The nursery is started!

I made these curtains a couple of months ago, and they are hanging in what is currently our guest room but will someday be the nursery. Even though they don't match anything else in the room right now, it is nice to see them hanging there as a reminder of what the room will someday be. I have held off making anything else for the room since we aren't quite ready yet to give up the guest room, but I think I would like to start making some other things - maybe a dust ruffle or a diaper stacker - and put them away. I have all the coordinating fabric and all the patterns and plans in my head for wall quilts, dust ruffles and the like, but I really haven't been in too much of a hurry to work on it. Plus, getting a chance to work on any of it with an almost five year old is next to impossible. Anyway, I wanted to at least post the curtains. I also came across the hardware that we will need to put the crib back together when the time comes. Brian had neatly packed it away in a small box and clearly labeled it, but I hadn't seen it since we moved. I found it the other day, so now we are all set to put up the crib whenever we need to!

One more "B"

We got one last gift from our B swap, and this one came from our friends in France! They sent this adorable onesie bodysuit. I love it! I can't wait until we have a little person to wear it! Thanks so much!

The "B" swap

I am part of a wonderful online group for families whose paperwork was sent to China around the same time that ours was. It is a great source of information and comfort as we wait for our children. One of the fun things that this group does is organize "swaps", often with themes. I just took part in the "B" swap. Families who signed up for it sent baby items starting with the letter "B" to the other families who had signed up. This was SO much fun, and we received such creative and fun things. This is the photo of all the great books, bibs, booties, barrettes, blankets, and (lady)bugs baby lotion and hairbows that were sent to us for the baby. Thanks "B" swappers!

Kisses to China

How cute is this? The other day I was driving Amelia to daycare in the morning, and there was a beautiful pink sunrise. I pointed it out to her, and she said, "I know Mommy, do you know what that is? All the pink clouds are the kisses I sent to my sister in China."

Baby Names

I think we are back to the drawing board with names - again. We had a lot of mixed feedback about the name Clara, enough to make me doubt it as a choice. Also, I discovered that my great-grandmother's given first name was actually Eliza, not Mary as we had always known her. That is a long story and not one that I am comfortable sharing on this blog, but suffice it to say that although I had always known that she was adopted, I have been able to learn a lot in the past few months and I am completely amazed at what she went through as a kid. It makes me have a completely new level of respect for the woman that I had SO much respect for in the first place. Anyway, finding out all that I did, it put Eliza back at the top of my list for names. Brian likes Audra and Bailey. Amelia still likes Elena. I am not sure if we will ever agree on a name, and I feel really ridiculous every time I post that I have changed my mind about a name again, so I have decided to post a running list of current names that we like on the column of this blog. That way, I can change it as much as I feel like, add names and take names off, and maybe at the end of our wait, there will be a name that we all like! At any given time, this will be more of a list of names that I like, and not necessarily names that anyone else in the family likes! I am still amazed that Brian and I have such very different taste in names because we have similar taste in just about everything else! We are open to suggestions! Maybe I am trying too hard - the cover of my Baby Name Wizard book is actually starting to fall off from overuse!

Happy Fall!

I feel like it has really been forever since I have updated this blog. We've been busy! Here are a couple of photos of the latest happenings...

Amelia and her buddy "L" on a giant pumpkin. Can you believe that this thing is real???
Doctor Amelia and her friend "C" getting ready to head out for Trick or Treating

Amelia's readoption

In late October, we completed Amelia's readoption. Although it isn't necessary and our adoption was final in China, we decided to go through the readoption process here to add an extra layer of legality, and to legally change her name from her Chinese name to her American name. We now have a US issued birth certificate as well. The process went well, we had a wonderful lawyer, and I love this photo of the three of us taken at the courthouse!

Disney!

It has taken me a while to get around to posting about this, but a few weeks ago we took a wonderful family vacation to Disneyworld. Amelia has asked to go back every day since we have been home, and is lobbying for our next vacation to be "10 days" at Disney. She really had the time of her life. The highlights for her were the pool at the hotel, which had a very cool water slide, and meeting her hero Mulan. As you can see from the photos, she spent a full day in the parks dressed like Mulan, and when we actually met Mulan, "big" Mulan was so sweet to Amelia that I could have hugged her. For those of you who might also be looking for her when you travel to Disney, we met Mulan in the China pavilion in Epcot.

It was such a great trip for all of us, and great to be able to spend so much time together as a family.

Happy Autumn Moon Festival!

Tomorrow night will be the Autumn Moon Festival, the second largest and second most important festival in China, and a favorite in our house. For the second year in a row, Amelia and I have attempted to make our own mooncakes, although every Chinese person I had talked to about it says that no one makes their own, they all buy them. Since we were on vacation this year, we didn't get a chance to get to our local Asian market to buy them, so we made them again. They turned out much better than last year, but still are a long way from the beautiful mooncakes you can buy. (The ones in the photo are NOT the ones that I made!) At least we have fun doing it, and Amelia really looks forward to helping me with them.

So we are looking forward to eating them tomorrow night, reading a story about Chang E, watching the full moon, and thinking of loved ones who are far away from us who might be looking at the same moon. And of course, we will think about and wonder about Amelia's birthfamily and think about our little sister/daughter that we are waiting to meet.

Happy Moon Festival!

Dolls

I just got an email from American Girl announcing the release of their new historical doll. Parents of children adopted from China have been requesting that AG come out with a Chinese doll for this series, perhaps telling the story of some of the early Chinese immigrants. The new doll is Julie, a caucasian girl of divorced parents living in 1970's San Francisco. However, I was really excited to see that they have also released another historical doll, Julie's best friend Ivy, who appears to be Chinese-American! She even has a Chinese New Year's dress available for purchase. I am looking forward to getting the new catalog and checking her out! She comes with a book as well, and I am interested in finding out what it is about. She is wearing her Chinese New Year's dress on the cover. They also have an Asian doll available in their Just Like You line, and Amelia seems to point that one out when we look through the catalog. As long as we are talking about AG, I should mention that the only baby doll that Amelia will play with is her Asian Bitty Baby doll. It is also the only doll she has that she has named - Isabel - which tells you how special this doll is to her.

For those of you who might be wondering why this is a big deal, I have always been a firm believer in providing my daughter with dolls to play with that look like she does. She does have caucasian dolls and African-American dolls as well, but they hardly get played with. She almost always chooses, on her own, to play with the dolls that look like her. In fact, she has a set of Ariel and Prince Eric dolls from the Little Mermaid where Ariel is wearing her wedding gown. They never got played with until last week when Amelia decided that one of her Mulan dolls was much better suited to marrying Eric, and Ariel was pushed aside. Mulan is currently wearing Ariel's wedding gown (and yes, it is a bit strange to see our brave hero Mulan in puffy sleeves and beaded brocade!). Amelia has a blonde Barbie, but also has a Yu Sai Wa Wa doll (Chinese Barbie-type dolls) and two Mulan dolls, and they are the dolls she plays with. (By the way, Amelia has no Asian Barbie-brand dolls because the company stopped making them. Boo Hiss!)

My point is that I have often really had to go out of my way to find a variety of Asian dolls for Amelia to play with (it isn't as easy as it sounds since there are very few companies who make affordable play dolls that come in an Asian version). Fisher-Price consistently comes out with Asian versions of their dolls, but they are difficult to find in the stores near us. I have had to order them directly from the Fisher-Price website. But it turns out that it does seem to be important to her to have these dolls to play with. Let's hope that more companies will recognize the importance of providing little girls with dolls that look like they do and will start to produce many multicultural versions of their dolls!

Seven months since LID and an upcoming milestone

I know my last post was about the wait being slow, but I had a realization today... The total time we waited for Amelia from our DTC date (not log-in date since our agency never gave us that date, but back then it wasn't so important since China matched whole months) was 8 months and 9 days. Today marks seven months since log in and tomorrow will mark 8 months since our dossier went to China for Clara. In just over one week's time, we will have officially waited longer for Clara than for Amelia. It just seems like a milestone that we should mention. We are actually marking that day by doing something REALLY fun (I will share when it is over!), and it is sort of funny to me that it was something we planned months ago, and it just happens to coincide with the first day of the official longer wait for Clara. Part of me really feels like this will mark the beginning of the real wait for me since we made it through this long of a wait before. I am not sure what the proper way to observe the beginning of a much-longer wait is, but it seems like we should be doing something fun instead of feeling discouraged, and we will be! I can't wait to post photos!!!!

This is painfully slow.....

Today I saw on the Rumor Queen site that China has finished matching LIDs (log-in dates) through November 25th, 2005. That means that they have only matched four days of LIDs again this month. Even more depressing is the other stat on RQ... apparently China has only matched about four months of LIDs in the past year. Just for comparison's sake, when we were waiting for Amelia, referrals were sent as full month LID batches every month. I am keeping my fingers crossed that things will speed up again after the Olympics, or maybe even once we get into 2008. Only time will tell, but it is getting harder to be patient.

For those of you keeping track of our baby name saga, we have changed our minds yet again (really, I am not usually this indecisive, and this has been a very frustrating process and embarrassing as well since I keep posting a different name every month or so!) First, let me explain.... I have a new hobby - geneaology - and have found some really interesting things out about my family, and also have been able to put some pieces together. I had a box of photos of children taken in the early 1900's and I couldn't figure out who they were. I finally figured it out with the help of ancestry.com (and the fact that their names were all on the back of the photos - thanks Great Aunt Emeline!) It turns out that they are all my Great Grandmother's cousins. Anyway, through all of this research, I found that one of the names that was on our list of potential names actually had some significance in my famiy and was used in one form or another for middle names of several people. And then I found out that this same name was also the first name of Brian's great grandmother. This is exactly what we were looking for, a name that we all like that has family significance for both of us. So our frontrunner name is now ....

Clara Elizabeth.

I am pretty sure that this one is the one, but Jenn - who is going to make us letters for the baby's room that spell out her name - says that she is going to make one of each letter of the alphabet, just in case we change our minds again. :)

I am so ready for a speed up in referrals!

Amelia's lantern quilt

I went to a quilt retreat on Friday and Sunday last week, and I actually finally finished the quilt top for Amelia's lantern quilt!!! Hooray!!! This is a quilt that I collected all asian or asian-themed fabrics for, and for whatever reason I decided to make each fabric square into a lantern, which I appliqued. Well, I literally spent 7 hours doing nothing but applique on Friday at the retreat, but it was totally worth it once I put the quilt top together. I think I have worked longer and harder on this quilt than on any other quilt I have ever made. I really think it is gorgeous, and I am so happy to have it to give to Amelia as a keepsake.

One Year Ago....

we started our paperwork for this adoption one year ago today!

Amelia's One Hundred Good Wishes Quilt

A few weeks ago I discovered that I had a bin full of one hundred good wishes fabric pieces from when I swapped for Amelia that I apparently had forgotten about. I have been working on a lantern quilt for her with 100 asian-themed fabrics that I collected for her, so I must have put the others aside and then forgotten that they were there (after all, I did collect them back in 2003). Anyway, when I counted them, I found that I had just over 100 more assorted quilt squares! (I must have been swapping like crazy!). All of the wishes are in a scrapbook that Amelia loves to look through, but for some reason I stored those fabric squares and didn't remember that they were there. Anyway, I am so proud to say that I put 100 of them into a quilt top for Amelia last week and it looks awesome. I will take a picture of it and post it when I can. I am planning to add the few leftover squares to the backing so that they all get used in the quilt. Now I just need to find the time to quilt it!

Back to the drawing board with names....

Well, we are right back where we started with names for our mei mei. We were all pretty satisfied with the name Elena, but then discovered that yet another family member named their daughter Elena. There are now Elena's on both my and Brian's side of the family, and I can't see adding another one to the mix. Brian has vetoed the name Eliza Clare (after my great-grandmother). The only thing we have agreed on is this - we both like the nickname Evie (ee-vee). There are only a handful of names that can use the nickname Evie, and most of them either are way too popular right now or they are names we don't like. We are considering Genevieve.

If anyone has any suggestions for names that aren't too popular (with or without the nickname Evie), please share them. We need the help!

Just some updates

Really there isn't much going on in our little adoption world. Just lots of waiting, which most of the time I manage by keeping busy. However, today I was on the phone with a co-worker from our main office who just recently returned from maternity leave and she asked how our adoption was coming along. When I told her that we probably wouldn't hear anything until 2010, she started to laugh, obviously thinking that I was trying to make a joke. I had to assure her that I wished I was kidding, but that things have slowed down and we really are looking at a 3+ year wait. I think she felt really sorry for me, which isn't what I want either. I told her we were just trying to put it on the back burner and not focus too much on it (but of course, we are!). Luckily it seems like after I tell people how long we will be waiting, they sort of forget that we are adopting at all, so at least people aren't constantly asking me whether we have heard anything yet.

In other news, I find myself looking at baby names again. I am just not sure about Elena, although I think it is a beautiful name. I also still like Adeline and Eliza, as well as some others. Maybe we will just have to wait to see her little face before we decide!

Friends of ours are in China now preparing to meet their new daughter Heather for the first time. I can't wait to see those Gotcha photos!!!

The Karate Kid

Amelia has wanted to take karate lessons for a very long time. A few weeks ago, my brother Austin was testing for his high red belt, and we were at the dojo to watch him. I entered Amelia in a drawing to win three free months of karate lessons, and guess what? She won! She has been so excited about starting her lessons, and tonight was her second lesson. She got her white belt tonight, and she is so proud of herself. I have been amazed at how positive the lessons are and how much the kids really seem to get out of each one. The other kids in her class really seem to match her (high) energy level. The instructors seem to work on building integrity and self-confidence as much as teaching technique, and all of the instructors are wonderful with kids. I can picture our family being involved with karate for a long time to come. Plus, she looks so cute in the uniform!

100 Good Wishes

I joined the 100 Good Wishes Quilt square swap with my January DTC yahoo group (a group for families whose paperwork went to China around the time that ours did), and I have to say that I have never enjoyed a swap as much as this one. The wishes and fabric have all been beautiful, and I have loved getting every single one of them. Amelia has me read each wish to her when we open the mail each day, and I think she is as excited about it as I am. I think it has inspired me to start working on some of the projects I have sitting around. In the fall I was in a flannel swap, so I think this week I will turn the squares from that swap into a rag quilt. It won't be very big, but it will be a nice cuddle blanket for Elena.

Red Threads and Forget-Me-Nots

When we waited for Amelia, I often got "signs" that everything was going OK with the adoption. Sometimes they were just little things, like running into an adoptive family at just the right moment, but sometimes they were really amazing. During our wait for Amelia, I became obsessed with giraffes. It made no sense to me at all, and I even commented to Brian once about my unreasonable obsession with giraffes, since I had really never given them much thought before. At one point I actually woke up during the night thinking about a stuffed giraffe that I had seen weeks before in a store, and I absolutely had to get it the following day. I bought drawings of giraffes for her room, blankets with giraffes on them... the list went on and on. When we got her referral and enlarged her photos to share with family, I could clearly see that her little shirt had tiny little giraffes all over it.

Some folks in the adoption community would call these "red threads". There is a Chinese belief that an invisible red thread connects those that are destined to meet and grow shorter as they get closer to meeting one another. This belief actually stems from a wedding tradition in which the bride and groom are joined by red ribbon at various stages of the ceremony, but has been used by the adoption community as a way to explain coincidences like shared birthdates between the child and other loved ones. We have had too many coincidences, and heard of other families who have had similar coincidences in their own adoption journeys, to completely ignore them. (My personal favorite: a family that we know kept asking their older daughter what they should name her younger sister that they were waiting for, and the older daughter always answered "Boy", despite the family explaining to her that "Boy" is not a name, and especially not a girl's name. When they got their referral, their new daughters name translated to something like "Beautiful Boy". Strange but true!)

So because of all of this, maybe I am more willing to see signs in Elena's adoption, although there haven't been too many yet. I wanted to share this one since at the very least it made me smile. I have been feeling discouraged by the long wait ahead of us, and I have questioned whether we have made the right decision. At one point last week I thought to myself "Maybe we should just forget this whole thing". At that very moment, Brian came into the room and said "Hey, some of those plants that you got from Chris and planted yesterday have flowers on them already. They have little bright blue flowers on them. What are they?" I smiled and said, "Oh, those must be the Forget-Me-Nots" My friend that gave me the plants for my garden purposely chose plants that were not ready to open and flower yet since she thought they would have a better chance of surviving a transplant from her garden, so it was odd that they opened a day after I had planted them in my yard, and stranger still that Brian would choose the very moment that I was most discouraged to tell me that they were in bloom. But the best part is that they are forget-me-nots. Call me crazy, but it seemed like a little message from the universe telling me not to give up, and that Elena will join our family if we are just patient.

How long will we wait????

It looks like China has sent 6 days of referrals this month. Last month it was a measly two days. The positive thing for us about this month's referral batch is that our friends are expecting their referral this month (last month they missed it by a day in what must have been the smallest batch of referrals in the history of Chinese adoption). So what does this mean for us? It isn't easy to predict. The only predictable part of international adoption, or adoption in general I guess, is that it will be unpredictable. Still, I am finding it difficult to imagine what our wait will end up being. Even if China starts to send two weeks worth of referrals each month (and they haven't sent that many in a while), our wait could easily approach three years. Amelia has been home with us for a little over three years, and that seems like a lifetime ago. I am really having trouble wrapping my mind around a wait that long. When we started the paperwork for this adoption, I really wanted to time it so that we wouldn't have two in daycare at the same time. This seems ridiculous to me now because Amelia may be in school for a year or two before we ever see her sister. A few months ago I bought some medicine to take to China with us on this trip since it was something that I had trouble finding the last time we were packing. The expiration date is in early 2010, and I figured that it made sense to buy it when I saw it since we would surely be happily settled in at home with Elena long before 2010. Now it might actually expire before we go.
We want another child, Amelia desperately wants a sister, and we want them to share a cultural heritage. Our only choice at this point is to wait and keep our fingers crossed that everything speeds up for all of us who are waiting.

Letterboxing

Jilly-Bean!

We found treasure!

We went to visit our friends this past weekend and picked up a new hobby that is fun for the whole family - letterboxing! Basically there are letterboxes hidden all over the place, and you can find clues to find letterboxes in your own area by visiting atlasquest.com or letterboxing.org and typing in the name of your city/town. The clues read somewhat like a treasure map, and when you find the letterbox that you are looking for, it will usually contain a rubber stamp, an inkpad and a log book. You bring your own rubber stamps, leave a stamp in the notebook in the letterbox with your stamp, make a stamp in your own logbook using the rubber stamp in the letterbox you have just found to prove that you found it, and then put everything back where you found it so someone else can find it later. To Amelia and her buddy Liam, it was like a hunt for buried treasure, and I think they both really enjoyed it. I think it is also fair to say that my friend Jenn and I are also hooked on this new hobby. I can just imagine how much I would have loved it as a kid.

The rest of the weekend was great as well. Our friends Jenn and Mike adopted their daughter Jillian (aka Jilly-Bean) from Korea in January, and Brian and Amelia finally got a chance to meet her this weekend. Amelia is completely in love with her, sings songs about her, and now is a little mad that her friends Liam and Carly both have their little sisters home and she has to wait. For me, Jillian reminds me that this long wait will be completely worth it in the end!

Happy Easter!

Today Amelia and I went to the zoo for their Easter Egg Hunt and then for Lunch with the Easter Bunny. We had gone to Breakfast with the Bunny at the Zoo many times, but this was the first time that we went for an Easter Egg Hunt. Well, we never got the instruction sheet with the rules on it, and Amelia quickly filled her basket with eggs. As I looked around, I noticed that no other kids had nearly as many eggs as she did, so I started to tell her that I thought maybe we should put some of the eggs back. Then I started to see parents reading from a white sheet of paper, and I started to get suspicious. We went back inside, and I managed to find one of the white sheets of paper that had been left on a table. It turns out that we were only supposed to gather six eggs. Can you see the number of eggs Amelia had in her basket? There must have been thirty! Luckily, Amelia is really good about following rules that are written down, so when I read her the rule sheet, she happily went back outside and put her eggs back, counted out six, and went back inside to trade in her eggs for candy. I can just imagine what other parents were thinking when they saw me letting her go crazy with gathering the eggs! I have no idea how we completely missed the rule sheets, but we will know better for next time.
It was so cold here today (predicted to be colder on Easter this year than it was on Christmas!)so we didn't stay outside for very long, but we had a great time looking at the animals that live inside at the zoo. Brian met us at the zoo for lunch, and Amelia was so excited to see the Easter Bunny and have her face painted. This is definitely one of our favorite family traditions!

Secret Buddy

I have a secret buddy! My large Yahoo DTC group is doing a secret buddy swap where you can sign up and be assigned another waiting family, and each month or every other month, depending on your preference, you send a gift to that family. I can't say too much since we are supposed to keep our identity secret from our buddy until referral time (unfortunately quite a ways off right now!), but I am really excited to shop and send out the first package!

My Celebrity Look-alikes

Apparently, I have a face that is unrecognizable. I tried about five different pictures, and each time MyHeritage would recognize everyone else in the photo except me. And I mean that it didn't even recognize that my face was a face in the picture. Since I am the famiy photographer, there are very few photos of me, but I finally dug this one out. Not the best photo of me since I look a little startled, but if it makes me look like Keira Knightly, how bad can it be?


My cool celebrity look-alike collage from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself.

My Celebrity Look-alikes

I love the fact that Rudy Giuliani showed up as a celebrity look-alike for Brian. I can't say that I ever noticed the similarity!

My cool celebrity look-alike collage from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself.

Xiao Dan Long (little lanterns)

I am finally working on Amelia's One Hundred Good Wishes Quilt. While we were waiting for her, I exchanged fabric squares and "good wishes" - sometimes called "squishes"- from other families who were also waiting to adopt a child from China. Supposedly this is a tradition in northern areas of China where pieces of fabric are collected from 100 different families in the community in order to make a quilt for a new child. The adoption community has taken this tradition and turned it into a fun way to pass the time while we wait for our own children. One of my goals before we travel to adopt Elena is to finish Amelia's quilt. I am also collecting squares for Elena, and it would be great if I could get started on her quilt before we bring her home as well. After all, it has only been FOUR years since I collected the fabric for Amelia. It feels really good to finally get started on it.

I posted a photo of the first finished block. I am turning all the fabric swatches into lanterns. Amelia and I often sing a song from her Ni Hao Little Friends DVD called Xiao Dan Long or little lanterns. It is a song that teaches children how to count to 10 in Mandarin, and it is one of the songs that we sing wherever we go, so I like the theme of little lanterns in her quilt.

One block down, 99 more to go!

The Wait

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the long wait we have ahead of us. Most likely it will be at least two years, if not longer, unti we get a referral and see Miss Elena's little face for the first time. I can't help but compare how different the wait will be this time around. When we were waiting for Amelia, the entire wait was full of twists and turns, ups and downs. When we sent our paperwork to China in January of 2003, we were told to expect a 14 month wait (it seemed so long back then, and now seems so short!). In the Spring of 2003, SARS hit and eventually shut down all travel in and out of China. Referrals completely stopped coming, and no one knew what was going to happen next or when China would re-open. When SARS was under control and travel restrictions were finally lifted, referrals started coming two months of LIDs at a time. Our 14-month wait dropped to just over 8 months, and we got Amelia's referral in October of 2003. It was so much like a roller coaster ride that sometimes I swear I could hear the clicking of the coaster car as it approached a hill, and the rush of exhilaration with every twist and turn. It was a wild and crazy ride!
The wait for Elena so far seems more like we are in one of those long long lines at Disney. I know eventually we will be able to get on the ride and feel the same exhilaration, but right now all we can see around every turn is the huge line and long wait ahead of us. I am so grateful that we have Amelia to focus on during this wait, and I am trying to think positively and just enjoy the time that I have to spend with Amelia one-on-one. She definitely keeps us busy! One of the hardest parts of this wait is going to be watching her wait. She is just so excited to bring her sister home. I guess we can do the best we can to keep ourselves busy while we wait and we certainly have a list of things we would like to accomplish before Elena comes home: fence in the backyard, get the flower garden looking somewhat presentable, start Chinese school in the Fall (it would be great to be able to say something more than Ni Hao and Xie Xie this time around!), replace the kitchen floor and maybe take a nice family vacation.
Honestly, the more I think about it, although I would like a little bit more of a speed up with referrals, I could do without the drama of an infectious disease outbreak this time! Maybe this time I should just hope for slow and steady and a little bit less of a wild ride! And although you NEVER could have convinced me of this while we were waiting for Amelia, everything happens exactly the way it needs to happen in order for the right child for your family to be matched with you. It still amazes me that everything lined up exactly the way it did for our paperwork to be matched with Amelia's, and I can't imagine not being her Mom. I have a lot more faith this time around that everything will work out exactly as it needs to so Elena can join our family, so I guess we just need to learn to be patient.

One month down, and we finally have a name!

Well, I just logged on to add a post and noticed that our little ladybug timeline ticker says "One Month since LID". One down, and who knows how many more to go!

I have been really encouraged this week because we finally have a name for the baby, and it finally feels right in the same way that Amelia's name did. We have decided on Elena Mae. I think I needed to know that we were using a family name that had meaning beyond being just a name that we liked, and once I saw it used in my family tree, I finally felt like I was being guided toward that name. I actually like the more traditional spelling of Elena as well, and it is nice because Elena spelled this way is a variant of Helen, which is Brian's grandmother's name. We chose Mae because it is also a commonly used middle name in the family. However, if Elena's Chinese name contains Mei, we will have to rethink her American middle name, or decide to use only her Chinese name as her middle name. At any rate, we are now very much looking forward to meeting our little Elena.

This has to be a sign.....

OK, I know I said I wasn't going to think about names for a while in the hopes that one would jump out at me as being the right one, and maybe one actually has and I just haven't been paying attention. This is too cool! For the past few weeks I have been trying to find out the middle name of my great-aunt who died when she was very young. I was sort of wondering if there were any family names that we hadn't considered. I had already asked my Mom, and she couldn't remember Aunt Margaret's middle name. Anyway, just for fun, I decided to Google my great-aunts first and last name with some other info to see if anything came up with her middle name. I ended up finding a website containing my entire family tree (my mom's mother's lineage), traced back for the last few hundred years (I have ancestors who fought in the Battle of Gettysburg!). Apparently someone (or more likely several people) have spent a lot of time putting together a huge website with all of my mother's lineage. It is pretty unusual to have your entire geneology handed to you when you type in a four-word Google search, but that is exactly what happened. I still found nothing on Great Aunt Margaret's middle name, but here is the cool thing.... I was looking at the names for my Great-great-grandmothers and found that one of their sisters was named Lucy Elena. The name Elena nearly jumped off the page at me. I can't believe that the name that Amelia has been insisting on for her sister is actually a family name. I don't think it was even all that common back in the 1800's when they were named. My Mom remembers her Great Great Aunt Lucy from when she was a kid, and I actually feel close to the women from her generation because at least two of them, Ida and Addie, were quilters, and I have inherited their quilts and have always felt a link with them because of that. So maybe there really was a reason why the name Elaina (or Elena) has been popping out at me all over the place. Now even my ancestors are throwing it at us! Maybe it really is the right name for our daughter.

And just as cool, I also discovered that my Great Uncle Olin's middle name was Clare, one of the middle names we have considered all along! We had all kinds of signs while we waited for Amelia. Maybe I just need to start paying attention to them again!

Conversations from Amelia's restaurant

Our daughter Amelia LOVES to play restaurant, and her favorite part is asking you what you would like to order and then pretending to write it down. My favorite part of this game is that no matter what we order, she never has any of it. Here is what happened the last time we played restaurant:

Amelia: What do you want to order?

Mom: How about a grilled cheese sandwich?

Amelia: Um, Mom? This is a Chinese restaurant.

Mom: Oh, okay. Then how about some steamed buns with the red bean paste?

Amelia: Actually, we are all out of that kind.

Mom: How about some tofu?

Amelia: Well, we are all out of the peppers, so we just have the tofu.

Mom: Ok, well I will take some plain tofu, and how about some garlic broccoli?

Amelia: Um, we forgot to buy the broccoli at the grocery store. We went to the store, but forgot to get the broccoli. We might still have some in the fridge.

Mom: OK, well do you have lotus root?

Amelia: Um, we did, but the box got yucky and stale and we had to throw it out.

Mom: How about some noodles?

Amelia: OK, we have noodles, and what else did you say before?......

Something like this happens EVERY time we play restaurant, and it cracks me up. It reminds me of the Monty Python bookstore skit where no matter what book the person asks for, they don't have it. She loves to help me cook, but I am not sure she has a future in running a restaurant!

Ugh! Names!

You know, when I was a kid I loved looking through name books and thinking of all the different name possibilities. So it is really surprising to me that I am having such a hard time with this naming thing. In the past week, after we had sort of unofficially decided on the name Elaina, I have been absolutely besieged by people named Elaina, (or Alaina, Alayna, Alanna, Elena....). On the one hand, maybe it is a sign that we picked the right name, but honestly it is making me feel like there are just way too many people with similar names. Now, I know that there will be other people with our daughter's name, no matter what we choose, but I really loved the fact growing up that I only ever knew two other people named Erica. For now, we are undecided on a name, and we are working on another list of names (including Elaina, Eliza-Claire, Natalie, Felicity, Claudia, Miranda, and Meredith), but I don't think we are coming to a decision at any time soon. I am officially taking a hiatus from baby names, and maybe when I think of it in a few months down the road, something will just seem right.

The Nursery

I've decided that I am going to try to make all the decor for Elaina's room (oh, there, see? I used her name!) I spent the better part of our wait for Amelia making her nursery decor, including a dust ruffle, a quilted giraffe wallhanging, curtains, and a diaper stacker. It really helped pass the time during the wait, and it helped me bond with her. Mom's that are pregnant have a daily reminder that they will someday be mothers, but those of us that are adopting sometimes have to come up with other ways to feel close to the children we will someday have. I found creating a bedroom for Amelia a wonderful way to bond with the idea that a little person would soon be joining our family. When I started thinking about the new nursery, at first I thought that I would like to do a "Secret Garden" theme, but never found a pattern that really matched what I was picturing in my head. Then one day I was going through some craft things and found a book that bought a long time ago called, "The Quilted Nursery". The very first pattern in the book is called "Baby's Secret Garden", and it is exactly what I pictured for the nursery!

Last weekend Brian took Amelia to gymnastics and I had a chance to escape to Jo-Ann Fabrics to start to plan the nursery. I could really get lost in fabric, and I love to find just the right combinations to go together. A while ago I bought a couple of yards of a ladybugs and flower fabric that I thought was really cute, and I put it away until I found a use for it. I pulled it out of the closet and decided it would be perfect in the baby's room. The room will be pinks, yellows, purples and greens. I bought so much fabric, half of it is washed and ready to go. I am making curtains (which are a log cabin pattern and whimsical floral applique), a wallhanging, a dust ruffle, a diaper stacker, and a small throw pillow. I can't wait to get started! Our nursery is currently our guest room, so we won't be turning it into a nursery for a while (even though the closet in there is already full of things for the baby, and things to take to China). I am sure that it will take me a lot longer to make everything for Elaina's room simply because I just don't have as much free time this time around, but I am really looking forward to getting started and watching her room come together!

Names, Part 2

(And let's all hope that I don't find myself a month before referrals posting "Names, Part 527") Anyway, our first choice for names has changed again, although at least this time it has changed back to a name we had already chosen once. Amelia is absolutely insisting that her sister's name is Elaina.. She isn't just saying that she likes the name. Whenever I mention another name she adamantly says, "No Mom, my sister is named Elaina". And honestly, we have to admit that we all really love the name. I love the nickname Lainey, and I think Elaina is a great grown-up name. I also like the link with Elaine of Arthurian legend, and "The Once and Future King", and "The Mists of Avalon" were two of my favorite books growing up. As for the distant cousin who named her daughter Alayna, the spelling is different (obviously), they live several states away from us, and we haven't seen them in over 10 years. I don't think it will really matter if the girls have similar names. So the name Elaina returns to the top of the list. I don't think we are ready for a final decision, simply because I have been such a name flip-flopper lately, but I do love the name, and it seems fitting and comfortable in a way that other names haven't.

Middle names are much easier. We like either May or Mei. Both have lots of meaning in our family. I like Mei because it means both "beautiful" and "younger sister" in Mandarin. We will also use her Chinese name, so the spelling of Mei/May will depend on her Chinese name as well.

Names

For those of you who know me, you know that I have been absolutely agonizing over what to name the new baby. When it came time to name Amelia, I opened a name book, said to Brian "What about Amelia?" and that was pretty much it. We loved her name from the start. I knew that I wanted to name her after women who have been pioneers, and who didn't listen when they were told that they couldn't follow their dreams because of their gender. Amelia was a perfect name because not only did it bring to mind Amelia Earhartt, but my dad is a huge aviation buff, and naming her after aviation's most famous woman is a nice homage to him. Her middle name is Jane, and she was named for Jane Goodall, a hero of mine who also forged ahead, blazed a path, and changed the world despite others doubting her abilities to do so because she is a woman. It turns out that my Amelia has all of the fearlessness, determination, and strong-will that I am sure her namesakes had. I have no doubt that she will be able to achieve whatever she wants to in life, on sheer determination alone. She was very very well-named.

So what about her sister? Brian and I have barely agreed on any names, and honestly I have had such a hard time coming up with any name that really appeals to me. I think I was hoping that one would just jump out at me and seem right in the same way that Amelia's did, but no luck. Part of the problem is our last name. There aren't a whole lot of names that sound good with it. Any name starting with an "L" sounds like a Dr. Seuss character. Some otherwise beautiful names blend very badly with it. We had to get rid of any names ending with an "elle" sound just because we couldn't tell where one name stopped and another started. So I came up with name criteria (and this has probably been part of the problem!): 1) the name can't be too common. Poor Amelia is one of two Amelia's in her daycare class, they share the same last initial, so they are both called by their full names. I don't want that for mei-mei. 2) the name needs to be a classic name. Although some of the newer names are pretty, I just feel like a name should have some history behind it. 3) if she decides to become a doctor or other type of professional that people need to put their trust in, will her name fit? I also wanted to name her after someone who has been important in Brian's or my life. I would love to name our daughter after my great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth, who I was very close to and who was possibly the kindest person I have ever known.

Brian really liked the name Sydney when we first started talking, but there are already so many Sydney's in Amelia's daycare. I liked the name Eliza for a while because it was my grandmother's actual middle name, but then realized that if she disliked it enough to call herself Mary Elizabeth her whole life, would I really be honoring her by using the name Eliza? Probably not. Amelia came up with the name Elaina, which we all liked for a while until we realized that one of Brian's distant cousins has a daughter with the same name. Ugh! So back to the drawing board...

We considered so many names, none of which seemed right, and after I finally got so frustrated that I threatened to name the baby Noname, we finally sat down and came up with a short list of good names. We may even wait to see her little face before we decide on one for sure. Here is our list: Clara, Marina (Brian's favorite and as far as he is concerned, the name we are going with), and Elaina (Amelia is insisting). I have to admit that I like Marina as well since it is a way that I can name the baby after my great-grandmother (Marina is a Scottish form of Mary). And I really like Marina Elizabeth, although I worry that may be too much once we add a Chinese name to it.... So for now the jury is still out. Maybe we will add names to our list as time goes on, or maybe one will just start to seem like the right name. For now she will just be our Mei-Mei.

Xi Nian Kuai Le!

Happy Year of the Pig! I am excited to think that this may be the year that our mei-mei is born! Amelia was born in the Year of the Black Sheep, and I have read that Sheep and Pigs are supposed to be good matches and allies. Wouldn't it be great if the Chinese zodiac could help us out and minimize sibling rivalry?

Last night we celebrated the New Year at the local Chinese School's Chinese New Year event, which seems to just get better and better each year. The food was great, and most of it was authentic Chinese food, not the Americanized kind. They had steamed buns and really good fried tofu, so I was happy! We met up with several of the families from our travel group, as well as the many other families that we have gotten to know over the past several years, so it is just a huge social event for us.

This year we also had the excitement of Amelia's dance group performing on stage as part of the entertainment. They did so well! Amelia sneezed a couple of times on stage (and got some laughs for it), but it only added to the entertainment value as far as I am concerned.

After the girls performed they sat down on the floor in front of the stage, so I sat down on the floor as well (a little further back so she could be a "big" girl and hang out with her friends), so I could keep an eye on her since the front area gets very crowded after the performances with everyone coming down to get a red envelope. So many children were down there enjoying the show - some were dancing, some were playing quietly with friends. I have gotten to know so many of these kids over the past few years, and it is amazing to watch them grow. As I sat there and watched them all, I was just overwhelmed with how lucky I am to be Amelia's mom, how lucky I have been to get to know all of these other families with their own amazing children, and how very very lucky we are to be able to send our paperwork off to China and someday bring another one of these amazing children back home.

Go fish

Well, it seems we have entered a new chapter in our lives - we have become fish owners (or at least we will be once the tank is ready for the little guys). My dad gave Amelia a gift certificate to Petsmart for her birthday since she has been wanting a fish tank ever since she first saw Finding Nemo. Tonight we finally took the plunge, went to Petsmart, and bought a tank and all the things that go into it (except the fish). On any given day, if you ask Amelia what she would like to do, her answer more often than not is "Go to Petsmart". She loves to visit the kitties and the rest of the animals that are there, and she is fascinated by the fish. Tonight she was in all her glory since she actually got to buy stuff for her fish. We let her pick out all the things to go in the tank, and since she is four, that means we now have a fish tank with bright pink, purple, green and blue rocks on the bottom, four plastic plants (two of which are hot pink and bright purple), and a purplish-colored mountain that the fish can swim around and through. Very appealing to a four-year-old girl, and I have to admit, the color-scheme actually looks kind of cool. The whole thing is set up, and now we just need to wait a few days so that the water is right for the fish. The funniest part of all of this is that out of all the fish at Petsmart - the fancy ones, the brightly-colored ones, and the expensive ones - Amelia's favorite kind were the minnows that you can buy for twelve cents a piece. By the time we left the store I think we had convinced her to get a little bit fancier of a fish, but if she decides that she really wants a brightly-colored tank full of minnows, who are we to argue?

LID 2/7/07!!!!!!

Well, I have been thinking about starting a blog to record our adoption process to bring our mei-mei home for a long time, and yesterday we got the wonderful news that our paperwork was logged-in on February 7, 2007. I was home with Amelia since we were being bombarded with snow (again) and happened to check my email and saw the great news. I told Amelia that China finally has the letter that we wrote asking for a sister, and she was so excited, dancing around the house. My guess for a LID was February 8, so I was just one day off. It is amazing how the news of being logged-in suddenly makes everything seem real. It is really happening!