Health and Insurance

Of course, it’s simple human nature that we aren’t going to always like everybody in the various support groups available to us (maybe even most of them) and there will be tons of opinions to disagree with and, inevitably, there will be that one woman who wants to prostelytize for adoptive breastfeeding the whole time. The important thing to remember though is that no matter how similar or dissimilar our personalities may be we have, arguably, one of life’s most defining experiences in common: adoption. Thankfully though we don’t have to see eye-to-eye in order to offer love.

I feel very blessed to say that while I no longer have access to a real live adoption support group I am so lucky to have the fantastic folks from our Holt Intl. chat room and all my adoption bloggy buddies. Just recently when we were so discouraged over not getting a travel date a fellow adoptive mom, who was returning to Thailand for a visit with their daughter’s foster parents, emailed me to say that she would make room in her suitcase so we could send Button a care package. Can you imagine what that meant to us? She knew what that would mean because she has stood in this place.

Be gentle on yourself and make the time to meet and develop friendships with people who can relate to what you, and your children, are going through. Trying to do all this alone would be too exhausting. I’m so grateful for all my “adoptive mom friends” – we don’t have to agree on religion or gender profiling – we just have to know how to be there for each other.

A great big thank you goes out to Ben, Becca and Kailani for taking our love, and a teddy bear, to Button!!

–Rosemary

For those of you who don’t know, the legend of the zodiac is thus, On the Buddha’s last day on this Earth he invited all the animals to meet with him but only 12 came. To reward them he named a year after each of the twelve. More recently in Thailand, it is believed that everyone should make a pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime to the Temple associated with their birth year. Anyway, this is what the internet tells about the Thai Zodiac predictions for the year of the mouse 2008:
“The Mouse character is industrious, disciplined, eloquent, shrewd and meticulous. There downfall can be in a selfish, obstinate, scheming and vindictive manner. The temple associated with the year of the mouse’s holy pilgrimage is the Wat Phrataht Sri Jomtong, in Chiang Mai. “
Of course, all predictions aside, we are just waiting to see what kind of an individual our little (boy, button, mouse) turns out to be but we are awfully excited to get to know him!!
–Rosemary

• Make copies, in triplicate, of everything. Including your dog’s rabies certificate.
• Do not attempt to diet – it is futile. Do not hang out with people who are dieting. Do not even remain friends with people who are naturally thin.
• Understand that if you hang new curtains, change your hair color or allow your nephew to camp in your backyard for the weekend your homestudy will have to be updated. At your expense.
• Whatever “they” told you all this would cost – that figure is incorrect.
• Only hang out with fun people, only do fun things, only see funny movies. Laugh as much as possible.
• If the people in your life refuse to see how constantly difficult this process is, if they refuse to help you celebrate humor at every turn in the road, subtly let them know you’ll be back in contact when all this is over.
• Eat, drink, exercise, make love, laugh, travel, shop, redecorate or whatever else you need to do to affirm life. Be kind and loving to yourself.
• Pray, say affirmations, meditate and journal but, no matter what, do not loose touch with that inner voice or higher power. The Whisper you hear telling you to put one foot in front of the other may be the most important part of this journey.
• Be nice to other people because they are going through hard stuff too. Our adoption troubles are not the only difficult thing to ever happen to anybody during this time.
• Pick up at least one new hobby, preferably two, because the last thing we need is free time. Try to make it something you absolutely won’t be able to do after the baby comes home. Celebrate this time because even though we want to wish it away it will never come again.
• Adore your partner! They are the only other person who knows what it really feels like to wait for “YOUR CHILD” so share the experience as fully as possible.
• Do something you have always wanted to do and never made time/money/courage for. Make sure that you can look back on this season as more than just a pergatory period.
• Even though the house is empty and you are desperate to give love – resist the urge to get a puppy mere months before bringing home a high impact toddler. If you do get a puppy though please call me so I can come over and play with yours. Brian says I can’t have one.
• Babysit for everyone you know so that in a year or so when Junior is comfortable staying with other people you can start raking in the favors.
• Read, read, read. We can’t ever read too many adoption books, blogs, chatrooms, and articles.

We spoke with our advocate at our agency and she said that all the DSDW meetings in Thailand have been booked through the end of the year and we are not scheduled to travel. So, barring a miracle, it will be 2010 before we meet our son. That was the first time I have ever been upset with our agency. I have loved working with them 100% of the time up till now, so this one little moment does not weigh very heavily into my rating of their organization. She said that Button’s paperwork is complete and so is ours but we are just…waiting. And apparently, the DSDW doesn’t care about the I-600 form that I was so worried about last time I posted. Just goes to show there’s no sense worrying. Ironic, isn’t it? Until now we have been led to believe that there was a numbered list that we were all moving up in order. Suddenly though the answer is simply, “They are very busy… Backlogged… They won’t review your son’s case until they decide to.” It was sort of like a Bugs Bunny-explains-himself-to-the-sheriff-routine. “Yeah, backlogged, that’s the ticket – backlogged!”


I’m feeling pretty angry. That tends to be how my personality processes this kind of thing. It’s just too horrible to face head on without fighting back so I get angry. Brian feels a lot of depression and worry. He always tries to fix everything so he feels overwhelmed by things like this because they are unfixable. We would give anything to change the situation because every day is a day of Button’s life we can’t recover no matter what we do or what we pay. None of that changes how we feel about Button though. Our love for him continues to grow CONSTANTLY.

Pray for a miracle. Pray for the “backlog” to unjam itself. Pray for my insane rage level to abate before I go postal and climb to the top of a bell tower. Pray for our son to be happy and healthy everyday. Pray for the DSDW to decide to review our case. Even if you don’t pray just light a candle for the kiddo, ok?

–Rosemary

The worst part about all of this though is that we can’t file the I-600 petition for Button until we get this @#&*!* form back and I am loosing my mind. For all of you who are not waiting parents also going through this crazy process, we CANNOT travel to pick our son up until our I-600 form has been processed by the U.S. government so we needed to start it yesterday already and it is horribly frustrating that we are unable to do so.

Yea, I am really worried right now and I feel angry too. I don’t know who I am angry at because it’s obviously not anyone in particular’s fault. It’s just a sad sort of nebulous anger that comes and goes like Eeyore’s little black rain cloud. I am trying to be calm, say my affirmations, pray and stay positive but I want my son to come home.

Would you mind taking a second to send up a prayer or a happy thought for Button’s homecoming? His Mommy would appreciate it more than you can know.

–Rosemary

So who has suggestions for EASY, no-fail scrapbooking? Ideally I would most like a website where I could drop all the pictures and text in digitally and not have to deal with all that cutting and pasting. You think I’m joking but Brian makes me use the child safety scissors. I know some of you out there are serious scrapbookers so hit me up with all your best tips and shortcuts! Or you could just volunteer to drive right over and work on it for me while I whip up something delicious for us to snack on. Now doesn’t that sound lovely?

–Rosemary