Tagged!

Hey! I was tagged... not once but twice! The rules for this game are as follows:

1. Link to the person who sent this to you and leave a comment on their blog so their readers can visit yours 2. Post the rules on your blog 3. Share 7 strange/weird facts about yourself 4. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, linking their blog 5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

My only problem is that the only blogs I read are other Kazakhstan adoption blogs, and it looks like everyone has played this game already! I'm not sure there's anybody left to tag! Bummer!

Oh well... here are my 7 weird things:

1. I grew up in the military (dad was in the Air Force) and we moved every two years, on average. I went to 11 different schools (including 3 different high schools). I've lived in the US, the Azores Islands, and Germany.

2. And speaking of Germany, a friend and I were once locked in a castle tower in Germany. Our cries for help went unanswered for about an hour and finally my friend and I decided to figure out how to pick a lock. We were successful. :^)

3. I once sat on the roof of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

4. Over the years, I have had 4 giant millipedes as pets, ranging from a nearly 13-inch long female named Millificent the Magnificent Millipede to a skinny little guy, only about 8 inches long, named Slim.

5. On this day, one year ago, I was petting fuzzy little leaves on New Zealand edelweiss plants along a trail leading up to Aoraki, the highest mountain in New Zealand, while my students took their midterm exam (by trying to identify plants, birds, rocks, etc. along the trail).

6. I get really excited by really cold weather. The coldest I've experienced is -40 degrees, while leading a wolf-watching trip to Yellowstone National Park. (Did you know that -40 is the same on the Celcius and Fahrenheit scales? It's where the two scales converge! Cool!) Anyways, when the temperature hit -40, I ran outside in my long underwear and jumped up and down with exitement! (And quickly learned that -40 will freeze your lung tissue almost instantly!)

7. I've climbed to the top of a 14,000 foot mountain in Colorado! (Even though lots of my friends have peaked numerous 14'ers... I'm still proud of my ONE 14'er!)

Hmmmm..... now who do I tag???? Who's left in Kaz blogland? I'll have to search...

(PS. Does anyone know why blogger continues to double-space between my paragraphs, even when I go back to edit the post and delete the extra spaces continuously????)
(PPS. Hey! I just noticed that on my poll on the sidebar, someone just voted for us to get "the call" this week! Thanks for the vote of confidence! :^)

Nope

For those of you out there that are checking this blog weekly to see if we've heard anything new, the short answer is: Nope. The long answer is: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nada. Nichts. Nothin'.


Try again next week! In the meantime, I've posted a new poll... cast your votes!


(Amy, if you're reading this, my mildly cranky attitude this week does NOT negate the fact that we're still optimists by default. I stand by that claim! :^)

(UPDATE on 1/18/08: Okay, I realize that my poll on the sidebar is incredibly poorly constructed. I'm clearly not a social scientist. I guess I was wondering, will I get the phone call this month? Or will it be later than this month, i.e. later in the year. Clearly if I get the phone call this month, it will also be this year. My brain is fried. I'm glad it's the weekend.)

Science!

Well, still no news on the adoption front, but I finally got my DNA extractions to work! I'm working on a research project during my "maternity leave" from teaching. I'm hoping to compare genetic diversity of some small populations of prairie plants along the Mississippi River bluffs. But first, I had to actually extract the DNA out of the plants, which just wasn't working. But last week, I set up the reaction, left the room for a bit, and when I came back, there was DNA!!! Yay!!!! It was like a late Christmas present! Here's what it looks like:

The little pinkish, glow-in-the-dark bands is DNA that is flourescing under an ultraviolet light. This picture is actually sugar maple DNA that one of my students extracted last night, after I taught her how to make the extraction work. She's doing this for part of her senior capstone project. Groovy.

On a completely different note, we had freakishly warm weather this past weekend, so we enjoyed it by taking the dog to the state park at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

The obligatory self-portrait shot:

Russell and Deva learning about the great rivers:

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!