“Protection” that protects nobody

I had to take Diva to an appointment with a new doctor, and I received the standard pile of paperwork in the mail to fill out before our first visit.  At the bottom of the form letter about being a new patient was this:

If you are not the patient’s natural parent, you must bring with you a legal document reflecting your custody of that child or a current signed/notarized statement authorizing medical treatment.

Oh, lovely.

The nurse asked me if I’d been informed of the requirement for adoption papers or something, and I looked her in the eye and flatly stated, “Virginia law says that after my adoptions were finalized, we are to be treated as any other family.”

She backed down.

I asked her what they were trying to catch or prevent, and she obviously didn’t want to continue the conversation.  So, for the edification of any other medical office out there (or any parent who’s tempted to hang their head and mumble, “I’m only an adoptive mom, I guess I deserve this kind of abuse…”), let me clarify exactly who this policy would catch:

• My friend’s wife, who declined to change her name when she married.  Hence, Ms. Thomas takes the Smith kid to the doctor.  Yes, she gave birth to this child, and no, she doesn’t need permission to take her to the doctor.
• My divorced friend, who reverted to her married name, but her kids still have their dad’s name, even though Mom has full custody.  No, she also doesn’t need permission, nor does she need her nose rubbed in the fact that her marriage failed.
• My friend from Malta who married an American, who happens to be black.  Her kids don’t look like her, but she doesn’t need special paperwork.
• Anybody who has adopted transracially.  Because, of course, even though adoptive parents are screened for finances, parenting skills, and marital stability, unlike anybody who gave birth to a child, we need to keep an eye on those people, right?

In short, unless you’re trying to harass multi-racial families or women who have chosen to keep or revert to their married name, you aren’t going to catch anybody you wanted to find.

And who wouldn’t this policy catch?

• The various children reported missing who were taken by the parent who was apparently losing the custody battle after the divorce.  (Those “have you seen me?” ads are full of kids who disappeared with someone with the same last name and about the right age difference to be a parent to the missing child.)  The parent on the run would look like the child and would probably have birth certificates and other documentation.
• Any child who was abused or trafficked.  (Do you really think those kids are being taken to the doctor?  If they are, I’ll guarantee they have falsified documents claiming these are their kids.)
• My now-divorced friend while she was still married and taking her stepson to the doctor.  They were both white, and they had the same last name.  Therefore, no warning flags are tripped, even though she technically had no legal right to take her stepson to the doctor without written permission from his father.
• Anybody who adopted a child who vaguely looks like them.  (Even though a child from Russia, although also white, wouldn’t look much like me.)  If the “problem” is adoptees, don’t you want to catch all of them, not just the transracially adopted ones?  I asked a nurse once, at another pediatrician’s office, if she would have asked for adoption paperwork if I’d walked in with a freckled red-head.  “Of course not, because then she’d look like you,” she replied.  “Um, not from my gene pool!” I told her.

And then let’s address the uselessness of a “signed/notarized document” authorizing medical treatment.  We wrote those up for our kids for while we were gone in China; the notary only asked to see our drivers’ licenses, not to see proof that we really have kids with these names.  Furthermore, unless we start tatooing social security numbers on babies like we do to cattle, there is no way to link that name to that child.  So what does that paper actually tell you?  Only that someone with an ID card matching the name printed under the signature line actually signed the document.

Yet another example of nonsensical discrimination and “protection” that doesn’t protect anybody.

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Home, at Last

I said I was going to keep up with the blog.  I said I wasn’t going to spend all my online time obsessing over stats and timeline predictions over at Rumor Queen.  I said I was going to take a deep breath and be sane throughout the paperchase for this adoption.

Obviously not.

But, we are now home, after nearly two weeks in China.  Very generous friends and family (most of whom seem to still be on speaking terms with us) watched our kids, our dog, and our house.  Someday soon, we even hope the newest addition will start sleeping through the night and in his own bed.

DH looked at me today on the way to the photo studio and said, “Hey, do you realize the minivan is full now?”  Yep; if we go again, we’re going to need a bigger van, I said.  He gave me a still jetlagged blink that said something to the effect of, “You aren’t honestly thinking about that yet?!”  We’ll see.

He’s kinda insanely adorable, so we’ll have to forgive him the turbo-poops and throwing up on Daddy on the plane (and at several restaurants, and in the middle of the night…).  He’s also talking, sort of; mostly he seems to babble, but he does yell, “WO!” a lot, which means “I” or the first half of “mine” (“wo de”), which makes some sense.  He’s chubby, his hair never lays down, and he’s a *bit* spoiled (Diva hates to hear him cry, so she’s been carrying him almost everywhere, which he loves).

And it’s really hard to catch him still enough to get a non-blurry photo!

I suppose I can officially update the “cast” page now…

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7 Quick Takes Friday: What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Last Sunday, several people at church commented to the kids about summer being “half over”… which it isn’t for us, since we homeschool.  In fact, it’s all over.

You know how they tell you that the population of the South didn’t really start to increase significantly until the invention of the air conditioner?  They aren’t kidding.  There are reasons for this, and August is the main one.  So, instead of listening to a month of, “But I don’t want to go outside!  *whine*  It’s too hot!” we start school at the beginning of August.  This has the lovely secondary effect of us being done with school by the beginning of May, when the weather is frequently lovely and the garden needs a ton of work.

All that being said, I offer (in homage to teachers past who seemed to love the old standby): What I did on my summer vacation, by the Political Housewyf

1.  I made an awning.  Three 2x2x8 treated pine poles, pipe strapping (DH insisted I shouldn’t screw the poles directly into the dock walls), six large screw eyes, six D-rings, a package of huge grommets, some PVC pipe and the stand from the failed patio umbrella (to hold up the fourth corner, where I couldn’t install a pole), and yards and yards of fabric (on sale!).  The D-rings stay in the grommets and hook quickly into the screw eyes.  It takes about two minutes to walk down to the dock and put it up.

And this view is part of why I haven’t gotten a whole lot of blogging done lately…

2.  I read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.  The cover has a panda with a smoking gun running away.  (If you don’t get it, you need this book!)  I loved it and discovered that some of my odd punctuation practices would be considered proper in British punctuation but not American.  Thanks to my high school English teachers (who were better at imparting grammar than enthusiasm for Shakespeare), none of the grammar rules was new to me, but the book is very funny.

Sticklers of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but you’re your misplaced apostrophe’s apostrophes’ apostrophes!  (Contrary to what some of you may think after reading my blog, I do know grammar rules… I just choose to break them upon occasion.  And I shall continue to do so. )

3.  I killed a whole lot of trees doing adoption paperwork.  Our dossier finally went to China in June, got assigned the all-important log-in date (LID) quickly, and… now we wait again.  We hope to see our LOA from China before the end of August, which then triggers- get this- even more paperwork.  But at least we got some updated photos.  (No, no photo here.  Yes, everyone else does, but “everyone else” usually has a adoption-specific website that doesn’t get into criticizing certain governmental policies.)

The good news is that I have rediscovered the joys of the Rumor Queen’s website, populated by number crunching waiting parents who, like me, want more info than the adoption agencies are usually willing to commit to.  (The agency says, “Well, it could be four to six months…” and the number crunching waiting dad says, “The average for the year, over two hundred familes, has been 74 days.”)

4.  I made sushi.  No, no raw fish (which is technically sashimi, a subset of sushi).  A trendy little sushi place in Richmond (I don’t think we’re cool enough or left-leaning enough for it, honestly) had a special one time we were in there on our way back from running adoption paperwork in DC.  They called it Kong’s Lunchbox, and it had tempura-fried banana, peanut butter, and grape jelly in a sushi roll.  The kids adored it, which is why what was supposed to be a photo of happy kids eating sushi has no sushi slices in it.

Ah, there it is, along with some tempura-fried figs and pickled ginger.  Good stuff.  (My DH informed me that the tempura-fried okra was not acceptable.  I suspect it’s because the tempura doesn’t coat heavily enough to disguise the vegetable.)  (Tempura-fried green beans are really good, too.  Start with fresh, raw ones.)

5.  I grew rice, although, really, it’s very low-maintenance, so I can’t claim much credit.  It started out tiny and pathetic.  Recently, though, I told Empress to stand behind it to show off how tall it is… except that you can’t really see her in the photo, the rice is so tall!  So, I took another shot with her in front of it.  The rice seems to take up a ton of water; I’m not keeping it full of water constantly, because of mosquitoes (I let the top of the soil dry just a bit in between floodings), but it does get watered every few days in this heat, especially since it is in a windy location (it makes the nicest swishing sound in the breeze), which could be causing it to lose water faster.  Just this morning, I found a fat, bulging part that is about to erupt into the seed head!  Woo hoo!

6.  I spent way too much at my friend Jen’s favorite local yarn store in DC, Yarn Cloud.  Yarn stores are usually nice, but this one is gorgeous!  Well-lit, easy to navigate, and the yarn is well-arranged.  What do I mean by well-arranged yarn?  Some was stacked neatly on shelves, but lots of it was hung on peg board display hooks, which encourages you to touch the yarn… which is how my bill got so big.  Once you start petting the yarn, all kinds of wonderful projects come to mind, and oh, that linen blend feels interesting and…  (If you’re on a strict budget, DON’T PET THE YARN!)  The priority right now, however, is to get the baby’s blanket on the loom: a single-ply silk blend weft on a plied silk blend warp, both in a gorgeous, deep shade of red.  Yes, photos will be forthcoming whenever I get going.

7.  I pulled my SIL’s Christmas present out again.  It’s an embroidered map of Middle Earth.  I spent more than an hour tying knots to make Mirkwood last night, and it’s nowhere near done.  (As I told her, “The forests are taking hours each, and that’s just the small ones on the fringe of the map that don’t figure in the stories.  I’m not sure I like you this much…”)  I had been avoiding it, because I couldn’t figure out how to do mountains.  I think I figured out a decent solution, but you’ll have to wait for a photo; it’s just too unfinished right now!

As always, I’ve been a bit wordy for “quick takes”, but there it is!  Go check out Jen at Conversion Diary for a weekly dose of 7 Quick Takes from her and dozens of other bloggers.

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God is good, God is good, He is always good!

(and I get to say that in a not-because-I-need-convincing-today tone!)

In other words, we have very good news.  Which also explains why I’ve been missing again recently.

Last weekend, we had a very nice visit with Jen, the Magpie Knitter, and her husband, both Naval Academy classmates of ours about to leave DC for the West Coast.  After a great deal of wine, beer, hotly contested board games, our three kids making their house look like a bomb exploded in a toy factory, and none of our combined five children sleeping very much… well, we got home tired.  To find a surprise waiting for us.

My father-in-law came over to let the dog out a few times a day and grab the mail for us.  And in the pile of mail on the table by the front door, I found a letter from Immigration.  No, not a problem.  It was our approved form that is the last piece of our dossier.

I had to read it twice to be sure.  We weren’t expecting it for at least another two weeks, if not four.  I had hoped to have it in time to visit our friends in DC, but that didn’t look possible as USCIS slowed down and other things delayed our paperwork just a bit here, a bit there.  When we told our agency we got our immigration approval (I-797, for those of you who know what I’m talking about) in 58 days, they were shocked.

So, the day after returning from DC, I got to drive (with all three kids) back up to Richmond.  We got the copy notarized on the way up, the state authentication office had their stamped sheet done in five minutes, we ran copies, and we stuffed forms and checks for the courier, the State Department, and the Chinese Embassy into an envelope to go to DC.  The courier got it, ran it through, picked it up at the embassy the next day, and got it in the mail.  Meanwhile, our agency had already done their big review of the rest of the dossier, which I’d already finished and mailed, so that cut two more weeks off the process.  Our agency got the authenticated I-797, said the now-complete dossier would be with the translators for a few days, then e-mailed back that same afternoon to say it was done and in the mail.

And tonight, our dossier is on its way to China.

Two of our three adoptions have had very odd coincidences associated with the anniversaries of the deaths of the saints we had picked to name our children after.  Diva’s namesake’s feast day turned out to be the day we were probably starting our initial paperwork for her adoption.  Empress’s namesake’s 150th anniversary of her martyrdom was the day of our appointment at the U.S. Consulate to get the “magic brown envelope” that lets you get back in the country with your new child, generally the last full day you’re in China because it’s the last wicket to clear before you can go home.  Part of the youngest’s saint’s name actually sounds quite a bit like “Kassie”, as in Secret Vatican Spy, who sort of tipped off this whole thing by posting a link to her RCIA sponsor who’d just adopted a child from China through the Special Needs program (and, no, that’s not why we picked that saint; I realized after the fact that, hey, “Kai Zhi” sounds a lot like “Kassie”, what a cool coincidence!).

I had somewhat tentatively asked for another miracle, hoping to at least get the immigration paperwork by the anniversary of our youngest’s saint’s martyrdom.  As various things slowed down and delayed, that began to seem like it would be a stretch.

However, instead of that intermediary step, we could actually have a log-in date around then.  I’m still sort of in shock.

I am reminded of a sermon I heard once on the miracle at the Wedding at Cana.  Not only did Jesus turn the water into wine, he made it exceptionally good wine, and a lot of it.  Several of Jesus’ major miracles went beyond what would have been the bare minimum, and provided an overflow of blessings.  God, the preacher said, does not just meet our bare needs, but often chooses to give us more than we dared hope for.

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Buying babies?

Someday, I might learn to just roll my eyes at people who say stupid, insensitive, and possibly lethal things about adoption, and then let it drop.

Today isn’t that day.  I strongly suspect tomorrow won’t be, either.

Let me preface the rest of this by saying that, normally, I love PRI (Population Research Institute) and admire their work trying to end coercive family planning around the globe and, by extension, defunding the UNFPA.  (Yes, your tax dollars go to the UN to fund the UNFPA, which, among other things, works with the Chinese government to implement the abusive One Child policy.  But don’t worry!  The money you paid in taxes isn’t used for the squads who haul in nine-month-pregnant women for forced abortions; that’s totally separate!  Your hard-earned tax dollars just go to the educational side…  And, if you believe that, I have a “no peeing” section in the pool for you, too, totally separate from the people who can’t be bothered to go to the restroom.)

But last week, PRI touched a nerve of mine that will probably be forever raw.  Not least because people who should know better keep hitting that raw nerve.  (And, yes, I contacted them.  Both PRI and LifeNews told me I’d “misunderstood” and refused to offer so much as an, “Oops; now that you point it out, we should have worded that differently.”  The end argument was, “But nobody else complained, so it must just be that you, in fact, don’t get it.”)

The offending paragraph, as copied from LifeNews (who picked up the article and the nearly identical (but slightly less offensive) article the week previously), titled Chinese Children Born Outside the One Child Policy Trafficked Abroad (emphasis mine):

According to a report in the Caixin Century magazine, population control officials in the Chinese province of Hunan seized at least 16 babies born in violation of the one-child policy, sent them to state-run orphanages, and then sold them abroad for adoption. In the words of Steven W. Mosher, China expert and president of the Population Research Institute, “if this is true (which we at PRI believe it to be based on our own research in China), then this act represents a serious human rights violation and a clear instance of human trafficking.”

The version of the article that ran the week previously ended with an explicit call for a “moratorium” on adoptions from China because of “trafficking”.  Am I the only one with a problem with this?

Yes, the One Child policy, like abortion in this country, is rife with abuses; I am certainly not denying that.  I’d rather see both abortion and the One Child policy end immediately, but I agree with, at the very least, drawing attention to the abuses in both, partially as a means towards ending both.  (And if you think I’m being soft on the One Child policy, I’d like to point out I have been very clear, repeatedly, about what I think about it: here right at the beginning of this blog, on adoption, on the Secretary of State in China, on Anita Dunn’s admiration of Mao, on non-pro-life columnists suddenly shocked by it, and on the occassion of the 30th anniversary of the policy.  No, I will not be brushed off as just being too dumb to understand the situation.)

But this latest report is not, fundamentally, about adoption in China.  Using this latest revelation of abuse as a reason to call for the end of international adoptions from China is incredibly irresponsible.

Unlike other countries that have been shut for international adoptions, the problem of children abducted into the orphanage system in China does not seem to be a rampant abuse.  Sixteen cases over an unspecified time period, with only one confirmed as having been adopted internationally, does not make a trafficking ring.  Especially when China has more than 100,000 children in its orphanages.

And, as much as it galls me (and I have to ask you to suspend moral outrage on the One Child policy for a minute and follow the logic), I have to also point out that the government may sanction the family planning officials’ actions as the logical punishment for a family that can’t or won’t pay the fines, in which case it would be the government’s decision to remove the child because the family is unfit to raise this child, something that all governments do for reasons of abuse or neglect.  So, technically, it may not actually be considered abduction, and it clouds the issue to conflate it with cases of criminal child-stealing rings.  This will likely be categorized as a normal governmental decision to remove a child from an unfit home.  You can hate that, but as long as the One Child policy is law, there isn’t much you can do about it.

Additionally, I will point out that the fines for “unauthorized” children are several years’ pay.  I don’t know about you, but my house isn’t worth several years’ pay, and many houses in rural China are small and traditionally built.  The farmers apparently figured out it was smarter to hide the valuables with relatives, let the house be bulldozed, then rebuild for a year’s wages or so, rather than pay the fine.  If the destruction of the house is losing effectiveness as a deterrent, seizing the child is the obvious next step.

Also unlike the criminal cases in international adoptions, China’s adoption system is more regulated; the $3000 “gift” to the orphanage (which has recently increased to $5000 and, unlike bribes in many countries, is definitely a normal fee) goes mostly towards improving the orphanage for the vast majority of orphans who will never have a family.  In some less-regulated countries, the “fees” were going exclusively to the adoption lawyers and the child traffickers.  Rather than a greed for the fees from international adoptions, most orphanages are reluctant, either through distrust of adoption or unwillingness to deal with the paperwork, to make children available for adoption.  The wait for non-special-needs infants is now around four or five years.

In the end, however, my complaint with this article is that it abuses the word “trafficking”.  The article uses “trafficking” as if it means “a child taken by a government official and possibly adopted later, with money involved”; well, crud, that would qualify all U.S. domestic adoptions of children removed from homes for abuse as “trafficking”… except that we don’t call that trafficking, because the purpose of the removal was not just to get them into the adoption system.  Child trafficking is a serious accusation and should only be used in specific circumstances, not just because we’re horrified by the out-of-control dictatorship in Beijing and its One Child policy and want to grab some headlines.

Unfortunately for PRI’s verbage, human trafficking is generally understood to be the buying and selling of people as virtual slaves.  Both the buyers and the sellers know exactly what they’re doing, and the whole point of the operation is to make money on the sale of people on one end, and exploit them for forced labor (often in the sex trade or drug running) on the other.  PRI and LifeNews have done excellent work reporting on human trafficking.

But that isn’t what China is doing.  These children were taken from their parents because their parents violated the One Child policy; adoption or not, penalties associated with the policy will continue, probably including the removal of children from the home.  If it was just about the money, the orphanages would be empty and there wouldn’t be a five year wait for a non-special needs child!  It makes no sense for an orphanage to pay the local family planning official 1000 RMB per child turned over (an accusation in the first version of the article, but not the second version), when the orphanages already have so many children that could be adopted.  If China just wanted the money, they’d quit actually checking the dossiers and just rush them through the process to get the fees, instead of there being a months-long backlog of dossiers in China that haven’t been translated and reviewed.

I did not buy my children; they were not for sale, thank you very much; and I am sick and tired of people carelessly throwing out that insinuation without thinking of the pain it causes.  Every time someone links adoption with child trafficking, a couple is pressured to decide against adoption and another child never finds a home.  People like me will continue to run into random strangers who feel compelled to accuse us of “buying” our children, bolstered in their rudeness by the fact that they saw it in a pro-life news source.  Yes, the fees, given China’s average wage, were exorbitant, but those fees got my child out of the orphanage, improved life for those children left at the orphanage, and kept the gate open for a few of the victims of the One Child policy to escape.

That isn’t a purchase, it’s a ransom, and hundreds of thousands of children will never find a family to come get them out of the orphanages.  Around the world, life is very bleak for those aging out of the orphanages with no family to support or encourage them.

(I’m struck by the similarity between the call for an adoption moratorium and the arguments against embryo adoption: “I’m keeping my hands scrupulously clean, and, gee, I’m sorry if a child has to die to do it.”)

Does anybody, for half a second, think a moratorium on international adoptions would influence China to change?  When the One Child policy began, orphanages started filling and international adoption hadn’t really taken off; sick or disabled children were simply left to die (“Since nobody wants the healthy ones, why bother?” the argument went, in a society that sees girls and orphans as largely undeserving of respect).  Knowing there was no chance for a better life through adoption, how many children would be allowed to die at birth?  Would the family planning officials be more brutal, knowing that poor families weren’t going to pay the fines, if there wasn’t another option besides killing the baby?

We have got to learn to be more careful in our dealings, so that, in expressing our moral outrage, we don’t unintentionally encourage the murder or pain of the most defenseless.

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Kung Fu Panda 2: the adoption angle

(This will start with a spoiler-free zone for a bit.  I will make it clear where the spoilers start.)

Kung Fu Panda 2 opened over the weekend.  GO SEE THIS MOVIE!

We had really enjoyed the first movie, in spite of one unfortunate line when Po, the panda in question, gets hit in the crotch during training (which, of course, is one of the lines they picked for the new plush toy to say).  The rest of the movie was much better than I had expected (we suspected it was going to be merely silly, full of only shallow references to Chinese culture, and, well, Jack Black isn’t always G-rated; we only saw KFP1 after reading a really glowing review on a chat site for families who’ve adopted from China).  There’s some stylistically over-the-top kung fu scenes, but KFP1 is not really all that intense except for a few moments in the closing battle.  The filmmakers really understood that their audience is young children; emotionally intense scenes are frequently interrupted by humor.  Furthermore, the landscapes and backgrouds are really well done, the food will make your mouth water, and even the music is good.  (The pipa-playing rabbit during the opening fight in KFP2 is great, and, apparently, an homage to kung fu movies.)

The one hanging question (especially from the adoption angle) was, “It’s really well done, but does Po know he’s adopted?”

In the first movie, there’s an important scene where Po complains to his dad (Mr. Ping, a goose) that he doesn’t exactly fit in as his son.  Mr. Ping looks uncomfortable for a moment, then says, “There’s something I should have told you a long time ago…”  He doesn’t discuss adoption, but the secret ingredient to his famous soup (Mr. Ping owns a popular noodle shop).  Po looks like maybe he was expecting a different revelation, although what he gets from his dad unlocks a riddle that allows Po to defeat the enemy coming to destroy his home town.

I have read reviews of KFP2 that condemned the Taoist elements, but, really, I don’t think the movie is trying to spread Taoism.  Yes, the kung fu masters do impossible feats of balancing, jumping, redirecting incoming weapons with their bare hands, etc.  Finding “inner peace” is a recurring theme, but it is unspecific enough that it could certainly be understood in a Christian light (it’s more of a sense of dealing properly with things in your past, accepting responsibility, and understanding what you can and can’t change).  There is a sheep soothsayer in the second movie who fortells the bad guy’s future, but, like Rafiki in Lion King, her job is more of that of guidance to other characters than divination (and occasional humor; she’s continually trying to eat the evil peacock’s robes, just when you may be tempted to take her fortune telling too seriously).

On the other hand, there are strongly redemptive elements in both movies.  In both storylines, there are strong themes of mistakes or evil in the past that has to be corrected or dealt with.  Victory comes only after characters learn to deal with what they have been avoiding in their past.  Both finales include opportunities for the villain to repent (in the second movie, the villain’s insistence on fighting after being defeated leads directly to his death).  Characters show compassion and respect for those weaker than them.

KFP2 is a bit more intense, however, than KFP1.  I think part of it is that the villain is much nastier.  We find out in the opening sequence (a beautifully done piece imitating traditional Chinese shadow puppets) that Lord Shen, a white peacock, rebelled from his family, killed all the pandas he could find, and was banished by his parents.  Furthermore, he has an army of wolves at his disposal and an array of cannons that make for some very intense fight scenes.

And then there’s the whole adoption angle.  I was worried about this one, since the previews indicated that Po was going to go looking for his birth family to “find out who I am”.  Uh oh.

Adoption keeps coming up.  In the first movie, the villain was found as a cub at the door to the kung fu monastery and raised by one of the masters; the villian succumbs to pride in his ability and becomes evil.  In one of the TV specials (there was a holiday special recently and a backstory special that aired with KFP1′s network premier), we find out that Tigress, one of the Furious Five, was an orphan who had had a particularly hard time getting adopted.  And, of course, you have Po, a panda, and his dad, Mr. Ping, a goose.  Adoption is frequently a side detail, but in KFP2, it was going to be a major part of the storyline, apparently.  I was a bit worried about how it would be handled.

The short answer?  These people get it.  Adoption wasn’t neatened up, laughed off, or villified; they walked a near-perfect line that I really didn’t think they were going to manage.  Several of the dialogs were believably uncomfortable for the characters involved.  The resolution is both happy and believable because it wasn’t easy to get there.

I don’t think Empress, at four years old, got that the adoption storyline mirrored hers, but she generally liked the movie.  Although she did protest that, “I don’t like that peacock!”  He’s the villain, honey, you’re not supposed to like him.

(minor spoilers start here)

You’ve probably figured out by now that Lord Shen’s massacre of the pandas had something to do with how Po ended up as the only panda in his town, adopted by a goose.

There are a couple of great scenes where Po and his dad finally talk about adoption (and you get the impression someone was writing from life, because it was really well handled).  Mr. Ping starts out as before: “Po, there’s something I should’ve told you a long time ago…” and he hesitates, stammering out the last word, “You were…. adopted.”  Mr. Ping tells Po everything he knows about his beginnings, which isn’t much, although Mr. Ping has carefully saved the radish crate that Po showed up in.  (Watch the credits all the way through for full illustration of a number of briefly mentioned humorous episodes in Po’s childhood!)  Po is flustered, but gets called away (he is an integral part of the bad-guy-fighting kung fu team, and there are bad guys to fight), so the conversation is left hanging a bit, with neither Po nor Mr. Ping quite happy with the ending and both unsure of where this relationship stands now.

Dealing with bandits, Po has a flashback of being a cub and seeing his mother.  This will be a recurring image throughout the movie, and it distracts him badly each time, although he tries to avoid and deny it.  He has a nightmare that his parents have replaced him with a radish that is smarter and better at kung fu than he is (the old, “your parents put you up for adoption because you weren’t good enough” lie).  Later, Po remembers enough of the flashback to remember that Lord Shen was there around the time Po last saw his mother; wanting answers, he corners the peacock, who vindictively lies and says Po’s parents abandoned him because they didn’t love him (another typical adoption myth).  Only when Po finally faces his memories and lets them all out does he realize exactly what happened and make peace with it.

Mr. Ping pulling out the radish crate and telling how he found Po mysteriously dropped in his vegetable delivery was tear-jerking enough.  There’s a couple of really touching scenes between Tigress (one of the other kung fu masters, who, in the backstory TV special, we find was an orphan herself) and Po, as he doesn’t really want to talk about what’s upsetting him, but his friends want to help.  And Tigress gets the line we’re all thinking: in response to Po’s upset revelation that his dad just told him he’s not exactly his dad, that Po was adopted, she replies, totally deadpan, “Your father… the goose.  And this shocked you?”  (Tigress is voiced by Angelina Jolie, who has adopted kids herself.)

(MAJOR spoilers from here on out)

Po, with some prodding from the soothsayer, finally remembers the entire scene of his village being burned and his mother running through the woods until she knows she can’t outrun the wolves and hiding her baby in a radish crate, trying to look unconcerned and shush baby Po so he won’t be found when she runs back to the forest to lead the wolves away from the hidden baby (and likely gets killed, although that doesn’t happen on screen)… if you’re the mom of a Chinese adoptee, you will want to seriously consider bringing tissues.  That part was really just a little too close to reality, and may be scary for small children.

In the final scene, Po returns home to tell Mr. Ping that he finally knows who he is: “I’m Po.  I’m your son.”

And I just about lost it, rescued only by the fact that a really tender, moving moment quickly shifts to Po and his dad arguing happily over who is going to get to cook lunch for who.

There’s a pretty obvious hint at the very end that they’re planning on a #3 for this series, but, by this point, I think I’m going to relax a bit more through the first viewing of #3, because I’m pretty convinced that whoever’s writing and advising on this series understands adoption.  I think it’s going to be better than ok, it’s going to be good.  I’m looking forward to it.

And, in the meantime, go see Kung Fu Panda 2.

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Current Nesting Project

I can’t do much more on my adoption paperwork right now besides wait.  Which, of course, means it’s nesting time!

When DH is stressed, he shoots things on the computer.  When I’m stressed, I work.  It drives him crazy.  Once, I was painting the living room (which I had decided to do on a whim; I had the paint and everything, was feeling down, and decided to paint the room that night instead of at some later date).  “I feel so much better!” I commented as I got going, admiring the new, non-off-white shade on the walls.  “What am I going to do when I run out of rooms to paint?”

DH ducked behind the paper and muttered, “Take up drinking?”  Thanks, dear.

No, usually what I do is crafting.

So, we’re getting a toddler sometime before the end of the year.  That means he’ll need a quilt for his toddler bed.  I pulled out the scraps of Chinese-themed fabrics I have and started messing around…

(Why did WordPress just eat my first four photos and the comments under each?  Beats me, but I hate rewriting!)

The geometric batik and the dragons at the top are leftovers from the Storm at Sea quilt I did for my bed.  It’s gorgeous, so I thought I should try to use it.  Then I thought of the Chinese legend of the Carp Jumping Over the Dragon Gate.  The carp worked really hard and finally succeeded in jumping the huge Dragon Gate and was rewarded by being turned into a dragon.  (Empress got the reference and remembered the story right away.)  So, there’s sort of a hint of an elaborately patterned gate at the top, with dragons in the sky beyond.

Strips of diamonds are coming along, but I’m still not sure I like all those wild patterns right next to each other…

Maybe the gate should be more than a hint; it needs side posts.

More tweaking on gate shape (angled roof instead of straight), more experimenting with borders.

Does a narrower gate roof help?  Not really…

Maybe the bamboo should extend above the gate to tie it more to the carp pool?

Wait!  Instead of a vague reference to a gate, let’s make it a proper gate with roof tile edging (the gold).  And add a calmer green-on-green edge around the carp pool.

There we go.  The calmer prints set off and sort of calm down (a little) the wild variety of patterns, while emphasizing the carp pool and the gate, then the sky of free dragons stretches all the way across.

Quilted, backed with a section of symbolic Chinese kites and all of my remaining red fabric with calligraphy good wishes words (which was going to be the red corner blocks way back in the original plan; the fabric is the main border on Empress’s toddler quilt).  Edged in red, of course, the color of happiness and celebration in Chinese culture.

Now I just need a particular little boy to wrap in it.

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Steps forward and back

The adoption paperwork is proceeding.  And not.

Our home study should be done in the next day or so (Yay!), allowing it to be reviewed, then sent off for the Immigration people (USCIS) to give us a form letter to allow us to bring an adopted child into the country.

Price for said form letter?  $890 (Boo!)

Time frame?  90 days… or so.  (Boo!  Hiss!)

We had expected a much shorter time frame (the agency was saying one to two months).  It would be annoying enough if we were just going through the paperwork, but we’ve actually been preapproved, so we are matched to a specific child, who needs to get home and have cleft palate surgery to be able to eat solid food properly.

Oh, yeah, and the Chinese government just upped the requirements for the paperwork, so, if we don’t get it to China and logged in by October 1, we get to start over.

And I have to wait for some bureaucrat in Texas to bestir themselves to issue me a form letter… eventually.

Followed by a great deal of running around and courier services to get the paperwork through the state capital, U.S. State Department, and Chinese consulate, then final review at the agency.  It goes to China and… waits.  Again.  For months.  I did everything I could to make it move faster, and there’s just at least seven months of bureaucracy built into the process that I can do nothing about.

Please pray for our paperwork to move along quickly.  Or, at least, for me not to burst into tears every time I look at the baby’s picture.

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Excuse me, my brain hurts…

[Weird.  I wrote this a week ago, but it went to the drafts folder instead of posting.]

I  feel like I’ve produced about a ream of paperwork in under two weeks.

I’ve dragged three wiggly kids to the post office three times, with another visit for tomorrow.  (Oh.  Joy.)

We’ve watched our ten hours of mandatory online training.

I have an appointment this week to meet a doctor from the local children’s hospital’s International Adoption Clinic.  [Since I'm posting this after the fact, I'll add the good news that we just found out that we have one of the best cleft palate surgeons in the country heading up our cranial/facial reconstruction team at our children's hospital, because the surgeon works with a cleft palate charity based here (which also means he's done thousands of these surgeries).  And the doctor at the clinic didn't seem at all phased by the baby's photo, which looks pretty awful.  "Yep, that's a cleft palate.  So, here's what you should expect..."]

Our social worker was here for multiple interviews this weekend [which is now last weekend] (couple interview on Saturday night, individual interviews Sunday).  Which means two things:

1. The entire house had to be clean at the same time.  Really clean.  Ok, I didn’t reorganize the garage like I did for the very first home study visit, before we had any kids, but I did clean like my mom was coming, and trim and mulch out front, and clean off counters so everything looked super-neat.  The social worker sounded really nice on the phone (and she is), but I didn’t want anything to smell like pee or dog, since she’s supposed to be assessing our suitability for adoption, to include the state of our home.  I’m not sure my children or my (wet) dog shared these goals.
2. I’ve been talking about why we’re adopting, what I thought of my upbringing, my relationships with my family, and why I’m still married to my husband (um?  He suggested, “Because you hate change,” as the best answer.  I think they were looking for something cute like “his sense of humor”.).

And, by the way, we could be travelling much, much sooner than we thought.  As in “this year” not “maybe sometime early next spring.”

Which all adds up to: my brain hurts.

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At least once a week…

With everything going on in the world, you’d think I’d have had more to say.  Or at least I thought I should have something to say… and then decided that riots in Cairo and Wisconsin will do what they’ll do without my saying anything at all about it, even if the fallout on the gas prices and following general inflation will be everyone’s problem.

Digging and paperwork, however, are all my problem.  If I don’t do them, they don’t get done.

Photos of digging will be up over the weekend, or as soon as the sun comes back out.  In true (and predictable) housewyf fashion, I have been out almost every night past sunset, which doesn’t make for good photos.  (Am I the only one who takes portable lights outside to keep digging?  Wait, don’t answer that…)

In the meantime, however, let me explain the paperwork complaint.  (No, it’s not taxes, which DH does.)  We’re adopting again!  Or, at least, we’re starting the paperwork.  Which is to say, it’ll be months before I can declare the paperwork done, then months after that before we will be ready to choose a waiting child.  Yes, we’re going back to China, and we are not doing the normal path.  We’re looking at children with special needs, which, unlike here, usually means medical issues, not massive developmental delays.  And we’re looking for a boy.

The kids have argued over who gets him in their room (boys go in the boys’ room, y’all) and what to name him (after a saint, thanks, and that’s mom and dad’s job).  They’re getting excited, although we had to explain it would be a bit.

I approach telling the blogosphere with a lot less trepidation than what I felt telling relatives.  And that’s just sad.  The one adoptee in the immediate family was ecstatic (Thank God for her!  (Yes, I know you lurk; hi!)).  The other sibling was sort of, “Oh, good,” but about as unenthusiastic as he usually is about anything I do (I’m Catholic.  I’m a conservative.  Therefore, I must be an idiot.).  (You know how Mary and Zechariah respond to the angel’s announcements of Jesus and John the Baptist’s impending conceptions with almost the same questions?  Mary gets answers and Zechariah gets muted for nearly a year.  It wasn’t the questions, it was the attitude.)  And the parents… well, it wasn’t pretty.

“But it’ll be hard!”  No s***, and if we quit when it got hard, we would’ve quit when we hit the infertility and had no children.  Lots of things are hard, some of them are worth it; grow up.

“But the physical defects could come with mental issues…”  Yes, I’m a complete idiot and haven’t researched anything, we just jumped into this without thinking.  Thanks for the confidence vote.

“You can’t save all of them, Kathy!”  Why think, when you can just be insulting?  I don’t know why I tell them anything, sometimes.  Granted, this was also the person who yelled at me for “letting your religion run your life!” when we said we wouldn’t do IVF because it’s immoral, so my expectations were pretty low.  But this was shockingly low, especially as a first reaction.

And, of course, the mandatory, “So, you’re done after this one, right?!?”  I could go on at length about the bizarre sickness in society that makes someone reply to the joyful announcement of a new grandchild on the way with the annoyed demand that this had better be the last adorable, lively, lovable grandchild to come home or else!

But I won’t.

On a lighter note, my DH has pointed out that getting me “paperwork pregnant” wasn’t all that fun, and it seems to be draining the checking account at an alarming rate.  (All kinds of wisecracks about letting the kids watch or “the pen being mightier than the sword” will be left to your imaginations.)   At least the “gestation” won’t be three years this time.

The first ream of paperwork is done (I’m only exaggerating the volume slightly), and the first round of checks is in the mail.  ($2000 here, $2000 there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money! (and if you don’t laugh about it, you’ll cry, so we try to laugh about the insane cash outflow right now.  Ouch.))  Hey, I used to kill trees for democracy (which is to say, I used to be a naval officer), so I may hate the paperwork, but I can churn it out at lightening speed. 

Which gives me time to go dig in the garden until I can barely stand up straight.  (Because there isn’t much more nesting to be done in the house, so I’m going nuts in the garden.) 

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