Monday, September 17, 2007
Holy Guacamole!
Just heard from our social worker. We have not received our LOI, but it seems extremely likely that we will be invited to travel in mid-october, to bring home a baby a girl. A girl! Lucatore is a Lucia!!! My little baby, I can't wait to come and meet you. Can. not. wait.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Autumn in the air
Today, Lucatore's big-sister-to-be started kindergarten. It's crisp outside, and I can feel fall sneaking up behind me on every dog walk, every back-to-school errand, every 7PM sunset. Last week, we spent a few days at the shore with my in-laws. Somewhere, in the midst of each activity (beach, pool, pizza, boardwalk, amusement park), someone would say, "Just think, next year when we do this, Lucatore will be with us." Lucatore, you've got a large, crazy Italian family who cannot wait to meet you and shower you with love! (oh, and my family loves you too!).
How is it that a familiar change of season makes me wistful for the son I've never met? In tribute to the excess sentimentality that autumn always provokes from me, I'm going to share the list of songs that I hum to myself alot these days, with moist eyes, thinking of little Lucatore:
1) Zion (Lauryn Hill)
2) Kid (Chrissie Hynde)
3) Fix You (Coldplay)
4) Mammals (They Might be Giants) - (yup, I've been waiting 10 years to sing this song to my child. I can't wait!)
5) My Funny Valentine (the Sarah Vaughan version)
It is September now, and so, per the agency, the LOI might come any day. Will it come today?
How is it that a familiar change of season makes me wistful for the son I've never met? In tribute to the excess sentimentality that autumn always provokes from me, I'm going to share the list of songs that I hum to myself alot these days, with moist eyes, thinking of little Lucatore:
1) Zion (Lauryn Hill)
2) Kid (Chrissie Hynde)
3) Fix You (Coldplay)
4) Mammals (They Might be Giants) - (yup, I've been waiting 10 years to sing this song to my child. I can't wait!)
5) My Funny Valentine (the Sarah Vaughan version)
It is September now, and so, per the agency, the LOI might come any day. Will it come today?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Why Kazaz... Kakaz... oh, you know? And isn't there where Borat is from?
If we had a dollar for every time...., well the adoption would've been paid for, and we could've taken a nice vacation on the tax credit. Alas, even the (extremely nice & helpful) Travel Medicine doctor yesterday, who gave Ava and I our typhus and hepatitis boosters, couldn't begin to pronounce the word Kazakhstan.
So, some fun facts about Kazakhstan:
1) Second largest of the former Soviet Republics, after Russia
2) Ninth largest nation in the world
3) Bordered by Russia, China, Uzbekistan, and the Caspian Sea
4) Russian is the predominant spoken language.
5) Racially, most people are Asian or Eurasian
6) Religion - ~ 50% Christian and 50% muslim, apparently coexisting in harmony
7) 6th largest U.S.-international adoption program for many years, approx 700-800 children annually
8) Poised to become extremely wealthy, with a developing pipeline for sending oil to China
9) Mostly desert, with some really tall mountains. Pictures I've seen remind me of Tibet
As for why? Well, it's like this: Sal and I are both on our second marriage, and had only been legally married for 6 months when we started the process. Right off the bat, this left us qualifying only for Guatemala, Vietnam and Kazakhstan. We initially chose Vietnam because we wanted Ava (adopted from China in '03) to have an Asian sibling. See my first post to learn what happened to the initial endeavor. When we decided to switch countries, we wanted to be sure as we could that we wouldn't run into the same problem with over-demand that had occurred with Vietnam. Because Kazakhstan requires two trips to the country, and a total of 5-6 weeks spent overseas, we felt like fewer people were likely to choose it, in the wake of China's changes. And most of the children are Asian or Eurasian, so Ava would still share some ethnic similarity with her new sibling. Of course, there was more to it that that, including just a "feeling" I got when reading other Kaz-adoptive-parents' blogs. But that's the one-paragraph version.
I admit it, Sal and I both loved Borat. Now let's never speak of it again...
So, some fun facts about Kazakhstan:
1) Second largest of the former Soviet Republics, after Russia
2) Ninth largest nation in the world
3) Bordered by Russia, China, Uzbekistan, and the Caspian Sea
4) Russian is the predominant spoken language.
5) Racially, most people are Asian or Eurasian
6) Religion - ~ 50% Christian and 50% muslim, apparently coexisting in harmony
7) 6th largest U.S.-international adoption program for many years, approx 700-800 children annually
8) Poised to become extremely wealthy, with a developing pipeline for sending oil to China
9) Mostly desert, with some really tall mountains. Pictures I've seen remind me of Tibet
As for why? Well, it's like this: Sal and I are both on our second marriage, and had only been legally married for 6 months when we started the process. Right off the bat, this left us qualifying only for Guatemala, Vietnam and Kazakhstan. We initially chose Vietnam because we wanted Ava (adopted from China in '03) to have an Asian sibling. See my first post to learn what happened to the initial endeavor. When we decided to switch countries, we wanted to be sure as we could that we wouldn't run into the same problem with over-demand that had occurred with Vietnam. Because Kazakhstan requires two trips to the country, and a total of 5-6 weeks spent overseas, we felt like fewer people were likely to choose it, in the wake of China's changes. And most of the children are Asian or Eurasian, so Ava would still share some ethnic similarity with her new sibling. Of course, there was more to it that that, including just a "feeling" I got when reading other Kaz-adoptive-parents' blogs. But that's the one-paragraph version.
I admit it, Sal and I both loved Borat. Now let's never speak of it again...
Friday, July 27, 2007
Who says Lucatore is a Boy?
I just realized it might seem strange that I'm so sure Lucatore is a boy. We requested children of either gender for our adoption. Apparently, 75-80% of U.S. adoptive parents request a girl. But the numbers of boys and girls put up for adoption (except in China) are equal. Thus, if you're open to either gender, you get a boy. When I asked my social worker why this was, she answered that no-one knows, and that someone should probably do their master's thesis on that very question...
Who is Lucatore? Where is Lucatore?
When Sal and I first began trying to conceive, picking out the "boy name" was easy. Lucas Salvatore - two family names with meaning, and an affable daily monniker: Luke. I don't know exactly when little Luke's name became a contraction, and can't remember whether Sal or I is to blame. Suffice to say, now our friends, parents, and even our 4-year old refer to our future son as Lucatore. You know, Lucatore.... as in: Lucatore, Omniscient Ruler of the Universe, or Lucatore, Fearsome Ancient Gladiator. I'll offer a wager as to whether we could ever stoop so low as to actually put Lucatore on his birth certificate. Any takers?
It's been 19 months since we first set out to bring Lucatore into our lives, and we now await the Letter of Invitation (LOI) from the government of Kazakhstan, telling us that the time has come to travel to a city 6500 miles away, and meet Lucatore. Everyday I struggle with not getting my hopes up too high, while simulaneously urging that letter to find its way to our door post haste! I haven't met Lucatore yet, but his absence makes my heart break a little every day.
Here's a synopsis of the road so far:
1) One year of fertility specialists, acupuncture, special vitamins, caffeine & tofu deprivation.... and a few boxes of plastic tests that failed to show the second pink line. By the end of the year, we were moving toward adoption, which we'd always planned to do anyway - we just thought it would be subsequent to having a biological child.
2) Three months of agency/program shopping - the culmination of which was a conctract with a local agency to adopt a child from Vietnam. Alas, days afterward, Angelina Jolie announced she had just adopted a child from Vietnam, using the same agency. And China changed their regulations. And Guatemala came under scrutiny. Which explains what happened in #3.
3) Two months of classes, questionnaires, autobiographies, security clearances, reference letters and home visits - and we officially "passed" our homestudy - hurray! After one night of celebrating, we learned the next day that our agency's Vietnam program had been so inundated with prospective parents, that they were putting it on hold indefinitely while they worked on expanding it.
4) Three weeks of disappointment, frustration and tears, while we tried to figure out whether or not to wait it out in the current program, or switch. It was during this time that I began reading other people's adoption blogs all over the web, and something called to me in the Kazakhstan adoption stories. I started feeling like maybe Lucatore was in Kazakhstan, not Vietnam... so at the end of the three weeks, we switched. During this time, we also decided to open ourselves up to adopting either an infant or two siblings, if they were 4-years of age or under.
5) 6 weeks of frantically getting our paperwork together for our dossier. A lot of it was similar to what we'd already put together for Vietnam, but there were some changes. I will refrain from sharing the saga of how difficult it proved to be to get a few of these pieces of paper, but I will share a few "lessons learned" at the end of this post, for those who are just starting the process.
6) 7/18/07 - we turned in our dossier - and learned, to our shock, that we could be leaving to meet Lucatore (+/- his sibling) in is as little as 2 months. After all the bumps in the road, I am trying to keep my hopes and expectations low. But wow!!! As little as two months!!!! We'll see.....
A few lessons learned with the dossier:
a) Expedite EVERYTHING no matter how long you think it will be 'til you need it, and no matter how quick the standard processing time is supposed to be.
b) Your congressman's office may be able to help get your passport out of current morass (mine did, and I am eternally grateful)
c) If you've recently changed your name (like I did), make sure absolutely everything (including the deed to your house) is in your married name before you start the process
d) If only one of your names is on the house/mortgage, it can be a big hassle to get the letter of home-ownership verification. So think about getting both names on the deed ASAP.
It's been 19 months since we first set out to bring Lucatore into our lives, and we now await the Letter of Invitation (LOI) from the government of Kazakhstan, telling us that the time has come to travel to a city 6500 miles away, and meet Lucatore. Everyday I struggle with not getting my hopes up too high, while simulaneously urging that letter to find its way to our door post haste! I haven't met Lucatore yet, but his absence makes my heart break a little every day.
Here's a synopsis of the road so far:
1) One year of fertility specialists, acupuncture, special vitamins, caffeine & tofu deprivation.... and a few boxes of plastic tests that failed to show the second pink line. By the end of the year, we were moving toward adoption, which we'd always planned to do anyway - we just thought it would be subsequent to having a biological child.
2) Three months of agency/program shopping - the culmination of which was a conctract with a local agency to adopt a child from Vietnam. Alas, days afterward, Angelina Jolie announced she had just adopted a child from Vietnam, using the same agency. And China changed their regulations. And Guatemala came under scrutiny. Which explains what happened in #3.
3) Two months of classes, questionnaires, autobiographies, security clearances, reference letters and home visits - and we officially "passed" our homestudy - hurray! After one night of celebrating, we learned the next day that our agency's Vietnam program had been so inundated with prospective parents, that they were putting it on hold indefinitely while they worked on expanding it.
4) Three weeks of disappointment, frustration and tears, while we tried to figure out whether or not to wait it out in the current program, or switch. It was during this time that I began reading other people's adoption blogs all over the web, and something called to me in the Kazakhstan adoption stories. I started feeling like maybe Lucatore was in Kazakhstan, not Vietnam... so at the end of the three weeks, we switched. During this time, we also decided to open ourselves up to adopting either an infant or two siblings, if they were 4-years of age or under.
5) 6 weeks of frantically getting our paperwork together for our dossier. A lot of it was similar to what we'd already put together for Vietnam, but there were some changes. I will refrain from sharing the saga of how difficult it proved to be to get a few of these pieces of paper, but I will share a few "lessons learned" at the end of this post, for those who are just starting the process.
6) 7/18/07 - we turned in our dossier - and learned, to our shock, that we could be leaving to meet Lucatore (+/- his sibling) in is as little as 2 months. After all the bumps in the road, I am trying to keep my hopes and expectations low. But wow!!! As little as two months!!!! We'll see.....
A few lessons learned with the dossier:
a) Expedite EVERYTHING no matter how long you think it will be 'til you need it, and no matter how quick the standard processing time is supposed to be.
b) Your congressman's office may be able to help get your passport out of current morass (mine did, and I am eternally grateful)
c) If you've recently changed your name (like I did), make sure absolutely everything (including the deed to your house) is in your married name before you start the process
d) If only one of your names is on the house/mortgage, it can be a big hassle to get the letter of home-ownership verification. So think about getting both names on the deed ASAP.
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