Little Things

So Chloe is STILL not sleeping through the night. She's usually up 3-4 times a night still to eat.

Like I've said before, while I wouldn't mind getting a full night's sleep, I really don't mind getting up with her, as she just takes her bottle and goes right back to sleep. To be honest, I think I'll kind of miss it when she stops getting up.

It's really the cutest little scene. She's crying, so I go in her room and pick her up. She's usually always lying on her stomach and so I have to pick her up and turn her around. She immediately takes one of her arms and puts it around me. She never opens her eyes, but she automatically opens her mouth and starts moving it around waiting for me to put the bottle in it. It's like she's still half asleep, but knows what's supposed to happen. It is too cute. But maybe you have to be there. I would definitely take my word for it though.

NEWSFLASH

I don't think that I've blogged about this, and I'm too lazy to go back and check, but Chloe is officially off and running. Well, not really running, but walking is definitely her preferred mode of transportation now. It is way cute, especially with how little she is.

Today we played in the playplace at the mall for the first time. Chloe LOVED it. She especially loves being around other babies. Unfortunately not all babies love being around her, but she's dealing with it well.

Well, that's all for today...

Happy Thanksgiving

What am I most thankful for this Thanksgiving?

I think this picture speaks for itself:

Chloe's first Thanksgiving:

Waking Up

Enjoying her Rice Crispies breakfast

Her favorite "toy":

Yes, she's standing. And she's going to be in EVERYTHING!

REALLY concentrating on her story:

Chloe and her first turkey leg:

Random Thanksgiving Evening:

Chloe's first Mt. Dew:

(The lid was actually on...you guys think my child gets soda!?!?!)

You know you have a problem when...

This was the view from my chair this morning:

So at 9:00 AM I am downing a cappucino and coke simultaneously. Take from that what you will.

What was supposed to be an uneventful day....

I decided that I would come home for lunch today and get some stuff done.  I'm in my bedroom and realize that one of the light bulbs in my fan was burnt out, then I remembered that one of the bathroom bulbs were as well.  So I thought I would head down to the laundry room and get some replacements.  As I get down there, I happen to see some water on the floor.  Hmmm....

As I investigate further, I realize that there is a LOT of water.  Then I realize that it's coming from the water heater.

Suck. 

Really bad.

I head back to work thinking I can make some calls and price a new one.  Wrong.  Apparently you have to know the exact dimensions of your old water heater before anyone will help you.   Jerks.

So I have to go back home and measure.  Then I find out that it's going to cost me more to have it installed than I'm going to pay for the unit itself!  Craziness!

But all was not lost....

Turns out my brother knows how to install water heaters and spent his evening installing mine.  So that was awesome.  Saved me quite a bit. 

 

Random Picture:

 

This is a completely awful picture of me.  I had just finished working out, washing my face, etc.  But it was the best I could do on my own and Chloe's smile is too cute!.  It was taken 9/11/07. 

Nails...

As you can see, I got my nails down the other day. And yes, they actually are MY nails. But that's not the point of this post. You see, usually when I get my nails down, I always end up getting them done by the same guy. And he's from Vietnam. So we usually end up talking about Vietnam a lot.

This time he talked to me a little bit about Tet, which is the Vietnamese New Year Celebration. According to him, this year is not only the year of the pig, but it's the year of the GOLDEN pig, which only happens once every 100 years or something like that. The pig is supposed to symbolize money and wealth, so I suppose the GOLDEN pig is supposed to mean LOTS of money and wealth. He said that everyone wants to have a baby this year. Especially a boy. (Of course, he doesn't think he really believes in that.)

He did give me some interesting customs that they do on Tet:

*They wear all new clothes. New everything. This is supposed to symbolize a new year a new beginning. So you don't wear anything old.
*They don't work. It's supposed to be a day of rest. So they try to prepare the food for the Tet celebration early so they don't have to cook that first day...

I found out that Chloe was born in the year of the dog. I didn't think about the fact that because the lunar calendar doesn't match ours, the years don't really match. You know how if you go to a chinese resteraunt, they have the placemats that list different years for what your symbol is? Well if you were born at the beginning of our calendar year, you probably are the prior years symbol...does that make sense? Also, it just so happens that I'm a dog too...

I'm going to end with a few pictures of Chloe:

I think this pictures is pretty cute...

I got this toy for Chloe a few weeks ago. It's a chair connected to a little table and it sings, reads a story, says the ABC's, etc. She LOVES it. I think it might just be her favorite!

Another picture of Chloe in her Colts outfit today. And check out what she's doing! She's also consistantly taking 8-10 steps now... She's going to be off and running here in the next few days I do predict...

And again, another cute picture!

Swimming Lessons Update

I must tell you all that swimming lessons were a huge hit with Chloe.

I was a little concerned that Chloe might not be into the water so much right now. When we took her swimming over the summer, it took her a while to warm up to it. Also, she's not so much enjoying bath time right now...

But the second we entered the pool, her little face just lit up! I don't think I have ever seen her as excited as she was about anything else. I mean, you can get her really excited for a minute, but this was thirty minutes of pure non-stop excitement for her. She couldn't contain herself! She was splashing, laughing, giggling the WHOLE time. Not for one minute did she stop splashing and laughing. Seriously. I'm not even exaggerating!!!

A little background on the class... Her group was 0-36 months. There were 3-4 other babies, but they all were getting ready to turn three in January. So Chloe was the youngest by far. The class was geared towards "survival training" rather than actually learning to swim. Basically, they wanted to get the babies acclimated to the water and teach them to kick and blow bubbles through their mouth.

Obviously I wasn't going to get Chloe to breathe under water. The instructors told me to only do what I felt comfortable with, but suggested letting her float on her back, or blowing in her face to see if she would hold her breath, then putting her mouth and nose underwater. I decided that I wasn't going to do the face underwater thing, as I didn't want to scare her. I did guide her around a little on her back, but mostly I just held her and let her splash.

I know that she probably didn't learn much, but like I said, my goal was just to make sure she is comfortable in water. And in the end, even if we come everyday and just play, it would be totally worth the money that I paid just to watch her have so much fun!

SIDENOTE: JUST A REMINDER THAT YOU CAN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG!

Swimming Lessons

So Chloe is starting swimming lessons this week. Twice a week, for a half hour. It will last approximately a month.

I know what you all are thinking now...Swimming lessons, huh? And yes, I am aware that she probably won't actually learn to swim. But I'll be in the water with her and I think we'll have lots of fun regardless. And I think Chloe will love it! And depending on how much she likes it, we might do it again.

I've been waiting for this forever. I actually signed her up for the lessons while we were still inVietnam :)

Hopefully I can get some pictures while we are there and post them....

My little rant...

As I mentioned in my last post, there have been two provinces in Vietnam that have been targeted for unethical adoptions and certain agencies that have received the NOID's.

Well, Chloe came from one of those provinces and one of the agencies being targeted.

From those of you that followed this blog while we traveled, you know that we were delayed.

Our G&R was supposed to occur on May 14th. It didn't happen until May 28th. That's two weeks that we were delayed by the Vietnamese side. Why do you ask? I don't know exactly. I know that a lot of agencies wait for an invitation to travel from the provincial government in Vietnam. From what I understand, there usually aren't any delays if you get this. We didn't have that. We just had word that our G&R would be on this date from a government official. But it kept getting pushed back.

These delays absolutely drove us crazy. Do I think that our agency had some fault? Possibly. I think that the Vietnamese government played a huge role in it. They do things when they want to. We went to get the passports, waited all morning, and then the passport people told us to go home because they were going to a wedding. What!?!? They are going to a wedding instead of doing their job? They couldn't have told us that? That's just the way things are. There were several of those kind of delays. It was frustrating not knowing what was doing on, and so we had a lot of time to imagine all the possible things that might be going on. Were are adoptions not going to happen?

I will tell you that at times, our communication with adoppt and staff sucked. Plain and simple. We'd be waiting for the G&R and not find out until after we were supposed to leave that it wasn't happening. But does that mean that our adoptions were unethical? No. Inefficient? Yep. But I can live with that.

After we had our G&R on Monday, the 28th, we were supposed to have our first embassy appointment on Friday, June 1st. Well, Thursday night, I got a call from the facilatator telling me that me and another family would have to wait until Monday. She gave me some excuse kind of blaming the embassy, but I truly believe that it was her fault. She wasn't able to get all the translation done on time. Again, do I think that this delay was because of unethical business practices? No. I just think that our facilitator was relatively new and inexperienced and she didn't get it done and was ashamed of that. I was very upset at the time, but in the end, it doesn't really matter. We got our interview. It was in fact on Monday, June 4th. And it was pretty uneventful. The inteviewer was very friendly.

We had our second interview on Friday afternoon, June 8th. That's four business days later. It took two minutes and very uneventul. We picked up her Visa on Monday, the 11th and left Vietnam that night. So while we were in country for a full month and our G&R was delayed by two weeks, had we been schedule for a May 28th G&R, our process would only have taken two weeks start to finish. Once we got going, there were no delays.

It only took a week for the full US side of things. The next travel group was not delayed at all and got out rather quickly. The next group is the current group that has had some NOID's issued. Not all the families.

Now let me ask you this...if this agency was so obviously unethical, why did the US let all of our cases slide through?

The sad part is that as all of this was going on, I was constantly having to defend my adoption. I was constantly having to correct false rumors that were being presented as fact about my OWN adoption, then I was treated like I didn't know what I was talking about. Basically people back in the US were acting like they knew more about what was going on than what I did. It was crazy what people were saying.

So I have particular sympathy for the people going through this right now. I know how mean, nasty, and condesending people can be.

Do I have reason to believe that Chloe was obtained unethically? Not at all. Does a delayed G&R mean the agency is unethical? Not at all. Do I believe that the process was inefficient? Absolutely at times. Do I believe that the current NOID's are warrented? I don't know. It's not for me to decide. But I can tell you that before I pass judgement, I want proof/facts that they were legit. Until then, I will absolutely support the families over there.

Ethics and NOID's

I know that I am going to have special challenges in raising Chloe that I wouldn't neccesarily face if I didn't have an internationally adopted child.

The big talk in Vietnamese adoptionland right now is on ethics. The US embassy in Vietnam has issued several NOIDS to families who are in Vietnam with their children right now. NOID's are Notices of Intent to Deny. What this means is that the Embassy is saying that they think that there might be a reason that the child doesn't meet US orphan guidelines. Therefore, they won't issue a Visa to the child to enter the US. The problem is that Vietnam has already approved the adoption, so the child belongs to the family in Vietnam's eyes. If issued a NOID, the family has the following options:

1) To relinquish the child back to Vietnam, at which point the child would go back to an orphanage.
2) To return to the US without the Child. The child might be placed in private foster care. Once back in the US, hire an attorney to fight the NOID. Who knows how long this process would take...
3) Live in Vietnam or another country abroad for two years at which point the US will issue a Visa.

NOID's can be issued for a variety of reasons. The US might suspect baby trafficing, the birth family might not realize that the child will be adopted abroad, there might be translation mistakes in the paperwork. As you can see, some of the reasons can range from simple typographical errors to illegal activity.

In the end, I don't want to see a baby being put up for adoption that was obtained without the consent of the birth parent(s). So if these NOID's are actually warrented, I am happy that the US is doing something about it. I'm not going to debate whether NOID's are a good thing or not.

What I would like to address are the rumors, accusations, and plain nastiness that is going on in the adoption world.

There are certain agencies that are going issued these NOID's at this point. The embassy issued a statement about the integrity of adoptions in two specific provinces. Does that mean that every adoption out of those provinces have been unethical? No. Does it need to be looked at? Yes?

What I have a problem with are all the people who are not involved in these specific cases preaching about them as though they are fact, and attacking the families involved. Automatically assuming that all these NOID"s are warrented.

It seems to me like the US embassy in Hanoi might be trying to make an example out of these cases. There have been rumors going on surrounding certain agencies for awhile now, but never have any NOIDS been issued. Then all of a sudden, a huge amount of NOID's. Are all of these actually warrented??? I don't know. And really, neither do most of the people out there who are speculating on them.

It's sad to me to think that some of these options are on the up and up, yet there experience might be forever tainted because of a power play. Of course, it's also sad to me that some of these babies might not have been obtained legally. So I don't know what the answer is.

What I do know is that it's awfully strange to me that out of nowhere the embassy seems to have a bunch of questionable cases. And if all the adoptions from a certain agency really were questionable, then why weren't there any questions with prior adoptions???

I am not by any means saying that there aren't unethical agencies operating in Vietnam. And I truly believe that they should be stopped. But I think that these cases should be based on facts and not rumor and/or speculation. I just hate to think of the effect that this has on innocent families and adoptions that might have been done ethically. And I hate to see so many people acting like they know all the facts about these NOID's. More than the families actually involved.

In all honesty, I would not use an agency that was issued a NOID unless I had proof that the NOID was unwarrented. Does that mean I think the agency is currupt?? No, I can't say that. I just know that I wouldn't want to have to go through the ordeal.

See my next post for why this really hits home for me...

Go Colts!!!!

I didn't get very good pictures...I'll try better next time. But trust me. She was super cute~