Still hoping to be the change

Last Spring I was very interested in getting a Mandarin language program in our local grade schools. I wrote about it here and here. For a while things were looking promising - I'd volunteered to be on the task force and everything. Then... nothing happened.

I'm not really sure where this stands anymore. Maybe our district didn't get the grant for the investigation or maybe it got put on hold over the Summer and not picked up right away in the Fall. Or maybe something happened and they forgot to include me.

Last week, the district learning services director contacted me again, though, and said that she wanted to schedule a meeting. Today I received another message saying that the meeting will be next Wednesday. I'm going to clear my calendar at work so I can leave a little early and make it back home (i.e. our town) for a 4:00 meeting. We are apparently going to "discuss progress thus far and ideas for future implementation". That sounds pretty good to me. I'm excited again. I'll let you know how it goes!

Hallmark China Ornament

My mom discovered a new series of Hallmark Keepsake ornaments, called "Joy to the World". There are six different child/house ornament sets representing China, Ireland, Norway, Mexico, Germany and Africa (strange, I know, five countries and one continent). Somehow my mom got a peek at them at her local Hallmark store, but they aren't being released until Thursday.

Anyway, I think they're cute. I'm now thinking of doing a little multi-cultural Christmas tree for Nora's room. She's got her first ornament already - Grandma's got this one on hold for her. Thanks Mom :)

Baby care basics

I think I mentioned once before that Rob and I are signed up for an infant CPR class in a couple of weeks. I'm really glad for that, by the way; it is something that we need to know. As I was thinking about the class, though, I realized that I've never had a baby wholly in my care for more than a few hours. Gulp. I'm scared.

I thought that there were some baby care classes available through our hospital, but I can't seem to find any information about that on their website. I'm going to have to keep looking I think. In the meantime, I'm reading this book.

I bought it because it was the most complete reference I saw at the store. It's got some mixed reviews on Amazon, but I'm learning a lot from it (and actually don't find it to be preachy as some of the reviewers complained). I think it will be good to have on hand.

I also wrote down the names of a couple of other books that I thought looked interesting and checked them out from the library so that I could spend some more time looking at them. These are the two that I have now.

I'm not wild about the first one (The Wonder Years), but Bright from the Start is fantastic. We've already bought our own copy (I had a 30% coupon from Borders). It describes all kinds of fun activities that you can do with your baby that, in addition to being a great way to connect, will also help with neural development.

One other thing that has been clear from my reading is that TV should be off-limits at least until age 2. This will be challenging. I think we probably need to start weaning ourselves now - maybe down to a couple of favorite shows that we can record and watch after Nora goes to sleep, assuming we can actually outlast her. One shocking bit from the book - 25% of 2-year-olds have a tv in their room. I found that amazing - no wonder kids are so sedentary.

Birth mother searches

There was a very interesting article in yesterday's NY Times magazine section called Looking for Their Children's Birth Mothers. I am not sure that it is my place to aggressively search for Nora's birthmother, but I feel that we should make it easy for her to find us and also collect any information we are able to collect to make it easier for Nora should she decide to search on her own someday.

I need to get ready for work, so I'll have to comment more on this later. I just wanted to get the link out there while I was thinking about it. In case the link is not obvious, click on the title of the article above and that'll take you there.

Have a great day!

Thanks to Jane for her comment. I agree that it should be Nora's choice. I wonder, though, if there's something I should be doing while she's young and the trail fresher to collect some information that might help her with a search later. I don't even know what that would be at this point, I suppose whatever finding information is available - date, location, what she was wearing, etc. Of course if there was a note, that would be wonderful to have. I don't know what else to ask/look for - thoughts anyone?

Mega Mail Monday is BACK!!

It's been a while, I think, since I've had really good mail on a Monday. When I got home today, though, there was a package waiting for me -- the first from our brand new January DTC Secret Pal!

Thank you so much for the darling Halloween baby socks and Good Night, Sleep Tight storybook. The book is so sweet - it comes with a little blanket that Nora can use to tuck all the little animals into bed. It will be a great, interactive bedtime story to read with Nora.

We love it (you must know I love books!). Thank you so much.

Attention artsy and creative people! Your help is needed!

You might remember my toy box project. Like all my projects, progress has been slow ... but I do have a couple of coats of paint on it and a cushion made (making the cushion, by the way, was far more difficult than I'd expected). Here's what it looks like right now. Sorry to make you look at our messy garage, but that's where it is at the moment.

You can't tell in the picture, but the toy box has some dings in it. Dings that are more obvious now that it's painted white. It doesn't really bother me that it has dings, but I wonder if it could look better.

Tell me. What would you do with this? Paint the spindles a different color? Paint something on the front of the toy box (I was thinking maybe the word "play")? Leave it as it is?

I do want to quickly show you the inside - it's my favorite part. For some reason, lime green just makes me happy.

Twenty one months today

Yeah, I wish we were exiting at 21..

Wow, another milestone. At least they seem to be coming quickly (I think they are coming quickly anyway - my mom will probably disagree).

It's in the bag!

Today was "luggage day" at the K house. Rob and I went to a mall and two luggage stores (one of them moved - so anyone who lives in our area who is thinking of going to the travel store on County B2, check the address before you go. The store has moved - it's not where you think. We actually didn't find it, but we went to the other location and it wasn't nearly as good as it used to be.).

Macy's at the mall actually had the best selection of the places we went - a couple of different styles of TravelPro, Delsey, Victorinox, Atlantic, Tumi and others. We opened them up, wheeled them around, stared at the price tags in shock (that was Rob, I've been looking at luggage for a couple of weeks so I knew about what we'd have to spend). Of everything at Macy's we liked the Victorinox Werks Traveler best - they had this in red, black, royal blue and basil green. We (both!) preferred the basil green color and decided that the 24" wheeled suiter was a good size. Victorinox's suiters are nice because the suit insert (which we won't need for China) is removable. It also turns out that the green must be exclusive to Macy's or something because I couldn't find it anywhere online except Macy's

After Macy's we went to the second luggage store and played around with their surprisingly limited selection. There the bag we liked best was a 30" wheeled duffel. Rob really liked the duffel and at this point decides that it would be best to get two different bags rather than two of the same bag to broaden our experience and spread the broken bag risk. The bag was HUGE, though, and it was Ricardo brand - which I knew nothing about - so we decided to come back home and do some more research online. Mostly I think Rob was just tired of shopping, but that's ok because it turned out to be a very good thing.

Once we got home I headed to the computer and quickly checked email before googling Ricardo luggage. In my email was a reminder from Macy's about a special today where you could save 20% off your entire purchase by donating $5 to the American Heart Association. I read the fine print. Luggage was included, even sale and clearance luggage. So off I went to Macy's website and found the green Victorinox for less $ than in the store (at least less than it what it said on the sign in the store). I also found a 26" wheeled drop bottom duffel that has all the features of the Ricardo bag that Rob liked - only it was smaller and it was made by High Sierra, a brand I'm more familiar with (see photo above, graphite gray color). I ordered both. I also ordered a green Victorinox duffel that matches the 24" bag - I thought that we could pack it on the way over and use it for souvenirs on the way home - and a light weight backpack that will be our second carry-on (pictured right - it is also High Sierra, like carry on #1). And it was all an extra 20% off!

This was an incredibly successful and satisfying day for me. I had been so stressed out over luggage. It feels really good to have found stuff that we think will work for us and to have gotten it for a price that didn't break the bank.

P.S. I did google Ricardo luggage online and people really like it. I think that the duffel Rob liked probably was a good bag - but 30" was way too big. Having something like that would pretty much guarantee overpacking (me, not Rob)

Luggage - we could use some advice

This month's packing list challenge is luggage and travel aids ... and I think I'm in a little over my head. We don't have the right bags for our adoption trip. Everything we have is either too small or too heavy. I've done some research online and visited a couple of stores and I'm overwhelmed by the selection. Right now I'm thinking either a 24" or a 26" suitcase and a 26" or 30" wheeled duffel, hopefully with a third bag (non-wheeled duffel) packed inside one of the other two. We'll each have a carry-on also. Does that sound about right for two people and whole bunch of baby stuff? Keep in mind that we can't go over the 44lb/bag limit on our in-China flights.

And once we settle on size, which brand? We need really durable, lightweight bags. I'm leaning toward TravelPro at this point because the best bag we ever had was a little 22" Rollaboard. I have to say, though, that I really liked the Victorinox bag that I saw at the store - and it was super-light, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra money over the comparable TravelPro. Any words of advice?

Update: I thought that the TravelPro Platinum5 25" expandable rollaboard might have been the bag, but I emailed to find out the weight -- 13.2 lbs. That might be a little bit too heavy; I was hoping for closer to 10 lbs. The search continues...

So....slow...

It is becoming difficult for me to maintain my state of denial. It is Monday morning in China, the CCAA has returned from October holiday and the website is updated. It's official, the cutoff was Nov 30, making this last batch one of the smallest batches ever. It took 6 months just to get through November 2005. Isn't that sad.

There are still 47 days worth of dossiers before ours. At this point our best case is probably a referral in March and worst case maybe July. I probably shouldn't even guess at the worst case because the wait has already become much longer than I ever imagined.

Worth the wait

Old Navy has a website where you can order stuff now - I'm pretty sure that before it was just a homepage with maybe a store finder. Anyway, I saw a link this morning and decided to check it out. Look at this onesie -- $7.99 and the sentiment couldn't be any more perfect.

RQ's new analysis

The Rumor Queen posted her latest analysis last night. Here's the table:

There's nothing unexpected about this, but it's forcing me to acknowledge something that I'd rather not think about... we might not have our referral in March or April like I've been telling people. If I told you "March or April", please read the RQ or talk to someone else who's waiting so you'll know I'm not crazy for having thought that.

For what it's worth, when we started I wasn't crazy to think October 2006 either!

An unusual number of activities...

... and overload in the first two weeks of November.

In the past week I have signed us up for an unusual number of activities. First there was the baby CPR class on 11/10. It was the same day as the baby sign language refresher class, so we opted to do CPR this time (more important anyway, right?) and I'll work on some other way to get a baby signs refresher, perhaps a do-it-yourself sign of the day thing at home. Next I signed up for a transracial parenting class recommended by C at work - this is on 11/03. Then, as I was considering purchasing tickets for the Minhua chorus concert (also 11/10), I remembered that the Twelve Girls Band is coming to town in November (11/3) - I know this because of the public television fundraiser a couple of weeks ago.

I asked Rob which he'd rather go to - Minhua chorus or the Twelve Girls Band - and, no surprise he chose the Twelve Girls band (because who wouldn't choose the more expensive ticket? - kidding, actually I don't blame him, I'd rather see the Twelve Girls Band also).

For the uninitiated, here they are: