HERE SHE IS!!!

Stewart and I got THE CALL from our social worker about 4:00 on Friday afternoon! She gave us just a few bits of info to hold us until they can get everything else translated.

She's a beauty! (And she and I share the same birthday! What do you think about THAT?!)

Yang Xi Zi Xian

Born: December 6, 2006

She'll be 8 months old on Monday.

DHL where ARE you?

Our agency was closed yesterday for the day and they haven't received their DHL delivery today. I spoke to them earlier and they were very nice but said they're not expecting anything until MONDAY now.
However, it is my belief that the DHL trucks are being delayed in the area of our agency because it is located so close to the bridge collapse (not to mention the fact that Laura Bush is here visiting the site) and getting packages to where they need to be must be quite a hairy ordeal for DHL. That, or the driver is eating his sandwich right now (hey, a guy's gotta eat!).
Hope is in the air as long as there is still someone at our agency on a beautiful Friday afternoon.

I can't imagine having to wait for two more days!
In a word, torture.

Update:
Our SW just called and confirmed that the agency is open until 5:00 and
encouraged me to give it up for today.
I will not give it up until after 5:00.
(Do you think our peanut will grow up to be as stubborn as her mom?)

We're O.K.

Stew and I have been getting concerned calls so I just wanted to put up a quick post to let all of our friends and loved ones know that we're ok.

Not Yet

So those packages showed up but did NOT contain referrals. It was information related to special needs (SN) adoptions. We didn't know for sure but we hoped!

Our date, 11/21/05, is still looking good to be included when they do come. It is hard to wait what will hopefully be these last few days but honestly, at this point, hardly anything phases us. We're old pros now!

This last bit here is going to be a little bumpy. Everyone keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times and do NOT stand up until the ride comes to a complete stop.

Packages En Route

Apparently, multiple packages left Beijing yesterday and are headed to agencies! Not 100% sure yet if those packages contain referrals but it's looking good. If it turns out to be referrals and if it turns out that we're included, we could get THE CALL as soon as Tuesday! I know that's a couple of pretty big "if's" but like I said, it's looking good so we're going with it at our house. What the heck?!

When I imagined this moment, I figured we'd be COMPLETELY freaking out but we're not completely freaking out. We're just really, really happy.
It's been such a long haul and WE ARE READY!

Bring on that babe!

(fingers and toes crossed, please)

Pin drop

It's so quiet out there in Rumor Mill-ville, you could hear a pin drop. Nothing new to report about whether we will be included in the next batch of referrals but thought I'd post so you wouldn't wonder if I'd forgotten aboutcha.

I did get a new question I'd like to answer:

Will you bring toilet paper?
Yes, we will bring toilet paper. Speaking of toilets, I should start doing wall squats so I'm prepared for the squat toilets found in public restrooms in China. Reminds me of my days back in Iowa, detassling corn for the fine men (and women?) of Mellowdent Seed Corn. Doesn't take ya long to figure out how to do your thing in a corn field, that's for sure. Looks to me like wearing a skirt would be a good idea...

Nothing like a little bathroom humor to pass the time, huh?

Frequently Asked Questions

First things first; online rumors over the weekend are a bit less rosy than they were last week. I'm not going to go into the details because I don't like putting negative stuff out into the universe. Stewart and I are still very optimistic about August. Please keep the positive energy flowing as we move closer to our daughter and she to us.

As a distraction, I thought it might be fun and helpful if I answered some of the common questions I get asked. I imagine other friends and family must be wondering the same sorts of things, so here goes:

When is the next batch of referrals going to arrive?
They should be mailed anytime between July 30 and August 13, with the most likely day for them to show up in the U.S. being August 6th.

When will you know if you are included?
The day the referrals arrive at our agency, they begin making calls to their clients who were matched. We won't know anything until we know pretty much everything. We'll get THE CALL out-of-the-blueish, meaning the agency won't call ahead to tell us they'll be calling.

Do you know you will have a daughter for sure? How old will she be?
No, we don't know for sure/sure if we'll be matched with a girl but most of the children available from China are girls. My impression is that there are a couple of boys in every 600-700 girls matched. Those parents are very surprised, exchange their pinks for blues, and are very excited. We'll do the same! I've seen children, at the time of referral, as young as 6 months and as old as 17 months. Most likely, she'll be around 9-10 months.

When you get THE CALL, what will they say?
They'll say something like "You have a daughter!" and then give us basic info like name, age, weight, and what Province she's in. We'll go to the agency a couple of days later to pick up the translated packet of info which includes more detailed information.

After you get THE CALL, what happens next?
We have one week to accept. During that week, most parents send off the baby's health information to the University of Minnesota International Adoption Clinic for their input. We're so lucky to have such an amazing clinic right here in our own backyard.

When do you leave for China?
After we accept our match, we'll wait (again!) to be assigned an appointment at the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou. Once we have that date, all the other business we need to do in China gets back-dated from that appointment. The Chinese business is at the beginning and the U.S. Consulate business is at the end. After referral, we'll travel anywhere from 5-6 weeks to 8 weeks later.

How long will you be in China? Who will you be traveling with?
We plan to do a bit of sight-seeing, hopefully in Beijing, before we travel to the Province where we'll meet our daughter. All together, we'll most likely be in China for about 3 weeks. We'll travel with the other families from our agency with the same log-in date (11/21/05). Additionally, our agency's China staff will be with us, acting as guides and letting us know what to do and when. I'm not sure at this point if another group from our agency will travel with us.

If anybody has any other burning questions, feel free to post a comment and I'll try to answer.

We're looking good

Online indicators continue to predict (though it's still very early in the rumor cycle) we'll be within the range of dates matched for August!

It's getting very, very exciting!

Special shout-out to friends Lisa and Mike who really helped Stewart and me this past weekend with baby stuff. Crib scouting and installing a chair rail/crown molding in the nursery - two projects not for the faint of heart. Thank-you Sahr's!!!

I'll update the blog as info continues to roll in, so stay tuned...

You people are the best

Ever since I put up my last post saying that August is looking pretty good for us to get our referral, friends and loved ones have been expressing so much excitement and anticipation for the arrival of our daughter. I've also received tons of offers of cribs and highchairs and pack-n-plays and exersaucers and safety equipment and so on.

You people are the best - thank you SO much!

July Referrals Are Coming!

It's official - referrals are headed to agencies around the world and the cut-off for this batch is November 14th, 2005!

I talked with the other couples from our agency with the same log-in date as ours (11/21) and we all agree that it's looking good for August, September on the outside.

Today is going to be one of those days when I laugh, cry, laugh, cry, laugh, cry and so on. Or maybe both at once. Goofy grin with tears.

P.S. To get a good idea of how excruciating just the past six months of this wait has been, check this out: since January 3, 2007 until July, 2007 - only 1 month and 18 days of log-ins have been matched. When we started this journey, they were matching a month of log-ins every month. Can you believe that? Seriously, wow.

Kitchen Remodel Photos

Sink area, before - yes, the sink is green.

Sink area, after - new light fixture pending.

Range, before - green to match the sink. Border came with the house.

Range, after - love the built-in microwave.

Breakfast table, before - first of three layers of wall paper down.

Lots of storage, after - pull-out pantry next to fridge is genius.

Roll-away dishwasher, catch-all corner, before - ack!

There's a little bench below the upper cabinets for sitting and taking your boots off, after.

Fridge, before - green to match the range and sink.

Breakfast bar, after - lots of good storage underneath.

July Rumors

We've been hearing that the cut off for July may be November 14. That's only 7 days away from us! AND a few of the days between the 14th and the 21st (our date) have very light numbers or no one was logged-in (weekend?) at all. What that means is and hold on to your seat here...if we see matches through November 14 this month, our chances to see peanut's face in August are excellent!

I woke up hours before I had to get up this morning, going over/over/over my mental lists of all the things we still need to do. It went something like this:
"If we get our match in August, that's let's say 6 weeks away. That's only 6 weekends. If we leave for China 4 to 6 weeks after that, that's only 10 to 12 weekends..." Funny (not funny) how in the dead of winter, it never occurred to me to clean out and organize closets but at 5:30 this morning, there it was - top of my list.

Stew's response when he wandered into the kitchen this morning for his bowl of cereal and found me bug-eyed and talking 100 mph? He said we'll sit down with our to-do list and formulate a plan, actually come up with a timeline, a schedule of when we're going to do each item so that's it's not just a random list of things keeping me up at night but A Concrete Plan of Action.

Ahhhhhh, the voice of reason...
How I do lurv that man.

As it stands right now - the update

I haven't talked about this for awhile so I think it's time again:

We will most likely get THEE CALL around the beginning of the month in either July, August or September. July best case, August more likely, or September also likely.

If we know ahead of time that we'll be included in a batch of referrals, which we might, we'll take the day off and sit by the phone at home. If we don't know ahead of time, I'll get the call at work and then attempt to calmly/safely drive home. When Stew gets there...Dance Party 2007!

I'm considering setting up our video camera so that when we get the call, we'll have the experience recorded. It occurs to me that the little peanut might like to see that moment - how happy and emotional it all was.

Nineteen months and counting

Yesterday, June 21, 2007, Stew and I hit 19 MONTHS since our paperwork was logged-in half a world away. (Is it more than half the world? And if it is...then isn't it both more and less because more than half one way would be less than half the other way? Ok, forget all that. This is how my brain works, just ignore me.)

So anyway, as this drags on and I try to stay in a positive place sometimes I forget how close we really are - finally. This morning while I was getting ready for work, thinking about what we might do this weekend, something hit me hard that I haven't thought about in a long, long time. It's this - Stew and I only have a few shorts months of our lives just being the two of us. I'm reminded all the time about things like "Sleep in while you can!", "Go to the movies while you can!", "Carouse while you can!" The one thing, though, that I hear very little about is this precious time we have, these few months left, of our "just us" relationship. We have a bunch of friends who were married for quite awhile before the kids but I don't recall anyone talking openly about this part of the deal.

It's so exciting to be this close to our referral but today, I also feel a little wistful. That's gotta be normal, right?

New Links

Check out new links on the right!

Half the Sky, a nonprofit organization that provides family-like nurturing care in the lives of China's orphaned children. Their Baby Sisters Infant Nuture, Little Sisters Preschool, Big Sisters, and Family Village programs have improved the lives of over 10,000 children.

A Child's Right, a nonprofit group working to provide access to clean and safe drinking water to children living in orphanages, street shelters, etc, in impoverished urban/semi-urban areas in underdeveloped countries. They just finished up a project in China providing clean water systems to eight orphanages. The photos from their trip are really worth clicking through.

Confirmation

It's true. The cut-off is November 7th (we're November 21).
Feel free to uncross/relax those fingers and toes for a few weeks - until the next batch is headed this way.

New batch of referrals

It looks like November 7th may be the cut-off this time, but I'm waiting for final confirmation on that info. If that's the case, it would mean a pretty small batch of referrals. We'd heard a few weeks ago there was a chance this batch would be huge compared to what we've seen recently.

Yeah, not so much with the huge batch.
That's why they're called rumors? Right.

I didn't completely get on the roller coaster when the rumor about a big batch surfaced but a person does have to at least entertain the idea otherwise you wouldn't know you should get on with picking out a color to paint the nursery. The only word I can think of to describe what's happening right now is excruciating.
So close, yet so (expletive) far.

Everyone keep fingers and toes crossed November 8-10 are included this time and we just don't know it yet.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my awesome, hilarious, smart and handsome husband! XOXO

Taking all tips and advice

Been adding to my list of things we need for the baby and was hoping to tap into your experiences and expertise. If there's any baby gear you can't/couldn't live without, books you or your kids loved, brands of things you found were your favorites, please share.
I'd love to hear any and all tips.

What to do, what to do?

I'm having a pushmi-pullyu week. I keep thinking "better to borrow as many items as we can and use that money for things like, oh I don't know...college", on the one hand. On the other hand, I think "we've been through so much ickiness over the past 6 years, let's get to the fun part already." Fun meaning shopping for cute, NEW, baby stuff. Nursery furniture included in that. What's more important, extra money or new stuff? Gosh, for me...today, I can't seem to choose. Is it even a question? Some people are delighted to borrow as much as they can - loving every minute of saving that money to use for other necessities. Others have reacted the opposite, deciding it's very important to get what they have personally researched and carefully chosen.
She certainly won't care a hoot if her crib and highchair used to belong to someone else.
For me, maybe it's the ritual - that nesting part. Maybe I don't want to miss out on this piece because it's something I don't have to miss out on. We'll miss her first smile, the first time she rolls over, the first time she crawls... Of course, I realize shopping for nursery furniture won't replace those precious moments in any way, but is there anything wrong with a little retail therapy? As of next week, our paperwork was submitted 18 months ago, maybe a new highchair will make me feel better.
Torn.
Anyone else felt this way? Any thoughts?
Help a sister out, wouldya.

The track

So Stew and I went to Canterbury Downs this weekend for opening day and to watch The Derby there. I'd never been before because I like my money in my pocket (or spent on shoes). Our friend John had a couple of free admission tickets and it sounded fun, so off we went. In the 8th, Stew noticed a horse called Asian Wind. It felt like a sign and I placed our bet. Simply put, Asian Wind won and we won $12 whole dollars. I think that bodes well for the future, no?