Random thoughts and questions

To begin with, I was bowled over by the encouraging comments I received about continuing this blog. You guys are so nice. Thank you! I imagine I will keep it up as long as I can think of stupid, useless stuff to pass along. That's my ministry. I'm so proud.

Second topic... I have to find a dress to wear to my son's wedding in June. The bride's colors are clover green and tea rose pink. She is wearing ivory. The bridesmaids are in clover. The flower girls (Livie and Bri) are in ivory and pink. The other moms (remember, I'm the groom's stepmom) have chosen full length, formal dresses. One dress is chocolate brown and the other is a burgundy/reddish color. My question to you, based on the information I've provided, is: How long will it take me to cry in the dressing room?

Not really. I'm wondering if anyone out there is good at the whole color coordinating thing and can help me not commit a major wedding faux pas. I know orange and purple are probably out. But other than that, I need help. What color goes with green, pink, brown, and burgundy????? Is there a color that goes with all of those? I'm thinking something rose-ish or that beige-y champagne color? Anyone... anyone?

Topic #3... Homeschool issues. Evan is leaning towards staying home for his freshman year like Michael did, and not going to public HS until 10th grade, if at all. If he's going to stay home, I will need to make some curriculum changes and am open to suggestions. Anyone have suggestions for high school? Particularly Eng., Hist., and Sci/Biology. We're happy with the math we're using, although it's expensive. Evan is not a real self-motivated type of person and I need to stay on top of him to make sure he's doing his work (except for math). This makes it hard with the 3 little ones who will be starting 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades next year. I can't spend all day at the table with Evan, because the little ones must have my time and attention, too. If any of you are homeschooling moms (or know someone who is) and are juggling different grade levels like this- dealing with both HS and elem.- I'd love to hear how you're doing it and what you're using. Also, if you have experience dealing with a kid who constantly needs gentle, loving "motivational assistance" I'll take advice on that, too. You would think that after 13 years of homeschooling, I would feel like an old pro. I don't. Each kid throws me for a loop. They're all so different. What works for one kid is hated by another. I'm beginning to think I'll never feel like I know what I'm doing.

You know... This whole raising kids thing is turning out to be considerably harder than I was led to believe it would be during the orientation.

Happy Birthday, Olivia!

My precious girl, my BFF, is 8 years old today.

I love you so very much and hope today is a very happy and special day for you!

As much as I love all your brothers and enjoy having sons, I was really looking forward to having a little girl to love. Someone to dress up in pretty little dresses, cute little pigtails, toenails to paint... When I found out you were a girl, I was so happy and couldn't wait to have a daughter to share those things with! I started buying pink, pink, pink the day I heard you were coming- You had more clothes and hair doo-dads before you were born than you would ever be able to wear, but I was too excited to care. After years of buying little boy things, shopping for you was so much fun! I think that's why you enjoy shopping so much- you were in training to be a Power Shopper since before you were born.

Since it's your birthday, I'll tell you one of your favorite stories; the story of the day you were born... As soon as you were born, you were screaming like a crazy woman. You were handed to your Daddy, who held you up to my face so I could see you. I kissed your little face and said, "Hello, my beautiful baby girl! I'm your Mama. You're alright. Mama's right here." As soon as you heard me, you stopped crying. You became calm and quiet in an instant and listened to me talking to you. You knew your Mama's voice. You have had my heart since that moment and you have never let it go.

You had a ton of dark hair and the fattest, cutest little cheeks. You were beautiful then, and you are beautiful now, inside and out! Daddy and the nurses took you out of the room to get you cleaned up while the doctor worked on putting Mama's tummy back together. Soon, the nurse came back in and shouted, "ELEVEN TEN!!!" Everyone in the room started oohing and ahhhing and laughing. I said, "What's eleven ten?" I was clueless! It never occured to me that my first daughter, my precious, dainty, tiny little peanut could possibly weigh ELEVEN pounds and TEN ounces... But you DID! You were bigger than any of your 4 brothers before you. You beat my previous biggest baby by a whopping two whole pounds! Way to show those boys how it's done, Liv! You smoked 'em!

This is the day we took you home from the hospital. I was so proud to be going home with my gorgeous daughter. Daddy was, too. It looks as if Dad is twisting you into an uncomfortable position, but I promise you didn't mind. You were conked out.

In this picture you look a lot like my baby pictures. Look how dark your hair was!

Those beautiful blue eyes!

The Birthday Girl

Is it normal to leave Target feeling traumatized?

Because yesterday I left Target feeling traumatized. I've often left Wal-mart feeling stupefied, disturbed, sickened, regretful, and even violated, but I have never once left Target feeling traumatized.

Here's the deal: I was shopping (by myself, and how often does that happen?) at Target, minding my own business and having a fabulous day. I stopped at a shelf to look at something. When I was done, I grabbed my cart and wheeled back out into the aisle. The store was fairly quiet and I thought I was alone in the aisle. All of a sudden- WHAM! Something slams into my leg. I turn around to see what just hit me and, lo and behold, it was a W.O.U.S (A Woman Of Unusual Size. Have you not seen Princess Bride?). A big girl, is what I'm saying. She was riding on one of those scooter thingies and she just crashed into my leg. I mean no disrespect to big girls. After all, I am one. Many of us are lovely people. This one was not.

I IMMEDIATELY said, "Oh, I am SO sorry. Please excuse me!" And I really was sorry. I was embarrassed. I didn't hear her coming and she was behind me, so obviously I didn't see her. But she starts shaking her head, huffing and puffing, rolling her eyes, sneering and glaring at me like I leaped out in front of her scooter thingy on purpose. That's my idea of sabotaging a W.O.U.S.'s day, I guess. Maybe it was rather rude of me, not having eyes in the back of my head and all. I don't know.

Her reaction made me a bit mad since it was just an accident and I did sincerely apologize. As she sped off on her scooter thingy at a rate of approximately 1.5 miles per hour, still shaking her head and huffing, I was feeling pretty ticked.
So I muttered, "Wow, what a sweetie," kind of under my breath but not really (this was unwise).
She yells over her shoulder, "Yeah, aren't you though, YOU B**CH!!!!"
I was totally stunned; standing there with my mouth open...

Traum-uh-tized.

Her husband, who was walking way ahead of her (though I can't imagine why) must have asked her if she'd hit someone. I couldn't hear him, but the next thing she shouted was, "Yeah, but only because THIS B**CH stepped right out in front of me!!!!"

Let's interrupt our story for a quick recap, shall we?

1. I get rammed by a scooter.
2. I apologize for getting rammed by a scooter.
3. I get cussed at for being rammed by a scooter.

Can you believe this? I'd just received two B words in the span of two minutes. That hadn't happened since my wedding day, during Darrell's vows. Muwahahah! Just kidding. So I was half hoping she would turn around and say something else to me. I was READY to rumble by that time. I don't know what I would have said or done, but I do know I can outrun a scooter thingy travelling at 1.5 miles per hour, so I was feeling pretty brave.

The gal's husband must have been feeling pretty brave, too. He said something else to her (I didn't hear what) that wasn't pleasant, because next she says to him, "OH EFF YOU (only she didn't say "EFF")!!! I decided that was waaaay more hate and hostility than I was prepared to handle, and if he had the good sense to walk ahead of her and her scooter thingy, maybe I should take that as a clue. So I turned and left.

By the way, she looked so much like Tiny Tim it was scary. Does anyone remember Tiny Tim? I am telling you, this is HER! This is the exact look the lady gave me, except her lip was all snarled up and her teeth were showing, further adding to my trauma...

And her teeth looked like Tiny Tim's, too. But not in a good, smiling way. Picture this face looking up at you, but with a hateful sneer in place of the smile. I had to sleep with my closet light on last night, you guys. Seriously.

So... How was your day?

Adoption Status: Stalled

According to my little tickers at the bottom of the page, it's been one year since deciding to begin our adoption and 3 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days since our dossier went to Vietnam.

As I've told you before, I'm sometimes asked why I don't ever mention our adoption progress on our adoption blog. Where are the updates? My answer is always the same: There is no progress. I have nothing to report, so I talk about the idiotic details of my boring house frau life instead. It's depressing to keep trying to talk about an adoption that I'm beginning to fear will never happen.

Yes, we are still trying to adopt. Yes, we still want to add one more child to our family. In fact, I'm currently having the mid-life-crisis-baby-cravings so bad I can hardly stand it sometimes. Which is exactly why I don't like to talk about it. My "baby" is turning 7 in a week. I've never, in 18 years of motherhood, had a kid that old before without a baby or toddler coming along behind him. That's a lot of years caring for little ones. Bottles, diapers, Sesame Street... That's what "normal" is to me. Babies is what I do! lol. So this feels pretty foreign. I don't like it.

For family and friends that don't know, the situation between the US and Vietnam continues to look bleak. As I said last time I recapped this, no one knows for sure yet what will happen after September 1st when the agreement between our countries expires, but each new statement issued and every new bit of news sounds like another nail in the coffin. It's not looking good. I'm feeling increasingly hopeless, although I'm trying not to. For those interested, details on the latest scoop can be found here at Bring Our Children Home, and Christina has written about the most recent turn of events over at VVAI.

On a personal level, our agency has still NEVER received a single referral, EVER, from Vietnam. So even if the Vietnam situation turned around overnight, and all is suddenly resolved, we are with an agency that is having trouble establishing a good working relationship in Vietnam. It's very frustrating. We never hear from them. They, I'm sure, are just like me and have nothing to report, so I can't fault them for that. We have handed over thousands of dollars to them, which I'm sure would be difficult to get back, and we still have no idea what we will do in the event that Vietnam closes. It's scary.

In my last conversation with our coordinator, we discussed our other options. She said they are strongly encouraging their VN families to "dual enroll" in another program. If we chose to do that, it doesn't mean we would end up with two concurrent adoptions. We'd enroll in two and go with whichever one gives a referral first, then the dossier would be withdrawn from the other country. "We" (read that as Darrell) aren't sure "we" want to do that, because "we" want to wait to see what happens. Apparently "we" are very patient people who like waiting.

I believe we qualify for: Ethiopia, Kaz, (possibly) Russia, (possibly) China special needs, and domestic African American.

Our hearts were so set on Vietnam that we are having trouble even trying to seriously consider and talk about what we'll do. With all of these, there are so many factors to consider and drawbacks to each one. To make it all extra fun trying to decide, I've recently heard rumors of trouble brewing in Kaz and Ethiopia, too- although I don't have any reliable information on either one.

I would do the domestic AA program in a heartbeat, because I do love the idea of getting to have a baby baby again; a tiny newborn would be wonderful! But we have to be completely honest and consider what's best for the child, not what's best for the mommy. We live in a ridiculously small town that is far from diverse, racially speaking. We know people (quite well) who could make the life of our AA or Ethiopian child "difficult." I'm trying to be delicate here, but you get what I'm saying, right? There are idiots out there. Some of the same people who fawn and fuss over how cute my Chinese daughter is may not feel so warm and fuzzy about my AA baby, which brings up the interesting topic of the degrees of racism so many of us carry around every day, but that's a whole other post. Anyway, am I prepared to handle those idiots on a daily basis? Is it fair to bring a child home knowing they will have to deal with those idiots every single day? I just don't know how I feel about all that yet.

I like the idea of bringing home a special needs child who may have otherwise not found a family. Darrell and I both were sure, going into this, that we wanted an Asian child, mainly so that Bri could have that common link with her sibling- so that would be a point in the China SN column. However, how serious of a special need we feel able to handle is another matter. And we're not even completely sure we would qualify for that program.

Our main drawbacks with the Kaz program are: 1. Blind referrals, and 2. 6 weeks in country. I don't even know who would care for our kids for 3 weeks in Vietnam. Who on earth wants to be responsible for 6 kids for 6 weeks?

The biggest thing that's keeping us from acting on any of the other choices is what I said above; the fact that Darrell really wants to wait it out and see what happens with Vietnam. He feels that we believed at the time God was leading us in our decision, so we should believe it now, regardless of what the circumstances tell us. We need to be faithful and see what happens. OK. I guess that's what we'll do then. I do believe God led us into this adoption. I do believe He has another child in store for us. I just don't feel as confident that it was God who chose Vietnam. Maybe that was just us. But, Darrell is right. We need to be faithful and patient. Oh, yea! A chance to show off my strong points... :0

So there you go. There's your adoption update! In all honesty, I've been having serious thoughts about stopping this blog for a while now. I'm not a blogger. I never intended to start a blog to talk about nothing in particular, and since the only adoption news I can give is basically a rehash of a previous update, I'm struggling to find a reason to keep doing it. There are plenty of adoptee blogs, parenting blogs, motherhood blogs, etc., all doing it better. So I don't know. We'll see what happens on that, too, I guess.