Happy Holidays

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Frost_(fairy_tale)
With any luck, next year at this time we will be preparing for the arrival of Father Frost. I wish everyone the happiest of holidays and a wonder-filled new year!

Kindness of "Strangers"

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness. - Seneca, Roman Philosopher

Grateful

I am deeply touched by all of your kind words in response to my post about my grandmother. I was amazed by the comments and emails that I received. I am so fortunate that I was able to visit my grandmother while she is still lucid. I was able to tell her how grateful I am to her and how much I love her. As I was driving home I felt such a sense of peace because I was able to tell her everything that I felt.

I am often amazed by the kindness and generosity of people I have met through blogs and message boards. I recently solicited some advice from people I know online and I received the most speedy, heartfelt, thoughtful and helpful replies. Adoption can be isolating in that it isn't the common way that families are built. Having this community makes me feel less isolated in this journey that is so difficult (yet exciting!) to make. Thank you so much!

Three Cheers for Mr. Hershey

Snacktime at our house

Luca: "Who made the chocolate?"
Me: "Hershey's."
Luca: "Well, he's my guy."

A Tribute to my Grandmother

Tomorrow I will go say good-bye to my grandmother. She has been diagnosed with cancer and has a very short time to live.

She has spent most of her life nurturing people and places before psychologists made a big deal out of nurturing. She is mother to 9 children, dozens of grandchildren and a handful of great grandchildren - "Saskia" will soon join this generation. I am sad that she will not know her because she is an amazing person. I have been thinking about making the trip to Indiana for the holidays next year and introducing my grandmother to her new great-granddaughter.

When I was with my grandmother, I felt like I mattered. I sat on a high stool in the kitchen while she cooked endless meals. We played Yahtzee together . . . I even watched soaps with her! She always included me in whatever she was doing and she made me feel loved. This attention, this love has given me the strength to persevere and live through difficult times. These were simple, everyday actions that made a huge difference in my life. I am grateful to her for just being there . . . I am so very fortunate to be her granddaughter.

Where in the world is "Saskia"

The wheel of fate is spinning - round and round it goes . . . where it stops, nobody knows. Saskia may have been born today or yesterday or tomorrow. Where is she? Currently, our agency works in:

• Akol
• Almaty
• Astana
• Essik
• Koksheteau
• Petropavlovsk
• Karaganda
• Stepnogorsk
• Tshchuchinsk
• Taldy Korgan
• Taraz
• Uralsk

So, at least we have her location (or location-to-be) narrowed down a bit. Where did you (or will you) go to meet your little one? If you have already been there, what is it like?

P.S. I want to draw your attention to the "Packing Checklist" link under "Resources" on the right. This "mother of all packing lists" was provided by and approved for posting by Jennifer. Thanks! Now I can shop . . . and shop . . . and . . . . . . shop.

The Fine Art of Paperwork

Smooth sailing
For the most part, gathering the needed documents for our dossier was not difficult. Our agency does not require a lot. I have a few tips (and debaucles) for any PAPs who are chipping away at their mound of paper.

1. Bind it. I labeled a binder and placed a checklist of documents needed, a calendar for 4 months and plastic sleeves for each document needed inside. I labeled each sleeve with the name of the contents it did or would contain. This helped immensely.

2. Copy (or scan) often. By the time we received our last piece of paper, I had almost everything scanned into PDF format and the copies printed using our home printer. It still took the good part of the morning to assemble the dossier, but it went together easily and in an organized fashion.

3. Be crystal clear. My doctor (and our banker and mortgage company) had never filled out paperwork for an international adoption. Write out detailed instructions for everyone who has to produce a letter for you. See below:

4. Expedite when you can.

5. Read and re-read what you need before you go. I had to get two blood tests because I did not re-read requirements before I went to the doctor's office.

6. Open a FedEx account. This made things so much easier! And, using FedEx is not as costly as I believed.

7. Guard it . . . with your life. We took the dossier with us when we went on trips. You could also keep it in a safe deposit box.

8. Keep track of birthdays. Track the age of your documents using a spreadsheet. Our agency required documents to be less than 3 months old at the time of submission so this helped me make sure everything was within that time frame.

9. Ask when licenses expire (home study agency, doctors). Agencies have different requirements for the expiration of licenses. Find out and ask your coordinator if there is a problem.

10. Ask questions on listservs and to others who are in process. This helped immensely! THANKS everyone!

A Few Ripples
Just a few random, RIDICULOUS things . . .

1. Make sure everything is notarized exactly to your state's specifications. The notary's stamp on our mortgage document did not have a BORDER around it, thus no Apostille for that document. See post written on 10/20. I don't know how I would have know that was an issue. There wasn't anything written about it in the Secretary of State's pamphlet. I guess I could have called, but I doubt that would have revealed too much more. This was not a huge deal. We just had to request the mortgage letter for a third time.

2. The state of Indiana does not Apostille birth certificates issued by the counties . . . they only certify those generated by the STATE. I don't know if I want to waste anymore virtual ink on this one. Why would the state have TWO different birth certificates?! AND, only Apostille ONE?

3. Our I171H took about 7 weeks, which wasn't all that ridiculous. But, the wait was excruciating. We had everything ready to go and all we could get from USCIS was that we were in line.

Basically, it took us 3 1/2 months to gather our paperwork - not bad.

Does anyone have any tips or experiences to share?

Gender bending

Don't you want something else, honey?
I have a confession to make. When Luca asks for anything "girly" I try to tempt him with something else - something that is more gender neutral or "boy-y." But, the fact is Luca loves girls and women. He has been charming women as long as I can remember. The summer he turned 2, we were in our local fruit and vegetable market and he climbed up on to a bench where an attractive young girl sat. He looked up at her with his big blue eyes and a huge smile and said rather boldly "What's YOUR name?" Historically, he has not given men (except his dad) the time of day.

So, why should I be surprised he watches Barbie videos when he visits his grandma. Or that he wanted a plastic Barbie toothbrush holder when we went to the grocery store today. We were standing in front of the kid's bubble bath and I said, "Pick one." And, he chose this silly Barbie toothbrush stand with pink & purple toothbrushes (why this was in the middle of the bubbles, I don't know). I said "no" mostly because I am morally opposed to poorly produced, useless pieces of plastic (not to mentioned the perpetuation of the idea of such a narrowly defined ideal woman), but there was a small part of me that wanted to steer him towards the "Cars" bubbles because they are more gender appropriate. I feel the same about the Barbie video. I don't forbid it, but I don't encourage it either.

What's good for one is not good for the other
I think and read a lot about gender. I wrote my thesis on feminist art. I teach a class about women artists and deal with the image of women in culture in an introductory class about visual culture. When I was pregnant with Luca I mistakenly thought he was a she. I thought about what it would be like to raise a girl in the United States today. I thought about the idealized (or unidealized - thanks, Britney & Paris & Nicole) images she would feel that she had to live up to . . . the limitations she may have to face in her professional career. I worried. But, one thing I did not think about was confining her to gender-specific toys or even clothes. When Saskia comes home, I think I will be proud if she picks the "Cars" bubble bath and plays in the dirt and wears overalls. It seems the society we live in is more okay with girls crossing gender lines. In some ways women have more freedom that way - perhaps because it is a symbolic grab for power.

But, when my little boy reaches for the Barbie bubble bath it is a demotion . . . a step down, so to speak. He looked at the rubber and plastic figure that contains berry-scented bubble bath and said, "Isn't she beautiful?" I nodded my head in affirmation and put her in the cart.