Awesome band name of the week

This time I thought I'd draw on my Dutch heritage to bring you yet another AWESOME BAND NAME! So, without further ado - Klompen! Klompen (I'm not 100% sure of the spelling) is what the Dutch call wooden shoes. I see Klompen - the band - as a theatrical metal band, who always where wooden shoes, and sometimes use them to great affect, especially when they're trying to elicit audience participation. Of course, the crowd would also be wearing their klompen, so audience participatin would be DEAFENING.

Bountiful harvest

After a couple of months of slim pickings, now you have 3 posts to read. Enjoy! And get off my lawn. That is all. And please feed the fish on your way out.

I was going to call this n-n-n-n-n-nineteen, but I was wrong

So, today is the 20 month anniversary of our dossier arriving in Ethiopia. At first I though it was the 19 month DTE anniversary, but that's because I set up the Outlook reminder wrong. So, what does this mean? Well, on the face of it, it means that we’re still waiting to be a family with a daughter. In addition to that, it means that we should start renewing our paperwork (police clearances, medicals, etc) so we can get our dossier renewed. Not that there’s really any rush at the moment, since there are still approx 75 families ahead of us in line. Did I think we’d be here at 20 months DTE? Interesting question. Well, if you’d asked me that at the beginning of our adoption journey, I’d likely have said we’d have our referral by now, and we’d be waiting for our daughter’s visa, and buying up baby clothes like crazy. And putting the nursery together. Ah, I was so naïve then. And then, 4 months after our dossier arrived in Ethiopia, the agency went bankrupt. That set us back about 5 months, but that was okay, because we brought the agency out of bankruptcy – at least our dream was still alive. The first few months brought lots of referrals, and lots of optimism. And then the referrals started to slow down. And then they stopped for a while. And my hope slowly started to fade. So I revised my thinking to – we’ll have our referral in the first quarter of 2011. Referrals are still pretty spotty, 10 months after the agency started up again, but it’s not the agency’s fault. There have been a lot of administrative changes in Ethiopia, all in the name of making sure these adoptions are ethical, not just for our agency, but across the board. There’s a lot more paperwork involved on the Ethiopian side now, and it’s taking a long time to gather, in most cases. So where before we would see referrals of children as young as 1 month old, now the youngest I’ve seen lately is 4 months old. Add another month or two for a court date (which we now have to travel too – it’s not a bad thing!) and, after a successful court date, another 3-4 months waiting for the visa to be processed, you’re bringing home a 10 month old, and that’s being very optimistic. They’re likely to be at least 12 months old, and that’s if they come into the orphanage as a newborn, and I’m not sure how often that happens. So instead of our request for an infant, we’re thinking of raising our request for a girl of up to 24 months old at the time of placement (that means at the time she comes home with us for good). The agency has recently signed on with a new orphanage but they’re still finalizing the paperwork so we haven’t seen any referrals from that orphanage yet. Hopefully they will start happening soon, so we can see what age range is coming out of that orphanage. I’d still really like to adopt a baby, to change our request to a child of up to 18 months at the time of placement, but that could be setting ourselves up for a LONG wait. I’m already barreling towards 39, then 40, so I really don’t want to wait too long to be a mom of a young child! If you asked me today when I thought we’d receive our referral, I think I’d honestly have to say – I don’t know. I honestly don’t have any idea when I’ll be a mom – and that both terrifies & saddens me. It’s tough seeing everyone have what I want. Sure, I’m jealous of people who fall pregnant easily, or even with difficulty – because they’re on the road, they’re parents. It’s a club I can’t be part of, no matter how much I wish to be.

Awesome band name - Amazing Race edition

Today’s totally awesome band name is courtesy of the Amazing Race episode from a couple of weeks ago (they were in Sweden). I give you……2 Large Cod & a Chainsaw. I imagine 2LCAC would have 2 guys dressed as fish, and a dude with a chainsaw. Quite a riveting stage act, really.

Where's Janna?

What have we been up to lately? Well, we took last week off, to go shopping in the US & to celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary, and because we have vacation time to burn. We went down to my parents on the Monday, to prepare for an early departure time on Tuesday morning. Tuesday we headed out to Frankenmuth, which is a predominantly German-themed town with a gigantic Christmas store. Seriously, I’m pretty sure it covers several acres. I got some cool ornaments – a tiny violin for Andrew, a black cat ornament for Willow (Pippin already has her own ornament), a kangaroo for me & a black angel for Wren. We hung out around Frankenmuth for a couple of hours & then headed for the nearby outlet malls, stopping at the W@lmart-esque grocery store along the way. Among other things, I bought Frankenberry cereal (in retrospect, Count Chocula might have been a better choice), Hello Kitty bandaids & malted milk powder, so we can have vanilla malt milkshakes. Then we checked into the hotel & passed out for a while. Then we hit the outlet mall for a while, had some dinner, then headed back out for more shopping. I finally replaced my Nike Shox, which were quite old & odiferous. Then back to the hotel to watch Glee with my folks (not sure my Dad has ever watched the show) – it was the Rocky Horror Glee Show episode. Wednesday was much the same, just different stores. While we didn’t go hog-wild, both Andrew & I got some really nice clothes & shoes, so it was worth the trip. Then back home on Thursday, to a couple of kitties who had missed us A LOT, and have stuck to us like Velcro ever since. Pippin’s been curled up on my chest every night since then, which Andrew says looks like a 10-year old trying to fit in their old stroller (because she takes up a lot more room that she used to when she was a kitten). Didn’t do much on the weekend (I hurt my back getting in & out of my dad’s SUV when we were in the US – I’m short, y’all). And I’ve been busy work-wise, trying to catch up. Now you’re up to date. Now get off my lawn!