We Are Registered!

In Primorsky Krai (Vlad region). But, we have to redo our paperwork for Sakhalin. Now they want the paperwork done separately rather than as a couple. So, we have to do it over again. But we’re registered in one region and officially in waiting for a referral. Any day now! (But probably not for a while).

When Will This Woman Ever Shut Up?

Anita Tedaldi drives me absolutely insane with her media-whore antics and evident inability to respect the right to privacy of her “former” child.  I understand that there is a need to discuss adoption disruption but I hardly think she is an appropriate person to represent that very difficult topic to the world at large.  She should NEVER have had an approved homestudy as she clearly has no support at home from her husband (he’s in the Navy and frequently deployed – not there physically and it sounds like he’s not really there emotionally either), and was pregnant with a biological child at the time of the adoption process. 

Fact: Most responsible agencies will not approve a family that is pregnant or that has a newborn in the home at the time of the adoption.  If you become pregnant during the adoption process, most responsible agencies will stop the adoption, due to the risk of a mother not being able to attach simultaneously to a biological and adopted child.  So as I see it this is an adoption that probably shouldn’t have been allowed to happen in the first place, and it amazes me that more people aren’t discussing that angle.

But beyond that, this woman is getting sympathy for her “plight.”  That’s what really irks me.  People talk about attachment like it’s a romance novel: “one look at your child and you’ll know.”  Well, I cannot imagine that is how it normally happens.  I am certainly not expecting that.  I’m expecting to meet a funny looking kid that probably doesn’t smell great.  I hear the orphanages smell like cabbage, and so do the kids.  Not my favorite odor.  Not sure how I will react.  Will I immediately bond with him?  Perhaps not, but I know my job and my job is to “fake it till I make it.”   Be a mom until I feel like one.

I suppose it is possible to react positively (“aww, look how cute”) to your child but that isn’t the same thing as love.  Love is a decision, not just a feeling.  You decide as a parent to love and attach to that child.  You made the decision to adopt, you are the adult, so you are the one that needs to work through your feelings and do what is right for the child. 

I guess my issue with Tedaldi is that I don’t think that disruption is what is right for the child unless the parent is afraid they will harm the child in some way.  Seems to me that Anita Tedaldi’s biggest problem is that she didn’t have any support from her husband and was comparing her feelings for “Dan” to her feelings for her bio kids.  Basically, through no fault of his own, “Dan” made her feel like a bad person, and thus had to be sent away.

The fact that the woman is getting so much media coverage, and obviously continuing to profit from her irresponsibility, her refusal to live up to the promises she made to that child, really bugs me.

Just my humble opinion.

I-171H is Here

Our agency informed us yesterday that they had received our I171H, which is basically a form stating that we are approved by USCIS (formerly INS, or “immigration”) to adopt a foreign child.  The approval is good for about 18 months as I understand it; with luck, we will complete the process well before it expires.  But of course, there is no way to know for sure.

The approval process was pretty quick – we sent in our I600A (the application form that ultimately results in the I171H) on Sept. 27th, and so it took just under 2 months to complete.  We were told to expect it to take about 3 months.  So, we are pleased with how quickly that happened.

We are less pleased, however, that apparently someone at USCIS was asleep at the wheel when they put the expiration date on the I171H.  Our agency received the form on our behalf and has already filed to have to have a correction done since they put in an expiration date of 11/11/2009.  Yes, they backdated the expiration.  Oops.  Anyway, it will probably only take a couple of weeks to have it corrected and we aren’t expecting to travel anytime soon so it’s not a big deal. 

Also, our agency has no word on our dossier translation but said that they would expect it to be complete in the next couple of weeks.

That’s all the progress we know about. 

In other news, we went skiing today up at Mt. Baker and it was sweet.

Traveling to Australia

I don’t have any adoption-related news to share.  As far as I know our dossier is still being translated – it’s been in Russia since October 21, so almost exactly a month.  We were told it would take 4 to 6 weeks for our dossier to be translated so hopefully by early December it will be completed and we will be officially “in line” for a referral.  I asked our coordinator to check on it and let us know…we were asked some questions about proper translation of a few things, and so I know they have been working on it in Russia for at least a couple of weeks.

After our dossier is translated and we are officially registered in the region,  our agency says it could be up to 12 months for a referral.  Or, as quickly as one month – there is just no way to know as it totally depends on who is ahead of us and what children are available.

So we wait.  Neither of us are big fans of waiting for anything, but we both realize that there is pretty much nothing we can do that will speed things up.  So, our plan is just to have as much fun as we can while waiting.  That’s all we can do.  So hopefully we’ll have some nice posts about all the fun things we will do to distract ourselves while we wait!

I have to say, this is kind of a funny stage in this process.   During the homestudy and dossier preparation, we are mostly in control of how long things will take.  From the point when our dossier was completed and sent to Russia, that control is out of our hands.  At this stage we are referred to as being Paperwork Pregnant, which I think to most people would imply that we’re all excited and ready to start decorating the nursery.  But that isn’t quite true – I think “cautiously optimistic” would be a more fitting description of how we feel, vs. “excited.”  We hope and believe this will happen for us, and in a reasonable amount of time, but we know we have no control over it.

The only thing I can liken it to in my life is how it felt to be pregnant after a miscarriage.  You are all too aware that there is a lot still standing in your way between now and when you will hold that child in your arms, and many things that could go wrong.  You are hopeful, but your innocence and faith that “Pregnancy = Baby” is gone.  I think that is the best way to describe it.

This is a letter written to Dear Abby a number of years ago, which I think aptly describes some of the feelings a person has when they are trying to build a family through adoption. I know I saw a lot of myself in it.  Hat tip to Debbie:

Deciding to have a baby is like planning a trip to Australia. You’ve heard it’s a wonderful place, you’ve read many guidebooks and feel certain you’re ready to go. Everyone you know has traveled there by plane. They say it can be a turbulent flight with occasional rough landings, but you can look forward to being pampered on the trip.

So you go to the airport and ask the ticket agent for a ticket to Australia. All around you excited people are boarding planes for Australia. It seems there is no seat for you, you’ll have to wait for the next flight. Impatient, but anticipating a wonderful trip, you wait… and wait… and wait.

Flights to Australia continue to come and go. People say silly things like, “Relax. You’ll get on a flight soon.” Other people actually get on a plane and then cancel their trip, to which you cry, “It’s not fair!”

After a long time the ticket agent tells you, “I’m sorry, we’re not going to be able to get you on a plane to Australia. Perhaps you should think about going by boat.”

“By BOAT!” you say. “Going by boat will take a very long time and it costs a great deal of money. I really had my heart set on going by plane.” So you go home and think about not going to Australia at all. You wonder if Australia will be as beautiful if you approach it by sea rather than air. But you have long dreamed of this wonderful place, and finally you decide to travel by boat.

It is a long trip, many months over many rough seas. No one pampers you. You wonder if you will ever see Australia. Meanwhile, your friends have flown back and forth to Australia two or three more times, marveling about each trip.

Then one glorious day, the boat docks in Australia. It is more exquisite than you ever imagined, and the beauty is magnified by your long days at sea. You have made many wonderful friends during your voyage, and you find yourself comparing stories with others who also traveled by sea rather than by air.

People continue to fly to Australia as often as they like, but you are able to travel only once, perhaps twice. Some say things like, “Oh be glad you didn’t fly. My flight was horrible; traveling by sea is so easy.”

You will always wonder what it would have been like to fly to Australia. Still, you know God blessed you with a special appreciation of Australia, and the beauty of Australia is not in the way you get there, but in the place itself.

Ski Season Approacheth!

See!  Snow in the mountains.  Time (actually, past time) to get the skis to the tuner!

Even though the adoption is eating up a lot of our spare money, Eric and I are still thinking that we need to get some skiing in this year.  Embarrassingly, we were big skiiers when we were dating but we’ve only gone skiing once since we got married.  Not sure exactly why, other than that we had a long period where it wasn’t feasible.  Or we were too lazy, one of the two!  (Let’s be honest, it was mostly the latter.)

But this year, we’re going to make it happen. We’ve been running in the mornings since September and are feeling like we are getting a good base fitness level.  I know my legs definitely feel stronger -  and you need both good cardio fitness and good leg strength for skiing to really be enjoyable.  The best thing is that I think the exercise is helping both of us with mood as we move into the winter (we are both prone to becoming very sluggish – and as previously mentioned, LAZY – as winter days get shorter and darker).  Which improves the odds of our actually getting our lazy selves up to the mountains.

It’s not just about being fit enough to do it…skiing is expensive, and I am cheap, so for me it’s also about being fit enough to get enough enjoyment to justify the expense.  I call that the cost to enjoyment ratio. It’s hard to justify paying for an all day ticket when your fitness level precludes skiing enjoyably for even half a day.  You find yourself running the numbers: “Well, I paid $70 for a lift ticket and skiied for 3 hours.  Did I have $23.33 an hour’s worth of fun?”  

Like I said, I’m cheap, so for that kind of money I better be having an awesome time!

Plus, committing to spending all day on the slopes is hard when you have other things to do, or when, like me, your best chance of earning money happens on weekends. So our plan this year is to do night skiing and just head up on the weekend once or twice, or maybe go to Whistler during the week if we can get a good deal.

All of that said, I am really looking forward to these kinds of excursions with kids someday.  Which means we really have to work hard to stay in as good shape as we can and get back out there now, so that when I am 50 and our future kids are 9 or 10, we won’t be the lame-o parents that can’t do anything anymore because our bodies have fallen apart and we have forgotten everything we used to know.  That was a big part of what finally got us off our rears to get back to running regularly.  We took to heart the advice that, “kids take a  lot of energy, so get into the best shape you can so you are ready.” 

On that note, I’m off to REI to get our skis tuned up!

Pleasantly Surprised

Yesterday morning Eric and I drove down to the USCIS office in Tukwila for our fingerprinting (or as USCIS prefers, “biometrics”) appointment. The whole USCIS process has been sort of interesting so far. We sent in our application about a month ago, and were told that it could take months for our application to be approved. The I600A is the application for citizenship for foreign children. You have to have that approved before you can adopt, and our agency recommends that you do it as soon as you pick a country to allow time for it to be completed before travel.

What seemed odd to us is that here is a federal agency that is requiring fingerprints, but yet as part of our home study process we had already had finger prints cleared by the FBI. It does at times feel like we are dealing with the department of redundancy department, but we have decided that the key to success in all this is to not try to buck the system too much.  So we didn’t ask a lot of questions about this, but we did think it odd. We also thought that it was odd you couldn’t just have your fingerprints done at your local police station like you can with the FBI clearance.

Well, we are still not totally enlightened as to the whys and wherefores of the process but we did notice that the process was totally different than what we did for our other clearances. Rather than use a fingerprint card and an old fashioned ink stamp, which was what the FBI and state child abuse clearance required, USCIS uses a laser fingerprinting machine that scans your prints right into their computers. We’re still not entirely certain what they are doing with this information, but we were pleasantly surprised that our biometrics appointment was handled very quickly and efficiently. Eric is doing a lot of work around lean management at his job right now, so he pointed out that USCIS had a very efficient queue management system. He pointed out the same thing at Disneyland in April and I thought it was funny then too.   Nerdy, but funny.  Gotta love engineers!

Preserving Heritage

I must admit that one of the things that attracted us to adopting from Russia is their amazing history and culture.  After America and Latin America, it is the area of the world I am most knowledgeable about.  My undergraduate degrees were in Spanish and History, so the focus of my history studies pertained to Latin America.  But there was still a certain amount of space in the curriculum for additional electives…and by far, my favorite electives were the classes I took pertaining to Russian history and culture. 

In fact, apparently I was a real suck up in those classes, because I ended up becoming friends with the professor and house sat for her for two summers when she was traveling in Russia. I read through much of her book collection those two summers, which admittedly gave me a TAD bit of an advantage over other people in the class. Of course, the real advantage may have been that I was inclined to read the books in the first place. There are many advantages to being a book lover, good grades are just one of them. Now it seems all my nosiness will pay off.

I think my interest in Russia stems somewhat naturally from being a child of the Cold War.  After all, when I went into the Air Force in 1989, the Soviet Union was still the enemy.  By the time I left the Air Force in 1993, that nation no longer existed. Kind of a strange thing, looking back on it.  The changes that happened in those years even had their effect on the course of my own life.  For example, when I was selected to attend Defense Language Institute, I was originally supposed to become a Russian linguist.  But, two weeks after I arrived at language school and before my class started, the Berlin Wall fell…and for obvious reasons the Department of Defense began reassessing their need for Russian linguists.  I transferred to Spanish and the rest is history – my history.

I remember thinking at the time that we were witnessing history – which is a big thing to realize at the tender age of 21.  When I returned to school after my military service these changes were something I wanted to understand more about.  So I took a few courses on Russian history. And in spite of their bloody history of purges, pogroms, peasant revolts, famines and wars, it was hard not to see that there was also a lot that was beautiful about the culture.  It was also hard not to see that the roots of Russia’s modern problems have little to do with the country’s relationships with the West , and much to do with the country’s own history.  I think in America we tend to see other countries’ history through our own lens, and of course, that is not how that history is lived.

I am hoping that when our child comes home, I can help them see that there is much that is beautiful about where they come from. That in spite of the social or personal problems that may have resulted in their birth mother being unable to parent him or her, there is much to be proud of in that heritage. Being Russian is cool.
Just as is being Irish, Italian, German or Mexican. But you have to know something about that heritage to know WHY it’s cool.

One of the ideas I have to try to help our child maintain a connection to their heritage is to make a tradition of giving one traditional Russian gift each year for Christmas. It is amazing how many beautiful handicrafts are made in Russia. They make beautiful textiles, porcelain, and their folk arts are lovely as well. So those are the kinds of things I would like to get while we are over there with the idea of giving one item every Christmas until the child is 18.

Eric and I love to travel so one of our goals with the child will be to take them to Russia during their teen years. We won’t have time to do this while we are working through the adoption process, but we think it would be amazing to take a trip on the Trans-Siberian railroad. So maybe we’ll have the good fortune to do that someday with our child.

I mentioned above that I am a book lover. One of the things I am undertaking right now is to read (or re-read) some of the great works of Russian literature. I just finished Dr. Zhivago, and all I can say is that it is SO much better than the movie. And that is saying something, since I also love the movie. I am working on Anna Karenina now, but I find it difficult reading. She is not making what I would refer to as “smart choices.” I did enough of that in my own life that I find it frustrating when I am supposed to see stupid choices as somehow romantic. I just want to scream “get a GRIP, woman!”

War and Peace is up next. Then I’ll go back and re-read Gulag Archipelago, which I read in high school. Then I’ll have to start working through Pushkin. Anyway, the Russian language has so many great works that I feel like my reading list is populated for the next several years (and it may take that long just to get through War and Peace anyway!).

Food is another way of connecting to heritage. So, I will learn to cook some Russian dishes. As it stands, I make an excellent borscht and I like piroshky’s but that is about it for my Russian cooking repertoire at the moment. Wierdly, if you judged us by what we eat the most in our house, you would think we were Mexican. But in recent years I’ve incorporated more French, German and Scandinavian influences. Apparently they eat a lot of soup in Russia, which we love around here, so in theory it shouldn’t be much of a change, just different seasonings and ingredients.

The hardest aspect of preserving heritage for an internationally adopted child is deciding how to deal with their personal history, and how it was that they came to be adopted in the first place. We believe in openness and will be as open as it is possible to be, within the context of what we know of the child’s history. The challenge will be if there is a difficult story behind the child’s adoption. Many Russian children are in orphanages due to their parents leading “a lifestyle not conducive to parenting.” We may have to play it a little bit by ear regarding some of those issues since our goal is to have the child feeling good about themselves and where they come from, yet also to be very honest and upfront about the hard parts of their story as well as the good parts.

Silly Halloween Costumes

No adoption related news to report so here is a post to share our Halloween fun.

One thing is for sure…the child we adopt had better be very tolerant of silliness because his or her parents-to-be are very silly people!  We love to dress up – this year we revisited one of our favorite get-ups from a few years ago: Austin Powers and a 60s go-go girl.  In years past we have won costume contests in this outfit.  No luck this year.  We are okay with that though, because the place we went to last night to celebrate was only giving away free tattoos and piercings to the winners and we would have had to give our “prizes” (using that term loosely) away to someone who is actually interested in that kind of thing.  Honestly, although it is very common among people our age to be tattooed and pierced in various locations, I have just never had the urge and neither has Eric.  Like most sane people, I typically AVOID pain, so why would I willingly pay money to have someone stick me all over with needles.

As Austin Powers would say, “that’s not my bag, baby.”*

Yeah baby, yeah!

Isn’t Eric an AWESOME Austin Powers?  I wish this was a better picture because I am particularly proud of my makeup job – I really wanted to do it up so I even wore fake eyelashes to make the costume more authentic.  And I feel like that’s really going all out because I find them very hard to apply…I guess maybe it gets easier with practice.  But I don’t like sticking glue in my eye so I don’t practice much. 

*That phrase reminds me of one of our trick or treaters last night.  We were very excited about Halloween and so we answered the door in character for every group of trick-or-treaters that came up.  The first group was a bunch of 12 or 13 year old girls.  So Eric starts doing his Austin Powers schtick, and saying “yeah, baby, yeah!” and just generally acting the part.   We thought it was hilarious, but none of the kids really got it.  We realized that the movie came out 12 years ago, and so lots of kids these days haven’t seen it.  We had to be satisfied with the parents thinking it was funny and the kids all giving us blank looks.  Sigh.  There is a lot of sexual humor so I guess it’s not really a kids’ movie.

Oh well.  I guess this is a case of “you know you are old when…”

As a parting shot, here are the pumpkins we decorated on Friday night:

Our Stitch Pumpkin (from Lilo and Stitch)

Tigger from Winnie the Pooh

My To-Do List

My last post was called “Things to do While We Wait” but then I got distracted and never wrote down any of what those things were. So, here’s a short list of the things we will be doing while we wait for a referral from Russia.

1. Paint the interior of our house. The child’s room is done, as is the master bedroom, living room and one wall of the kitchen. Every other wall of the house needs fresh paint. Something in a nice eggshell beige. We bought a paint sprayer machine and an automatic paint roller so we should be able to make relatively quick work of this. Lord knows if it’s not done before the child comes home, it probably never will be – two years have elapsed since we bought the house and we’ve been talking about doing it since before we moved in. We’re starting this weekend so wish us luck.

2. It’s too soon to buy furniture or clothes yet, so I am trying to suppress my urge to buy things in those areas by buying things like books and other items that we know we will need regardless of gender, age or sleeping arrangements. I plan to do a lot of reading to the child since I think that is a good way to simultaneously foster attachment and work on language skills. Plus I am totally enjoying re-reading my childhood favorites like Winnie the Pooh.

3. Read books and blogs. I am following the blogs of other adoptive parents who are ahead of us in the process and I feel like it is giving a lot of insight into what the logistics “on the ground” in Russia are like. How else would I know that there is a park and a beach right near the Vlad Motor Inn, where we will be staying in Vladivostok (assuming, of course, that is the region where we end up)? Keeping up with the other adoption blogs also keeps me informed as to what kinds of issues we are likely to face when we get home. Plus, I’m obsessed and can’t help myself. If I talk to my friends IRL about this as much as I am thinking about it, they will grow very bored. So blogs are a good outlet.

4. Clean and organize! I’ve been working on this since the beginning of summer and I am just starting to feel like most of the house is under control. The last demon to fight is my office. The plan is to turn it into a playroom and move all my office stuff downstairs into our large closet. So far that effort is not going well, so wish me luck!

5. Be patient and realize that everything will happen in it’s own time. This is probably the hardest thing. I feel like I should be doing something to make this happen more quickly, and there really isn’t much I can do. So I just have to make the most of the time I have to get things done, and enjoy the time with Eric.

Things to do while we wait

Our dossier was sent to Russia yesterday, so now, we just settle in and wait for a couple of months before we begin putting paperwork together for part 2 of the dossier, which is the court section.  We are still waiting to hear from USCIS regarding our fingerprint appointment, but we did hear from them a week or two ago that they had received our I600A application. 

According to our awesome regional manager at Very Large Adoption Agency (VLAA):

At this time, VLAA considers you to be in the “waiting for a referral” stage; as you know from the monthly updates, families are currently waiting 1-12 months for referral from the time that their documents are shipped overseas.  With that being said, there are still some steps that your documents must go through before official submission to the regional Departments of Education overseas; they must all be translated and notarized (which typically takes 4-6 weeks).  I’ll keep you posted on their progress, but knew you’d be excited to enter this phase of your adoption.  Your USCIS approval is not required to submit the documents to the Departments of Education; however, VLAA has a policy that families must have it in hand prior to first trip travel to avoid delays in a court date being set thereafter.

At this time, you may take a break with the paperwork for a bit.  I’d suggest that you should begin work on some Segment 2 documents in December or January.  I can provide a “short list” of documents to work on to ensure that you are only working on the documents likely to be required in Vladivostok and Sakhalin to avoid wasted efforts on unnecessary documents.

So, since we are taking a break from paperwork for a couple of months, I need to do something to keep the adoption part of my brain (currently at least half of my brainpower…maybe more) occupied during this time.  My plan is to track down blogs of other families who are at various stages of the adoption process and add them to my blog roll, obsessively check them for updates, and continuously hit “refresh” on the active threads on the FRUA chat board (FRUA is Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption).

Okay, and I have a few other non-adoption related things to do as well.