Fun in the sun

Thank you new Jan DTC Secret Pal - we love our "Fun in the Sun" gift for Nora!

Our new SP has decided to make her own themes (yay - I love a theme!) and this month is "Fun in the Sun". Hmm, beachtime fun where we live in April - that's highly unusual! This is an unusual year though - we actually did take a walk to the beach on Sunday a full two months before our usual first beach trip.

SP sent Nora the coolest stuff - inflatable beach toys, swim floaties, a frisbee, a pail, a sand shovel and rake, two baseball caps (one pink and one denim with ladybugs - Nora's first ball caps! How long do you think it will be before she has a pony tail to pull through the back?), and *my favorite* sidewalk chalk!

Rob's right - I am a cheap date. All this great stuff and what do I like best? Chalk. Figures.

One more thought

Today is my Mom and Dad's 57th (is that right???) Anniversary!! Congratulations Mom & Dad and Happy Anniversary!! We love you!!

Love,
R & J

Some random thoughts...

I'm sorry, this post is not going to be coherent. I have a lot on my mind.

(1) As many of you I'm sure know, a horrible story of a disrupted adoption surfaced this week. Here's a link. It is at once heartbreaking and eye opening for those of us in wait. If you're a worrier, you should probably not read this (Mom - this means you!), but if you are a waiting parent and are not already following Jen's blog, I would encourage you to catch up with the story. I'm sure this sort of thing does not happen often, but it does happen and we all need to educate ourselves and be as prepared as possible.

(2) AmFam wrote a hysterical post this week. First I laughed Diet Coke out my nose. Then I dwelled over our robbing Nora of her culture. I posted the following comment on AmFam's blog:

Comment from Jennifer Time: April 22, 2007, 11:14 pm
Great post - made me laugh Diet Coke out my nose!
I share many of your feelings about the FCC. It’s disturbing. Here’s my dilemma. DH and I neither are Chinese. We are concerned about robbing our daughter of her culture, but nothing we do is going to be really authentic. Thankfully we have a few friends who are Chinese (some live here, some in China). We will travel to China - I love it there. But… that’s an every couple of years kind of thing. In between, though, what can we do that’s not… well… creepy?

This is such a difficult position to be in. At once we are robbing our child of her culture and pretending to be Chinese. How on Earth do you ever do the right thing?? I want to be the best parent possible. I want Nora to be proud of who she is. I will not dress her up in silk brocade and I will also not wrap her in an American flag. If any of you ever see me do either, please give me a good whack, ok?? Wait -what about the red couch photo??* Should we ditch that? Please advise.

(3) I ordered that book, Learning the Dance of Attachment: An Adoptive Parent's Guide to Fostering Healthy Development, that I wrote about last week. It came yesterday and I started reading it this afternoon. I'm also reading Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew for the Adoption Network book club at work. I'm sure I will have thoughts to share about both.

(4) Holy Cow -- I almost forgot the best event of the week! We received our new I-171H on Wednesday. This one is good through 10/26/2008. I sure hope that we have Nora home by then and are on our way to Carys. Carys will be Nora's Mei Mei (little sister) ... I hope!

*The "red couch photo" is a Chinese adoption tradition. Every travel group has a photo taken of the babies dressed in Chinese clothing on a red couch in the White Swan Hotel.

The "dance" of attachment

Yesterday Rob and I attended a very good seminar about attachment. The speaker was Holly Van Gulden, an author and family counselor who grew up in a family formed through transracial adoption (four brothers I think she said - and this was back in the day when transracial adoption was much more unusual than it is now) and who is an adoptive parent herself.

We learned a lot and came away with some good information about transitioning Nora into our family and promoting attachment and also about talking to our families and daycare providers about attachment issues and what we need them to do to help Nora. I should have bought Holly's book, but foolishly assumed that I could get it on Amazon. Turns out the only way I've found to order it is through Crossroads Adoption (where the co-author Charlotte Vick works). Here's a link to a review on the Adoptive Families website and to the order form on Crossroads Adoption's website.

If you ever have a chance to hear Ms Van Gulden speak, take it! She's outstanding.

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing...

I had a much more depressing title for this post, but decided to try to keep somewhat optimistic.

There is a terrible, terrible rumor on the Rumor Queen forum today. Some agencies are telling their clients that only two days have been matched. If that's true it will have taken a full month to move from October 24 to October 26. I'm hoping that the truth is that the CCAA has matched two days of LIDs for those agencies and that it will amount to a week off the calendar. Please.. Please...

I understand that this is outside of my control and that the CCAA owes me nothing, but I really would like to get a little bit closer to our daughter this month.

Mega Mail Monday - Daddy edition

Great news!! Are you sitting? Better sit.

Last week Rob took a class at work - something about thinking on your feet - and one of the other participants made a comment about every child needing to be read Aesop's Fables. So he ordered Nora an Aesop's Fables book!

This is the first thing that Rob has bought for Nora on his own! I think that she is becoming as real to him as she is to me. I so love that he's thinking about reading to his little girl!

P.S. Also in today's mail was a replacement for the first Combi diaper bag that arrived damaged. I didn't post about that at the time because I wanted to give BabyStyle a chance to fix it before I bashed them for sending me a torn up bag. They fixed it. All is well. Shop at will.