Showing posts with label The Butterfly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Butterfly. Show all posts

Just Another Little Thing...

 February 28, 2012

That Helps Me To Believe We Are Really Going to China!


Check Visa's for six off the list.

Yes I said SIX which probably doesn't make sense but really it does.  Because.....the Little's are not going to China.  Instead they are heading out for a two week Florida vacation with their grandparents.  (And let me tell you they are THRILLED about that!)

And if the math still seems off it's because we are taking the three big boys plus a girlfriend.

Our official departure date is March 15th.

Visa's....CHECK.

Only about 900 things left to do.

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Our Butterfly Knows...

 February 25, 2012

While we have known FOREVER that she was our daughter, she just learned about us today....















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We Have a Winner!!!!!!

 February 24, 2012

And it's us!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As of 3:03pm today we have TRAVEL APPROVAL!


Also our TA pool winner is Amanda Vigale. Amanda you guessed my TA would come on February 24th at 2:45pm!  Send me a message and let me know the charity you want to support.


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SITUATION (ADOPTION) NORMAL

 February 22, 2012

These days it’s hard for me to hang on to a thought for very long.  Instead I am consumed with images of Butterfly Kisses! Mmmmmmm.

We are in the home stretch; the light is at the end of the tunnel, we are about to cross the finish line, victory is in sight…. what I am saying is…. we leave in 3 weeks!
Of course we still don’t have approval to travel, but TA----sha-me-A.... we are going anyway!
Actually I’m hoping my TA is pretty darned close to getting here  (did you place your bet in my TA pool???) Someone with my same A5 date got their TA TODAY (actually last night).  Now of course my agency added 3 days to the process (Argh) so my package wasn’t actually dropped off to the CCCWA until the 10th but still if this is any indication of the current turnaround times I should be seeing a TA in a couple/few days?
Ahhhh but of course there's a hitch.... MY AGENCY waits until they have a hard copy of the TA in their office in TX so unlike my AP friend we won’t actually be informed of our TA until a few days after it is issued.  Lovely.  So surprised.  Not really.
But I’m not here to bitch (much).  I haven’t been writing lately (a factor of my adoption onset ADD) and I thought I might try to harness whatever brain power I don’t have focused on adoption and give you a little update on life outside the wonderful world of waiting.
I guess I will start with a progress report on my exercise boot camp.  I told you about that right??  As part of my living out my word for 2012 (which was "discipline" of all things), I signed up for a 5am (kick myself in the) Boot(ie) Camp.  I started on January 2nd and to my utter dismay I’m still doing it. 
At first it was hard, like light headed, ready to pass out, I hope no one cares if I puke, hard. Over the past few weeks though I’ve noticed I’m getting stronger and faster and more over I’m feeling really healthy. Go me. I’ve improved my mile time by a full 2 minutes (it can actually be called running now) and I can do more than 40 pushups in a minute. Sure they're girl pushups but trust me for this old broad, that’s the stuff.  
And while that’s the good stuff, the bad stuff is the 4:50am wakeup call is killing me, mostly because I’m still up watching The Colbert Report at midnight but also because  it's 4:50 in the FREAKIN' morning.  Clearly I need to extend my discipline to an earlier bedtime!
What else???? Do you remember I mentioned we were talking to a producer about a TV show?  Well our family is a finalist. I know right?
We think we’ll hear back in the next few days if we are actually cast.  However one of the casting folks has already told us if we don’t get cast in this program they would like to pitch us for something else.  Yeah were sort of a big deal like that (cough cough). 
It’s all pretty ridiculous but whatever; I’m game for anything as long as it sounds like fun (and promotes adoption). So listen up TVland …have your girl call my girl and we’ll do lunch. (air)kiss, (air) kiss.
And really that’s it.  I’m busy packing, (I’ve packed a dozen pair of shoes and outfits to go with each for my baby girl along with 40 more pounds of “necessities” for her) and, I'm nesting (I stripped the wallpaper  in my kitchen---BTW wallpaper is of the devil) and,  I'm planning the logistics of our trip (tickets booked, private adoption guide hired, tour company secured).  The rest of my brain, if there is anything left after that, is busy obsessing with adoption timelines and setting up the occasional flowchart to analyze travel scenarios.
I know to some I look crazy but to those in the know, those BTDT got the T-shirt IA moms, they understand, THIS IS ADOPTION NORMAL!  I think.




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TA Guessing Game...Want to Play Along?

 February 20, 2012

Well as you my dear readers know, as of February 7th or 10th (depending on how you count it) I have been waiting on Travel Approval.  I am hoping and praying I get it this week which would make it one of the few things (besides our actual referral) to happen ahead of plan.

I'm just sayin'..... I WANT THIS LIKE A DOG WANTS A MEAT TRUCK.


So more as distraction than anything else let's have a little contest to see when I will get my TA.  Sort of like picking the delivery date for a pregnant women ehh?

Here are the facts:
  1. My Article 5 was picked up on February 7th and delivered on February 10th.
  2. The average time from A5 to TA over the past 30 days is 24 calender days but that includes the Chinese New Year breaks.
  3. The 90 day average is 20 days and the 2011 average was 19 days.
  4. On Friday families with A5's dated 2/1-2/3 received their TA's, (just 14-17 days!!!).
So what is your prediction, when will we get our TA? (By "get" let's say, when will I be notified by my agency.)

  • Leave a comment with your best guess of date (AND TIME OF DAY for a tie breaker). 
  • ALSO leave the name of your favorite orphan or adoption related charity in the comment.
  • Vote for my blog on Top Mommy Blog (Ok that part's optional and totally on the honor system...I trust you)

The first person to comment with the closest date/time will win a $50 donation for their selected charity.




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Dentists, Fireworks and a Timid Smile

 February 19, 2012

It appears a team of dentists from Crest visited Shepherd's Field today. (How awesome is that?)

My little one didn't look very please about it but it turns out it wasn't because of a fear of the dentist.  Apparently there were fireworks going off across the street and she was scared by them. (BTW there are fireworks in China ALL. THE. TIME.)

Of course being the naturally happy and  smiley little elf that she is eventually they were able to coax a smile out of her.


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A(nother) Year in Her Life...LOST.

 February 17, 2012

It's hard to believe it's been almost a year since I first saw my daughter's face. Here she is when we first saw her and again today.

Age 2 years 8 months
Age 3 years and 9 months

Sigh....I mourn the changes. We've missed so much (more) of her life waiting. How I wish I could have been there from the first moment that her mother decided she could no longer parent.  I suppose that is every adoptive mother's regret...the time lost to orphanages and temporary care. The love and protection we desperately wish we could have provided supplanted by circumstance. 

Worse than my loss though is her's...since the age of 4 months SHE HAS BEEN WAITING.

The adoption process is apathetic to her waiting; it's an unmerciful, self absorbed task master with little compassion for the child. It's half sighted priorities focus almost exclusively on the needs and desires of adults..the kids are, (let me say this nicely), SECONDARY.

Birth Mothers determine a life long course for their child.
Orphanage Officials arbitrate if and when paper work for a given child is processed.
Government Bureaucracies cling to a process fraught will inefficiency, undue costs and misconduct.
Adoption Agencies advocate for some and not others.
Adoptive Parents choose who and when and under what terms they adopt.

And meanwhile....The Child...vulnerable and powerless, the supposed focus of our attention... waits, and grows, and loses (months and years and far too often all of) their childhood.  A victim of chance in an adult controlled lottery.

I don't have the answers...I just know we can do better than this.

It's already too late for our daughter. The better part of four years, her entire babyhood,  has been lost to "adoption".  All we can do now is try to make up for that loss after she joins our family. We can help her deal with the unavoidable pain she will face as she comes to terms with her "adoption reality" and we can try to make her whole again but we will never be able to make up for those lost years.


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Can you hear Stevie Wonder singing?

 February 10, 2012

Isn't she lovely
Isn't she wonderful
Isn't she precious

 


Isn't she pretty
Truly the angel's best
Boy, I'm so happy
We have been heaven blessed

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O'Shalalie...You're doing What?

 February 9, 2012

March 17th might just be our lucky day....because O'Shalalie we are going to China!



After almost 10 months of waiting I'm about to go over the edge. (Yeah I know you could hardly even tell, cough).  I've been arguing with my agency over the outrageous fees  they sprung on me on top of the stupid delays dropping off my A5 and now another extra few days delivering my A5 to CCCWA and that added pressure has pushed me past my tipping point.

My husband, my WONDERFUL husband saw it coming.  He's good like that.

So today he took me to lunch and informed that he didn't want me to travel alone to China.  He wanted to come with me and better yet he wanted all the big kids to come too.  But it got even better.

At lunch we hatched a plan to travel for the kids spring break which starts on March 17th with or without travel approval.

It's a risk but we think hope we will have TA sometime in the first week of March which will allow us to get a consulate appointment the last couple days of March or the first week of April.

The plan for the moment is to book round trip flights for Dad, the boys and the girlfriend too leaving the 16th or 17th with a return on or about the 25th.  I will book just a one way flight leaving the same day as the rest of my crew but wait to book the return portion until I know when the Butterfly and I can come home.  In the worst case, if we don't have TA before we leave then I might need to make a second trip. 

Like I said there is a risk but frankly... I NEED to have a date. 

So I'm praying for a little luck of the Irish and hoping our little red thread doesn't get tied up in a knot.

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Mercy, Hope and Patience

 February 6, 2012

Sounds like sisters from a Victorian romance novel.
But it’s just a short list of things I seem to be in short supply of as I SLOWLY move through the interminable wait to get to my daughter.
Adding to the pain of the more than 9 month separation from my child is a week long discussion with my agency about travel fees.  I won’t go into detail (yet) but let me just say that the back and forth with my agency has been  exhausting and disquieting. I sent them an email asking AGAIN for clarification on fees and I have vowed it will be my last attempt at reasoning with them.  (They probably all breathed a sigh of relief reading that-I’m sure they did.)  I don’t agree with their take on things and I find myself outraged by the lack of transparency in the fees but I simply cannot allow them to steal any more joy out of what should be a wonderful time in our lives.
Money suck, apparently so.
Joy suck, only if I let them.
Unfortunately the process of “fighting” with the very people that are supposed to be supporting me though this adoption has left feeling depleted and struggling to find much of anything upbeat to write.  I want to be a positive voice for adoption but the truth is at this point I can’t do it.    
I guess that’s the MERCY I need from y'all. 

Can you put up with a cranky, self-absorbed (more than usual), way overdue waiting mama on the edge? Fair-warning...it’s probably going to get worse from now until the time I have her in my arms.

And HOPE, well do you have any of that to spare for a sister in need?
I’ve lost all HOPE that I will have a satisfactory response from my agency (though I'll let you know either way) and I’m quickly losing hope for travel in March.  
Losing hope is a terrible feeling; it's numbing and heavy.

Who's that last sister?  PATIENCE?

Boy is she a witch.
Honestly and truly if anyone tells me to be MORE patience I might just not be responsible for my own actions. Screw patience. I’ve been patient.  I’m over it.
 If there is one thing I am completely and utterly out of it is patience.


Signed Ms. Cranky McCranks-a-lot....






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So, any news yet?

 February 2, 2012

 I think I must get asked that question 5 times a day.  With good reason though, I mean it has been almost a year since we were matched.

We are STILL waiting on the Article 5 to be picked up.  With the agency delay in dropping it off and then getting caught in Chinese New Year holiday we don't think we will have our A5 until February 7th.  (Ugggh, that means what should have been a 10-11 days process will be a 32 day cluster-you-know-what.)

More and more it looks like travel is going to be pushed later into March or even early APRIL.  (Good grief.)

I'm really hoping that somehow or another we can travel on March 17th. That's the start of spring break and if we can leave then it would mean one less week of missed school for my favorite travel partner (not that he's fond of that idea mind you).

I've been in a rather disappointing discussion with my agency about travel fees which is sucking a lot of energy out of me.  They have some pretty unsavory practices with travel and they have succeeded in changing my opinion of them from being a competent committed tot he kids sort of agency to...well let's just I will no longer recommend them.

I still have one more entry on my "How to Select a China Agency" and I will be sharing my experience in detail there.  I may not be able to get much satisfaction for myself (yet) but at least I can help keep other from becoming a victim of these unethical practices.

In the meantime here's the latest picture of my growing girl.  We just got an update on her sizes. (Gotta shop (some more) ya know.)  BB weighs almost 24 pounds (average weight of an American 18 month old) is 35 inches tall (average height of an American 28 months old) and wears she a size 6 shoe.  At 3 years and 8 months she's a peanut, certainly by American standards but even on the Asian growth charts she's below the third percentile.  But she is healthy and smiling and it appears we have another small but mighty daughter on our hands!


Hey don't mess with me and my Mommy.  

Give us a TA quick and no one gets hurt!


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The Giggle Girl is Mine

 January 21, 2012

Giggle girl in the pink butterfly hoodie (@1:05-1:20...15 seconds of sweet torture) is my happy, beautiful, much loved and dearly missed daughter....



Please consider 
sponsoring a child at Shepherds Field Children's Village.
 
 Today marks 9 months of waiting for my daughter to come home...trust me on this,  9 months of looking at  photos and videos and dreaming about holding your child is a long, long time.   
Let's say we celebrate my elephant "pregnancy" by casting a vote on Top Mommy Blogs?

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What's One More Week?

 January 10, 2012

Make a note: please be gentle and sympathetic with mothers separated from their children, even when we only know them through a photograph we feel the pain of their absence EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Do not minimize the wait or the loss. Especially if you are an adoption professional, please remember the URGENCY is real: for the parents who are missing their kids and for the kids who need families and medical interventions. We are not impatient, we are doing what good parents do... advocating for our kids.

(Steps off soap box and tears open yet another chocolate bar...)




Well, less than 48 hours later and my best case dates are already out the window.

What is at most a 24 hour process for other agencies is apparently a 3-5 day process for mine.

Which just sucks.

And worse yet, the delay is completely avoidable.

Of course the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one.


Overall I like my China agency (and LOVE some of the people who work there) and I know no agency is perfect but ......Duuuuuuuudes,

you can need to do better.

What exactly could they do better?

Well instead of waiting until I got my PDF to review my paperwork and submit to China,  they could have had me send all the paperwork to them when I filed the I800.  If they had, then they could have reviewed the documents and forwarded them to China and then when I got the PDF (last Friday) all  they would have had to do is email the same PDF to China. Our Article 5 could have been dropped off the same day or next business day.

With a little advanced planning and processing our Article 5 could have been dropped off yesterday.  Instead it will go Friday or  maybe even next Monday.

Think a week isn't a big deal?  Well then tell me which of your preschool kids you're willing to send to "Chinese orphanage camp" for a week?  Didn't think so.

The wait is already long and these days, days of unnecessary waiting, they matter. A lot.





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OCAD-Obsessive Compulsive Adoption Disorder

 January 9, 2012

Last Friday at 3pm (not that Im stalking my computer or anything), I received a PDF by email from the State Department's National Visa Center informing me that our petition to "classify" (baby butterfly)"orphan as an immediate relative" was forwarded to Guangzhou China.

Woohoo we've been CABLED!!


There were about a dozen items including passport sized photos, original immigration approvals, our LSC and LOA (and blah, blah, blah) that needed to go to my agency along with the cable notice.  I tossed them together that same day and sent the whole caboodle by overnight mail to my agency.

According to my FedEx tracking number the package arrived as expected at 8:54 this morning.

I'm assuming my Article 5 (the notice from the US that informs China we are suitable adoptive parents and that Miss Butterfly will be able to enter and reside permanently in the United States.) will be dropped off tomorrow, maybe right now--it is 10 am Tuesday in China after all.

The Article 5 is then picked up in 14 days so I'm expecting that on January 24th-ish.

The only thing left after that is travel, glorious, travel approval and that could come anywhere from 1-3 weeks later.  (Sometimes longer but since we've had more than our fair share of delays I'm going to pass this time on the delay cart.)

We are asking for the first available Consulate Appointment which right now is out to the end of the first week of February.  There are only 24 spots, four days per week available so occasionally there are backups, again we are taking a pass on all further delays, thank you very much!  So I'm assume we will have a CA 3-4 weeks after our TA.

So then looking at all best case scenarios all the way around and assuming a gotcha day 9 days prior to CA, I COULD be holding my daughter as early as ......

FEBRUARY 12TH!

(probably not but just for a while I'm going to enjoy the possibilities.....ahhhhhhhhhhhh, February 12th.)

And if you think all of this minute by minute tracking and stalking and counting down of the minutes left between now and the moment I finally get to hold my daughter for the first time is obsessive and unhealthy and maybe even warrants medical intervention...

...well then you probably haven't ever adopted before.

obsessive clicking on the perky juggling chick is much appreciated!
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Nesting...aka just another excuse to shop for cute little girl clothes

 January 3, 2012

I officially started nesting this weekend.  Somehow the changing of the calendar is making it all feel very real.  Well that and the fact that we are now in the paperwork homestretch!

We took down the tree yesterday and brought up the boxes of baby clothes, (insert ridiculous-I-should –be-totally-over-it-but-I’m-not squeal). 
I haven’t had any measurements since early September so I’m totally guessing on sizes.  Back then she was fitting in 18-24 month clothes and wearing a size 5 shoes so  I’m packing (yes that’s right, I’m packing) mostly 24 months items plus some 2t stuff.  I think if I stick to dresses (I might have a few) they should be pretty forgiving.
After sorting through the boxes of clothes I realized most of the stuff in the boxes were either too small or too big.  What’s a mom to do?  You know already.




Mud Pie...Lily Pad




Mud Pie Wild Child Giraffe
(hmmm there my be a Zebra set too...I just cant lay off the big bows)





And a Mud Pie Lady Bug Yoga Set, of course

Then there was BonEful for a few custom made frills...


Oh and I'll need a spiffy red and black Boba3G too...


 there might have been more but just in case you know who is reading we'll just leave it at that. 


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