And now...for the disorganized ramblings of a waiting parent...

We were on cloud nine here at The Family Homestead last week for a couple of days. The rumor was that CCAA was working hard to catch up and make the wait for referral 12 months. The next batch of referrals were to contain the rest of July 2005 and all of August 2005. We were GIDDY I tell you! I mean, even with the LID mess, that would've meant that we would receive our Claire's picture and information in either that batch or the very next one.

HA! So much for giddy! Referrals came out last week...on a good note, EARLIER than everyone had expected. On a silly ridiculous note, they only included seven working days worth of matches. No "official" cut-off date has been published however, it seems that in the last 3-4 weeks they've only moved from July 13, 2005-July 22, 2005. Want to hear something insane? I laughed. Yes...laughed. I mean, how much more proof do I need that God is orchestrating this whole thing? SEVEN DAYS? HILARIOUS! I get it...I really do...Claire isn't ready yet...but could you just hurry her up a little bit? ; )

Sadness sets in when I think about when the referral might come. Yes, I still hold out hope that they are going to catch up. However, if we don't receive our referral by mid-October at the latest, there is very little chance of having her here with us for Christmas. We have a little porcelain ornament from last Christmas which I have hanging on our fridge. It says, "Waiting For Claire 2005". I think I'm going to have to pull out one of my pigma pens and add 2006 as well.

We were refingerprinted on August 10th. We received our updated I 171-H (The Holy Grail of All International Adoption Documents) on the 19th! Seriously...I almost passed out. That turnaround is UNHEARD of! Now, if we could just get the CCAA moving! ")

Because...our I 171-H expires in mid-December. If we aren't back in the US with Claire by then, we have to spend more money, update paperwork, file more forms, visit our social worker...you get the idea.

Hope starts preschool next month. With the added stress of the extended wait for Claire, and trying to be upbeat about being separated from my OTHER baby I have, well, extended MY weight. Eating everything that doesn't eat me first doesn't seem to be the healthiest coping mechanism OR a good example for my girls. SO! I've been busy doing extra workouts, skipping dessert, and limiting portions. I'm doing very well, no eating disorder danger signs. I'm down three pounds and I plan to lose seven more before preschool starts. Again, nothing drastic. It was just very depressing that I couldn't fit into some of the shorts I had gotten at the beginning of THIS summer.

I finished the text for Hope's lifebook and we have been working on putting it together all this week. She's really enjoying playing with the pictures and stickers. I'm really enjoying seeing it come together. It is turning into a real work of art...but more importantly, it is going to be an invaluable tool for her AND us as she deals with where she came from.

Garry and Hope put up Claire's crib last weekend. I've yet to do anything other than clean it. I'll get busy this week...I promise! :)

Y'all take care...

Ok! Refingerprinting...CHECK!

Egads...I am SUCH a mess when we have to go to The Federal Building. I don't know what it is...worrying about terrorist attacks...dealing with bureaucracy...feeling like a criminal having to go through metal detectors...being fingerprinted for the 8th, yes THE EIGHTH time. Whatever the reason I hope I NEVER have to go back there again.

Let's see, well hidden on the USCIS (formerly the INS) webpage is a link to follow where you can make an appointment. This is NOT an appointment to be refingerprinted, but an appointment to PAY for your refingerprinting. Our appointment was for 9:30 this morning, we were there around 9:00...yeah, I know...wonders never cease! ") Go through security, ride the elevator to the 5th floor. We go into the USCIS office which has LOTS of chairs for LOTS of people who have to wait and five windows (two of which are open) where the USCIS officers/staff/employees sit/meander/work. Garry went up to the check-in window and it went so smoothly I almost fell off my chair. They gave him a number that would be called when it was our turn. There must have been at least a dozen people ahead of us. Guess what? If you have an appointment you are called AHEAD of everyone else. I'm still in shock. Once at the window we had to verify some basic information, write a check, and wait for our receipt. Next stop, the fingerprinting office on the 12th floor.

When you enter this office you have to fill out a basic form and then take it to the person behind the window there. They check everything, take your driver's license, and give you a number. When your number is called you get fingerprinted! Well...we forgot that our driver's licenses no longer have our social security numbers on them...neither do our passports...or anything else we had with us. The guy there was extremely nice and very helpful. He told us to go to the Social Security Office on the 7th floor and they would give us what we needed. SO! Back on the elevators and down to the 7th floor. We get there to find two armed security guys standing in the doorway saying stuff like, "I think it's ok...just a false alarm." We go in...more and more guards are arriving...nothing materialized thank God! Take a number and wait...you get the idea. It was relatively quick and painless.

Back up to the 12th floor with our copies in hand. You may remember that I have next to no fingerprints left. She finally gave up on my left pinky...the supervisor wasn't too happy but she told him, "That's as good as it's going to get! I did it MANY times!"

Hope loved all the trips in the elevators, trying out yet another public restroom (the girl SERIOUSLY loves public toilets...go figure), and going through the revolving glass doors at the front of the building.

The really sad thing is, this was nothing compared to when we had to refingerprint while we were waiting for Hope. Read on if you dare!

No one informed us that we needed to PAY for refingerprinting. Yeah...we were frighteningly naive! We went to the fingerprinting office, filled out our forms, took them to the window and the lady told us we needed to pay. Garry gets out his wallet, she tells him she can't take the money, we have to go to the 5th floor. She said when we got there, there would probably only be one window open and A LOT of people waiting. She told us to jump in front of everyone else as soon as the window was free and tell them what we needed. I kid you not! That's exactly what she told us to do! I felt HORRIBLE! Here are all of these people who are in the country LEGALLY and who are jumping through every conceivable hoop they can to REMAIN here legally and we are supposed to leap in front of them. Ok!

We ran to the window as soon as we got there and told the woman what we needed. She gave us the total we owed and Garry and I got out our wallets. No, no, NO! They don't take cash! We didn't bring the checkbook. Not a problem! Go to the post office downstairs and get a money order she says! Back down to the first floor to buy a money order...up to the 5th floor to pay, jumping in front of yet someone else to do it...back up to the 12th floor to be refingerprinted. The Federal Government is FUN!

It's done...I feel immensely better and now I'm going back to drifting in my fog.

Later y'all...

Oh! I almost forgot! I was feeling so good after our trip to beautiful downtown Cleveland this morning that when I got home I did some nesting. I got out all of the crib linens and fired up the washer and dryer. I think the crib may go up this weekend. Too early? Probably but I *needed* to do it...something in my gut and in my heart said, "go for it."

Nothing much new to report! Garry has one coat of paint on Claire's closet. He says one more coat should finish that project and then I can start organizing! I'm not sure just WHAT I'm going to organize but at least it will keep my mind occupied and perhaps fool myself into thinking I'm making progress! Hope has already volunteered to help Daddy put the crib together. It's early, but I feel good about it. The room no longer holds dread...only excitement.

Anyone wishing to look at a few pictures of the current group of new families in China can go here: http://qzhou.photosite.com/ These deliriously happy folks received their babies last Monday. God bless them and I am sooo jealous.

No new updates at CCAA...hopefully a new batch of referrals will be coming out soon.

Some information from Dr. Jane Liedtke, the CEO of Our Chinese Daughters Foundation who is raising her Chinese daughter in China...I have copied and pasted the following text from the Ask Jane in China Yahoo group as Dr. Liedtke says it better than I could:

"I don't believe domestic adoptions are on that big an increase to impact international placements/referrals. What I do believe is that the new move to put all institutions under CCAA for the purpose of coordinating adoptions is causing a shuffle of employees, training, restructuring to accommodate and how to handle within new offices, etc. This could cause temporary delays but not likely long-term. Also, all the press about adoptions from China always tends to cause things to slow down and I suspect the recent Hunan investigations are creating some of this as well - imagine you are sitting on an office of files from Hunan orphanages and other places under investigation. Those files are getting sent back to the orphanages. Then other children's files have to come forth from other orphanages to fill in the gaps on referrals that could not go out as anticipated. This will cause delays for sure but not permanent delays as eventually other orphanages would be sending more children forward if they have them. If fewer children are being abandoned in some regions then of course processing of referrals will be slower than in the past. Hunan is the largest province for international adoptions with something like 2,000+ kids per year so that number if bound to change in the short-term and have some impact on speed of referrals. I don't think people should panic about it. My suspicions are that "slow" may be a good thing for the system inside China in the short-term as they have a huge public perception problem to deal with domestically and internationally. No country doing international adoptions wishes to appear to be "babyselling"."

Also, according to Dr. Liedtke, these investigations into babyselling aren't new. Apparently there is a history of this in Anhui, the province Hope was born in as well. As I told Garry yesterday, "I don't care...they're not getting her back." Dr. Liedtke has also stated that the move to CCAA's new building still isn't complete. Apparently they are having a terrible time with their wiring etc.

C'MON REFERRALS!

You'd think that after 42...and 1/2 years I would've learned by now that anything I perceived as being easy and simple would turn out to be exactly the opposite. Yeah, well...hope springs eternal. Let's call this post, "The Comedy Of Errors" or "The Mattress Warehouse Hidden Valley Is Now Closed".

In July I told you about ordering Hope's new bedroom furniture and Claire's nursery furniture. Early in August we got a call from Baby Tyme saying everything was in. We decided to leave Claire's furniture there until we are ready for it. That way we don't have to worry about where to put it while we are getting her room ready. We piled in the Jeep on a Saturday and headed for Hartville to pick up Hope's new bed and nightstand. Newsflash...it wouldn't all fit in the Jeep. We took what we could and while Hope was napping, Garry drove back to Hartville and picked up the rest. After unloading it in the garage he drove to Medina to buy her a mattress and boxspring. He came home, unloaded those and we all took off for Kohl's to look for sheets, mattress pads, pillows, etc.

With the washing machine running at full capacity the next day laundering all of her new linens, Hope napped in her crib, blissfully unaware of the angst her parents were about to go through. After she woke up I moved the crib to the other side of her room so Garry could build her big girl bed where the crib used to be. We planned on leaving the crib in the room for awhile after she was in her new bed for security reasons. We had been preparing her for this for quite awhile so she was really ok with it!

Garry put the new bed together and right away we knew we were going to have problems. It was a platform bed, raised significantly higher off of the floor than a traditional bed, and doesn't require a boxspring. Garry put the new pillowtop mattress and boxspring in and my stress level just about shot out the top of my head. It seems soooo totally ridiculous in hindsight now but at the time all I could think about was how we had Hope so psyched up about this and it wasn't turning out perfectly. (Linda...stop laughing! I can hear you in *this* country!) The top of the mattress was only about two inches away from the top of the headboard. It reminded me of the story of The Princess & The Pea where the princess sleeps on a tower of mattresses. Garry removed the boxspring, leaving only the mattress which was just the perfect height. Great, right? NOT! The bedrails we had purchased will only work BETWEEN a mattress and boxspring. It was getting later and later, we hadn't had dinner yet, and Hope still didn't have a bed ready to sleep in. Feeling beaten and dejected (and I know Garry wasn't feeling the love either) I pulled the nasty old 1950's-60's mattress and boxspring off of the twin bed in "The Boys' Room". The room is set up as a guest room but since we never have guests, it's always been called The Boys' Room as the cats love the peace and quiet they can find there. They're going to have to find a new spot soon because it's going to turn into Claire's room!

Garry put those two horrid looking old things on our baby's new bed while I proceeded to spray Lysol all over them and set about putting her new linens on them. Gads...they looked AWFUL but they were the perfect height and the bedrails worked. She didn't seem to care that they were old and disgusting and that if Garry or I tried to sit on the bed with her she just about shot off the other side. She was so excited she couldn't go to sleep. She had a ball until around 11:00 when I couldn't take it anymore. I airlifted her out of the bed and put her in the crib...she was asleep within 15 minutes.

Her nap the next day was about the same...I gave up after an hour of happy chatter and put her in the crib. That night she slept in the bed! YAY! The next day's nap was just the same, but after that she has slept and slept well in her big girl bed.

Garry called the guy at Medina Mattress the next day and "explored his options". The guy is one of the nicest men you could ever hope to do business with. He genuinely cares and will do just about anything to work things out to your satisfaction. He told Garry to come in and take a look at what else he had, he could also order something else, and if all else failed he'd take everything back.

That next Saturday while Hope was napping Garry took another trip to Medina. He didn't find anything that would work and the only sets that were the right height were just newer cleaner versions of the yucky mattress/trampoline set that she was already using. The owner told Garry that Sealy makes a low-rise boxspring. They both looked all over the warehouse but he didn't have one in stock. He told Garry that he would order it for us, we could try it with the mattress we had purchased from him and see if that worked any better.

The next day Garry dismantled the crib while Hope and I watched from her big girl bed. It went very well until he actually started removing pieces of the crib from the room. She tried very hard not to cry, but in the end, there were tears. With tears streaming and bottom lip quivering she said, "Claire sleep in crib...Hopie sleep in big girl bed...when Claire done, Hopie sleep in crib again." It was HEARTBREAKING!

SO! Inside the guest/boys'/Claire's room we now have Hope's brand new pillowtop mattress and boxspring sitting on the nasty old metal bedframe, the crib and it's mattress, AND our old queensize mattress and boxspring that was waiting for disposal.

The next Saturday, another trip to Medina for Garry while Hope is napping. He came home with the smaller boxspring and ladies and gentlemen, we have a winning combination! The Sealy boxspring with the Serta pillowtop mattress works! YAY! Garry called Medina Mattress right away and let that wonderful man know how appreciative we were for all of his help. Then do you know what he offered to do? He said he would come over the next day after the store closed and get whatever we didn't want out of our way. He pulled in Sunday a little after 4 and took the unused Serta boxspring, the old nasty twin mattress and boxspring, AND our old queen set. As he was getting into the truck Garry was cleaning up a bunch of the plastic that the mattresses had been wrapped in and moving the old steel bed frame. The guy gets out of the truck and says, "You want me to take all of that too?" Medina Mattress in Medina Ohio people...the owner is a prince.

Enjoy your week!