crabs

We are adopting from China and the question I am usually asked by some people is why China and not the U.S. where there is so much need.

-The US adoption system is flawed and in need of a giant overall. In general, the law favors reunification and so everything is done to try to get a child back to their biological parents. Usually, this doesn’t work out but in the trying the child has been in several foster home situations and is older. The child has real attachment issues and losses the ability to trust, and rightly so. The older children are often difficult to place as most couples want babies. For those people that do a U.S. adoption either a private adoption or otherwise you put yourself on a rollercoaster where in the end you might have your heart broken and not get the child you have fallen in love with. In a private adoption you might also be out several thousand dollars.

-We visited China about 6 years ago and were impressed with the beautiful children and fell in love with people.

-China has a very fair and centrally organized system. It doesn’t matter if you are a doctor or plumber everyone goes through the same hoops and you a virtually guaranteed a child at the end.

-The Chinese Children are pretty healthy and don’t have some of our westernized issues with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome etc, Most birth mothers in China take very good of themselves hoping that their pregnancy will result in the birth of a desired son.

-Since the adopted child is abandoned in 99.9% of the cases you don’t have a parent or other relative showing up after a few years to claim the child or try to have a significant relationship with them. I later learned that this is not the optimum as the child has no history and you have no way of answering their questions later in life about where they came from when they start trying to form a good self image.

If anything, adopting from China inspired me to get involved in Rosemary Children's Services and not the other way around. I wanted to have some part in changing our system so that these kids who are a product of our flawed system have a chance. I know this only scratches the surface, but that reminds me of a story I heard.

A young boy is walking along the beach which is strewn with thousand of little sea crabs that have been washed ashore. He is throwing the crabs back into the ocean as he walks along. His dad says “Son, There are thousands of them just throwing a couple back wont make a difference.” And the little boy replied, “Just did for that one”.

A nice weekend

It was a lovely weekend of the waiting families workshop, potty training, Charlottes Web and to end a charity cocktail reception and dinner.

On Saturday I attended the FCC waiting families workshop to hear a panel of parents who recently returned from their adoption trip to China. It was good to hear all the dos and donts and to have our questions answered. We also got to meet the new arrivals and the children were all so beautiful. A topic of particular interest to me was being able to use our United frequent flier miles to book award travel in business class at the last minute. It looks like one parent had a strategy for that they used twice. Of course I got her phone # and we will be chatting. Other tips included putting a notebood together of copies of the adoption paperwork, documents and medical information such as dosages. We also talked about the luggage restrictions for both US and Chinese carriers and how much cash to bring. It is clicking in that soon it will be our turn.

Sienna has been potty training since Friday afternoon. She did pretty well...we had a couple of accidents but she stayed in good spirits and was able to wear underwear to school for the first time today. We took her to see Charlottes Web on Saturday and she loved it. Today she took the book to school to share but the teachers said the book was a little too advanced for the group. That's our girl!

On Sunday John and I attended a delightful event; the Circle of Life Dinner to benefit the Jewish Home for the Aging. I made some business contacts both for work and Rosemary Childrens Services that I think will be a big plus.

Not too much.

It has been a relatively quiet week. There has been no mention of referrals and I am not planning on hearing anything until next week. Sienna is getting pretty excited about her upcoming birthday party with Mickey Mouse at Creative Leap. It looks like we should have about 20 of her buddies for a rousing good time on April 1st. I am a little sad as this will probably be the last time she gets to hang out with them outside of preschool because we will be moving her in June. Most of the kids in her class are making their arrangements as day care will close down at the end of August. Hopefully they will find a new home by then. They are working with the school district to take over one of the abandoned school sites. Still it doesn't leave much time to pack and move by August.

To Disney with love

We went to disneyland last weekend. Angelica's niece took the whole family since she works in the restaurant on Main Street USA. We spent the first part of the day in Fantasyland and then we met all of Sienna's favorite princesses including Cinderella and Belle. We lunched at the Blue Bayou next to pirates of the Carribean and finished up in Mickey's Toon Town on the rollercoaster. On the way out we caught the parade of dreams. John and I were just exhausted after. On Sunday we went to Andrew's Birthday Party at My Gym. The kids had a blast zooming down the zip line into a vat of plastic balls. When I was their age all we had was pin the tail on the donkey!

We are readying ourselves for the trip to China and made arrangements for Hep A and B innoculations.

Wow

I don't know how I was finally able to get in on my home computer...but I did!

Catch up time. Our adoption agency is projecting us now for July. They are projecting the cut off to be 12/5 for June. I think the June cutoff will still be a date in late November due to the glut of dossiers at CCAA (Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs) has for that month.

Today I looked into getting vaccinations for all three of us for Hep A and B. Sienna already had HEP B in her regular protocol. I will ask her pediatrician about getting Hep A when she has her 36 month exam in a few weeks.

We also picked lovely bedding for the new nursery at overstock.com. Sienna helped pick the ladybug theme. I think it finally hit her that we will have a sibling for her soon because she said "when is she coming...tommorrow". How cute, she wants to help and take care of her new sister. I also bought the particular bedding because someone wrote in on the first review of the product that they had to have it for their grand baby "Brooke". I figured g-d was talking.

Tomorrow our friend Angelica is taking all of us to Disneyland for Sienna's 3rd birthday. Her niece works there is getting us all in for free, yipeeee. Sienna is very very excited.

June prediction, November 21-25 2005 dates for referrals

That is the RQ post today as she returns from her trip. That simply means for us that June is probably a very long shot for a referral. I still think we are looking at July. I think August is a distant possibility because if they only get up to November 21st in June (worst case scenario) than that means they would have to refer 15 days in July to include us. The mid case scenario is up to November 22nd putting us at a 14 day referral batch. Anyway you look at it we are on the cusp for July. On the good side dossiers logged in for the beginning of December look to be light so they may be able to get up to our December 6th date pretty easily in July. With a referral in July we are looking at late Aug/early Sept. for travel. I hope that is the case as the trade fairs in China fall the first week in October and I don't want to be caught up in that.

It's been a while...

Sorry that it has taken so long to get back to this post. My computer at home was not allowing me in for some reason.

So let me update the last couple of weeks;

The matches came out for this month and they were not that good. CCAA only covered 11 days from Oct. 13th through the 24th. However, we lost a week due to CNY so we will have to see where things are after the next referral batch. November is a very large month for dossiers so it may take 2-3 months to get through. That being said our agency still thinks we look okay for June. I think we will probably see a July referral with travel at the end of aug/sept. That is okay because our window of possible referral dates seems to be closing in on June-Aug. It will be nice to not travel during the very hot summer months.

On Saturday we received our updated approval from immigration. We started the process to renew in mid december so this has taken 4 months to complete. I am relieved to have this hurdle completed.

Last week I was sick with the flu and I had some kind of tendon strain in my calf so it was a tough week for me. This flu is taking me over a week to get over even though I am taking it very easy and I stayed home 2 days last week.

Hopefully I will be better this week as Angelica is taking us to Disneyland on Saturday and Sienna has a birthday party on Sunday.

Our girl continues to amaze us with with her incredible memory. Yesterday she started to recite some hebrew prayers she learned in temple! She is extremely compassionate and empathic and loves to share her toys with other kids. She is also very vocal and comments on just about everything.