homestudy & conversations

A couple weeks ago, we went to our federal fingerprinting appointment in the next largest city in the state. Nearly 3 hours of travel each way, about 1 hour of waiting for our numbr to come up on the display, and then 15 minutes of rolling our digits on the digital plate. It was actually pretty cool.

The technician sprayed my fingers with a bit of water mist and then swabbed them off with a towelette to get the perfect amount of moisture so that my fingertip grooves would splay out correctly on the fingerprint reader. After my finger was plopped down, he rolled it gently to get it centered and then rerolled from one edge to the next with a mouse click to start recording on one edge. Very cool. Even more clean than the local fingerprinting (which still uses ink and a more brusque roll). My tech guy said, well, the local cops probably do not go home at night and practice their finger rolling technique! lol All I can say was that it was neat to watch! I want a copy of my prints!! But no, the federal gov is propriatory about their prints. My digit record will remain in perpetuity... until our form expires in 18 months and the prints will mysteriously become invalid. Yeah, you know how we all change our digit grooves every year, like changing the smoke alarm battery on my birthday. Ding! So if we are not so lucky in wait times (as you know most of us are), we will get to do this all over again in 2008...

But meanwhile, we tracked down a last piece of paperwork to complete the homestudy. Had to apply to a different state to have that last piece of paperwork sent, too. We also completed as much documentable "family education" as necessary to be acceptable on the form. M toook a couple hours and read through a very good website on attachment so I could finish the form. That;s under the 4everfamily.org. Very informative website. M was impressed (and informed!).

We also have the draft of the homestudy! Only one small typo to fix, and then we are done with that phase. Whoo!

Our next big chore is to finish the documents for the dossier. We have several documentation and dimplomatic letters to write and acquire. We are still trying to get more pictures of us with other people. This has almost been more frustrating than anything else. It's amazing how many pics we get that are really not going to work. Either everybody is looking in different directions or somebody has a disgruntled look on their face, or the pic is aimed at our knees... So we force friends and family to pose for more versions every time we see them! We hope to get a few more from M's family when we visit over Thanksgiving. Of course, we will also have "the talk" with M's parents. We are trepidatious, but I also have some confidence that they will want us to be happy and will be happy for us, even if they may not agree with what we are doing. Who knows--maybe they will be thrilled! They, it's the only way they will be getting grandchildren out of us at this point.

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Had a good talk with one friend last week. She is trying to be patient about our desire to not talk about everything all the time. Or not share so, so much. She thought I wasn't sounding "excited enough" when I told a few other friends, that all that came through was the "anger" at the process (her word). For starters, I was downplaying the announcement knowing that it was going to take f***ing *years* to have a real baby in arms, and the ^gleee!^ factor was just killing me. It feels premature. Also, I am more cautious about announcing things knowing how our baby plans keep going awry!!!!!! How about that?? Maybe I should not have told that one friend until later... Kept saying she was "proud" of me, but it was really rubbing me the wrong way. We want a child and we are taking reasonable steps in that process--how do I feel "proud" about that? When I objected, she changed it to "so excited for you." That's a little better. :) hehe Yeah, what *would* be acceptable to you, Marie? :) I mainly don't enjoy other people's reactions trying to overwhelm my own. Putting one foot in front of the other and trying to watch out for sneak attacks of crushing disappointment. Forgive me for being wee bit cagey? defensive? wait and see? Way self-protective? Yeah, all that.

Anyway, I know this one friend (who is actually one of my closest friends) hates being left in the dark and feels constrained about not being about to talk and ask about it. My take on this is: just who is she doing this for? Does she want to talk about it to take care of her own emotional needs or is she at all concerned about considering my needs as one of the primaryly impacted parties??? Eh? I tried pulling out some of my emotional complications to show her *why* I was less inclined to have other people tromping over my tender feelings. If I hold other people off, it's purely self-protective. Many/most other people do not get difficult and traumatizing it has been coming through and out of infertility. They think it should be all hunky dorey now and still give us thoughtlessly callous advice and remarks. Consesus in the IF world (that I have seen) suggests that they are wanting to make themselves less guilty or anxious, not so much as actively wanting to hurt/help us. Eh, whatever. Meanwhile, I still have to take care of myself. Therefor, there are a lot of personal things I don't discuss.

On a related note, this same friend was again tut-tutting that M & I don't have "anybody else to talk to." I tried saying, well, no, we talk to *each other*, and that is what keeps us going. I feel lucky that we have been so supportive and understanding of each other and our individual processes in this whole ordeal. She doesn't get this. I told her rght out that it was worse to try to talk to people who did not understand than it was to not talk about it at all. That is was a like a survivorship situation, where people who had undergone IF were in a better position to really understand what it was like for others, like some cancer survivors find it most comforting to talk to other cancer survivors. For me, trying to talk about IF and related issues to non-IF people is overwhelmingly an exercise in frustration and infuriation. Man, they just walk all over my heart! And don't even realize that they are leaving muddy boot prints behind... So, heh, is it *understandable* that I dont go out of my way to talk to that random "other" people? I read and post to blogs with like minded people. I talk seriously with my sweetie. I distract myself or work harder on what I can do. THAT helps.

Nearly Fall And All That Paperwork

Long time no blog. I've been busy, and obsessed with other things. Also, I've been somewhat discouraged by reports that the wait times in China are slowing down so much. Ack. I have been readjusting my expectations, but not happily. 2 years, plus. okay... I might have been less enthused about China if I had been aware of this before we'd sunk so munch money into the process, but we feel pained at giving up our dream of a little girl from China, so... we move onward.

Well, we have completed the homestudy visits. It wasn't bad. They kept encouraging us to eat dinner while we talked, to the degree that we started to feel that they wanted to *watch* us eat dinner to see what we would do! Ok, so we ate dinner! I was picking basil out of the garden for pesto when the social worker came up. I made pesto and tossed it with pasta and vegetables. Yes! Let me show off my womanly homemaking skills! lolol Too funny.

We did clean house, but we didn't get to clearing the baby's room (which we keep calling something else from its earlier days). I decided to just not worry about being super neat. Let's be realistic, here; we are not all that neat. The social worker just laughed when she saw the room. "Where are you going to put all this?" Sell, reorganize, redistribute. Worse case, we'll put it in the basement. She didn't even seem to notice the various annoying flaws of our old house. OK, we have no known hazards in the house. :) Plumbing functional, not too many dust mice it the house, etc.

But we haven't gotten word that the draft is back as expected. I am just assuming that if there was anything they objected to that she would have told us... Maybe that is an erroneous assumption. Maybe they would route a rejection through the agency. God! Something else to worry about! After I blabbed at boring length about my childhood and relations with my family, sisters, etc, I started to feel rather overexposed. Again, oh well! It's over and done, so I try to not waste energy worrying about it.

But in better news, we finally got our appointment to get fingerprinted in the big city next month. It's on an inopportune day for a variety of reasons, but I am glad my husband has proclaimed it a priority. Yes! We will go and do the thing!

Since my trip to New England last month, I have been immersed in other things. It's been hard to get my head back into the process. Just today, my husband asked what else we needed to do to progress with the paperwork. I had been wondering just how fast we would be progressing if I wasn't taking charge of so much of the organization, so I was gratified that he had started to be more present to the process. So we reviewed our list of items and tasks to complete, and he is motivated to work on the things within his range. It's more motivation for me, too, to restart tracking down all the little details. Oy! How this drags on!

On the other hand, we have time to do things like learn Chinese Mandarin. I was teaching some of what I know to M tonight on our walk. I am actually really happy that he is interested. After grades are in, he wants to look at books on China and adopting, etc. I am currently compiling to a list of books I want to read on adoption, parenting, transracial adopting, all of that. I don't want to have to buy them all (not wanting to spend money like we have gobs of it), but some of them might be worth it. Hopefully I can track down some of them in the library. Not that I want my name attached to records on this topic. (Hellooo record-trackers!) But again, oh well.

I have also been finding and reading yet more blogs on a variety of related topics. So much good writing out there! Maybe someday I will get my act together (and conquor shyness) to provide linkies to some of the blogs I most enjoy and admire.

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One weird story recently -- somebody at my sister's church had terrible news about a local family who had just internationally adopted two children, then ran into some tragic health news. That is just stunning enough, but my sister was thinking, well, what if they needed to give up their children? (She thought of us as possible parents to "step in" and be new parents. !! Ack!!) She was obliquely feeling them out on this idea. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the tragedy of the situation, much less even considering taking on their children! The last thing I want to do is snatch some poor people's babies away from them! Plus, if there were a real need, they would have already designated guardians. That's why they have the guardianship requirement, afterall.

Oh my God. I'm feeling rather embarassed that she would pursue this line of thought. I'm so glad we don't know this person however distantly. I can't honestly imagine that a parent would ever give up their new babies, and how awful for the babies, too! I would not want to "benefit" from somebody else's tragedy. ... Although, how far removed is it from the whole adoption scenario? Baby is abandoned, adoptive parents step in. I have mixed, mosly sad feelings about that too. I guess if there has to be sadness and grief, it's at least one positive step to have a stable loving home at the end of it. But it doesn't take away the grief of it.

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Ni hau ma? Wau hen hau, xia, xia.

My Mom says: maybe she is being conceived soon. But I say: No, she will be conceived next year. And then I have to wait for my baby to be abandoned by her first mother. How sad is that? Waiting for sadness, waiting for happiness. I want to wrap her up and cuddle her and keep her safe, to make her know how beautiful and special she is and that we will always love and cherish her. That we will never leave her. Who do I send this message to now? Some anonymous mother-to-be who will not want to keep her baby. I want to say: I'm so sorry. And: we will keep her safe.

Wau-duh bao bao. My treasure.