Zen Mama

I've moved...

2006-08-09T10:18:00.000-05:00

my blog, that is. The new address is http://zenmama.wordpress.com. Click here to access it.

Please update your links (and note that the new address has one "zen"--not two.

See you over there!

Zgirl

Adoption Talk at The Melting Pot

2006-08-07T11:50:00.000-05:00

Last night, ZGuy and I went to celebrate our DTC status by pigging out at The Melting Pot. We had a wonderful four course meal that left us stuffed well into this morning.

While eating, both our server and the restuarant manager asked us if we were there to celebrate anything (I get the impression that lots of people go to The Melting Pot for special occasions, probably because it so darn expensive), and we told them about our DTC status. They were very congratulatory, and the manager even said that he and his wife were thinking about adopting at some point.

What was particularly interesting about their responses to us was their assumption that our decision to adopt was based on a desire to save the orphans and help needy kids. Our server told us that we were "good people" for adopting, and the manager said that he respected our way of "ministering." In actuality, we decided to adopt not to be charitable but to start a family. We just wanted a kid and couldn't have one the old fashioned way. After considering our remaining options, adoption seemed like the best path for us. The server and manager seemed very nice and genuine, though, so we just smiled and said thanks and didn't explain the "real" reason for our decision.

Based on comments made by other China a-aparents, this type of response is not unusual. Lots of them have gotten it. Although it is true that the primary motivation of many a-parents to adopt is give orphaned kids a home, many others decide to adopt because, like us, they simply want to be parents.

I have more to say on this topic, but I don't have time right now to write a longer post. I'll continue this post later.

Recipes, anyone?

2006-08-05T08:25:00.000-05:00

It was my birthday a few days ago, and because I'm such a wild and crazy gal, I asked ZGuy to get me a slow cooker. So he did, and now I'm the new owner of a $19.99 red Rival 4-quart crock pot. Here's a photo of its white counterpart:

I am very excited about my crock pot. I' ve never used one before, however, so I need a little help. Specifically, I need recipes. Vegetarian ones. The guide that came with the crockpot consists primarily of meat-based recipes. I did buy two vegetarian slowcooker cookbooks yesterday, but if you know of any good recipes, please send them my way. Thanks!

Celebration

2006-08-05T08:08:00.000-05:00

So ZGuy and I began our weekend of post-DTC festivities by going to see The Descent, a wonderfully scary and claustrophobia-inducing movie about six women who get lost in a very dark and creepy cave chain in the Appalachian Mountains. There were some aspects of the film that I found a little too Hollywood-ish, but overall, it was one of the best horror films that I have seen in a long time.

Tonight, we are continuing our celebration by going to The Melting Pot to eat lots of ooey-gooey cheese and chocolate fondue.

At some point, my post-DTC high will wear off, and the reality of our upcoming two-year wait (give or take a few months) will soon set in. But that hasn't happened yet, so in the meantime, I'm going to milk my excitement for as long as I can. As the drunken college-aged guys in our neighborhood like to say at late hours on weekend nights, "Woo!"

OMG! We're DTC!

2006-08-04T14:28:00.000-05:00

Our agency sent our dossier off to China today. They didn't even get it until this morning, so I just assumed that it would get there too late for them to include in this week's batch.

So, like, wow, ZGuy and I get to celebrate a week earlier than we thought we would. The Melting Pot, here we come...

It's off

2006-08-03T14:59:00.000-05:00

I sent our dossier to our agency this afternoon. So assuming Fed-Ex doesn't mess things up, our agency will have it tomorrow morning. Yay!

Hopefully we are finally done with things on our end. If our agency finds problems with the dossier, we may get delayed a couple of weeks trying to fix things.

My brain hurts from all the sorting and document checking I did today. Must rest now.

More about the update

2006-08-02T20:12:00.000-05:00

So yes, our 171-H, homestudy report, and my medical form should be arriving tomorrow afternoon. Which means that I will most likely Fed-Ex our dossier to our agency tomorrow. Which means that the agency, if all goes to plan ("if all goes to plan" is my new catch phrase, as it seems that this adoption process has reduced our life to a time line), will receive our dossier on Friday.

The only reason why I might not Fed-Ex the dossier tomorrow and do it on Friday instead is that some of the xerox copies of various documents that we have to send along with the originals have my hand/wrist prints on them. This resulted from me holding down the documents on the xerox machine to make sure they were properly aligned. The hand/wrist prints aren't obstructing the actual documents or anything, but they are a little creepy and reptilian looking. Actually, now that I think about it, what I will probably do is redo the xeroxes tomorrow morning so everything is ready to go when I get the forms.

ZGuy (previously known as Mr. ZGirl) and I just got back from our 8 day roadtrip to assorted east coast and southern states, so we are pretty tired.

Oh, and Fed-Ex tracking is a wonderful thing.

August 11th is still looking like our DTC date if (say it with me) all goes to plan.

Update

2006-08-02T16:36:00.000-05:00

The last of our authenticated documents should be arriving tomorrow afternoon.

More updates soon.

First squirrels, now monarchs

2006-07-25T09:16:00.000-05:00

For the past few weeks, I've had several lovely monarch butterflies hang out in the foliage outside of my office window. There are two of them out there right now.

If my camera had working batteries, I'd take some pictures of them. But alas, it doesn't, so instead I'm posting this photo from the World Wildlife Foundation:

Our next steps

2006-07-23T16:15:00.000-05:00

Now that we have the I-171H, we have all the documents that we need for the dossier. The only thing we need to do now is get the document certified and authenticated.

We got the I-171H notarized and sent off for certification yesterday. If all goes to plan, we'll have it back later this week. Because we are going on vacation on Wednesday for eight days, I am having the document Fed-Exed to where we are staying. Then, the day after we get back from our trip, we are driving down to Chicago to get the form authenticated by the Chinese Embassy. If we get the form in by 11:30 AM, we can pick it up later that afternoon. A couple of days after that, we'll Fed-Ex our dossier to our adoption agency, which will then--if everything looks good--send it to China on Friday, August 11.

An August 11th DTC would mean that we would be done with things on our end in less than three weeks. I don't want to get my hopes up yet, however, as delays could still happen at various points along the rest of the process.

It's here!!!

2006-07-21T17:56:00.000-05:00

Our I-171H arrived today! Yay! I'm very intrigued by the fact that it arrived the day after our INFO PASS meeting and my phone call to CIS. Hmmm. Maybe these things did make a difference. At the same time, though, the form's processing date is July 19th--the day before our meeting and phone call. Which leads me to wonder why they didn't tell us that at our meeting the next day. Oh well, whatever. It doesn't matter now.

Tomorrow we will get the form notarized and Fed-Exed off to our Secretary of State.

And if all goes to plan from here, we're going to have a mid-August DTC date. That's less than a month from now.

Our INFOPASS visit

2006-07-20T10:15:00.000-05:00

This morning Mr. ZGirl and I went to our INFOPASS appointment at our trusty CIS office. Before we got there, I had envisioned that we would get called into an office, and we'd all sit down and chat, with the immigration officer answering our questions about the 171-H process.

This isn't exactly how it happened. Instead of being called into an office, we got called up to a counter, and we spoke to the immigration officer through a speaker, as she was on the other side of a plexiglass window. The only benefit to this set up was that right before the meeting, I noticed a food stain on my pants at the knee, so her being behind a plexiglass enclosed counter meant that she wouldn't be able to see my unkempt state.

The other thing about this meeting was that she didn't seem to know what forms we were talking about. I told her that we had been waiting for the I-171H for over seven weeks now and were just wondering when we should expect to get it. She paused for a second and looked a little confused before asking, "When did you file your I-171H?" Hmm. I told her that we didn't file the I-171H , that we filed the I-600A, and that once CIS received that form, along with our homestudy report and fingerprints, they were supposed to review everything and approve us for the I-171H. She paused again, skimmed through a official looking binder for a few seconds, and then said that she's be right back. When she came about a couple of minutes later, she said tht she spoke with the orphan officer, and that person said that they don't have a timeframe for when our I-171H should arrive. She did say that she would tell the orphan officer that we had stopped by and that he/she would probably look at our file.

Sure, that's cool, whatever. When we got home, I called the orphan officer's number that my SW gave me a couple of days ago (the new policy as of July 1st is that adoption agencies are not allowed to call them anymore, only the prospective a-parents are). The message on the answering machine said that processing time for the I-171H is currently 90 days. So the 3 month estimate that I had heard about earlier appears to be true. My SW said that until they go above 90 days, there's not much that we can do. If they surpass it, though, that's when we can contact our Congresspeople.

51 days down, 39 to go. Ugh.

Interesting reactions

2006-07-19T17:32:00.000-05:00

[Note: I originally posted a rougher version of this discussion at the end of my earlier post about my accupunturist. I took it out because I wanted to give it its own space. In the meantime, Johnny left a comment about the deleted part, which I then responded to. So if you're confused as to what he and I were talking about in the comments section of that post, here's the story. Read the earlier post first for a broader context.]

I have various friends who were born and raised in Asian countries. When I told two of my Chinese friends about the adoption, they expressed great interest and offered to help teach our child Chinese. When I told my some of my Vietnamese and Taiwanese friends about it, however, I got very different reactions.

I told my Taiwanese friend about the adoption just as we were starting the adoption process. After I told her over lunch one day, she got this horrified look on her face. My initial thought was that she disapproved of international adoption and more specifically, the act of white parents raising Asain babies (I had been reading a lot on the politics and ethics of transracial adoption at the time and my worries about perpetuating white/Western cultural imperialism were particularly strong then). Anyway, it turns out that she wasn't horrified at us adopting a Chinese child per se but worried that we would get swindled by the Chinese adoption officials. According to my friend, Chinese people like to swindle foreigners, especially Americans.

Then, yesterday, I was tellling my Vietnamese accupuncturist about the recent slowdown at the CCAA, and she rolled her eyes and gave me a look sort of like, "Yeah, what did you expect? It's China."

When I had the discussion with my Taiwanese friend, I already knew about the contentious relationship between Taiwan and China. I wasn't familiar with the contentious history between China and Vietnam, however, but after my conversation with my accupuncturist yesterday, I got the impression that maybe something was going between those two countries as well.

Turns out there is bad blood between China and Vietnam, as explained to me by Johnny. Mr. ZGirl also explained some of this history to me when he got home from his trip today. It's very interesting to learn about these historical tidbits, as it provides me with a greater knowledge of Asian--and in particular Chinese--political history.

It's also very interesting to see how these broader historical and political dynamics play out in very localized and personal ways here in the United States around the adoption issue.

CIS progress, sort of

2006-07-19T17:29:00.000-05:00

The person with the April 14th fingerprinting date emailed me to tell me that she received her I-171H form on Saturday. She's still pretty sure that they got through April 27th. If that's the case, we're still a month behind, but at least the office is making some progress.

Today we hit the seven week mark...

2006-07-18T22:42:00.000-05:00

of waiting for our I-171H form.

I celebrated this momentous day with a very relaxing accupuncture treatment from my Vietnamese accupuncturist. I bring up her ethnicity because when I was telling her about our adoptions delays, she asked me if I would consider adopting a Vietnamese child. Assuming she meant adopting an orphan from Vietnam, I said yes, that Mr. ZGirl had talked about that country's program, and that we might consider adopting a second child from there. It turns out, however, that she had a different adoption plan in mind for us. Evidently, she has an unmarried cousin in California who has 5-7 kids by various fathers (my accupuncturist gave this numeral range, as she's not sure of the exact number of children her cousin has). Anyway, she said that she's thought for some time now that the cousin has too many kids to care for as a single mom, and that I should consider adopting one of them. She was serious. She even said that if I was interested, she would talk to the cousin and the cousin's mother for me.

I responded by thanking her for the offer, but that if she is worried about her cousin's mothering skills, she should probably contact a social worker rather than try to give the kids away to her friends. But I was touched that she thought of me as being worthy enough to raise her cousin's offspring.

About those adoption tickers

2006-07-18T20:26:00.000-05:00

I forgot to ask this in my earlier posts about adoption tickers, so I thought I'd mention it now. If anyone knows of any not-too-cutesy, not-too-girlie, not-too-ladybuggy adoption tickers, PLEASE let me know. And no teapot ones, as that is the one I am currently using, and I would like to replace it something a little more, uh, relevant.

Thanks!

It's pretty much official

2006-07-17T09:51:00.000-05:00

The CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) recently returned from a meeting with adoption officials in Australia. Based on this meeting, the Australian government (there are no private international adoption agencies in that country) officially declared the the wait time for a referral from the time that your dossier is logged in with China will go up to 18 months over the next year, and that the wait time could get longer after that.

To put that 18 months is perspective: when we decided to adopt from China, our agency told us it was a six month wait. Turns out the wait was really 9 months at that point, but whatever. 9 months was still a comfortable time frame, and close to the length of an actual pregnancy. This summer the wait has gotten to be around 13 months. Still, not great, but not so bad. But 18 months, that is triple the length of time we were told the process would be and double the length of time that we were anticipating once we actually started our paperwork.

So this is what it all means for us in practical terms.

Say we get our dossier to China in late August (assuming our CIS office gets its sh*t together) and we get a log in date of mid September 2006. That means at the very least we won't get a referral until April 2008, and we won't travel to meet our daughter until June 2008.

That is two years away. So from the time we started the adoption process, it will be 2 1/2 years, and tack on another year to trying to have a kid to old fashioned way and we're pushing 3 1/2 years.

And to make our CIS saga even more juicier, an 18 month wait would mean that we will have to redo our homestudy, fingerprints, and 171H approval, as the fingerprints are only good for 15 months. Fun.

And if we did stick it out for the first child, I'm not sure what we'd do if we decided to adopt a second child. If we decided to adopt a second child, we would ideally want her to have the same heritage as her sister, but I don't know if we could deal with another 2 1/2 year wait, especially since we won't be able to start the adoption process for a second child until the first one has been home for at least six months.

Hmm. Lots to ponder.

It's the little things

2006-07-16T21:03:00.000-05:00

Mr. ZGirl is visiting his brother in Texas for five days, so I've had the house to myself this weekend. Usually when he goes away for trips or conferences, I take advantage of this quiet time. So what have I been doing with it today?

1) Kakuro Puzzles. I was hooked on Sudoko earlier this year, but I got a little burned out by it after awhile. I've been avoiding Kakuro puzzles like the plague since then, as I haven't wanted to start up another puzzle obsession, but I finally broke down and tried out a couple this week courtesy of Games Magazine. And then there is this site, from which you can print the puzzles for free. I just printed two of them, and will do them at bedtime.

2) Steamed asparagus with a little butter, blasamic vinegar, and roasted pine nuts. It's quick and easy to make--about ten minutes. I made a ton of it tonight so I can also eat it tomorrow for lunch and dinner.

3) Dove milk chocolate squares. Enough said.

4) I started to work on my FlyLady routines for work. I recently put together a control journal for home and am planning on getting materials together for my work one.

Grey skies

2006-07-16T18:22:00.000-05:00

I'll be honest, it's been a rough week, the roughest one for me since we started the adoption process. I have been very down about our paperchasing problems and delays. Like having-a-hard-time-getting-out-of-bed-and-sobbing-uncontrollably down. I mean, we knew early on about the delays on China's end (current rumors are that we will have to wait 18 months for a referral once our dossier is logged into China's system, which won't happen for another couple of months--when we started the process the wait was 9 months) BUT we never expected to face so many delays during the paperchase (in addition to the CIS stuff, our SW took an extra month to finish our homestudy report). I know that once we get our 171H and things start to move again I'll start to feel better, but that is then and this is now.

Today has been better than yesterday, though, which is good, and although it feels like we'll never get to be parents, I have been thinking about some post adoption childrearing plans. I've been reading a little about the possibility of breastfeeding after adoption via induced lacation. If I did it, it would be more to facilitate the bonding process rather than for nutritional reasons, as our child will already be used to formula and it's likely that I wouldn't be able to produce enough milk to meet all of her nutritional needs (although some woman have been able to produce enough through induced lacation). Plus, I would really love to experience breastfeeding for its own sake.

There's a lot of information out there on induced lacation and adoption, and enough China a-mothers are trying it to merit an entire yahoo discussion group devoted to the breastfeeding of adopted Chinese infants. Once the paperchase is over and I'll have to fill up my time with things to do during the REAL wait, I will probably join.

For now, here's some info about it from the LaLeche League (courtesy of American Family's new blog, Adoptive Breast Feeding).

Taking action

2006-07-14T11:58:00.000-05:00

Here is what we did today: 1) Via the USCIS INFO PASS system, we set up an appointment with an immigration officer at our trusty CIS office for next Thursday morning and 2) We sent our Congresswoman a letter expressing our concerns about the delay and asking that our case be processed ASAP.

This weekend, I will contact the various peope who are also waiting for their 171-Hs and suggest that they take the above two steps as well.

My SW got back to me today (she was out of town last week, which is why she wasn't in touch) and said that her agency had contacted the CIS office to get information but the CIS person told them that the office would only talk to clients and not to the SWs themselves. She does not understand this, as last Fall (presumably when the old director was still there) the policy was the exact opposite. She also told me that the CIS person said the 171-H delay had to do with all of the federal immigration and border security stuff going on, but she's not sure if that's the only reason.

Anyway, she told me to call the office myself (which I will do once she gives me the phone number) and to contact our Congressperson. All things which we have planned on doing, so I'm glad she affirmed our ideas.

Some news

2006-07-12T10:26:00.001-05:00

The person with the April 14th fingerprinting appointment emailed today to tell me that their SW said that CIS has just gotten through the April 27th appoinments and were in the process of mailing out 171-Hs to this bunch. This person also spoke with another SW,who said that the wait time was now around 3 months. Not sure if that is accurate or not, but the estimate seems to be in the general ball park.

So the 3-4 week estimate given to us by our SW was, um, a little bit off. To be fair, I know that it was 3-4 weeks at one point earlier this year (and in fact, last fall our CIS office was getting 171-Hs out within two weeks). Howver, if people in mid April are just now going to get their 171-Hs, the wait hasn't been 3-4 weeks for awhile.

On the down side, our wait will most likely be 2 months longer than we had anticipated. On the bright side, we've already gotten through half of it.

No news yet

2006-07-11T21:26:00.000-05:00

It's been two weeks since our 171-H form was "officially" late, and at this point, there is no end in sight to the delay. It will come eventually, but the office does not appear to be giving out information and its website hasn't been updated since June 13th.

We're going to bug our SW tomorrow about what she had found out, if anything, assuming she even called the office in the first place, which to be honest, I'm not sure she did. If she did, she hasn't told us about it.

I've been emailing my various aparent groups asking if others have been waiting for their 171-H from our local office, and I've gotten a bunch of responses. So it's not just us. And one person emailed me a few days ago to tell me they have been waiting since April 14th. So the CIS office seems to be VERY backed up if this person's been waiting for almost three months.

In addition to bugging my SW to update us on what she has found out, I think I may try to organize all of us waiting for the 171-H forms, and see if we can do some sort of collective effort aimed at the CIS office or at one of our Congress people who oversee the office. I don't know if that would help, but it can't hurt to let these people know that there are alot of frustrated adoptive parents out there who just want to get their dossiers off to China.

One form is all that is separating our dossier from going out to China. Just one. So that is why this delay is particularly frustrating and upsetting.

Anyway, I think I'll go eat some chocolate now. Yum.

My squirrel friend

2006-07-10T21:43:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's true, I have a squirrel friend who comes by my work office each day for food. Here's the story of how me met. In October 2004, our department's office manager removed the air conditioner from my window. He didn't put the screen back in, however, so if I wanted my window open, I had to do it screenless. This wasn't a problem for the most part because A) it was October in Wisconsin and there weren't too many hot days at this point in the year(which is why I had my air condition removed in the first place) and B) I usually remembered to close my window when I went home at the end of the day.

But one Friday, I forgot to close my window. I also forgot to put away the bag of M&Ms that I had been scarfing down that day. So when I got back to my office on Monday, I noticed that my window was opened. I further noticed M&M crumbs all around my desk and floor.

Oops.

So I closed my window but it was too late. Later that day, a cute little female squirrel came by my window and stood upright on her hind legs looking at me, just waiting for food. I didn't give any, so she left a few minutes later. But then she came back a couple of hours later, just waiting quietly and patiently outside my window. This time, I gave in and fed her some trail mix. She was very happy to get some food and I was happy to have fed her.

And so my life as a squirrel lady began.

Almost two years later, I am still feeding her organic raw and unsalted sunflower seeds daily. She's made it through two winters now. I also recently took some photos of her. In late May, she disappeared for two weeks and I thought she had died. I was surprised at how sad I was, as I didn't think I had gotten THAT attached to her. After all, I didn't even name her. But then it turned out she didn't die (maybe she went on vacation or something, I'm not sure) and once she started come back, I vowed to take some photos so that once she did die, I'd have something to remember her by (see, I told you I was a squirrel lady).

I'm not sure how long she'll keep coming by, but at least I have these photos. They aren't great, but they do the trick, and squirrels--or at least this particular one--aren't all that picky about their photos, anyway.

So until I have a bona fide kid to talk about, I'm going to have to tell stories about my pets, other animal friends, and new pieces of furniture instead.

All I want is a simple, inoffensive ticker

2006-07-10T15:29:00.000-05:00

I belong to a mothers and mothers-to-be online group where lots of people have tickers in their signatures--tickers for how long they have been TTC, how long they have been pregnant, how long they have been breast feeding, how old their child is, etc.

So far, I've resisted getting a ticker because in many ways, it just isn't my thing. Today, however, I decided to join the others and get one. I assumed that I'd find some for adoption, and I was right.

But here's the problem. I'm not a particularly girly person. I would describe myself as feminine-lite. So when looking for a ticker, I wanted a something simple, something not too frilly or saccharine or cutsie.

Most of the pregnancy tickers that I found are, indeed, too frilly and saccharine and cutsie. However, there are a few that I liked and would chose for myself if I were pregnant. For example:

When it comes to the adoption tickers, though, my options are sparse (see my post below, for example). The most simple and inoffensive one I found is this one, and that's not saying much.

Because we all know that waiting to adopt a child is like boiling a pot of water for tea.

Things that make you go hmm.

2006-07-10T15:16:00.000-05:00

It's one thing to embrace the ladybug as a symbol of China adoption culture, as many U.S. a-parents and prospective a-parents do. It's another thing to blur the line between the symbol of this adoption culture and the adopted child herself. Although I'm sure the person who created this ticker had good intentions and just thought the infant would look cute in a ladybug get up, the image winds up--in my opinion--objectifying/dehumanizing/exoticizing the adopted Chinese child.

Also read Mr. ZGirl's extended commentary on this ticker.