An Update (yes, I know, finally!)

All is well on the Brown front. We are so excited to say that there are only 27 days worth of families ahead of us in our China adoption quest. This month they referred families through February 9, 2006 and we are logged in on March 8, 2006. Officially less than a month, although it could take them 6 months or longer to get through that month...

We are so excited at the prospect. We even opened the room to our future daughter's room the other day (it's been closed for a while). Charlie and I are both traveling like crazy these days, so time is going quickly. We can't wait for the real countdown!

Tag - I'm it!

Rebecca tagged me...so here it goes!

10 Years Ago...
I had just moved to Los Angeles from Baltimore. I was working for an educational initiative and barely scraping by. I didn't know it at the time, but I would lose my mom within the year.

5 Years Ago...
I was living in Los Angeles as a newlywed and driving four or so hours a day to get to the office and home. Charlie and I were enjoying our home and our friends, but looking back, what I really enjoyed was the weather! Five years ago this month, we traveled to Tahiti for my 30th birthday! This year it is Turks and Caicos...

5 Months Ago...
I was doing exactly what I am doing now, only wearing warmer clothes! I was also thinking that our adoption might come through this summer (five months later that is not the case).

5 Things on my To-Do List...
Find paintings for the dining room
Install our new solar outside lights
Look for a new sofa
Walk the dogs (this is always on the list...)
Find a billion dollars (see below...)

5 Snacks I Enjoy...
Edamame
Hummus and pita
Air-popped popcorn
Strawberry yogurt
Almonds

5 Things I Would do if I had a Billion Dollars...
Travel the world and take everyone with us
Work to fix the domestic adoption system
Move to a new place
Send our kids/siblings/nieces/nephews/us to (or back to) college
Retire!

5 of my Bad Habits...
Procrastinating things at work
Letting the Internet hog all my time
Not returning things to the store when I should
Grocery shopping the European way...shopping for one meal at a time
Not listening to voice mails right away

5 Places I have Lived...
Greensboro, North Carolina
Santa Clarita, California
Los Angeles, California
Columbia, Maryland
Evansville, Indiana

5 Jobs I have had...
High School Teacher
Program Manager
Technical Writer
Training Manager
Technical Communicator

5 Things most People don't know about me...
I work out with a personal trainer 3 times a week
Charlie and I don't exchange gifts for any holiday (except every 5 years of marriage)
Our to-be adopted daughter already has a room with furniture and clothes
Sunglasses are my favorite accessory - if I could have a hundred pairs I would!
I hate going to the doctor and only go when I absolutely have to

I tag...Robyn (if you are reading this!)

Referrals are out...47 days to go!

Okay, it isn't a literal 47 days, but instead is 47 days worth of families are now ahead of us. This is great news! Referrals came out yesterday through January 20, 2006. Hopefully the Olympics are not too much of a hindrance in the adoption process. My girlfriend, Kate, thinks that the process is going to speed up more quickly than we expect...Kate, I hope you are right! Charlie and I are ready. Scout & Boo might not be, but we'll work on that...hugs to everyone!

Our 2-year LID-versary

Well, we officially entered year two. March 8, 2006 is the date that China logged in all of our finished paperwork. The good news is that they just referred through January 4, 2006! Woohoo...finally! It's great to see "our" year on the list!

We'll keep you posted!

A little bit of math...

The most recent set of referrals covered through December 19, 2005. Being March 8, 2006, that puts 80 LID days between the current referrals and us. For clarification, that isn't actual days; it is days of families ahead of us. Recent referrals included five days a month. The rumor right now is that the latest batch of referrals will be through December 27, 2005. That puts us at 73 LID days to referral...my lucky number!

Woohoo...it might be 2008 after all!

Skip forward again to 2008

I've been on an unexpected hiatus since the last post. While we were incredibly excited and anxious when we began our Chinese adoption, we are now a bit frustrated and sad. The CCAA referred 3.5 months total during 2007; 80 LID days remain between the current referrals and our LID. To demonstrate how slow the process is right now, they referred only five days each month over the last quarter. We must remain positive and are determined to wait it out, but it seems to jump into our daily routine causing normal activities to seem difficult.

Although we're only 22 days into the new year, I am proud to say that my resolutions are all still in tact. I am also adding a new one today. To add to this blog on a (semi-) regular basis! So much goes on in our daily lives and neither Charlie nor I take the time to document anything! A lot of it is baby related, like our quest for the Porsche stroller!

Blog you soon...

Skip to the present

So...I'm a procrastinator. This is most obvious by the fact that even my blog is out-of-date! Every entry up until this point took place before the middle of September last year. All of the bureaucracy that faced us during our paperchase, to include the US government making a clerical error and sending our advanced orphan petition approval to Russia (???), gives me a headache. I thought that I would post a few updates before I try (emphasis on try) to go back and relive all of the "fun" months that we endured while we recreated our life in paper.

It is now June. Tomorrow is Father's Day -- Charlie's first. Even though our little girl isn't home with us, I still think it is important to acknowledge the holiday. If we were physically pregnant we'd be getting lots of recognition tomorrow, so I took it upon myself to plan a celebration for my honey. After all, if we had gotten pregnant when we started this process, our child would be over a month old! So for tomorrow, I even splurged and got him a couple of cute gifts to open. I am even letting Charlie decide if we'll go to church in the morning! Talk about a good holiday for him...It's these little things that keep this experience alive for us. If we didn't make a conscious effort to acknowledge our journey, the whole thing would feel more like applying for life insurance or something equally boring and forgettable.

A little update on our paperwork...because of the government's error in countries, we got pushed back a bit, but our dossier was officially accepted and sent to China on February 10th. We got an e-mail on March 8th that our dossier was officially logged in (LID) to Beijing, which means that our timeclock started 3/8/06. Once the dossier is logged in the waiting game begins. When we started this process, the wait from LID to referral was 6 months. It is now at 12 months and is rumored to go up to 18-24 months. Given that information, our best case scenario puts us at next March for a referral (a photo and medical history of our matched child) and June for traveling to China, while our worst case puts us well into 2008. Your guess is as good as mine!

In the meantime, Charlie and I are keeping ourselves relatively occupied. Both of us are working quite a bit and enjoying business and personal travel. I've thrown myself into volunteer work and we're making the most of our new home on the East Coast. But every little child, regardless of gender or ethnicity, reminds us of our journey.

#6: The Vital Records

The term paperchase is commonly used to describe the records gathering process. I have also heard it referred to as a paper pregnancy. Both terms fit for me. It could also be called the validating your existence phase or the are you kidding me phase. Once we were accepted by our agency, we received a package that detailed all of the work that lay ahead of us.

Getting copies of our vital records was step one in the paperchase. This was the point when I realized that all is fair in love and adoption. The folks who are very good about always keeping copies of their vital records in their safe deposit box or somewhere hidden in their home are no farther along than the rest of us. You see, for the vital records to be accepted by China, they must be less than six months old. Consequently, everyone starts at square one. Finally we were on an even playing field.

For us, the vital records included our birth certificates, our marriage certificate, and certified divorce decrees. There was other fun paperwork to gather, but I'll tackle that next. For Charlie and me, getting these five required vital records (we've both been divorced once) required that I go through four different states. Of course, these four states did not all work the same. This was the second time that I have hailed the beauty of the Internet. In two of the five cases, once I found the right sites, all I had to do was enter the vital information and hit click. They arrived at our home within two weeks. The other three required much more leg work, but I don't believe I would have been able to accomplish it had I not had the benefit of the Internet at my fingertips. After a few frustrating days of searching for some information on one of the states, I picked up the phone. That got me nowhere, so back to the wonderful and vast Internet it was.

I started the vital record quest in September of 2005. We had everything in our possession by the middle of October. It was a check in the good box for step one of the paperchase. Charlie and I started to think that this whole thing might be possible! Onto the next paperwork step...

#5: The Agency

Everything I read said that the agency was key. Pick the right agency and this adoption thing is easy, or pick the wrong agency and there will be an excess of work, worry, and waiting. So there was just a little pressure for me to choose the right one.

The agency search took me back to the Internet to research. It seemed that just about every agency provided a liaison to China. That sure didn't help me with my plight. Then I looked at requirements, and although the agency requirements differed a bit, we still qualified for the same child status regardless of who we chose. When that also didn't help, I looked at cost. Now Charlie and I were not in a position where an extra thousand dollars would have made a difference, but it was something to take into consideration. The differences still weren't that immense.

So, I did the only other thing I could think of to do, which was to call someone. I had requested informational packets from several of my top agencies, but I didn't have the patience to wait for them. My friend's oldest adopted grandchild was adopted from China, so I knew that she could either recommend or not recommend the agency they used. Her response was overwhelming! Yes, they loved their agency and highly recommended them.

After a bit of research and viewing the informational DVD that finally arrived, we decided to go with their agency. What sold us on them was something we hadn't previously considered. The agency's connection to China. Our agency actually had an office in Beijing and had connections with the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA), which was a definite plus. It didn't mean that we could get our daughter any faster, but it gave us piece of mind that our agency was in touch with the Chinese organization responsible for pairing up children with adoptive parents.

Once we made our agency decision, we still had to apply and be accepted. Although in the end, since we met the basic adoption criteria, we really only owed them the money. However, at the time it felt like when we filled out security clearance paperwork. I will also add that the only reason we were able to complete the application in so timely a manner, is because Charlie and I had both at one time been in the position of filling out security clearance paperwork, and therefore already had gathered most of the information.

After completing the form and submitting it with our application fee, we began the first of what seems an innumerable number of "waits." They didn't care how qualified you were, how much money you had, or how badly you wanted to adopt - you still had to wait. This is when I learned a sad truth about myself. I am NOT a patient person when it comes to paperwork and bureaucracy. Little kids I can handle, a two-hour commute I can handle, but having to wait while someone holds our family's future in their hands was simply unbearable!

We made it through those long six days and were approved! Approval from our agency just meant they would take our case, but it meant the world to us! Somewhere, someone out there thought we would make good parents. That's when the fun began.

#4: The Research

Once we decided on international adoption using no research, we decided that we should do a little investigation on the process and decisions that needed to be made. This was a red-letter day in my life. Since Charlie and I met, we have both been Internet junkies. The Internet was our sole method of getting news, knowing the weather, getting a movie time, and sometimes even communicating with family and friends. However, it was not until this day, the day we started our research, that I realized just how invaluable and vital the Internet is to our lives.

Using the Internet, we began the process of looking into the different programs available to us. When looking at the countries with available adoptions to the United States, it was important to look at the requirements each country imposed on prospective adoptive parents. There are a multitude of factors that are black and white to those countries. Facts such as age, home state, health, home, and other children/adults residing in the house need to be considered when looking into programs. It was also a realization for us that these requirements came from the other countries and not from the US government. During the research it also became clear to us that if you are an upstanding US citizen who is willing to go through the bureaucratic motions, the US is not picky about your adoption. Their primary concerns are that you do not have any criminal record, that the child you are adopting is eligible for citizenship, and that you can and will be financially responsible for the child.

Charlie and I are in our mid-30s with no criminal record and no health problems. It is just the two of us...we don't even have a pet. You see, I'm a dog person and Charlie is a cat person -- in four years of marriage we have yet to agree on this! Regardless of our dilemma with the pet situation, the other factors made us eligible for a number of programs, so after we narrowed down our eligibility, we decided to choose which culture was most appropriate for our family.

I would like to say that we spent weeks researching each country and figuring out which cultures and ethnicities would be most appropriate for us. But I would be lying. Charlie's travels took him to some fascinating places, but no where more so than Asia - China in particular. We also have many Chinese friends, so our first look was at China. Our first glance at Chinese adoption hooked us...there was no going back. Those healthy, beautiful girls are sitting in institutions, with the luckier girls in foster care, just waiting for a family. Their birthparents were not able to keep them for various socioeconomic, political, or familial reasons, so they abandoned them in the hopes that they would be adopted by a loving family. We watched a couple of videos and we both melted. Our little girl was waiting for us.

China it was.

#3: The Decision

Once I get an idea in my head, I become completely obsessed. Let me repeat...completely obsessed. Keep that in mind when I say that I also have some trouble making decisions. I had a time during our recent move across the country. Leaving Los Angeles forced me to say good-bye to my career, and after much discussion and contemplation, we decided that I wouldn't go job hunting for awhile. I would take this opportunity to get our new home organized and to learn to relax, a skill that had always eluded me. We could also focus on starting a family. To this day, I still agonize over this decision. It is now a more permanent arrangement though, since we made "the" decision. I am working, but only on a contract basis, so I can quit at any time.

Given my track record with decision making, including a consistent difficulty in choosing dinner, imagine our surprise when neither Charlie nor I had no problems with this decision.

After a quick discussion, we came to the conclusion that we had three options. We could adopt, we could continue to try for a pregnancy, or we could forgo our dream of children. We had no diagnosed nor anticipated fertility problems (although we had been trying for a year), so continuing to try a few more months for a biological baby seemed the logical choice because of our strong desire for kids. The third option of not having children wasn't our first choice, but it would allow us to maintain our freedom - travel whenever we want, buy the latest gadgets, and so on. It sounded fun, but very lonely. It sure wouldn't fill the gap in our lives.

We have a friend with three adopted grandchildren. The love that the family feels for these kids and the heartbreaking stories of their lives pre-adoption reminded us of Charlie's trip to the orphanages. We couldn't resist - the thought of those little children starting their lives in institutions was too much for us. Adoption it was.

#2: The Spark

Charlie and I met at work and had the atypical office romance. Winks across the conference tables, stoken kisses in the boardroom, and all of the no-nos that HR informs you of. We kept it a secret as long as possible, but when the time came, we shouted from the rooftops with joy. Imagine our dismay when not everyone returned our excitement. No one was angry, thank goodness, and luckily there was no actual policy against fraternizing with a co-worker, but there were simply a couple of girls who thought they should have a shot at Charlie themselves. After all, Charlie was new on the market after a recent divorce, and it wasn't fair of me to hog his attentions. Nevermind that I was also recently divorced and we were complete opposites.

We moved in together before we even went on our first official date and we bought a house together, which was a feat in California, before we were engaged. Needless to say, our relationship started in a rather non-traditional manner. We even married in an unusual way. Charlie grabbed his best friend and I grabbed mine, and we all flew to Hawaii for our beach wedding. While the whales breached in the background, Charlie and I said our I dos complete with Hawaiian leis and the hony-hony, which most of us know as an Eskimo Kiss. We topped the evening off with champagne on the beach in our wedding attire. There has never been a more perfect and fun day for us.

In our now four years of marriage, we have made every effort to keep things interesting and full of spark. Our careers, our friends, and our lifestyle made our lives exactly what we wanted. We have enjoyed multiple passport-required vacations and speak conversationally in multiple languages. Our careers brought in plenty of money and our vehicles were top of the line. We thought we had it all, but there was always something missing. For me it was a dark hole and for Charlie it was a nagging feeling. Kids - we wanted to share our life with a family. We weren't getting any younger either. But with Charlie's travel schedule and my extra-long commute, we always came up with an excuse. Sometimes it was my excuse and sometimes it was Charlie's. We both wanted kids though - how much we wanted kids simply depended on the time of day.

We stopped preventing pregnancy and I started doing all of the appropriate health-related maintenance items so that our children would have the best possible start in life. No alcohol, no caffeine, no medication, no foods from the do-not-eat list, daily exercise, and a fantastic pre-natal vitamin all became part of my daily credence. And for the record, that split second you have that first monthly cramp when you are trying for a baby is the worst split second you can imagine. But that feeling quickly dissipates, which is what makes you want to try again.

Pregnancy was never something that Charlie and I truly looked forward to - me for the possible physical and psychological complications and Charlie for the rumored high maintenance pregnant wife issues. What we really wanted was to be parents. In speaking with my friends and family, there seem to be two outlooks on babies - those who want to be pregnant and those who want to be parents. Don't get me wrong, I hope to someday experience pregnancy and everything that goes with it, and it is our hope that we can do so without medical intervention. But pregnancy is not our first priority. Charlie and I wanted the privilege and the challenge of starting and raising a family, regardless of how that family gets started.

Charlie's many travels had taken him all over the world and the "tourist attraction" that most caught his attention was an orphanage in Africa. Because of these travels, we have many friends all over the globe and have had the pleasure of seeing all kinds of families and watching and playing with kids from all over. After Charlie's visit to the orphanage and after he relayed the stories and the pictures to me, it became so important to us to think of and pray for these children. Being Americans, we had no concept of a newborn baby not being adopted immediately and having a waiting list years long behind those specific adoptive parents. In many of the countries we visited, the exact opposite is the reality. Our standard saying became "we wish we could take him/her/them home with us." Not just because we could provide a loving, two-parent home, but because we could learn so much from him or her. Our world would be opened up.

In our atypical fashion, adoption became a real possibility for us over dinner. We had not done any real research on it, but sitting there enjoying our salads, we experienced a real spark. The kind of spark that is always with you. Let's adopt - how about China? And so we sat down to make a decision.

#1: Our Latest Curse Word

Adoption must be a curse word. Not an everyday, run-of-the-mill curse word, but an impression of utter inadequacy, last resort curse word. As a self-proclaimed curse word aficionado, one would assume I knew of and had used on occasions worthy, the vase majority of American curse words. Why, I'll even make the claim that all standard curse words were in my regular vocabulary. I pride myself on my well-honed craft of curse word usage.

Imagine my dismay when I realized that the word adoption, which I use regularly and without the emphasis I reserve for a curse word, falls into the curse word family. I did not come to this realization overnight, nor did I realize how far-reaching the effects.

Children make the world go around and keep all of us on our toes. Think about it...without children there will eventually be no more life. Even if the average life span is raised to 100 years, without children the world's population will die out in 110 years (there are always those stubborn folks who refuse to be normal). This thought raises the question - how do we keep children coming and keep the world populated with well-adjusted productive members of society? There is only one way to bring a child into this world. That way, much to the chagrin of the modern men out there, is for a woman to get pregnant and give birth. There is no ethical way to get away from that. It is the second part of the question that has alternatives.

How do we produce children who are both well-adjusted and productive members of society? This process actually begins with conception, but I am simply not prepared to have that conversation right now. So for the purpose of this blog, let's take a look at producing responsible individuals beginning after birth. The only proven way to raise this healthy person is through human contact.

The absolute vast majority of children are raised by the woman who birthed her and in most circumstances, the man who conceived her. Because of its commonality, most persons assume that a child was birthed by the same couple who is raising her. No thought is given to any other possible circumstance. Even when the child obviously looks different from her parents, unless there is a different race involved, strangers will come up with ways that the child is like her parents. She has your long fingers, he crinkles his nose just like you, her hair is silky like yours, and the list goes on. Humans are desperate to connect the child with the parents - in behavior or appearance.

This brings up the truth that not all parents birthed their children. Through circumstance or desire, some adults choose to raise a child birthed by someone else as their own. The vast majority of you reading this blog were raised in a home. While it might not have been the perfect home and there were most likely lots of moments you wanted to be from anywhere else, you had a roof over your head and food on the table. There were adults around you and everyone in the house knew your name. For many children, that is a fantasy - a wonderful world that they only allow themselves to see in the safety of a dream. Those children live in institutions or orphanages because their birthmothers could not or would not raise them.

These institutions and orphanages are improving each year and it is no longer quite a death sentence to grow up in one. However, institutionalized care is second best to a loving home with caring parents. These parents did not birth these children, but are willing and able to bring a strange child into their home and raise her as their own, with all of the same rights as a biological child. They do not love that child any less than a biological child and do not consider her any less "theirs."

My husband and I chose to become parents through adoption, not birth. We had not been declared infertile or exhausted all attempt at pregnancy. We decided that our goal was to be parents, not to be pregnant. There are so many orphans in our small world who dream of parents and a home. After much thought, discussion, and prayer, we decided that there was no reason we shouldn't start our family through adoption. What follows is our story...

To Start Off With...

I caved...I broke down...today I join the masses and started my first blog. It isn't that I haven't wanted to for a few years or that I haven't had anything to say or that I'm not technically savvy...I simply realized that today was the day. No more putting it off. You may be wondering why I chose the title of Picking Names, which could be construed many different ways. Well let me tell you our story.

Charlie and I got married several years ago. Busy with bustling careers, crazy commutes, and a super-sized mortgage, we decided we would wait a couple of years to start our family. I always wanted children, but Charlie's desire grew along with our marriage. It seemed that one moment I would be ready and he wouldn't, then it would be him ready but not me...it was the day that we were both ready that my stomach did a little flip. It was that time. We were going to try for a baby. Needless to say, getting pregnant isn't something that you can simply decide. Ask anyone who has tried to get pregnant more than one month and they will confirm this fact. But the moment that we decided to try, my mind went crazy trying to pick names for these unborn and as-of-yet-unconceived children. I went through thousands of names, each one with different connotations, denotations, and evoked feelings...everything from Ally to Zoe.

Anyway...after much trial and tribulation, we decided on adoption for a multitude of reasons. What I am planning to include in my blog is the book that I started writing - and will hopefully finish - as we go through our adoption journey to bring our little one home.