Our Family Journey

I'M SO EXCITED!!

I talked to Lidia today and she said that Flora had her 2nd DNA appointment today. I'm so glad that our attorney is taking advantage of the part of the process that she does have some control over and getting us finished up timely.

As of today, we are right on schedule and maybe a day or two ahead of the timeframe I posted below. Now we just have to wait for the confirmation that the DNA results have been recieved at the lab in North Carolina. Hopefully, they will arrive still this week. The doctors at the US Embassy in Guatemala City send the samples in batches and they don't send them every day, so they could have left GC today or they could still be there are will be sent on Tuesday or Wednesday. I won't know until the samples actually arrive at the lab.

Then we have to wait for the completion of the testing which is anywhere from a couple of days to a week or more. Why the discrepancy? Well, sometimes the samples need to have more than one test done on them in order to get an accurate reading. I'm no expert, but that is what I have gathered. Anyway, hopefully at this time next week, or Tuesday or Wednesday of next week the results will be on their way back to Guatemala. I will know when they get there. Thank goodness for Fed Ex and for tracking numbers!!

We are working feverishly around here preparing for Flora's arrival. I know...we've only had a year to prepare, but somehow it didn't really seem real until a couple of weeks ago. Flora's closet has her clothes now hung and ready for her to wear, her socks, tights and pajama's are folded neatly in her drawers and her crib is made up and ready to go. Truth be told, her crib has been ready for about a year and a half since it was ready for Maria and she has never slept one night in it...not one night!! I hope to have better luck with Flora!!

The curtains have been switched from Ducks to really girly bubble gum pink ones. The name above the closet used to say "Maria Rene", now the Rene has come down and it says, Maria Flora. In the middle of the two names is a cute flower clock. I will have to take a picture of their room tomorrow and post.

It's pretty girly...just the way I like it!! Of course, I had to get rid of the Duck curtains without Dave knowing, he was partial to the Ducks. He just doesn't want too much girl stuff as he thinks that these two are going to be his tom boys....what is he thinking?? I don't think Queen Maria is going to have anything to do with his tom boy dreams, although she does enjoy blowing in the duck call that he bought her. Can you believe he bought her a duck call?? Who buys a 2 year old girl a duck call?? Anyway, she likes it, but just because she thinks it's a toy. At least that's what I'm telling myself. The jury is still out on Flora and whether she will go with his secret desire to turn her into a boy, but if I have anything to do with it, she won't want to break a nail and therefore duck hunting will be out of the question!

I will post more in the next few days with news of the DNA samples arrival in the States. Hopefully, it won't be more than a few days.

In the meantime:

This is a great little story a forum friend found on a great website called Karen's Adoption Links & list of adoption listservs.

Mommie, How much did I cost?
By Mary G

The moment every adoptive parent dreads….right over the fish sticks, French fries and peas….the question I had been waiting to hear, just not so soon. Annelise (adopted from China four years ago, now age 6), coming up for air from the ketchup pool on her plate, looks at me with her dark eyes and asks “Mommie, how much did I cost?”

Me: “Cost? You didn’t cost a penny! Now eat your peas!” Situation handled. At least for now.

But let me think about this again. We are standing, Dave and I, on the shores of another “new” adventure. We are embarking on our 6th international adoption, bringing home another five year old boy from Taiwan.

So, besides the obvious monetary cost of the process, how much did you cost? There is no mystery where the question came from. It came from four years of you absorbing our frenetic paperwork gathering, fingerprint getting, notary signing, and budget deficit spending for the four other children that followed on your heels from China. Or, it might have come from Kindergarten, where the children are so worldly they know more about where babies come from than they do about Bob the Builder.

Annelise, your question briefly halted me in my onward rush for total enlightenment, acquired by getting 5 kids fed and bathed before 8 p.m. bedtime. Your question has simmered and bubbled in the back of my mind ever since. Together, you and I have gone through “you are adopted”, “you didn’t grow you in mommie's tummy”, “not all babies are born in China”, “yes, airplanes are to used for other things than getting babies from China” and “no, you can’t have more cookies before bed”.

So, Annelise, here is how much you cost:

* A feeling of willingly jumping off the top of a tall building with no clue on how to land safely. I think it’s called a Leap of Faith. I’ll let you know when I land.

* 1.5 pounds of paperwork

* Three vials of blood, one physical, 15 visits to the doctor’s office because the notary screwed up... again.

* Multiple social worker visits…are we there yet?

* At least 5 headaches from thinking up creative answers to questions there are no good answers to, such as: what will I do when I return home after work to a totally wrecked house, a husband snoring on the couch, walls decorated in rainbow patterns from glitter crayons, cat vomit in a connect-the-dots pattern from the kitchen to the living room, and a 16 month old in the middle of the kitchen making dinner out of a Oreo cookies.

* Two 14 hr plane rides.

* An overnight stay in Tokyo when we missed the connecting flight to Beijing

* A sleepless night in Tokyo brought on by really reading all the earthquake warnings on the back of the hotel room door.

* My first mommie moment when I learned what a being a mommie was all about after you threw up all the food I overfed you on the airplane (after bouncing you on my knee), after stripping you down to your diaper, after learning the airline blanket had not escaped the projectile vomiting, and after getting ready to rip the throat out of two smarmy airline hostesses who tried to ignore me asking for a blanket, while my child turned blue from the cold.

* At least two weeks of feeling like someone dropped off their child with me and forgot to come back and get her

* Two months of singing every rendition of “Rock-a-bye Baby” I could imagine for at least 2 hrs every night while I suffered from a terrible virus received from my trip to China, in the middle of the hottest summer on record in Northern Michigan

* The cartilage in my knees as I learning to crawl out of your nursery with out making any of the floor boards creak, knowing full well you were still awake, but going hoarse from all that singing.

* Learning how to stop dead in my tracks and pretend I was still laying on the floor sleeping next to your crib when you popped your head up because I missed one lousy, noisy, **** floor board.

* Experiencing the joy of eating a whole quart of strawberries by the side of the road with my 18 month old daughter, because you didn’t know when to stop eating, and I was having too much fun to know any better.

* Finding out there was only one true color and that was pink, pink, nothing but pink, so help me God.

* Finally understanding that dresses are better than pants, with tights please, the ones with the frilly bottoms, and what do you mean they don’t come in 5T?

* The realization that no matter how many children I adopt, no matter how old I get, you and your brothers and sisters will never, ever fill the hole created by the two babies that I gave birth to who died because they were too young to live.
And while you can never replace them, they can never replace you either.

Annelise, you cost me everything I never knew I had inside me to give. You cost me the wall I built around my heart when my babies died, the patience I so sorely hoarded because it was in such short supply, the personal space I thought I required, and my unceasing quest for answers from God who finally just plunked you down in my lap and told me “Look! This is all you need to know!”

That, Annelise, is how much you cost. Now, go tell your Kindergarten class that Bob the Builder doesn’t hold a candle to your mother.