Love Internationale

James and I have both had PMS nonstop for the last two months. I’m not surprised to see this in myself, but I am surprised to see it in James. James is a guy and he follows the “guy rules”. I’ve been married to him for over ten years and I’ve seen him cry exactly…counting…three times, all for very, very good reasons — deaths and other major trauma. My point is that, in proper guy fashion, he’s pretty bad about showing his feelings or talking about them.

And ME, little-miss-Cancer-with-the-psychology-degree, is all about expressing my feelings and expressing in general. (As an aside, I totally wish I could cry “pretty”. You know, with the whole crystalline teardrops sliding down pristine cheeks. I don’t cry pretty. When I cry my face gets all splotchy, it swells up and my eyes turn all “demonesque”. Plus, once I start crying, I…cannot…STOP!) Not that I’ve been crying about the adoption, I haven’t. That was just a tangent.

So it’s been all emo, all the time for a while in our house, but James manifests it differently. He just channels emotion differently than I do. I’ve been having to read his behavior and make my best interpretations because he’s not a big talker. And who says women are hard to figure out? You need a friggin’ guide to understand the male of the species sometimes. The bottom line, we’re both feeling lots of stuff right now. This is bound to continue for quite some time too. Heh.

Right now, as related to the adoption, we are:

1. Looking at travel agencies and airlines. (We really want to fly premium economy. Really, really, really!)
2. Making packing lists
3. Figuring out how and when to send the gifts for the officials and working up letters to FD’s SWI to be translated.
4. Reading beaucoup baby books.
5. Picking out adoption announcements

What I’m not doing:

1. Learning Mandarin, not even a little. I feel really guilty about this too. There’s just too much on my plate right now.

What I still need to buy:

1. A crib! (A gift from my stepmother and father. Should be coming soon)
2. An ergo
3. An excersaucer
4. Clothes

Other than the medicines and other smaller items, I think we’ve got the baby stuff issue handled.

I think we’ll get the referral on Monday, Feb 5th…

It is 15 days, 10 hours, 8 minutes and 43 seconds until Monday, February 5, 2007 (New York time)

I think we’re the only family on the face of the earth who would turn down a referral for twins, dudes. (Okay, we wouldn’t turn it down, most likely. We would freak out A LOT, however.) Let’s hope…no twins…. PLEASE, Universe, no twins…

Ordinarily all adoptive parents bring gifts to China for the orphange director and assistant director. They also sometimes bring gifts for the children of the orphange or items that the SWI needs. We planned to bring these things to China with us, but I’ve seen at least one family sending these things with the first care package.

I like this idea a lot…but how to fit everything in that tiny box? I guess I need to talk to my agency about this. Maybe if you’re sending stuff for the SWI director, etc, they allow you a bigger one?

Cut off date rumors are pretty dismal, looks like 10/10/05 or thereabouts. Ouch. It just gets worse and worse. I feel especially for the families who had an LID of 9/27/05 (or something) and, when the last batch arrived, were suddenly told their LID was really 10/24/05 (or something). Yikes.

I think referrals will come the first week of February. That’s my prediction and I’m sticking with it.

Once we get the referral, we can send FD a shoebox filled with gifts. We’re, uh, going to use a boot box. *g* If we could send a container ship, we would.

This is what we bought. A very soft blanket, a smaller security blankie with teddy bear head and a soft pink elephant that rattles. We will also include a small photo album with pictures of us, the cats and the dog, a disposable camera, (hopefully we get this back with pictures of her and her nannies, ect), and a bag of candy of the SWI staff (I’m going with Dove chocolate. That’s always good, right?).

I bought two of each thing. We will bring the duplicates with us to China.  We are also going to sleep with these items for awhile, in order to get our scents on them. Some people spray their perfume or cologne on the items, but what if she’s allergic? That’s no good. I think that as long as J and I continue to use the same products we do now, that will be sufficient. She will, hopefully, at least subconciously, be familiar with our scents when we’re in China.

Obviously, I have no problem with the color pink. *g*

WE GOT OUR NEW I-171H YESTERDAY!!!

That’s one less thing for me to stress about.

but that’s never stopped me before.

I haven’t read the transcript from the Paula Z show yet, but I’m gathering the gist from the IA community that it was marginally better but nothing approaching great. Apparently they emphasized the “thousands” of negative emails they got from the last show (ya’ think?) several times and Paul Z looked really nervous, stumbled over her words and flipped her hair a lot. I might watch it on You Tube later.***

In the first show one of the main points made was that people choose to adopt from China rather than adopt African American babies and how unfortunate that is. Apparently this was also a prominent issue in the second show as well.

First, someone made a good point in one of the forums. It’s something I’ve noticed as well. What’s with all the judging of people’s choices? What’s all the, “Oh, you’re adopting from China.” Pause. “Why didn’t you adopt from the U.S.?” that I hear so very often? When I saw my pregnant friend on Friday evening, I didn’t say, “Oh, you’re pregnant.” Pause. “Why aren’t you adopting instead?”  I may have a personal preference for adoption over having bio children for various reasons, but I’m not going to judge her choice…because it’s her choice. She doesn’t have to defend it to me and I shouldn’t have to defend our choice to others.

Second, as I mentioned before, this comment always seems to come from a place of whacked patriotism. The subtext is always like, “U.S. kids are better than Chinese kids”.  Uhm? I don’t even think I have to address this one. Children are children. No one child is more deserving of a loving home than another.

I don’t have to defend or explain our decision not to adopt an African American child and I’ve already written about why we chose the China program and IA. I will say that we looked into domestic adoption. The cost, the maze of laws, the uncertainty, and the story after story of couples spending lots of money only to end up heartbroken and childless turned us away from that path. I know that it can be done successfully. did it successfully and ended up with an absolutely gorgeous little girl.  For us, it simply wasn’t the road to take. We opted for the (then) stable, established China IA program instead.

But I did want to address this impression I’ve gotten from comments that I’ve been reading. I know there’s many who think that white couples should not adopt and raise African American children. That it’s unfair to the child because they’re being taken away from their birth culture. People say that about international adoption too. I say that a loving home in which the child is raised with thoughtfulness and caring trumps birth culture, but that the parents have a responsibility to see that the birth culture is a prominent part of the child’s life.

However what I’ve been seeing in various comments is maybe some people think it’s easier to raise a Chinese child than an AA child in regard to cultural difference and that’s got me more than a little perplexed. I hope that I’ve misunderstood.

When we started down the adoption path and we discussed adopting an African American child or adopting internationally, we discussed the added dimension of weaving her culture (whatever culture that happened to be) into our lives forevermore. It’s the same. That was our conclusion. Whether you’re adopting an AA child or a Chinese child, either way the parents have a responsibility to do justice and pay respect to that child’s birth culture.

Our daughter isn’t just going to be American, she’s going to be Chinese American. (Literally, since China retains her citizenship. She’s probably going to be a triple national, actually, but that’s another post). It’s our job to help her weave her birth culture into her identity, which is going to be tricky and difficult, but we’re going to do the very best we can. It’s not easier, not at all. I’m not sure how anyone could think that.

In our case the whole thing is going to be pretty interesting because we already have a culturally diverse and slightly, uhm, “different” family, what with the Belgians and the Buddhist influence and the fact my father is probably going to want a protest sign in her little fist by the time she’s five. But, ya’ know.

I hope that made sense. I’m very tired. Only…I just ran the spell check and there’s not even one error. How the hell did that happen?

***Just as an aside, I love all the complaints about the “liberal” media (I guess they mean CNN?) and how FOX news always does it right. Heheh. Those crack me up.

ETA: Here’s the new transcript for interested parties. It’s very disjointed because it was a rush-because-so-many-people-were-pissed show.

I’m so very not all right this month. It’s nice not to have the uncertainty. I mean, it’s possible we’ll be skipped in the next batch or something like that. There’s no guarantees about any of this until we’re holding her in our arms and she’s back in the states with us. But, most likely, we’ll be seeing her little face for the first time next month. Odds are with us.

But there’s still uncertainty about when the referral might come. That’s a big question mark because of the spring festival aka Chinese New Year that starts in China around Feb 18th. Historically the CCAA has sent a batch of referrals right before CNY, but that would make for a very, very long time between batches. So there’s some speculation they’ll try to get two in before CNY…but I just don’t see that happening. I just don’t. It would also be too good to be true.

My money is on the second week of February.

And there’s uncertainty about the match itself. Wow. I mean, how old will she be? Where will she be from? What will be the state of her health? Has she been fostered? Questions ping pong in my head constantly. Yeah, so, I’m (even more) emotionally psycho this month than I have been previously. That’s why the CNN thing socked me in the gut so hard. Normally I can let stupidity like that roll off my back, and I hate feeling so nasty and negative that way. Hate it.

I think I just need to keep myself busy and occupied this month. I have lots of work to do and that’s good. We have two trips to take. This is also good.

:::taking a deep breath::: I may be quieter this month than in previous months.

It says:

“The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before September 27, 2005.”

Next month that date will be AFTER September 29, 2005, thankyousoverymuch.

But since the cut off date is only 2 days shy of our LID date, well that means that WE. ARE. NEXT. Oh, yeah, baby. We’re next. Don’t you be coming around here next month looking for me not posting about a referral. Uh, uh. No way. Oh, no, honey, you just BACK OFF right now. I’m tellin’ ya’. Back off!

So, obviously, I’m feeling better. I cleaned my house to within an inch of its life and had a nice glass of Parallel “45″ which is a very nice Cotes du Rhone red. But before all that I cried on the way home when I listened on NPR about the plight of the polar bears because of global warming (okay, I might have cried over that anyway) and I got all misty-eyed over a Pampers commercial.

I’m much better now. I swear.