The Baby's Room is Done

Her room needed a lot of work. We had someone come in to repair the cracked ceiling. This took about a week to finish and it was messy! Thankfully we were going to replace the carpeting.

My dad put in the wood trim to go around the window. Amazing how much nicer it looks now with that done.

The color scheme: decided on pale green and pale yellow. Originally I had samples of paint that were electric yellow and super bright green. Anyone that I showed the samples to made a face. I was disappointed with the reactions. I really liked those colors, but because of the revulsion of others, I started to second guess myself. I didn't want the room to shock my baby so I went with the lighter shades. The colors are soothing. The wall and ceiling is green and all of the wood trim is yellow.

We ripped out the old carpeting. That was a filthy mess. Yuck! There is a hardwood floor underneath, but the floor is not in good shape. We picked out a light green carpet and hired someone to install it. The color is not the same as the walls, but it all looks good together. Now all we need is a baby to go in this room!

Not even thinking about referrals

I cannot even discuss referrals now. I can't even think about it. Okay? Lets move on.

I painted a wooden letter K the same color yellow that we painted the trim in the baby's room. I gave it to Aunt Gina roday to finish it off. She is so creative! She came up with all of these words that begin with the letter K and she will paint them onto the wood. I think it is going to look really cute in the baby's room.

Albert and I went to the doctor two weeks ago to get some shots that we needed to get for our upcoming trip to China. The shots we got were Hepatitus A, Hepatitus B, Measles/Mumps/Ruebella, and Tetanus/Diptheria. Boy, did our arms hurt! I woke up this morning covered in spots! I went to the doctor and he said I had a measley response to the measle vaccine. I am itchy too. Thought the vaccine was supposed to prevent me from contracting measles! Argh!!! Well, I'll be ready by the time we go to China, whenever that may be.

Bad News~No referral for us :(

I am crushed. No, even more than that. I am devastated. Referrals came. Yes, they did. All of December, all of January and nearly all of February received their precious referrals. The month of February was split. Referrals were sent up to and including February 26th. We missed the cut off by one day! One freaking day. I cannot believe that the entire month was not included. I mean, there are only 28 days in February for chrissakes! WTF!

I was so sure that we were getting our referral. I mean, SO SURE and now I have nothing. Don't even DARE to tell me that I will get the child I am meant to have, okay? I don't want to hear it. I WANT MY BABY NOW! Do you understand that? Do you? Let me have my pity party. Thank you.

July 22, 2004 Referral Rumor

The rumor is that referrals are coming and will include all LIDs for December, January and February. That means us! Our LID is February 27th! We should have our referral in a few days. Thw wait is nearly over. Woo Hoo!

Referral Rumors

Adoption sites thrive on referral rumors. When you are waiting, you tend to hang onto whatever scraps of info you can glean from any source. I was an avid reader of a-parents china yahoo group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a-parents-china/ Truth be told, it nearly drove me insane. I can say that now in retrospect, but at the time, it was all I had. The waiting is hard, and when you learn of referrals, you can guesstimate when you will get yours based on log in dates etc. Now I wish I had never gotten so wrapped up into the rumors, but alas, it was intoxicating. I spent many sleepless nights reading the boards and hoping and wondering when my referral was going to be next.

The next posts are comprised from my journal writings.

June 14, 2004
Today I heard a great rumor. All of November and most of December LID will get their referrals this week. That would mean that we will get our referral in August! I sure hope this rumor is true!

Albert took a part-time job to earn some extra money. A very dear friend of ours gave him a job working in an office supply store. She is the store manager, so it should work out for both of us, I hope.

The Wait

The waiting is the hardest part...Yes it sure is, but I have been keeping myself very busy. First order of business is to switch all the rooms around. Albert and I were moving out of the master bedroom suite so that my dad could move from the medium sized bedroom that we were going to take. His having the larger bedroom allowed us to also move his tv, books and computer from the den that will be our daughter's room. It is the smallest of the three bedrooms.

It is a pretty straight forward thing, just moving stuff around, but my dad is someone who does not like change. He understands why we have to move everything, but he isn't so sure why we have to do it now when we don't even have a referral yet. I tried to explain that I couldn't wait until I got the referral as there would be so many other things I'd have to do then, but he thinks I am just a little crazy I guess, but he is going along with it, begudgingly!

The trick to this multi-room move is to do it when my dad will be out of the house for a few hours because there is going to be stuff all over the place. In addition, we had to call the cable company and the phone company in to move the cable and change the telephone lines, so there was going to be a bit of confusion. So that was our plan and it pretty much worked. We had to move all of our stuff out of the master bedroom in put it in the living room and dining room temporarily. This enabled us to move all of my dad's bedroom furniture into his new room. Then we moved all of his stuff from the den into the bedroom.

Then we painted his old bedroom so that we'd have fresh paint on the walls. It is always best to paint when there is no furniture in the room, so this was a grand opportunity. We did however, have to sleep in the living room that night because it was so late by the time the painting was finished that we did not a. have the energy to move the furniture into the room and b. did not want to sleep with the paint fumes so strong.

By the end of the weekend my dad and I had switched bedrooms and my daughter's room was empty. This room was going to require a lot of work. Painting, new carpeting, fix the crack in the ceiling and put trim on the window. See, we will have a lot of stuff to do while we wait!

Our LID!

I have been waiting to hear news of our official log in date so everyday I anxiously go through the mail looking for a letter from CHI. Last week I was disappointed because there was a letter from CHI about waiting children, but it wasn't what I was hoping for.

As I sorted through the mail today, I saw an envelope that looked like a book. It was upside down so I didn't know who it was from, but I set it aside to look at all the letter-type envelopes. There were none from CHI. I flipped over the book envelope and it was from CHI. I opened it and there was a letter with my official log in date of 2-27-04 and a book called "Does Anybody Else Look Like Me?" A parent's guide to raising multiracial children. What a pleasant surprise. Thanks CHI! We are officially DTC for February!!!