Garden Variety Family

Doing what a thousand words could not.

The blog has been needing a design update, this image, the obvious choice.

wondering

As I go about my daily life engaged in the exciting to the mundane I sometimes just stop and wonder about the little girl who's fate is on a crash course with my own.  Probably not yet born, is her mother living in the highlands graced with those mythical peaks that we know through simplistic brush paintings, does she do back-breaking work in stepped rice fields that climb so exquisitely into the clouds?  Maybe she is from the vast plateaus of central China or running from stall to stall in the busy and vibrant markets that sound of motorbikes, honking cars and boisterous bargaining.  I will be forever tied to this woman but I will never know her.  Her age-old culture will give me my daughter for this I am both heart broken and grateful.  The miracle of life may not yet even be stirring inside her but we will be cognizant of each other someday through an innocent who will be thrust into a crazy world.  As sad as it can be, her fate, her mysterious life thread has already attached itself to me and in order to get to me she will be born half a world away.  Her life may be going through the greatest growth and change it will ever know while I am commuting, shopping, painting, sleeping -- whether I am thinking of her or not.  Then both of us will engage in the greatest cross-cultural exchange of human-kind.  How dare I bring her here where Saturday mornings sound of riding mowers?  I dare because I think I can give her both worlds, I think I can bring her to her embarking point where she will find those fateful experiences that will drive her to wherever she may go.  No matter her feelings about either of her mothers I hope she someday realizes we both did the best we could and whether she grew inside us or not, whether she lives with us or not, whether she calls us mom or not, together but separately we tried to give her the best launch in life we could.  Has she been conceived?   Is she on the other side of that canal that will bear her into a doubt she doesn't know how to have yet?  Is she ready for this journey?  Am I?

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!!

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.

the big let down, excitement

Well, we just had our home visit.  It was a bit anticlimactic.  I cleaned for a week and a half, purged closets, drawers, rooms.  We have piles of stuff for Goodwill, recycling, garbage.  My house is reorganized and rearranged --revitalized!  I like my house more than I ever have.  I knew they were just coming to the house to confirm it exists and that we have room for a little one.  But... I used it as the impetus to get things done.  So, yes, I am glad I did it but social worker was here for only a half an hour.  She collected paperwork from us and took the 5 minute tour.  That's it.  She did comment how she liked my decorating style.  Good enough for me!  So it was a let down, but now things are really in motion and the excitement about the journey we are embarking on is starting to set in.

accepted

Today I went to pick up our marriage certificate.  Our birth certificates arrived as well.  We didn't pay for priority handling and they arrived sooner than the priority handling guarantee.

After arriving home there was a message from Lindsey at Great Wall saying that our application has been accepted!  Tears of joy...quietly I'd been afraid the gauntlet of reviewers would deem us unsuitable to be parents.  Rationally, I know this is ridiculous, but when your fate is in someone else's hands....

So, let the paper chase begin!

To our little soul not yet born in China, mommy and daddy are one step closer. 

we did it!

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" ~ Chinese proverb

Hubby and I finally did it.  We completed step one.  We decided on an agency, filled out our initial application for our adoption and mailed it!  I had such a busy day yesterday, that the application kept sitting around waiting to be sent.  I was kinda afraid to send it so I let my business be my excuse.

Dropping that application in the mailbox is initiating a chain of events that will take 2 years to complete!

It is such a deliberate way to start a family!  There is no little symbol that magically appears when you pee on a strip of paper that reveals the results of yummy passion that occurred a few weeks ago. 

Our seed is being driven, flown unstoppable by the USPS to Texas to be fertilized (hopefully) by Great Wall China Adoption.  There in lies my fear, I am afraid they may not accept us. 

Maybe our net worth isn't enough.  I spent the past couple weeks trying to get those figures together, trying to guesstimate as best I could the things that make us worthy to have a child. 

In my heart I believe we have a daughter already.  She is concieved in our minds and our hearts and not yet even thought of by her birth mother, but we have stepped onto that great wall that will bring us to her.  When we are done crossing the time and distance to her, I am sure it will feel like we have walked ever step of China's great barrier that will not keep us from her but rather lead us to her.