Oh Yeah...

Another family with dates slightly later than ours was told by their agency that they are in the match room! That's the last room. And it's a short one. So, while we didn't get our LOA on Friday, we are really, really hopeful for next week.

There are rumors that the CCAA is working through the weekend.

I can't even get my hopes up any more. It's been so long.

All Smiles for Myra

Myra, a family
Is waiting for thee!
Where they live
Brings to mind deciduous tree!

Your new state is filled
With pomaceous fruit!
Myra, we can't help but notice
That you are so VERY cute!!

Myra, you're beautiful
With eyes so wide!
You'll have no siblings
At your side.
(Yet - you know how these things go!)

I hear your Mama to be
Spends time on the phone
With one CHI Mama who has a
CHI child not alone.
(He has beloved stuffed animal beside him)

Your lovely smile
We can't wait to see!
If you need speech therapy
You'll find help in your family!

Bluebunch Wheatgrass
Is a grass that's very good!
Have you ever seen a piece
Of Petrified Wood?

Sweet Myra, first child
You soon will be!
They'll love you SO MUCH
You will soon see!

So, settle back, Myra
And let time pass by.
When paperwork is all done,
To hold you, they will FLY!!


I never posted the poem that CHI wrote for us when we were officially matched to "Myra" (that was her agency name).

Why you should always back up your jump drive...

No news. Well, no LOA news, but I did get some good gossip. More about that later.

This week, I turned in my tenure binders. This doesn't mean much to most people, but trust me, it's a tedious, gut-wrenching, sometimes literally painful (ever get your finger stuck in the three-ringer binder?) process. Here's how it works: I gathered every artifact related to my life as an instructor, scholar, and employee of the university and put everything in two 5-inch, thirty dollar binders (binders that don't really work all that well for all the money I spent on them). Anyway, I wrote several statements describing the contents of the 5-inch binders--an introductory statement, a research statement, a teaching statement, a service statement--long statements all about how hard I work and how much I love my job and why the university should keep me. After weeks of not sleeping and sitting on the floor of my office with an industrial strength three-hole punch and dozens of rainbow-colorted insertable tab indexes and pieces of paper from the past five years of my life, I was finished. On Thursday at 5:00 p.m. I was finished. I went to my office to print off everything.

It was all saved on my jump drive. Only on my jump drive.

Which, when I got to my office, I'd discovered was lost.

Hysterical, I ran to the office of a colleague, who said "where do you think it is?" English isn't her first language, so I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt on that one.

Then I called my husband, who said "why didn't you back it up?"

Because I'm a moron. Obviously.

I won't bore you with the details of my search (back home, to the bagel shop where I'd eaten breakfast, to my friend's house where I'd spent the day, back home, back to my office). No jump drive. I'm going to have to do it all again. I'm imagining how my weekend (which I was going to spend between my garden and my bathtub) is going to be consumed by writing my statements ALL OVER AGAIN.

Then I went home and picked up the newspaper...and out fell my jump drive.

Like I need this while I'm sitting around waiting for our LOA! So now it's done and I had a nice big glass of wine and some cookies and tomorrow I'm going shopping.

Oh, and I bought Nora this really cute outfit at Wild Blueberries today--fancy kids shop with WAY overpriced stuff--but it was all 50% off. Somebody had to buy those cute clothes, to make room for more stuff at the store. I'm advancing the US economy. I'm doing my part.

Heading into the Chinese Holiday

We need a lot of collective prayers and positive energy to bring us our LOA in the next 24 hours. If we don't get our LOA tomorrow we will have to wait at least another week (which, realistically, we will probably be doing...but a girl can dream). The CCAA is closed all of next week. I guess, technically, the CCAA could mail out LOA's on Friday and we would get our LOA on Monday. Monday has been a good day for little pieces of paper from China.

But I sure would like to hear something tomorrow.

Tomorrow I finally turn in my tenure application (funny story about that; when I've recovered from the trauma of it, I will post). Tomorrow is the end of the first week of classes. Tomorrow would be a great day to celebrate a whole bunch of things.

So...fingers crossed for a miracle.

I'm just going to get a t-shirt that says:

"When we hear something, we'll let you know."

I really don't mind people asking me when we'll travel, but the answer is so completely depressing, "We don't know. We haven't heard anything."

I'm keeping very busy now that classes have started and the garden is ready to be dismantled (holy weeds and dead tomato plants). I stop at the kids consignment shop weekly and buy toys and clothes. I go to Fairhaven and buy fancy children's books. Like this one: DOG.

Next, I'm going to knit leggings. I can only knit square things and leggings are a variation on square.

We've long passed the 100 day mark

Last Wednesday was day 100 of our wait. I have heard from other families (whose agencies seem to have more "inside information"), that dossiers logged-in in March and April (i.e. ours) are kind of "stuck" due to a problem in the translation room. I have heard from other March LID people that their dossiers should be out of translation by now, but there has been no confirmation of this. It's hard to know if there is any truth to these rumors (And what difference does it make anyway? We're still sitting here, twiddling our thumbs). In about 10 days, I'm going to ask our agency for some concrete information about our dossier. We never got a login date. We never got a pre-approval. We don't know where our dossier is right now.

It's maddening. Positively maddening.

Brave kids

I'm reading a great book right now called "Toddler Adoption." It's not a book to read if you're not adopting a toddler, but it's been very enlightening for me. I've been trying to wrap my brain around what it will be like for our daughter to have her life changed so much in such a short time. I find myself thinking a lot about how old she will be when we travel and what that will mean for her adjustment. I think "if we can travel before she turns two, then she'll accept us better than if we bring her home at 2 1/2." But that's not really true. Even if she were 10 months on adoption day, she could really struggle with this transition. And lots of 5-year-olds adjust wonderfully. There isn't any way to know how she will feel and how well she will accept us. There isn't any way to know how much she'll remember or for how long she will grieve the loss of her family in the orphanage.

I just feel so lucky to raise this brave little girl!

And that's the other thing that I've been thinking about lately. I've been thinking what an amazing experience this has been so far, and what an adventure we have ahead of us, and how much I've learned in such a short time. I don't think I would do this any other way. If I could choose how to build our family, I would choose this. I'm convinced of that, after looking at the pictures of our brave little fighter, thousands of miles away.

Really quick (really depressing) update

Our agency told me today that we can expect to wait two more months before we hear anything about our application. This is due to the thousands of dossiers that were submitted in early 2007 (at the bottom of which is our dossier).

So, no need to blog-check on a daily basis.

It'll be a while.

First dream

Last night, I had my first vivid dream about Nora. In the dream, she was very stubborn (of course, this could have just been the language barrier--I was speaking English to her. How dumb am I?). She also loved to be held.

Could this mean our LOA is on its way?

I doubt it. But it's nice to think of myself as psychically gifted, even though my husband said to me today, "you are the worst predictor I've ever met."

Humph! What does he know?! And how many predictors has he even met? That's just a silly thing to say, if you asked me.

Just passing the time...

We still haven't heard anything from the CCAA, although quite a few families from at least two agencies received LOAs today. I saw four announcements for the following LIDs: 6/12, 6/15, 6/20 and 6/27. None came for our agency that we know of, but we wouldn't hear until tomorrow (Thursday) if LOAs came today. Yes, these dates are long after ours; this is just the way things go, frustrating as that may be.

To help the time pass a little faster (and to celebrate our anniversary), we took our new boat out for a few days. The boat isn't really new, but it's new to us.

Here's the dog in the boat (her first time on the boat--hence the leash...as she tried to "dog overboard" herself several times).



Jones Island, where we spent the first night, is a camping island in the San Juans:


Orcas Island, the Deer Harbor Wooden Boat Festival, which we participated in for the first time this year:


Hey, if you're going to be waiting for what seems like FOREVER, you might as well do something really cool.