Hesitation

Still in a holding pattern on the China adoption. I'm ready--or think I am. Poptart is the holdout, in a sense. For me, it was the question: Four? Are we crazy? For him, I think it may be: China? Are we crazy?

And probably we are. I think about it a lot less at the moment--it was an obsession for a while. Now, it's more a fact of life. I think of it as something that's going to happen, but I'm okay with waiting on it for a while.

I kindof pushed at another blogger for waiting on her husband, saying why not get the ball rolling while you're deciding? I think now that that was pretty rude of me. This is a process and it's a different process for everyone. There are plenty of POVs around the the Nets, and then there are the majority of people who aren't out there blogging or posting on Yahoo groups at all, but just going about it. I think the Nets are pretty self-selective--if you aren't obsessing a bit, you aren't out here.

Me, I just like to blog.

Whiter, More Painful Teeth in Just One Hour!

I got my teeth bleached today. I've been longing to do it and just waiting for my dentist to offer it, but still, that plus a small weekend shopping spree have left me feeling like one of these people. Swear, I'm all done spending money for a while.

Especially since, although I love the way my new, vanity enhanced teeth look, they hurt. And I already have a cold, and the kind of laryngitis that makes words possible but exhausting effort, and as always way too much to do and way too little time to do it in. And did I mention my teeth hurt?

They say it will go away in a few days but what if it doesn't? What if I have achy teeth forever now, until I have to have them all pulled out and wear false ones, and they are all out of the really white false ones that make you look younger (ok, I admit it, that was the goal) and I have to have yellow ones, really yellow ones, yellower than my teeth, which the dentist has been insisting for years weren't yellow at all no matter what my mother says?

Speaking of dentists, this is apparently what they do. Come in for a fillling, or cleaning, or whatever, and they flit in, muttering, wave at you, maybe fill a tooth or two before rushing out. But let them paint a toxic substance all over your mouth while you wear a funky little guard to keep your tongue and lips from touching your teeth, and they will sit there with you all day. I think they just like looking at their vainest patients, dorky and drooling in the name of beauty.

Why nothing on the adoption front this week? Oh, a little more cold feet. Time to write the checks, baby, and We are both--really truly both---hesitating about rocking this boat. Gert fell asleep this evening for an hour (never a good idea but it didn't work out as badly as it usually does) and we were outside with Bart and Beau and it was...easy. Two is easy. Three is hard. Four is scary, and we're flinching. You know, it's not even a little about the special needs, or the trip, or anything else. It's about the kid. Who will be here, waking up in the night, running down the driveway, trying to sit in my lpa just because everyone else is.

That was supposed to make me not want her. It isn't working. I still want to do this, I just can't actually do it right now.

SO Not My Fault

How Lola starts her day with a small, secret smile (no, not what you're thinking!)
Stuffs Bart and Gertie into their boots and coats and whatnots and whizzles and shoves them out the door after Poptart. Scoops up Beau and heads back in for a peaceful morning. Well, ok, to wait for the babysitter and frantically prepare for a conference, but I enjoy that.
Poptart reappears.
"Did you put Beau down for a nap in my car yesterday?"
"Nope. Wasn't home before you, remember?"
"Oh. Did you get anything out of my car, then?"
"Nope. Haven't driven it in days. Have I mentioned that it's smelly?"
"That's my bike helmet. So you haven't been in my car?"
"Nope."
"Well, someone left the door open or something."
"Wasn't me."
"The battery is dead."
"Ah." I could see that coming, actually. Poptart's battery dies if you look at it funny. And I do mean his battery. Geez, your mind!
"I need you to help me jump it." (You really have to imagine the snarliest, grumpiest possible tone you can imaginecoming from someone referred to as "Poptart.")

It was the most fun I've ever had jumping a car. Because honestly, that sort of thing usually is my fault. And this wasn't. And he knew it.

Chilly Feet

Not literally (although I did think I had frostbitten toes after my first bike ride of the season this past weekend).

But freaked-out-edly.

Me, a little bit. I look at beau in his crib and he is so happy, and he really is just a fabulous little two-year-old pudding, the best and most amazing little guy, and the thing is, he is NOT going to like this. Not at first, anyway. Gertie was a charming and happy flirtacious little 20-month-old when beau popped her bubble, and now she's difficult kid supremo numero uno. her first reaction to anything is nearly always no, I don't wanna, you can't make me. I mean, that's probably a personality defect, but who knows?

So I'm a little but going hey, why are we thinking about rocking the boat here?
Poptart says, isn't this going a little fast? (He says this as he contemplates the upcoming rash of large fees.) I say, it will slow down a LOT once it's started. He says well, i maybe need to have it slow down a bit now. We are going away together, just the two of us, this weekend (second time since the advent of Beau! And I could probably count the times since Bart showed up on one hand...maybe two.) Let's sit and talk.

So we will. And the minute I said of course, let's, things relaxed. We are still having meeting #1 (the introductory meeting) with the social worker tomorrow am. I think that will get us talking. Otherwise we tend to do more than we talk..and if he doesn't want to address a subject I really hate bringing it up, and he avoids the strangest things (witness the baseball/soccer incident). I know what he means, though--it's just being so incredibly exhausted and not wanting to DEAL.

In other news, the reason we're away is a writing conference for me. I have a few meetings with magazine editors--one in particular that I REALLY want to write for--that I'm really excited about. I should be prepping. I need brilliant pitch ideas, and I need 'em now!

An Official Document! A Very Tiny One!

Well, we are now official--at something. The USCIS sent us a little tiny reciept, like a cash register receipt, for our money order. They divided it up according to the official fee and the two fingerprinting fees, so they did, apparently know what it was for. And there it was, all alone in its little hand-addressed envelope.

I put in the big drawer of adoption stuff, which is apparently my idea of "being really organized about this."

Telling Secrets

I've told four friends now, and I swear I'm stopping. On the one hand, that covers all of our recommendation people, which is good and would have had to be done sooner or later. On the other, I suspect it guarantees that when I tell most other people in a few months, they will somehow already know. Cause this is a super small town, and people are just like that. I guess that's ok.
I did mean to tell this last friend, and had been planning on it--all are people I want to know. So that's ok.

Really.
OK maybe I'm not so sure about that. Not sure why, either.

A Meditation on Special Needs

Today I've been giving more thought to the "special needs" part of special needs adoption. The most common relatively easy ones seem to be cleft lip/cleft palate and heart defects, of the easily repaired and already repaired variety or sometimes of the needing more surgery variety, especially for younger babies. Then we have premature birth, spina bifida, varying degrees of developmental problems and so-called limb differences--oh, and "ambiguous genitalia". Bringing up the rear in terms of things I can remember at the moment is albinism--oh, and other skin issues, which I assume to include birthmarks--and burn scars.

That's quite the list. It all reminds me a little of that popular parlor game, "Which Disability Would You Rather Have"--which usually starts with drunken questions like "Would you rather be blind or deaf?" and "Would you rather lose an arm or a leg?" and generally goes on from there, only with two especially bleak additions: the disabilty, if that's what it is (I know some of those needs aren't disabilities) goes to your child, and the children alredy exist. You've got skin in the game, as it were.

So our list of things we can cope with probably tends towards the usual, with an emphasis on short term and resolvable issues, and maybe a slight extra willingness with respect to things that are going to require additional medical care, like heart defects--but only the ones that are considered fixable, and I can't say I've thought too much about the fact that that's really not a 100% guarantee. Certainly I should. And I will. I don't want my zeal to be a good AP, one who genuinely wants to adopt a child who needs us and, in some sense, not take the opportunity to adopt a child away from someone childless--to haul us blindly into something that will clearly be too much for us to handle and continue giving the BGB three what they need.

So I got to thinking today about ambiguous genitalia and about "limb differences". To address the second first, I had included on my prelimary form to the agency limb differences not affecting mobility--and I think I/we should rethink that. (In all honesty I filled out the form myself, after discussion but not enough of it.) So, follwing a great add for cars, of all things, that's been running in all kinds of magazines and features a beautiful fit young woman with an artificial leg, and thinking again about all the opportunities here for a child with only one leg to get that kind of treatment, and also to learn to ski and play and generally just get on with life, I had to wonder--maybe we could do that. I have to look into it.

I'm iffy on the one arm (as I've said before, you don't really know yourself until you think about this stuff) because that's less easy to--not hide, but tuck away--and also I think might actually impact your life more, and I'm not sure that I can either deal with that myself, as a parent, or help a child learn to deal with it. And I'm not saying one should hide one's disabilities, but that it's nice to be able to choose not to reveal them constantly, especially if you are a child whose status as an adoptee is going to be nearly always on view.

As for ambiguous genitalia, I don't have time to meditate fully now, but I read
this piece in the New York Times magazine and it made me think.