Garden Variety Family

one thing leads to another

Right now there is a contractor putting up new walls in our den which will one day be a play room.  The people before us put old barn wood and large stones on the walls for a cool effect, but it is a basement and it's a little dark with all that wood.  Last summer when I was down there I slipped and caught myself on the wall or maybe I should say the wall caught me!  I got a sliver the size of a toothpick in the palm of my hand!  That was the clincher so now we are replacing the walls that had barn wood at -- little adorable daughter height -- with good old fashioned dry wall. 

I can't for the life of me figure out the look I want for that room.  This is something I normally have no trouble with.  I picked up some paint swatches and 2 adorable light fixtures from ReHouse a cool recycled house parts store.  I am hoping they will start inspiring me to create something fabulous. Normally I would never start until I had a plan in my head but we have decided to seize the moment and get things done.  It certainly helps that relatives we have never met will be visiting us from Korea in 3 weeks to start the fire under our butts. 

As I am writing this we just found out that one of the stone walls is about to fall -- a hazard for anyone, certainly our little one.  Now we have another wall we need to replace with dry wall.  How does that song go?  One thing leads to another...I'm gonna gitch ya, gitch ya, gitch ya...

My intention was to talk about plans I had for the nursery and put a picture up of the darling leafcanopy I bought.  I got it a long time ago when we were visiting the Ikea in Pittsburgh.   It is just propped up for the picture so the picture doesn't do it real justice. 

So here I am working on the baby room, the den and I am in the process of stripping paint and stain off the stairs in my house so I can refinish them and make them beautiful.  No wonder I can't decide how to decorate the den, my brain is too full of all these other projects.  Everything in our house was patched together, we are learning that more and more as we go along.  Homeownership--ain't it grand!!

the wait officially began

Well, our paperwork was sent to China (DTC-Dossier to China) on March 30.  CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) received it on April 2. I was told that "Dossiers are typically logged in within 30 days but it can take the CCAA up to 8 weeks to send us everyone’s log in dates" because they do it in batches.  The day after asking my agency when we would find out our LID (log-in date) and they gave me the explanation above, we got our LID!  It was April 16!  So this is the date that our wait is measured by.   

I got the following information from a yahoo group that I am a member of. 

This came from an agency rep. who attended the Joint Council on
International Children Services. Please know that the China Center
of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has not given any of the following
information in writing, so unless otherwise indicated, the
information below is simply a collaboration of information from
adoption professionals throughout the U.S. who are currently working
with the CCAA:

1. There are currently 25,000 dossiers at the CCAA that have been
processed and are waiting to be matched with referrals.

let the fun begin

Time to lighten things up.  As of right now our nursery is a spare bedroom that is the overflow room for the house.  It is filled with musical instruments, amplifiers and mics, boxes and boxes of photo albums, stuff set aside for scrapbooks and our seasonal clothing. 

If you have read my blog for any length of time it will be of no surprise to you that I will be doing our little girl's room in a garden theme.  I want to give it an Chinese garden influence while maintaining a little girl feel.  I found this table runner at the great fair trade store I do visual merchandising for.   I bought two.  I am going to use them for cornices over the window and closet and it is my starting point for the room.

I think, at this point that I am going to paint the room, a peaceful calming jade green.  I am planning on a mural on the wall or walls as well as the ceiling.  I have yet to design all that.  I want it to be a haven or rather, her own slice of Eden.

I can't wait to get started but at the same time as soon as I do it will be one more thing that will make all of this more real to me and then I'll probably think about the wait more.  This is reality though so I may as well make it fun.

a follow up

I had an interesting week with the last post.  I had many people view the post but only 2 commented-- 1 positive, 1 person commented predatorily, (I'm making that a word), yes it was very negative, ... I would have published the comment that was submitted 4 times because the purpose of writing the post was to incite conversation but rather than address the conversation this particular respondent attacked my character.  I wasn't offended by the article in question, as my respondent assumed but I was playing the "devil's advocate" or more specifically the "adoption advocate".   

I did find a post about "adoptism" on another blog which refers to an article posted on the PACT website.  The simple point is that adoption has prejudice attached to it, be it good or bad.  And, well I know that it is the job of a reporter to report the facts, we all know that facts get left out everyday.  We don't know how tall the child in the article is, or his race or what kind of shoes he was wearing, because these are facts that are not important for this article.

Our language in everyday life and in the media changes over time.  Thanks in part to Gloria Steinem, women are no longer referred to using masculine pronouns. Imagine all the terms that used to appear in the paper referring to different racial groups.  They make me cower.  I know it is hard to keep up with the latest politically correct phrases of the day.  It can get so crazy sometimes that it can almost be humorous, like this article.  Thankfully our language is not static --what would we do without our peeps, bushisms or texting, we would just be grunting and groaning at each other about who gets first dibs on the fresh kill. 

Semantics maybe, but if it is going to affect my beautiful daughter's image of herself I am going to try to affect the change needed to help her stand tall and proud of who she is, where she came from, and how she became a part of our family.  Not only do I want her to be proud of being adopted I want to help her cope with questions and learn when that information is important and when it is not.

a son has lost a father

I came across an article from a local news source yesterday.  I usually just read the headlines posted on the station homepage but I clicked through to read the whole story.  Unfortunately, it was about a man getting killed in a freak motorcycle accident.  You will see why I am writing about this in my blog by reading the quote below.

"Owen was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the car, 27-year-old Michael Walton did not have any injuries. Police are still investigating. He leaves behind a wife and an adopted seven year old son."

                                                                                                                    by Casey J. Bortnick as it appears on RNews website

A seven year old son has lost his father.  This is all that matters here.  Why must he be identified as adopted?  Are the writers of this article trying to paint this person's death as more tragic by depicting the deceased as an even better person than average?  Is the son's life supposed to be read as more unfortunate because he has lost 2 fathers?  Does it matter?  This boy is a son, period. He need not be differentiated or singled out.  The way this child came into the family should not matter and certainly has no bearing on this story.  If you haven't guessed, this bugs me. 

Let's imagine a similar story... 38 year old mother killed by a bus was pronounced dead at the scene.  She leaves behind a husband and a 4 year old daughter that was born after 48 hours of grueling labor. 

I think adoption should be celebrated and viewed as a natural way to join a family but it does not need to define or differentiate a child every time they are introduced and certainly not on a public website.  Thoughts?

what next

In response to my good friend Julie,

"YAY YAY So, now what are you doing?  :) Do we get to see Pics of nursery items and stuff like that? Superwoman SUPERMOM? :) Julie"

I am posting a picture of the adorable dress and sweater I bought while shopping for her little bundle of joy that came home two months ago already.  I was focused on cute little, little girl clothes for her.  As I kept circling the sale rack I kept happening upon this sweet little gauzy dress with polka dots and a darling cotton lace trim with little capped sleeves.  I swore I would not buy anything for my little girl until our dossier was finished.  I would pass it by and then "find" it again as I kept circling the rack. I started feeling like a dog chasing my tail so finally I bit and the next thing I knew I came home with this dress and the little "Jackie O." sweater.  I just love that cowl collar.  So here is the picture in answer to your question.  I do have a couple other nursery items that I will post soon, it'll help me get into the mood.   

Right now, if I were to post pictures of the nursery people would run scared from my blog.  Right now it is home to my husband's good friend who has been staying with us for a couple days, and to all my scrapbooking stuff, photo albums, hubby's music stuff (sound familiar, Julie?), and a big person bed.

More to come...