting so old she may have to have in vitro. I know it's mean, but I'd love one of those "most beautiful people" to be on Clomid, just to make me feel an ennsy bit better.

Next post will be all sunshine-ish. I promise. I'm losing my readers, I know : )

Back to reality. It was nice to get away, even if just for 24 hours. We all imbibed too much on the boat, but the weather was gorgeous and I did not even get the hint of seasickness! Woo-hoo! I am posting just a few pictures for your viewing pleasure. I did have one of all 16 of us, but some of us are in our bikinis, and I so wasn't going there.

This is our "blog cloud". You can make your own here.

That is-if you have your own blog! Yes, I have free time on my hands, why do you ask?

BTW-I just notices the words "martini" and "lunch" are sitting side by side, like the best of friends. Nice.

Tomorrow we are going on a one day cruise to nowhere to celebrate our good friend Ronnie's birthday. Even though it's only like 20 hours long, I plan to not think about the fact that we are only at the start of the wait, or anything about the adoption process during the whole cruise. This is the perfect chance to take a mental escape, just eat, eat, eat, drink, drink, drink and be very merry. If I don't drop the camera off the side of the boat while I am "feeding the fish", I promise to add a few pictures from our not so grand, but lots of fun adventure.

I totally need to order this tee-shirt. It couldn't be any more me!

And now some happy news:

CONGRATULATIONS, David & Kristen,

Your dossier was sent to China yesterday afternoon (4/17/2006)!

Here’s what to expect for the next month:

The CCAA will receive your dossier in approximately 3-5 days. We will e-mail you your Dossier to China (DTC) Information Packet as soon as we know that your dossier has been received by the CCAA. The current referral timeline will be discussed in this packet.

The CCAA usually logs in dossiers within 1 month of their receipt. Your dossier may be logged-in this or next month. This Log-In Date is called your LID, the date that you may “count down” to your referral. As the CCAA is the ultimate authority in logging in your dossier, we are unable to estimate your LID.

The CCAA will notify us of the LID date within the next 8 weeks. The date will be posted on your personal on-line Parent Access Network (PAN) page of the CCAI website, www.chinesechildren.org, the instant that we are notified of it.

Again, congratulations! If you have any questions about this e-mail, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Congrats on hitting this milestone,

Kim

Ok, I should not be allowed to go on rumor queen's blog. The newest rumor is that the CCAA is making great attempts to shut down the NSN (non special needs) program for International Adoption, which is why they have slowed down to only a few LID days for each batch of referrals. I hate to be selfish, I really do, but I can't imagine having a SN child as our first. Our insurance is meager at best because we are self employed and live in Florida which has the worst health insurance ever. Another rumor, which is good for us but bad for most other families, is that they are going back to only referring NSN children to childless infertile couples. Apparently they did this a few years back. I need to take up a time involved hobby so I don't have time to go look at the latest rumors. Under water basket weaving perhaps? Making minature houses out of toothpicks?

Thank you, Ms. Stahl for possibly helping to screw up the happiness of thousands of adoptive families with your insensitive, opinionated, narrow-minded journalism. In case you are wondering who Miss Stahl is and what I am talking about, Leslie Stahl is that Diane Sawyer wanna-be on 60 Minutes and the bad journalism I am referring to is the “Too Many Men” spot they aired last night. The show was trying to state how there are too many young men in China and not enough young women because of the One-Child rule. Instead of stating facts or not enough facts rather, Ms. Stahl left out so much from the big picture and made adoptive parents look like opportunistic fools and Chinese families look like uncaring, soulless jerks. The show just depicted Chinese families as wanting only boys, it forgot to mention the reasons why. It didn’t mention that annual income for a family in China is under 2 grand a year in American dollars. Most people make barely enough to eat over there. There were a very few amount of cases where girls were being stolen and sold to orphanages, and the media jerks of 60 Minutes made it seem the norm. They forgot to mention that it has been found that NO babies that have been stolen have gone to international homes. Two seconds after talking about the kidnappings, they flashed to a happy American mom holding her new baby. The journalist says “Is this your first?” The American mom replies “Oh no, this is our second Chinese adoption”. It was just edited so horribly and made my stomach churn. The low point was when Ms. Stahl said “If you don't have enough girls here, then why are you letting 12,000 being adopted worldwide with 8,000 coming to the U.S each year?" Hello you idiot, that 12,000 is such an insanely small drop in the bucket compared to the whole problem. There are estimated to be 1.5 million girls in the orphanages in China. Yes, let’s keep those 12,000 girls in the country, their lives will be much better if they are married off to an abusive husband at age 12 than to go to a loving family overseas. I do agree that the whole system they created to control population 20 years ago is very screwed up, but stopping adoptions is not going to fix it. Hopefully some of incentives to keep girls will work for the country’s sake. That doesn’t change the fact that there are still 1.5 million girls in orphanages over there. And until a family’s income goes up enough that they can afford to feed their children, baby girls will still be abandoned.

All I am saying is the media really needs to be more sensitive, but I guess no one would watch. The orphanage directors have been freaking out and not sending paperwork to the CCAA due to multiple situations. Because of this there is a lack of paper-ready children for adoption, hence the crowding in orphanages, hence the lack of care for the children. Can we cool it a little? Let the nice folks who are going to give us our babies take a breath? I refuse for you media idiots to allow you to make me feel guilty for wanting to adopt a child from China. My intentions to go bring my daughter home are pure, as are every other adoptive parent. Don’t make us look bad. Everyday I feel like this program is teetering on the edge and this media crap is just not helping!

By the way Ms. Stahl, Dorothy Hamel called from 1984, she wants her haircut back.

Thanks for listening. And forgive me for any misspellings on this post, I am writing rather quickly, because CSI Miami is coming on. I know, loser.

Word of advice....

Never skip breakfast, then go to a spin class and then immediatly donate blood. Just in case you might try it. Don't.

I should have stopped at a bar and had a few tequila shots, then I could have nominated myself for a Darwin award.

I needed this bit of sunshine-looks like we will be DTC by the end of this month:

From my agency:

Just wanted to let you know that I received your doctor’s letters and they look great! So, MANY congratulations as I have moved your dossier into our Translation department! It should be there about a week or less, and then will be mailed to China…. So, keep an eye on your email as we’ll send you another message when this happens!

We’ll be in touch soon. Happy celebrating!

Respectfully,

Jen Winkelmann, MA
CCAI Dossier Dept.

I live in a row of 8 townhomes. As of yesterday, 5 women are pregnant, including 2 on each end. Apparently the baby fairy forgot my address. This coupled with the recent rumor that the CCAA is quoting 18-24 months from DTC to referral. Argh...

Sorry, I know I should enter some happy news every few entries, but some days I just feel like it's raining right over me and not in too many other places!

I just had a thought today. Ok, I had a few more than that in the 10 hours I have been out of bed, but I will share this one. I feel today like I am someone's pawn (or little plastic car thingy) in the game of Life. Like there is literally someone up there playing the board game and chose me as their pawn. They did pretty well the first half of the game, they chose the college path, met the spouse, got the house but keep skipping over every square that allows whoever is using me as a pawn to collect the little pink and baby blue pegs. Everyone else's little plastic cars are filled with pegs. Or rather their VW Touregs, or other momma SUV's have lots of cute little pegs in them all dressed up in their itty bitty Babypeg Gap clothes. Once my pawn was halfway through the game, alot of "go back one space and skip a turn cards" have been drawn. Just like yesterday, I thought when my agency called me, someone rolled a 6, but nope, got that go back 2 spaces card again. Darn.

Oh well, hopefully next week we can roll another 6, or at least a 4. And hopefully this game will end with at least one peg behind the front row. Pink, please.

I was so excited today when I saw CCAI's number light up our phone. I thought the caller would tell me everything looked great, ah, but that would be too darned easy. Apparently David's dumbass doctor (the guy is a real jerk with the personality of a cat getting a scalding bath, so I can say that) . On the long checklist they require our doctor's to fill out, he checked both the yes and no boxes under sexual disease and mental illness on David's form. Don't laugh, it's not funny. It will be in a few weeks when this all gets cleared up, but right now, for my sake, hold your laughs. Ok, just don't let me know you laughed then, not yet. Crap.

Oh and you'll love this, I did. I need an explanation from my doctor regarding my "abnormal vision". I have never worn glasses or contacts in my 32 years. I am 20/20 in one eye and 70/20 in the other. I have never had an issue. So I may have to go spend who know how much on glasses just to satisfy this "condition" from them. Well, maybe I can get some cute Ralph Lauren ones, kinda preppy sexy-Lisa Loeb
looking. Maybe I can look smarter than I am!

David and I are putting together a Bai Jia Bei quilt for Amelie with the help of our wonderful friend Sherry. I hope you call all help!

The tradition behind the One Hundred Good Wishes Quilt, or Bai Jia Bei .

This tradition began in Northern China. When a new child was born, family and friends would give the parents pieces of fabric, generally from clothing they'd worn, to the new parents to create a quilt from the 100 pieces of fabric (wishes). The quilt was meant to wrap and warm the child in good wishes and the energy of the people who were around the child. Parents adopting from China have taken on this tradition by creating One Hundred Good Wishes quilts for their children. It is a custom to invite 100 people to contribute a single square patch of cloth. The 100 patches are sewn together into a quilt that contains the luck, energy, and good wishes from all the families and friends who contributed a piece of fabric. The quilt is then passed down from generation to generation.
With each fabric piece that is given to the new parents, a wish for the child is also sent, with a 1x1 inch piece of the same fabric attached to the “wish” so that the child will always know whose wish was made just for them.

Now what about this wish?
You have a lot of freedom with how you create your wish. People find their inspiration in many different ways; you can use song lyrics, a quote, bible verse or even a word with its definition to create your wish from. You can make your wish as simple as you want (e.g. "I wish you joy in your life" or humorous “I wish you to pass your driver’s license on the first try”) to a poem written especially for this occasion. How creative you want to get with the presentation is also your call. If you are into scrapbooking, you will love this part of the project. If you want to pretend you are into scrapbooking, this will also be a good time. If you are into stamping, this is also a chance to use that creative channel.
The most important part is this: have fun. You are working towards making a gift for this child. In the end what this child will treasure is the effort and work that went into making this creation, in whatever form it ends up, and the love that was behind it all of the way. A HUGE Thank You goes out to Sherry who so sweetly agreed to take on this project!
What type of fabric do I need?

Please send one 9 x 9 square along with a smaller 1 X 1 square. The smaller square should be attached to your “good wishes” message/card and is the quilter’s way of identifying your fabric within the quilt.
Type of Fabric: I would recommend QUALITY (not Wal-Mart and not the cheaper stuff at Joann Fabrics) 100% cotton fabric as most decorator fabrics have some synthetic blends and tend to be heavier. It's always good to have 'like fabrics' in a quilt. Quilt shop fabric tends to have a better thread count (think of how thread count in sheets generally designates the quality of the sheets) and will wear better than fabrics that have a lower thread count. Please pre-wash if you can, as they will shrink. Some ideas are red fabrics, ladybugs (good luck symbols in China), panda bears and pink.