So today we had an interesting situation. Around 11 AM, we had hail. Small hail, but in large quantities. I drove home for lunch (because I can) and though the sun had come back out, the hail was still all over the ground. It’s far from what the weather was like in South Dakota, but it definitely brought back some memories.
So I revamped the front page of the site with a little color, and hopefully it is still easy enough to navigate.
I thought I would share this with everyone since we’re in a slower period waiting for our Travel Approval (TA). Karen and I saved the voice recordings for the period when we received the first word about our referral. We asked our agency to leave us a message on our answering machine when our referral was in. We had hoped it would have shown all of the excitement as we pictured, but it was a little disheartening that it lacked the real punch. Message 1 is that call. Karen then called me and left a message on my cell so that I knew what was happening. The last message was my reply to her. We listen to it now, and I think you will get an idea of the level of nervousness we were feeling as we left these messages. Enjoy.
We’ve been so busy packing and repacking and shopping. The most difficult part of packing, is that Cadence is 16 months old. That puts her in the “in between” stage between baby and toddler. Therefore, I find it necessary to pack bottles and tippy cups….18mo and 2t….diapers and underwear… ok so you get the idea. WAY too many things to pack, not to mention any and all meds just in case she’s sick when we get her. I can’t pack any shoes for her because we have no idea what size shoes to get. But it’s all fun and exciting anyway. We can only have 44 lbs each, for check in luggage, but we can each have a shoulder bag and a carry-on, with no weight limits. One of the carry-ons will have snacks, and a tube of peanut butter and a tube of jam, and even some bread, because Scott already isn’t too fond of American-Chinese food….So, he will have a difficult time filling his belly with REAL Chinese food. And I suppose, when the menu includes whole, boiled fish with the head still in tact, or shark fin soup, or meals so fresh that you pick the critter out of the tank for the chef to cook, I can’t blame him for wanting a few comforts from home, like a PB & J once or twice.
A while back, I had the ambition to make a quilt for Cadence out of material that our friends would give us. It never happened. I got busy, one thing lead to another, and I didn't go out and buy a sewing machine, as had been the original intent. Too many other things needed to be bought, and too many other things needed to be done, to bring our baby home.
My mom had sent several swatches to me, and I spoke with a friend at work about her sewing skills. She offered to put together a little something for me, out of the material swatches my mom had sent. I was expecting something very simple.
Today she presented me with this beautiful blanket. It was such a wonderful feeling to know that Ramona had done this, and done it so well. It's very apparent that a lot of attention went into detail. The swatches were of no particular color scheme, and Ramona put them into a pattern that makes them just fit together so well. The back is a very soft material with tiny heart shaped flowers on it, the same tone of green as many of the patches.
Throughout this journey, I think one of the most fulfilling aspect so far, has been the warm, heartfelt acceptance from others. I've received emails from people wishing us the best, and been touched by the stories of others that I would have never even known existed, if we were not also adopting. I've become friends with Renita...the phone agent helping me with our school loans, now also following our journey. I've conversed via email with Ann, an aunt of another person adopting from China. I've received many comments from my friend, Happy, that responded to our blog in the early months, as a random act of finding our blog...He's been cheering us on the entire time, continually making me smile or laugh. And the friendships I've gained from other adoptive parents, and the wonderful support from my friends on MSN Adopting from China all of you have been my backbone through this wait. I've gained so much, and appreciated the sincere kindness, generosity, and positive wishes from friends and family on our journey to Cady. My mom is overjoyed that she will soon have her new grandbaby home. As we go to China, I knew we would be taking with us our friends and family. That was the original purpose of this journal, to be able to share our experiences with our close friends and family, as they happened. But as the months have progressed, I've realized that we are taking many more friends with us to China, friends that we've met along the way.
I handle stress easily enough, but I do not handle chaos very well at all. Boy, what am I getting myself into, eh? Karen is doing most of the paperwork for this adoption, because it gives her the security of knowing what has been done, and what needs to be done, and she does things in a very chaotic manner. Last weekend we needed to organize all of the paperwork (4 copies of this, the original of this, 1 copy and 1 original of that) and Karen was stressing hardcore on all of this, and was feeling very overwhelmed. Now, I am a very linear thinker. When I have a project, I need to formulate an order to events, then complete each thing in that exact order. This is not a fitting process for handling the adoption paperwork, though it does help at some points.
“No, no, I do not want that document yet, Karen. That one is later on the list. I will make those copies when the list tells me to.”
I sometimes miss my gaming time. I’ve played World of Warcraft a lot since it was released, but the past few weeks I have barely even launched the application. I mention this because today while getting ready to start the day, we saw one of those “Talk to your child about marijuana” commercials, and Karen asked me how we will talk to Cady about that. I replied with
“Well we can’t really figure that out until we know how she will feel about things. By the time she is level 14, we will know more..”
What?? Level 14?? I didn’t even get to finish the sentence because Karen just kept grinning at this error.
It’s also another testament to how being a blogger changes daily communications. From the point that I made this error, Karen just kept saying “That needs to be in the blog.”
I found myself with a little bit of jealousy this past week. I posted earlier about a program called Comic Life that allows you to use your pictures in a comic book format. One of our friends liked the program and created Hui-Hui & Stinky Mouse. It’s a really fun story that they created. Being an adoptive parent to an overseas child can be very different than being a parent to a birth child (I hate using the terms, but lack any other descriptive words) so though I will live by many parental examples, but I do hope that Scott and Tina will continue to blog, as I feel that I can learn so much from their experiences. My jealousy only came from the fact that they get pictures to play with. They get to hug and hold their child. They get to do all of this now. I still have to wait.
Lastly, does anyone else think this is just wrong??
So yesterday was a big day for me. We got the crib home (thanks Kirk), and I did the assembly. Part way through this, I had one of those moments. The kind of moment that made me sit back and ponder..
I’m a daddy.
I’ve referred to being a daddy often, and I talk about being a daddy with co-workers all the time, but in this instance, I really felt like a daddy.
It felt really nice, and Karen got a (seemingly) random hug from the new daddy.
As tomorrow will be spent picking up the crib, high chair, and car seats, today will be spent on the everyday tasks. Karen is now doing some shopping while I create this new blog. I understand that my job sounds more like fun, and likely Karen thinks exactly that, it’s not all that much fun. If I don’t get it right on the first attempt, I’ll have to do it later when Karen tells me how it’s supposed to look.
Later on today I’ll have to clean the house a bit, and probably disassemble the old guest bed that we have, to get it ready to be given away.
On Thursday the 16th, we were given our “tentative” date for our trip. As it stands right now, we will be boarding a plane on March 10th bound for Shanghai China.
Wow, what a difference a day makes. Last week, we knew it was going to happen, and we knew that it would be happening fairly soon, but we were fairly relaxed, only really stressing on the fact that we were going to have to take time off from work (vacation time that we would prefer to save for after we have Cady) and drive a couple of hours away to get our travel information. We did know that people sometimes get their travel date during this meeting, but we had figured that was more of an exception to the “norm” rather than a likelihood.
So now our first weekend is here in the 3 weeks that we have left until we board the plane. We had some things planned, but this is now the rush period, in which we have to complete those things that we had held off on until we had this date in hand.
It’s been said that the site of the previous blog, Once Upon a Cadence, will be difficult (though not impossible) to use while in China, so it just seemed easier to make the transition now to a new system that should give us no problems while there.