It's the Final Countdown...

OK cue the band..."Europe" are you guys on stage now, ready to sing your famous one hit wonder? OK and 1,2,1,2,3,4
doo da doo dooooooo.....dit da doo dooo dooooo

doo da doo dooo did di doo doo doo

It's the final COUNTDOWN.... Seriously, I think this guy can sing it better:



That hair is FANTASTIC!!! Laina was watching this video with me and her comments were; "Mommy, is that a man or a woman?" I asked her what she thought and she said, " I think that's a woman or something". I told her they were all men and she said, "How come they don't put bands in their hair, they're going to get all their hair in their eyes".

And now, Min's theme song performed by "Pink Martini" here's the song that was inspired by a ketchup advertisement that said "hang on little tomato".

Pre-Trip To Do

OK, Everything for the adoption and the trip is technically taken care of. I mean, if someone said, "You must leave tomorrow morning", we could stuff a few clothes in a bag, grab our adoption file and be out the door. But, I've got a few things that I need to remember. I'm going to write them all down here just so I can see it.

1. Empty the fridge of things that will get nasty.
2. clean the bathrooms really well
3. put clean sheets on the bed
4. vacuum the house
5. mop the kitchen floor
6. make a list of things I.'ll need to have for the dinner I'm making at Xiao Yuan's house
7. print out some pictures for Min's foster family
8. Pack up Laina's clothes for her stay at my parents
9. Wrap up the little presents for Laina for each day we're away
10. Update our Will so that my parents will know what to do in the unlikely event of a water landing.
11. Pack up Min's clothes
12. Order tickets for the "Baby Loves Disco" party.
13. Make sure I know the "direct send" address for this blog.
14. Make sure I have all my camera equipment packed.
15. Call and make sure how many "gifts" I need to bring and for whom.
16. Make sure that Oscar the Cat has all his needs met and his caretaker knows the drill.
17. Get a house key packed.
18. Figure out if my parents will need 2 carseats or just one.
19. Call Grandma
20. do all the laundry
21. Pull more weeds in the backyard if I can.
22. Find a good book to read on the trip, one that's a paperback and not too expensive so I can ditch it if I have to and not feel bad.
23. Try not to flip out, scream, rip off all my clothes and go running down harbor blvd wearing nothing but a tu-tu and hiking boots.

Yeah. That's all I gotta do. EEEEhhhh...no biggie. I worry about it tomorrow.

The TODO list updated

Send LOI (letter of Intent to Adopt): (Done August 13)
Wait for PA (prior approval): (Done September 14th)
Send Dossier to China: (Done September 15)
Talk to Social Worker to get home study addendum: (Done September 18th)
Get Home study Addendum (Received on October 3)
Receive Letter of Acceptance (Received on December 14)
Sign and Return LOA back to the Agency via FEDEX (Completed on December 17th)
Apply for Travel Visas to China (Picked up from L.A. Consulate on 1/23/08)
Receive Travel Approval (Received on 1/22/08)
Agency Makes Consulate Appointment (DONE on January 28. Scheduled for March 4)
Get the go ahead to book plane tickets (DONE on January 30)
Leave to Pick up Min!!

We have a schedule! We're taking off on the 14th and coming home on the 6th. We have a very fun trip coming up and I'm really looking forward to it. We start off in Beijing and we're going to stay at Xiao Yuan's house. Xiao Yuan was my student when I was teaching at Shandong University. She was a freshman at the time and in my first class I told her class that my husband was looking for a Chinese student to talk with him and help him with his Chinese lessons. After class Xiao Yuan ran up to me and told me that she wanted to have the job if it was OK. She came to our house every Friday for the whole year. That school year we spent the Chinese New Year with her family in Chong Qing. She graduated from University in 2001 and now works in a very big language institute in Beijing. She and her common law husband just bought an apartment and moved in recently. It will be very fun to see them.
After the weekend in Beijing, we go to Nanjing to see some business contacts that Jorg needs to talk to. We'll also do some touristing around there. I haven't been to Nanjing since 1998 and I'm sure things have changed. It will be interesting to see.
We get to Hangzhou on Sunday the 24th.
Sunday the 25th is Meet Min day. From that day forward, she will be our daughter and we will be responsible for her. I hope that we will meet her expectations or at least the basic requirements for a good family. I'm gearing myself up for some traumatic times ahead. Planing for the worst, hoping for the best. Breathe, eat, drink, love, lather, rinse, repeat.

Some things change, some stay the same...

AND SHE WILL ALWAYS CARRY ON
SOMETHING IS LOST
BUT SOMETHING IS FOUND
THEY WILL KEEP ON SPEAKING HER NAME
SOME THINGS CHANGE
SOME STAY THE SAME

The lyric above is from a Pretenders song called "Hymn to Her". I don't really know what it means, but sometimes I find myself humming this song in periods of transition. I've found myself humming this song recently and so I'm posting it here just as a "remembery".

Let's see, news of progress!! Our Travel authorization came in on Tuesday the 22nd. It would have been here the 21st except that it was Dr. Martin Luther King Day. It would have been very auspicious if it were the 21st, because that's Min's birthday! So, we're going to be traveling in 3 weeks. We don't have our consulate appointment yet, we'll get that tomorrow. After we get that, then we can start getting our tickets and getting some firm plans nailed down.

This weekend we put up the shelves in the girls' room. We got the bed set up and 2 smaller dressers will replace the one big one. I still need to sort out the clothes and get Min's things into the drawers so they're ready for her when we come home.

Wednesday, Laina and I drove into Los An Hell Ease to pick up my passport that I dropped of last week. I have a brand new years pass to China!! For no extra charge and no special papers, I got a multiple entry visa for the low low price of just $100. A single entry was exactly the same price, so I just got the multiple entry just for fun. Now, Jorg and I can sit around the table on a Thursday morning and talk about what we're going to do on the weekend. "Oh, let's have brunch at the Four Seasons in Shanghai on Sunday!" "That will be grand! I'll buy the tickets and you grab our passports with the multiple entry visas in them". Yeah, that'll happen.

I got the 2 car seats for our 2 cars and also the new stokke trip-trap chair for Min. Laina's is red and Min's is black. The 2 new car seats are tan and huge. Oscar the cat is sleeping in one of them right now.

Oh and the biggest development happened last week. It has been decided that Laina will stay home with my parents. So the deal about my Mom coming along--not gonna happen. It's OK, though. I'm glad that my parents will be together and Laina will be with them. My Grandma has not been healthy recently and it will be better for everyone if my parents can be home with her, and we'll be able to have Min all to ourselves and she can have us all to herself for while before we come home.

I have a picture of Min that I got last week (thanks to A.) Was it only last week? Maybe it more like a week and a half. I photoshopped it just a little bit because it's fun to do that. So here's what miss Min looked like 2 weeks ago:

The staging has begun--

Bought this weekend:
1 8 ft board
1 6 ft board
10 L brackets
2 boxes of wood screws

Completed:
Using stud finder to mark the wall where L brackets will go
Measured room to determine optimum placement of shelving

Lined up:
Grandparents to watch Laina on Sunday so that Jorg and I can work without "Help".

Oh yeah, I got an email from Adriana who is in China right now. Her son Blake and Min are from the same Social Welfare Institute and she met Min while she was there getting Blake. She said that Min was very social and liked to chat. The nannies tell her that we're coming to pick her up, so they know we're on our way!

Min turns 3 next week. I was really hoping we'd have her home by now, but we'll be there soon enough. Maybe we'll plan a birthday for when she comes home.

Still waiting on our TA

We're still waiting on our Travel Authorization. We still have plenty of time to get it and since we're not actually planning to leave for a few more weeks--we're still OK. The problem is that we can't book any tickets until that paper comes and we want to leave sometime around the 14th or so of February or something like that. So...again we wait...
On the "getting the room ready" front, we have a plan to get the shelving up. We have no shelves, but we have a plan. I can buy the shelves this weekend or something.

February

Happy with that!
My mom and dad came with us to go pick up Laina and I was really happy to have them along on the trip. I invited them to come along with us on this trip. I didn't expect much since my parents have done a lot of traveling in Asia this year. They spent much of the summer in the Philippines where my dad was teaching a class on business ethics or something like that. Then they took off to Vietnam where my mom was volunteering for Project Vietnam teaching doctors and therapists how they can case manage their population of developmentally disabled people. Well-that's not exactly what she did, but she gave lectures to hospital staff and not directly seeing patients. My mom is a Pediatrician with a specialty in developmental disorders.

So during the Christmas break my mom confirmed that at she would like to come along on the trip to go pick up Min. That will be so nice to have them along, both be along on the trip and also to help wrangle Laina while we get used to Min...and she gets used to us. Oh...and do you suppose there would be anything good about having a pediatrician along at all? So that will be great. We're going to be doing some sightseeing/visiting prior to pick up day. We want to go to Jinan (that's in Shandong Province) and then to Nanjing (that's not too far away from Shanghai). Then we'll go to Hangzhou.

So, tentative Pick UP day?? February 25th. This is provided we get our TA in January as expected. Although our LOA came on the 14th, the LOA packet wasn't sent back to China until the 26th because someone from our group didn't get the LOA signed and returned to the agency until then. I'm not bitter...too much, because I don't think we would have traveled until the middle of February anyways. So now, we wait--and tick off some things on the "to do" list. Notice how so many of them are ticked away...like...none of them. I procrastinate like crazy.