Howdy, folks!

Last night, our agency sponsored a conference call for all waiting Kazakhstan adoptive families, which was really cool! It was so amazing to hear the voices of so many people from all over the country as they joined the call. I recognized many names from all the blogs I've visited. I wanted to blurt out "Hey! I know you!" each time someone joined! Hello to all my fellow bloggers and waiting CHI families! It was also great to hear Julie Woods' voice on the line - all the way from Almaty! Hi Julie! The connection was great - I could hear you a lot clearer than I could hear folks in the U.S. Thanks for your insights and your encouragement!

We had been gone all day doing some shopping, and when we got home, there was a message on our phone from our social worker. He was calling with the details for how to join the conference call, but we had completely forgotten that the call was on the 27th - it wasn't even on our minds. When we played the beginning of the message and heard his voice, we suddenly thought... it's THE CALL!!! We dropped the groceries we were putting away and looked at each other with wide eyes. My heart was pounding, but then I realized the REAL purpose of the call. Russell and I cracked up together in the kitchen, took a deep breath, and chalked it up to a "practice run" for the real phone call. :^)

Not much to update you on since my last post, adoption-wise. We're still waiting and hoping that referrals pick up after the new year's holiday. Let's see... what was I doing during my last post? Extracting DNA, reading books, and baking holiday cookies? Yup, that just about sums it up. I'm STILL trying to extract DNA (it's not going so well), still reading books, and I baked (and ate) more cookies than I care to admit (as well as a completely fabulous recipe for chocolate cinnamon bread I got at Starbuck's... we accidentally burned one batch but scraped off the tops and ate them anyways. Such desperation is warranted for this bread - it's just that good. Trust me.)

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Maybe January?

We got an email update from our agency today that said that due to several holidays in Kazakhstan, and the likelihood that government agencies will be closed, they're not sending families for any first trips to Kazakhstan until after January 14th. Of course, we still need to find out which region we'll be headed to, but at least we know now that we won't be headed anywhere until mid-January at the earliest.

Not much else going on around here... Still working on my genetic diversity study (hoping that my DNA extractions are working)... Reading an awesome book called "Deep Economy" by Bill McKibben that's making me want to invest in a wind turbine and eat local organic food... Being awakened early in the morning by the sound of gunfire in the woods around our house (apparently shotgun season - for deer - started a few days ago)...Itching to get started on holiday baking... is it too early for Christmas cookies??? Maybe I'll just make a few "test batches." :^)

Still Waiting...

I'm still sitting here, trying really, really hard to be patient (see my previous blog entry). Our dossier is technically still sitting on the desk of someone at the Ministry for Education in Kazakhstan, but I find myself wondering where it is, really... is it in a file somewhere? Literally on a desk? Collecting dust? Is someone's coffee cup sitting on top of it? Did the people who evaluated it like our photos? Did we look acceptable? (Someone told us that some of the officials like books in the photos, and we took some of the photos of ourselves in front of our whole WALL of bookshelves... we are total book packrats! I hope that makes us look smart! :^)



I had a total "light bulb moment" the other day, when I realized that the next phone call we get from our agency will be telling us what region we'll be traveling to... and the only reason we'll be assigned to a region is because there's a child there that fits with what we requested in our dossier (under 18 months, boy or girl). So that means that when the phone call comes, the Kaz officials have technically identified a child for us. (To those of you waiting on Kaz adoptions, this may seem like a "No DUH!!!" moment... but I don't know why the reality of this hadn't sunk in until last week.) Russell and I grew up in the military... I sort of felt like we were awaiting our next "orders"... the Kaz government was telling us which "duty station" to report to. But really, it's all centered around a child... an actual child. Hopefully, OUR child.

So despite my strong attempts to be patient, and despite all the lovely stuff I wrote in my previous blog entry (which I still stand by!!!), I'm still obsessively counting the days and wondering when The Call will come in. I'm also obsessively counting days that would come AFTER the phone call comes in. I'm hoping that we travel in December or early January. If we push it much further than that, then my maternity leave runs out and I'll have to come right back to teaching full time immediately after we come home with the kiddo. Sigh.... so I'm still wrestling with moments during the day when I want to SCREAM! (Is it okay to admit this, after my previous gratitude post? :^)

Russell and I have been joking about this. We've decided to start a list:

You Know You've Been Waiting for THE CALL for Too Long When:

1. The phone rings and your heart lurches. (We live on a college campus, and the phones here have a special ring that signals an off-campus, long-distance call coming in... my heart definitely lurches for those rings...)
2. Your spouse calls you while you're at work, and you answer the phone with "What??? What have you heard?" (At which point your spouse apologizes because they're just calling to talk about what we should fix for dinner....)
3. People in your office pop by while you're in the middle of grading papers or something and say "Have you heard anything?" and you have to pause and figure out what they're talking about... because a) if you HAD heard anything about the adoption, you probably would have run screaming down the halls about it by this point and wouldn't be calmly sitting at your desk grading papers, and b) they might be referring to something else entirely, and if you respond with adoption-related stuff, they'll think that yet again, you are obsessing about the adoption (which, of course, would probably be right).
4. You're counting the days since your last phone call to your social worker, asking about the progress of your dossier, since you put yourself on a schedule: "I will only call Jeff once every two weeks... I swear!"
5. You find yourself admitting to the world (via a public blog) all the insane things you're doing and the weird thoughts running through your head while you're waiting for The Call.

Thanks to all of you who've been emailing with supportive ideas and comments! I'm sure you could add your own items to our list!

Gratitude Blog

As you may have guessed from the significant LACK of blogging, not much is happening in our little corner of the wide world of adoption. As far as we can tell, our file is still at the Ministry for Education. Jeff, our Kaz program social worker, said that it's probably "sitting on the desk" of the person who makes decisions about which region we'll be assigned to. I'm trying very hard to be patient, which is not something I've ever been very good at.

That said, I've been thinking a lot about patience lately, and came across an article where the author described how selfish impatience really is. So I started thinking about what the opposite of impatience would be... the main thing I could come up with is gratitude! So here's my gratitude blog for today, as an antidote to impatience:

• I'm grateful for all the people who have helped and supported us in this journey - so many friends and family members who've been so enthusiastic and happy for us. Some of you have given me hope when my own hope was waning... so thank you for that.

• I'm grateful for all the folks at CHI who approach their jobs with such love and understanding, especially when they get bombarded with frequent requests for updates from impatient people like myself :^). I'm grateful for the folks at CHI who put in such long hours and bring so much thought and prayer to their jobs.

• I'm so grateful for all the new friends and aquaintances I've met through blogs and the yahoo groups. WOW! What a supportive community.... thanks, you guys! Thanks for being willing to share your stories and your insights. I can't imagine doing this without you all!

• I'm grateful for friends who are beginning to give me unsolicited parenting advice. I know this happens naturally to women who are pregnant. But having no "external" evidence of our "pregnancy" has made this a pretty surreal experience. If I was biologically pregnant, I'd be about 7 or 8 months pregnant by now...but being "adoption pregnant" is easier for people to forget. So thank you to those friends who are continuing to throw out bits of advice for us soon-to-be first-time parents!

• I'm SO grateful for friends at work who helped me successfully lobby my employer for a change in their benefits package: maternity leave for adoption cases! Yippeee!!!!

• I'm very thankful for the people who make Rody inflatable ponies (see pic below). I had never seen one of these until I went to City Sprouts in St. Louis (a cool kids store). Every time there is a young child in that store, he/she gravitates towards their little red Rody. They LOVE it... bounce on it, squeeze its ears, etc. So we bought one. Ours is black with yellow dots.
• I'm grateful for the avelanche of baby stuff that people have bestowed upon us... a crib, 2 car seats, a baby "backpack", a tricycle, 2 strollers, etc. It's pretty overwhelming. And I'm grateful for the offers of clothing and toys that have been made... we're just waiting to find out more about the size/gender/age of the kiddo. Believe me, one thing I can't wait for is launching into clothes shopping. I'm not a shop-a-holic, and I'm not obsessed with clothes, but there are just WAY too many cute things to pass up shopping opportunities for baby/kid clothes.
• I'm actually grateful for the waiting time associated with this adoption (going on 2 years now), because it's been a fabulous growing time for both of us... we have known each other for 18 years & been married for 11, but we've still learned so much about each other through this process.

So those are my thoughts on this last day of October. Happy Halloween, everybody! And stay tuned... more updates should be coming!

Worldwide Blog!

I've discovered that this blog is being read all the way down in Antarctica! How cool is that??? My friend Sune, who works for the British Antarctic Survey, responded to my email alert about this blog. Here are some pretty darn cool pictures that he sent from some work he's been doing with emperor penguin colonies lately:

(Sune titled that middle picture "Parenting." I hope that sort of parenting applies mostly to penguins, since I don't recall parental regurgitation of half-digested fish being mentioned in the child development books I've been reading. Maybe I skipped that part?)

I can't tell you how much I would love to visit Antarctica someday. Actually, I'd love to work or study there at some point - extreme biology rocks!. However, it will have to wait, as Sune informs me that there are no kids allowed in Antarctica (a shocker, I know)... with the exception of a Chilean base where the Chilean government allows their citizens to have babies, thinking that this solidifies their claim to the continent. Apparently, there are children in the world who are native Antarcticans. Interesting....

And speaking of children... no new info yet about a Kazakhstani kid. By the way: I've been reading books about Kazakhstan, and "Kazakhstani" refers to the citizens of the country. "Kazakh" refers to an ethnic group which makes up the majority of the population of the country. Just in case you were curious... I've been reading blogs by folks who've been to all of the regions our agency works in. They all sound like really interesting places to go... they range from big cities to smaller towns. I'm getting really curious about which part of the country we'll be staying in when we travel.

Also - people have asked about the gender of the kiddo. Short answer: we don't know. We didn't specify one or the other when we applied. In Kazakhstan, this normally means you'll adopt a boy (since most people who adopt request girls). We'd be happy with either.

AND... people have asked about names. We honestly have not decided on a name. The kid will, of course, come with a name. We figured that we'd wait to meet the lil' kiddo and make a decision then. Many people end up using the given name as a middle name... we have no idea yet what we'll do. This doesn't stop people from suggesting names, though. So far, my favorites (and by "favorite", I mean "the ones that have made me laugh out loud") are "Bergthora" (which is "goddess of the mountain" in Icelandic - thanks Nibby, for that suggestion), "Horst" (not really a suggestion, but just a name that came up in conversation and made me giggle) and "Zaphod" (this is probably what Michael Booth will call my child, regardless of what we name him/her.)

So, Where's the Baby? (Part 2)

Well, it seems the traditional thing to do on one of these adoption-related blogs is to post a map of the place you're headed off to. I know most of my friends have beat the pants off of me on the Facebook geography quiz challenge, so you probably don't NEED a map of central Asia in order to remember where Kazakhstan is, but for those of you who've never heard of the country, here it is...

Our agency currently works in several different regions in Kaz: Almaty City, Almaty Region, Shymkent, Taldy-Korgan (northeast of Almaty) and Qostanay (in the northern part of the country). So we're currently waiting to find out which region we'll be assigned to. Any guesses?

Fun facts about Kazakhstan: it is the birthplace of the apple (this is where they evolved). Also, Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world! Kazakhstan has had a long and fascinating history, from its experiences as a stop along the Silk Road, to the influx of Islam in the 9th century, to the arrival of Gengis Khan a few centuries later, to the experience of being a former Soviet state... it's a pretty amazing place. It's been a region of nomads and famous horsemen, with a rich cultural history. It's also been the home of the Soviet space program and Soviet nuclear testing. Overall, we're pretty psyched about being able to visit this part of the world. (Although it will most likely be the dead of winter while we're there... not quite as much fun for a couple of biologists like Russell and me who would love to see plants, animals, etc.)

So until we hear from our agency about where we'll be headed, we're busy preparing. Russ is trying to get another chapter of his PhD done before we leave. I'm teaching my fall classes. I'm also starting a research project on genetic diversity of hill prairie plants. This research project is what I'll be doing instead of teaching next quarter, once the baby is home. This weekend, Russ and I went out to collect plants from local hill prairies...some of them are really beautiful this time of year!

We're also still collecting odds and ends for the baby's room. Two of my favorite things so far: a mural for the wall called "Our World" (from Oopsy Daisy art) and a stuffed monster called "Oliver". The mural was an awesome find... I love it because of all the random places to include on a map of the whole world, the artist put the St. Louis arch (we're in the greater St. Louis area) and a yurt in Kazakhstan. Very cool. And I love Oliver because he was designed by a 4-year-old boy who described him as a monster who who loves pink and who is growing his hair out. Oliver wants to be a princess when he grows up (hence the crown). He has no arms, but as the designer puts it "That's okay, because everyone is different." Seriously, how can you NOT love that?
Finally, to the commentor who asked about our agency - we've been really pleased with CHI so far!

So, Where's the Baby?

I thought I'd post a summary about the process we've been involved in for the last ... oh, 2 years or so. So many of you have been patiently following along with us during this process, and lately I've been bombarded with questions about our "progress" with the adoption, so here goes:

In 2005, we decided to adopt. When we got married 11 years ago, we decided that if and when we wanted children, we would choose adoption. At first, we didn't know whether we would look at international or domestic adoptions, but we eventually found an adoption agency we really liked, and they only worked with foreign adoptions, so that sort of made the decision for us. We chose Children's Hope International as our adoption agency. CHI works in many different countries, and we initially looked into adopting from Kazakhstan because the process really appealed to us (and also, we had a friend who had adopted from Kaz, and we'd spent a lot of time talking with her about her experiences). We really appreciated the child-centered nature of the process: you have to live in Kaz for 3 weeks, visiting the child in the orphanage for a few hours each day. This, we felt, put the child's interests first... letting him or her get to know the new parents slowly, and in an environment that was familiar to him/her.

But as we got into the application phase, we realized that Kaz was a fairly new program for CHI, plus we didn't know if we'd be able to get the 3-7 weeks (or longer) off from work that the Kaz program required for travel. So we switched to China. We gathered paperwork for a looooong time (that's a whole different story...), then sent our dossier to China in August 2006.

In April of this year, we both started feeling that we were on the wrong track. Something just didn't feel right about what we were doing - this was fueled in part by the ever-growing wait for adoptions from China. We were guesstimating a travel date to China of sometime in late 2008...??? After lots of soul-searching and discussion, we discovered that neither one of us really ever wanted to switch away from Kazakhstan, so we came back! We called our agency, recalled our China dossier, and they helped us re-do all the paperwork.

On June 29th, our new dossier was sent to the Kaz Consulate in New York City. Sometime after that (we're not sure when), it was sent to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Kazakhstan. During early September, it was sent to the Ministry for Education (which oversees orphanages). The next step will be assigning us to a particular region in Kaz. Once our paperwork is at the Ministry for Education regional office, we will be issued an invitation to travel to that region to meet our child! We'll stay in the country for about 3 weeks, then come home for a month while lots of paperwork is processed, then return to Kaz for a few days to pick up the baby and head home.

We more than likely won't have any information regarding the age or gender of the kiddo when we travel. We've requested either gender, between 8 and 18 months old. (Kids generally aren't available for international adoption any younger than 8 months.)

So we are hoping that we're in the final stretches of the waiting game. We're keeping our fingers crossed that our first trip happens before the end of the year.

Joining the 21st Century

Greetings friends, family members, and curious bystanders...

Thanks for joining us in our newest adventure: impending parenthood! As most of you know, we've been working on an international adoption for quite some time now. It would appear that we're getting pretty close at this point. We're hoping to travel to Kazakhstan sometime in the next few months to meet our first child! We're pretty darn excited about this.

So in celebration of this, we're attempting to join the 21st century by figuring out how to manage our very own blog. We've been so inspired by so many of the other international adoption blogs that families have posted over the past few years. We've learned HEAPS, and discovered quite a community of folks who've created their families through international adoption. We want our blog to help keep our friends and families informed throughout our trip, but we also want to help encourage the folks who are behind us in this process. So welcome to our first test post! More to come...