The first time they met...

“A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”

                                                                             -- George Bernard Shaw

Congratulations to Michelle and Brian, who met their son Wesley! Learn more about their first meeting HERE. Wishing you all a safe journey home.

Friday Roundup--7.30.2010

Oh, happy day! So glad to see this week come to a close. Ever have one of those weeks where you feel like you are running on a treadmill at a full sprint? You are running your butt off and going absolutely no where! Well, that's the short version of my week.

On the positive side, we got most of the last bits of paperwork signed and turned in for our home study. Just my bio left to go. It's written, just needs an edit.

One other plus--I made a lovely photo of a flower (passion vine?) that has kept me smiling. Sometimes, happiness is in the details.

Here were my fave posts this week.

In the post Sarcastically Answered Questions, blogger Matt shares his answers to the stupid adoption questions that most of us have encountered. Like Matt says, if the person is sincere in wanting to know something, I'd be happy to educate them. But so often these intrusive questions seem accusatory and blameful.

For the touching and heartfelt, go read Goodbye Korea at Our Adoption Journey. As the foster mother held her foster child for a final time, a prayer was said over the children who were bound for their new adoptive homes. It's an insight into how painful this is for the people of South Korea, and the strength it must take to send their children away from their country. I also found the post So many mixed feelings so compelling. It's a letter to her new son, and shares her joy about being a mother, and a promise to bring him back to his beautiful birth country.

Found this post on adoption memory books by The Sassy Infertile Lady. I never even knew these type of books existed! She gives her reviews on a few. Can you say...time to shop!

Here's one more super sensitive and sweet post by an adoptive mom at Seon-Mi Kyung. I know I'm all caught up in these mush fests this week, but that's how it goes. This is a letter to the birth mother on Zoey's second birthday.

Now for something sweet! Our replacement rhubarb plant (The Man accidently "weeded" ours out of the planting area) is about ready for it's first harvest! Methinks this recipe for rhubarb cakes looks delicious!

Happy weekend to all.

The Motherbridge

Have you seen this illustration? It's so beautifully done, and so...perfect. I know it's a bit romanticized. I can't imagine the Asian mother would be quite so happy looking, especially knowing that she'd be saying goodbye to the tiny life inside of her after delivery.

But it feels nicer this way, doesn't it? I'm OK with suspending reality from time to time.

The text reads: "The first gave you a need for love; the second was there to give it."

 

From what I can tell, it appears that this illustration is part of the book Motherbridge of Love and illustrated by Josee Masse. (Love the concept of a Motherbridge too, but that's a topic for another day.)

I haven't seen the book in print yet, but it looks like one we'll want for our collection. The book talks about the two kinds of love and gifts an adopted child has received--that from a birth parent, and that of the adoptive parent. The book follows and illustrates this beautiful poem, Legacy of an Adopted Child.

Once there were two women,
who never knew each other.
One you do not remember,
the other you call mother.

Two different lives,
shaped to make your one...
One became your guiding star,
the other became your sun.

The first gave you life and
the second taught you to live it.
The first gave you a need for love,
and the second was there to give it.

One gave you a nationality,
the other gave you a name.
One gave you a seed of talent,
the other gave you an aim.

One gave you emotions,
the other calmed your fears.
One saw your first sweet smile,
the other dried your tears.

One gave you up ...
that's all she could do.
The other prayed for a child
and God led her straight to you.

And now you ask me,
through your fears,
the age old question
unanswered throughout the years...

Heredity or environment,
which are you the product of?
Neither, my darling neither.
Just two different kinds of love.
                         ---Unknown

WORD Wednesday--"Dirty Korean"

(A word of warning--this post has a R rating. If you are sensitive to profanity you should stop reading here.)

At our first agency, one of the questions we were asked was "do you use profanity."

I somehow restrained myself from shouting "fuck yeah I use profanity." The Hubster and I bowed our heads like children in trouble, looking at one another sheepishly before telling the truth.

Yes. We use profanity. A lot of it.

But we don't do it around kids!

So I had to giggle when I came across this book "Dirty Korean" where I can learn everyday slang, including Korean profanity! Cool!

I like a book on language that doesn't take itself too seriously. This one looks to be humorous, informational and practical. They have the transliteration so those of us that don't have the Hangul alphabet down can sound it out in English.

There are some phrases in this book that I seriously doubt I'll ever need to use such as "you need to lose weight." Come to think of it, I doubt I'd need to know how to tell someone to fuck off either. But the book will teach you how to do both.

You never know what you might need to say...

(image credit: both images from the book "Dirty Korean" available at Amazon.com)

Yum yum gimme some

Just a quick post to highlight this great Korean cooking blog we just discovered, Aeri's Kitchen. After just a brief digging around, we've already found half a dozen recipes that we'd like to try.

The recipes look easy to follow and are broken down by categories such as vegetarian, soups & stews, and dessert, so it's easy to find what you are looking for.

She gives short Korean word lessons with each recipe, which I love. What isn't as easy is trying to pronounce them correctly...

And some of the recipes even have video tutorials!

One thing you might also be interested in is the free cookbook ebook download that has more tempting recipes to try.

Hoping to try out this recipe for  DoBu JoRim (Fried tofu side dish) this weekend!




(image credit: Aeri's Kitchen

A family is born

"When something is missing in your life, 

it usually turns out to be someone."  

                                                 

                                                                 --Robert Brault

Congratulations to Allen and Kala who met their son Matthew today! Stop over at their blog HERE to congratulate them yourself and learn more about their journey.

Stroller spotting

Not sure if you all saw the mayhem happening here in Milwaukee the past few days. We had the "storm of the century" (we seem to have the storm of the century every summer) on Thursday which dropped nearly 8 inches of rain in just over 2 hours. That translated into a lot of flooded basements, flooded roads, basement collapses, and sink holes throughout our city.

We fared OK at our house. This is a photo of our basement window well that turned into an impromptu aquarium during the storm. Fortunately whoever glazed this window 50 years ago knew what the hell he was doing! (Is this sexist of me to assume it was a he? Hmm.)

Several of our basement windows leaked, and the basement did too. Fortunately we don't have a lot of stuff down there and the water all flowed right to the drain. And the best part is that the sewage didn't backup from the drain, so we feel pretty lucky.

Our bike race/5K this weekend was cancelled due to all the flooding so we had an unexpected free weekend. Yay!

Decided to play hooky from doing more house projects and went to a street festival instead. We were able to do lots of our favorite things such as people watch, look at dogs, and eat. And, I noticed we started doing something new---stroller spotting!

It's still a long ways off, I know. But at some point, we are going to need a stroller (never thought I'd be saying that). We can't believe the variety that are out there, and have no idea what we'll even need. Right now strollers seem to fit in one of two groups: the SUV-sized stroller that's pimped out more than a low rider, and the no-frills, super light, old-school umbrella stroller.

We are not fans of the former. One too many close calls with those super-sized strollers in the grocery aisle has us a bit jaded against them I suppose. But I can see a use for something bigger than the umbrella stroller. Something small and efficient is what we are looking for.

At this point, we've just looked at strollers online trying to see what was out there and what we should budget for. The Man seems to have taken this part of the baby project in hand--that man sure does love his Consumer Reports.

So today, I was gawking at a ridiculous hoochie-mama outfit worn by some 20-something parading through the crowd. I say "check that out" and he says "uh huh". I turn to see what he's checking out, because it's certainly got his attention and it must be really good. I couldn't believe it...The Man was gawking at a Quinny stroller!

Boy, the times, they are a changin'.

So the rest of the day, we'd see a stroller in the crowd, and stalk it until we could get a better look. Still pretty hard to believe that we might be pushing one of those next year!

Here's a few others we liked today: the Bob and the Bugaboo lines, as well as Maclaren. I guess the next step would be to find a place where we can actually push these things around and see what works for us.

But that's a little too much reality right now. We'll just settle for a little more stroller stalking instead.

Friday Roundup and home study part 2--7.23.2010

Well folks, a huge thanks to all of you who helped me through the nerves on Thursday before our home study visit. And you were right! It was super easy.

Our social worker is such a lovely woman and again we were reminded exactly why we wanted to work with her. She puts us at ease! We hung out at the dining table eating banana bread and drinking coffee. We did not eat any of the yummy fruit plate that I got up early to make because I completely forgot to offer it. We talked for nearly 3 hours and the conversations were so natural and easy. She's an adoptive mama too, so our chat was similar to those I've had with many of you, about what you've tried, what you have experienced, and what you are trying to do.

At the end of the visit, right before she left, I asked if she needed to see the house at all. She almost left without seeing it! I couldn't help but laugh and thought to myself...I cleaned for 3 days...you are going to see this house! The tour took about 5 minutes and she didn't look in our closets (you were right Mom) or even count smoke detectors (although we now have the proper amount and have them in the proper places).

We have a few last bits of paperwork to round up, but hopefully our home study will be written up in about a month! Yay! Now just waiting for the formal app from AIAA....

__________

So many super great blog posts this week. Here's a few you don't want to miss:

You absolutely MUST read the post Dog at Hyperbole and a half. The author blogs about the series of tests she gives to her dog to see if the dog should be riding the little bus to school. I love how the blogger describes the scene, and her illustrations of her dog crack me up. Don't hesitate. Check it out now.

This post at Rage Against The Minivan also had me in freaking stitches. I think anyone who has children should be able to relate. For those of us still waiting, we find it incredibly amusing and a little terrifying.

And while you are at Rage, keep rolling down the page to this post. It has a totally different tone, but the topic is super important. The blogger noticed the sale on every variety of African American Barbie at Target, which led to a great post about children and race.

I kept thinking about this post by Carrie Goldman, talking about how adoptive parents need to be better parents than biological parents. It sounds weird, and all you bio parents out there, don't go getting your panties in a bunch. I'm not saying that you aren't good parents, but the author makes an incredible point: birth mothers are placing their children for adoption with the assumption that adoptive parents can do a better job than they could. That's a high expectation to live up to. And an important thing to remember as we are filling out all this paperwork, taking tests, and jumping through endless hoops. We have to prove that we can do better.

One more, just for laughs. My sister T loves to decorate cakes. Every year my nephew comes up with some kind of cake request, and each year she manages to make it work! While I was searching for new ways to blow my healthy eating trend, I visited Cake Wrecks, a blog I love to troll through. Here's some cake disasters that make even me, a certified cake-lovin' junkie, lose my sweet tooth. T, don't try this at home!!

Home visit

House sparkling. Coffee brewing. Hopefully the dog will behave. Nervous! Social worker due in 10 minutes. More later.

WORD Wednesday--Korean alphabet rap

Found a fun little rap song for learning the characters and sounds of the Korean alphabet. Evidently I need to listen to this about 100 times because I can't hear the difference between a lot of these sounds!

Sharing the "aha"

I got a cool email today. Mutual of Omaha is touring the states right now to record stories for their "proud sponsor of life's aha moments" campaign. They are cruising about with a 34-foot Airstream mobile film studio on a 25-city tour to listen to everyday folks like you and me talk about their aha moments.

They define aha moments as "a moment of clarity" or "a defining moment where you gain real wisdom-wisdom you can use to change your life."

The crew is hitting Milwaukee in a few days and they have advance researchers digging up people to come out and tell their stories. They found us through our blog and asked if we would like to share a moment about our decision to adopt.

Geez. Kinda cool. And pretty intimidating. I mean, I have no idea what our aha moment is. And we are so early on in this process. I feel a bit fakey to talk about any life-changing moments in adoption when we haven't even got through it yet. But it's important to get the conversation about adoption out there. Not sure if we are doing this or not...

There have been some aha moments with this process thus far:

• aha--we want to adopt!
• aha--not everyone thinks adoption should be your first option to creating a family
• aha--not everyone is going to understand us/our family
• aha--there is a huge community of people who DO understand us!
• aha--we are not in control of this process
• aha--we really really want to be parents!
• aha--this process is slow, painful, and frustrating

But to identify the ONE aha moment, that's a little more challenging. The Hubster and I talked about this tonight. I'm trying to work out just what it was for me...

I guess you are programmed from the time you are small, about what your life should look like. Grow up. Meet a wonderful man of your dreams. Marry that guy. And then have babies and grow old together.

We all know that's not how life goes. But that's what the picture looks like in your head anyway.

So I got the first parts done. Grew up. Met a wonderful man of my dreams. Married him.

And that's where our story got stuck.

We always talked about kids. But we just didn't seem to want to HAVE them. There were always other things that took our attention--travel, careers, relocations, education. There never seemed to be a perfect time to have kids (I hear my mother's voice now...there's never a perfect time to have kids...).

There's also the fact that the thought of pregnancy has always freaked me out. And since I was in junior high, I had wanted to adopt. I remember learning about China's recently implemented one-child rule, and how thousands of Chinese girls were given up for adoption. I wanted to tell those girls that they were important and valuable, and told myself that I would adopt one, one day.

Back to the "when/how should we have kids debate". The bottom line is we couldn't figure out how to make kids part of our plan.

Now this might sound crazy to some of you. If you want a kid, you just have one. It's not usually a decision you have to belabor. You want them, or you don't, right?

I've always envied those women who were bound and determined to have a child. I wished that I could have their same clarity. They had their eye on the prize and some had a take no prisoners attitude in their mission to become mommy. But I just didn't feel like that. I wanted to be a mommy, but I just didn't feel that strongly. I thought because I didn't feel it in an all-consuming manner like they did, that meant I just didn't really want it.


We kept procrastinating and putting off "the decision". Wasn't that an answer in itself? Avoidance is an important sign. Maybe we really didn't want them at all.

So we went on with that debate, back and forth, for about 15 years. Yeah, we are slow learners in that respect. And we moved some more. Went back to school. Both of us changed careers. And moved again.

Next thing you know, we turn 40. I started doing the kid math (if we have a kid now, we'll be 58 when they graduate high school, 62 when they graduate college....etc.). Oh crap.

On top of that, both of our fathers had experienced health issues, which scared the bejeesus out of us.

And, our beloved cat, Jayka, who had been our baby for 17 years, died. (You might say it's just a cat, but that old girl was my baby.) All those things meant, time was marching by (time was more like sprinting by at this point) and it was time to sort out this "should we or shouldn't we" question for good.

In January 2010 we went up north for a little time away--just us and Argus, hanging out in a cabin on the lake in front of a fireplace for 3 days.

And we talked. And talked.

I don't know what stars aligned for us to figure this out. One night, after wine and cheese, we finally figured out what had been holding us up.

What was important to us was to give the very best of ourselves to something important. We wanted to step out of our selfish and self-consumed lifestyle (which we thoroughly enjoyed up to this point) and know in the end that we had given all that we could to something of worth. We wanted to do something that mattered. We definitely thought that meant parenting.

And that's when we had an aha moment--parenting was what was important to us. Not pregnancy.

In that small discovery--that we didn't have to follow the biological path of creating a family--we freed ourselves to move forward with adoption. We were able to move past the notion and feelings of obligation that we had to follow a predetermined course. We could skip the decision whether to get pregnant or not, and move directly to parenthood!

We felt lighter, happier. Joyous in the discovery of how we wanted to create OUR family. Finally we understood that having children biologically just wasn't the right way for us to grow. We were fighting it all this time because deep down, we knew that wasn't what we wanted.

It sounds so simple.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not dogging people for wanting to create families biologically. I think that's a great way to build your family. But it wasn't for us.

We realize that not everyone is going to understand this. We've seen and heard it in people's reactions when they learn that we are adopting. Many people think adoption is the second option--the method of last resort. When we tell them we are adopting, we can see the questioning looks lurking behind their pasted-on smiles and over enthusiastic congratulations.

All I can think to compare it to is this: one person likes to decorate their house in shabby chic, with floral prints and country accents, while another likes the straight crisp lines of modernism, with minimal decor and a muted color scheme. Both are perfectly acceptable decorating styles and loved by their inhabitants. But one size does not fit all.

One size does not fit all for creating a family either.

So...you've listened to me blather on about this. Thanks for your patience. You've helped me think it out.

But now we want to hear from you....have you had any aha moments about adoption?

And do you think I should do this? I'm a little nervous about jinxing the process. I'm getting very superstitious about this adoption stuff. More on that later.

If you are in the Milwaukee area, you might want to check this out. They are looking for more than adoption stories and will be taping on Thursday and Friday. Here's the website to get more info.

Parent training

Finally finished our first online course in parent education. We have to complete 18 hours of parent training before we can get a little sprout of our own. Training comes in a variety of ways--seminars, online courses, books, etc.

Our agency gives us some recommended courses, but is pretty lenient about allowing us choose whatever we think will be helpful. The course we took was at BGCenter Online School and the course name was "SJM1-The reality of parenting an internationally adopted child under 3."

It sounded like just  the class for us and we were pretty excited about it. But unfortunately, we were quite frustrated with several things about the course.

First, the course interactive design was really poor. I'm not expecting a super slick deluxe presentation, but a little thought put into how people move through the course isn't too much to ask. There is a course outline, so you'd think you could click on the section you need to work on and go there, right? Wrong. Each time you work a section you have to use the back arrow on your browser to return the main page.

Second, the presentation consisted of text. A LOT of text. And for goodness knows what reason, they often used a colored font, or used white font on a colored background. Not a friendly way to present a lot of reading material. It was such tedious reading that The Man and I took turns reading it aloud so one person could give their eyes a break.

Third, there were spelling, syntax and punctuation errors. That's plain annoying. Add to that mix, the fact that they use the most ridiculous run-on sentences I've ever seen. Here's an example:

Along with this observation regarding the powerful drive to be an individual is the belief by observers that some form of lifelong dependence on "mother" is also a universal truth of human existence, even if this dependence is only experienced internally or is carried out externally by showing the world that one is never dependent on mother of anyone else for that matter.

Umm...what??!!

Ok...so there's all those reasons why the course was freaking annoying. But there is a much more substantial reason why I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's all about this paragraph, which they use in the summary of every section. After enduring long tedious readings on all the stages of the baby's life  about prenatal, birth, and growth stages for non-adopted children, their advice to adoptive parents is always the same:

Here is what you can expect a normally developing child to be doing by age three months. Due to many issues typical for "unwanted" children residing in orphanages and discussed in the class, you can't expect them to pass all the milestones on the same schedule as a normally developing baby - developmental delays are very common. You should be concerned in these situations and call your local Early Intervention Program.

This is their key advice? Call in a professional?! We are slogging through all this stuff about how critical the bond is between biological mom and baby (which makes me feel like there's no way I can succeed, by the way) and their parenting suggestion to me is to "call your local early intervention program"?

And what about the word "unwanted". When The Man and I saw this for the first time, we let out an audible gasp.

We were shocked that this is the language of "the professionals". They are accountable for teaching future adoptive parents to think about the stereotypes and beliefs that are connected with adopted children. They are responsible for teaching us NOT to make assumptions, and how damaging labels can be. I know they used the term in quotes, but the fact is, they are still describing these kids as unwanted.

The truth is, we have no idea whether that child was wanted or not. All most of us know is that the birth mother felt she could not care for the child for one reason or another, perhaps financially, or emotionally, but we do not know if they were unwanted. They didn't believe they could RAISE them, but that's a very different thing than not being wanted.

They use the term so casually. As if the decision to let someone else care for a child was easy. And I'm quite sure it wasn't an easy decision for most women.

And then extend out the implications of being described as unwanted. What kind of self identity crisis are you setting your child up for when you refer to him in this way, because that's how the experts referred to them so it must be OK to use this term.

Adopted kids usually wrestle with the very difficult question of why they were placed for adoption. They need to come to grips with that on their own terms, and try to understand it as best as they can. Calling them unwanted seems to put a simplistic and dark story together for them---you weren't wanted and we rescued you. They didn't want you. We did.

We know it's not that simple.

I don't know...am I being ultra sensitive here? I realize it's just a word. But it's a huge one.

There were a few other annoyances in the program--they assume that everyone adopting has gone down the infertility road and/or adoption is a second option for building a family. If you read this blog often, you know how I feel about that stereotype.

And they just plain didn't give a lot of information that was specific to the developemtn of an adopted child, other than to say they can or are usually developmentally delayed. Without those details, we might as well have been reading any book about child development.

Fortunately for us, we have a choice of other parenting courses, and we don't have to take another from this place. And I guess it was educational in a way. The Man and I had many long conversations about this topic, so in that respect, it did further our parent training.

But it still pisses me off.

Friday roundup--7.16.2010

Happy happy Friday! Only one more day to go in my work week and then, hello VACATION! Well, kind of vacation. But a week full of a different kind of work at least.

I didn't have as much time for trolling blogs this week, so this Friday list is going to be short. Hope you all have some good things planned and good weather to do things in!

------------

Oh, this blog post is painful but powerful. It created such a living, breathing image in my head of our baby's birth mother. She hasn't had our baby yet, but my heart aches to think of the pain ahead of her--that her experience might be the same as this essay, written by Korean adoptee Jane Jeong Trenka. Trenka is the author of The Language of Blood which is on my reading list, but now I'm afraid to read it! If it's anything like this post I'll be a quivering mass of emotional jelly.

This week a fascinating story in the Chicago Tribune about an open international adoption. I had heard of a few open international adoptions but what made this story especially amazing to me was that there were three children adopted to the U. S. and their parents figured out the story and made the connections. Really great read!


And because I'm going on vacation, I'm posting The Man's recipe for Bloody Marys. I wasn't a fan until I tasted these sweet delights. I hope to be drinking a few of these on the hot, humid evenings next week.


The Man's Kick Ass Bloody Mary
1 1/2 oz vodka
3 oz tomato juice (we use low sodium--do not use V8!)
juice from 1/2 a lime
1 tbsp. Worchestershire sauce
dash of celery salt
2-3 drops red hot sauce


Shake all ingredients together with ice. Strain into a glass over ice cubes. The lime makes all the difference!

Cleaning Spree

Eek! A week from today we'll have our at home visit for our home study. It's the final visit in the home study process.

Our social worker will be coming to our house this time. Not sure what all she'll want to see, but at the least I know it will be a tour of our home, followed by our 2-3 hour meeting. Let the cleaning spree begin!

I've heard others compare this to cleaning for a good friend coming over, vs. cleaning for your mother-in-law to come over. His family used the same agency and said the good friend cleaning is fine. And the social worker told us the cleanliness of the home is not what they are observing here...it's the type of home we have, if we have a place for our child, and to get a better picture of how we live our lives and what's important to us.

But how can you not want to clean the hell out of your place? I mean, these are the folks who will be writing about you as suitable future parents in the home study document. If there ever was a person to clean for, the social worker seems to rank pretty high up on the list.

We've only lived here for just over 3 years. We've done a tremendous amount of work to our home already, but I look around and see bits of unfinished projects (the baseboard moulding needs to be stained and installed where we put in the new floor) and things that still need to be done (window coverings in the bedrooms and the kitchen has 3 different colors of paint on the walls).

The basement has stacks of boxes we haven't unpacked yet (goodness knows what's in them--we've been toting them around the country for the past 10 years). There's a wall of household goods to be donated to foster care, with another pile of stuff destined for a rummage sale.

Just to make things more fun, we had flooding in the basement overnight from a huge storm, and so now the entire mess is sopping wet. Agghghgh. Fortunately The Man was off of work today and took care of that clean-up.

I'm taking next week off of work to get prepared. It will make me feel much better to have this house scoured, and will make it less stressful to have the week to do it. I know I'm crazy, but I think I'm going to try and squeeze in painting the kitchen too. Over achiever...I know. Perhaps I should just concentrate on cleaning....

We still have a little paperwork left to gather, and to re-edit our 10 page (yes, 10!) biographies that we wrote for our Lifelink homestudy. Our new biographies need to be slimmed down to 4 pages. But other than that, we are about finished.

The next step: the home study will take about a month to write, and then it will be submitted, along with our formal application to our agency in Michigan. A little progress!

WORD Wednesday--Korean multimedia dictionary

A few weeks back you saw the spectacular learning site created by folks at Indiana University. Well here is another example of their well thought out design.

The Korean Multimedia Dictionary uses well drawn graphics, paired with audio recordings to help you learn new words. There are 461 words to learn on this site! You can view the words lists in English or Korean. But perhaps the most useful feature is the words are organized into categories, such as transportation, weather, body parts and family.

This site is a sure bookmarker!

(credit: image taken from the Korean Multimedia Dictionary)

Ponder this

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."---Lao Tzu

A kind of famous quote in adoption circles. Seems like ages ago that we finally made the decision to do this, but it's only been about four months. The time passes so slowly! At times it does feel like we are going to walk the entire thousand miles....I know we are moving forward though, and that's something to cling to.

  

Pororo The Little Penguin

So excited! Just discovered Pororo The Little Penguin! Haven't heard of him? Yeah, neither had I. But you can bet your bottom dollar that most children in South Korea have. This impish little four-year-old penguin dreams of flying and lives in the Arctic. He sounds like the Dora the Explorer of Korean children's cartoons.

The animation is the brainchild of Choi Jong Il, and first popped on the Korean TV scene in 2003. It is geared towards children ages 3-7 and the creators did something really interesting--they studied preschoolers to see the things they like, how they hang out with friends, what they do, etc. They took that information and applied it to the characters in their episodes, and presto--instant hit among the preschool crowd.

One of the things I think is cool about this cartoon is that it has won the Korean Culture and Content Agency Character Awards two years in a row. The episodes are 5 minutes long (like a pre-schooler's attention span) and they have a simple social message (like friends are kind to one another).

The only disappointing thing about Pororo is he hasn't come to the US yet. He's in over 80 countries, so why not here? Word has it they are working on something, but in the meantime, because it's unlicensed in the U.S., you can watch the show on YouTube. That's where I've been watching them so far. I watch the Korean language episodes HERE but also really enjoy the versions with English subtitles.

I did find some DVD's online but I'm not sure if I'll order them. They have an English version (with Korean and English subtitles) (HERE) but the DVDs are labeled "Region 3." Not sure if that means they will play in our U.S. DVD players though.

We have a few Asian markets in town, but I'm not holding my breath that they'll have any DVDs available. Maybe Pororo will come to the U.S. by the time our little Kimchi does.

Read more about Pororo's rise in popularity in a Time Magazine article HERE.

Bloggie Bling!

Hey you adoption bloggers (and mommy bloggers too)! Found this site with some cute bloggy dressings for ya at MySunWillShine.com. I'm not one for cutesy stuff, but I love the fact that they had quotes that refer specifically to adoption. Yay! This one isn't bad--

graphics for moms

Or if ya want a little sparkle in your life, they have some that are more flashy like this one:

graphics for moms

There's a few other designs you can check out, including quotes for foster moms! Have fun--

Friday roundup--7.9.2010

Happy today marks the end of yet another wacky (and oppressively muggy) week here. We starting our online parenting courses (yawn), and chipped away at that huge pile of adoption paperwork we need to complete. The best part of the week is we are piling into the Subaru on Saturday morning for a 6 hour road trip! We are heading across the state for The Man's bike race, and I'm running a 5K trail run. The wonder pug loves road tripping to, and we are all looking forward to getting out of dodge.

Here's a few blog posts I enjoyed this week:

• Happy to stumble across an  interesting post by blogger jjtrenka at Jane's Blog on the recent change in the U.S. definition of being an "orphan". This definition is very important because it defines which children are eligible for adoption. Many people believe that children adopted internationally do not have parents, but that's rarely the case. In the case of Korea, single motherhood is so ill received and shameful, that single women choose to place their children up for adoption. I always find it ironic that the children who are adopted to American families will be brought up in a culture where single motherhood is commonplace. The new definition says in part:

"The child of an unwed mother may be considered an orphan, as long as the mother does not marry (which would result in the child’s having a stepfather) and as long as the child’s biological father has not legitimated the child." 

Wow--I know lots of folks who would be considered orphans under that broad definition.

• For the LOL post of the week, hop on over to Busted Plumbing's post titled "Glad to Stop Sticking Things Up My Lady Biz (Or, Welcome Back Cooter)". I don't think I've ever been that interested in anyone else's parts, nor seen that many names for them!

• I seem to be on a roll with cooking blogs lately. The post I put up last week about the mozzarella and tomato tart was a real find. The Man and I scarfed up that tart in no time flat! So this week I stumbled across a recipe for The Single Lady Pancake over at Joy The Baker. I'm a sucker for lots of sweet stuff on my cakes, unlike The Man who likes his with butter and syrup, and that's it. The other thing that I like about this recipe is it uses oatmeal so I can feel less guilty about all those fixins I'm gonna smother the cake with.

Short but sweet this week! Have a great weekend--

Adoptee Rights Day-A demand for access to sealed records

ARRGGGG. I wrote a really kick ass post on this subject. But an unfortunate flub (accidentally selected all, then hit delete, followed by the untimely "save now" feature kicking in before I could hit undo) has left me starting from scratch.

I'm warning ya--it's lengthy. If your attention span can't hold on, I won't be offended. But please roll to the bottom of the page before you leave and read the super important part!

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I can recall the first time I saw my birth certificate. I was about to get married. I thought I knew exactly what would be on it and assumed it would be pretty straightforward. My mom's name. My birth father's name. And my name.

But when I saw my adopted dad's name on that slip of paper, it surprised me. Like most people, I had no idea that when I was adopted (read about that here) my original birth certificate was altered, removing all traces of my birth father. In my case, that was a good thing. But it's still strange to have your history rewritten by the law.


The issue 
For the roughly 6 million adoptees in the United States, their original birth certificates and all information pertaining to their birth history is permanently sealed upon the completion of their adoption. Once sealed, those records are not accessible.

Adoptees records include:

• the adoption document
• details about birth parents and their histories gathered during pre-adoption interviews 
• the original birth certificate
  

The law hasn't always worked this way. Adoption records were open until the 1940s. Previous to that, birth certificates were not altered, and all the names of the people in the adoption were part of the public record.

But in the 40's, the social perception of adoption began to change. Adoption began to be secretized (for lack of a better word I just made up my own). It became more commonplace, and was seen as the alternative way to getting that idillic life of 2.5-children-a-dog-and-a-white-picket-fence for those who could not conceive. In order to fit into that squeaky clean life, they cleaned up the adoptive child's not-so-pretty past.

At the suggestion of social workers and adoption agencies, the courts moved to seal records. Supposedly this move would protect the adoptive parents from possible interference from birth parents and protect adoptees from the cultural stigmas attached to being adopted. (It seems there was nothing worse at that time than to be considered a bastard child or illegitimate. "Illegitimate" was actually stamped on their birth certificate! Adoptees records were changed to reflect their new, non-bastard status.)

And don't forget the protection for the birth parents, who, once the records were changed, could not be legally traced to an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.

Fast forward to today. In the 70's the active adoptee networks began pushing for unsealing records. The movement has been slowly gathering steam. In the beginning the push for opening records was downplayed. (I surmise it was by people who never knew the pain of not having access to their personal histories.) They saw the request for records as disrespectful toward adoptive parents, or as spiteful moves from adoptees who's adoptions "didn't work out".


Why should I care?
The Man and I have had discussions about this and it's a complex issue. Although much of this debate does not pertain to us since we are doing international adoption, we can still empathize and understand the pain that not having access to records can cause adoptees.

Adoptive parents should care about this issue because it's important to our adopted children. It's perfectly natural to wonder where you come from, a family history and why you were put up for adoption. This is actually a part of healthy adaptation to the concept of self for an adoptee. I can't think of a better way to show love for our child than to support them in their effort to understand themselves and their adoption. Yes, it might be painful, but aren't there lots of painful aspects to doing the right thing for your children?


The debate
This is the hottest issue in adoption right now. Sealed records are generally the exception around the world. Scotland, England, Sweden, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, and South Korea, to name a few--they all have open records. Most industrialized nations do. The U.S. is one of the last hold outs on this.


 There are basically 3 camps in this debate:

The adoptees: Right now, there are only seven states in the U. S. that allow full or partial access to adoptees records. (Please give a big hand to Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Kansas, Maine, Oregon and Tennessee.) If you aren't lucky enough to be born in one of these six states, you are shit out of luck.

Without access to their original records, in some states adoptees are only given non-identifying information about their birth families. This information may include hair color, the age of the birth parents at the time of birth, reasons for adoption, and perhaps a health history if they are lucky. They often have to prove to the courts that there is a "good cause" for wanting this information. Curiosity is not enough.

Adoptees consider this restriction of information as a civil rights violation. By not allowing them to obtain the original government documents pertaining to their adoption, they feel they are discriminated against. Everyone, except adoptees and people in the federal witness protection program, have access to their records.

Search and reunion is not the intent of every adoptee who wants this information. Just having access to this information is enough for some.

 In a study of American adolescents, the Search Institute found that 72 percent of adopted adolescents wanted to know why they were adopted, 65 percent wanted to meet their birth parents, and 94 percent wanted to know which birth parent they looked like. --American Adoption Congress

The parents:  The law, as it exists now, seems to put the rights of the birth parents over the rights of the adoptees. The folks in this camp believe birth parents have a right to privacy. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand why birth parents might object to unsealing the records. But even if they are contacted by an adoptee, they still have the right to refuse interaction with them if they choose.

Surprisingly, research has shown that most first parents are open to being contacted.

Ninety-four percent of non-searching birthmothers when contacted by their adult birth children were pleased, according to a recent British study. (“The Adoption Triangle Revisited: A Study of Adoption Search and Reunion Experiences,” British Association for Adoption and Fostering, 2005)

And lest we forget the adoptive parents in this debate. A major reason courts have given to keep records sealed is to protect the adoptive parents who might be hurt or threatened if their children want to know more about their first families. And again, research does not show this point to be true. 

Adoptive mothers were more in favor of opening adoption records than fathers: 83 percent of adoptive mothers and 73 percent of adoptive fathers felt that adult adoptees should be able to obtain a copy of their birth certificates; only 9 percent of adoptive mothers and 11 percent of adoptive fathers felt they should not have access.--Adoptive family study by Rosemary Avery, Cornell associate professor of consumer economics and housing and a specialist in family policy and foster care.

The adoption vs. abortion group: These folks are against unsealing records because they allege that without anonymity, women will choose the abortion option. However, in countries and states that have redacted the sealing laws, this has not proven to be true. In fact, the numbers do not seem to change at all.

Workers at pro-life centers such as Birthright report that young women today will only choose adoption if they are assured of updates or contact with the adoptive family. Gretchen Traylor, Birthright counselor in Minnesota, says, "When adoption  is under consideration, the young woman’s overriding concern is that she will be unable to contact her child later in life, and that the child will not be able to find her as well. Pregnant women tell me that if such contact is NOT available, they would rather abort."--American Adoption Congress

So what are the options?

There seem to be three options on the table at this point.

• Pro unrestricted access to records--Adoptees must apply and will receive their information.

• Against unrestricted access--

• Compromised access--Access would be allowed, but birth parents would be contacted first and have the right to accept or veto the adoptee's access to the information. This group of supporters believes this minor change in the law is better than nothing. This process would tack on a large expense for adoptees to get access to their information.

The whole point of this post
 OK. So it was a long introduction, but here's the point. There is a large protest rally happening July 25 in Kentucky at the Annual Summit of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Rallies have been held in past years and made significant progress but there is much work to be done!

If you cannot attend the rally, you can join the cause. Spread the word through social media and blogs. (Feel free to link to my post as a way to spread the message) Or pick up a snazzy badge to display on your blog HERE.

Or participate in a letter writing campaign to let your state legislators know how you feel. Find your legislators by going HERE and send them a letter by July 19.

Of course donations are a great way to help the cause.

And there are other suggestions about what you can do HERE.

But the main thing is that we get involved. Think about your child. Think about the questions he will ask. Think about what's important for her emotional and psychological health. Think about what YOU would want to know, and then speak out to make it possible.

Here's some more places you can learn about the cause:

The Adoptee Rights Demonstration

Green Ribbon Campaign for Open Records

The Basic Bastard: Open Records
The Basic Bastard: A History of Sealed Records in the US

A brief history of adoption records-Part 1
A brief history of adoption records-Part 2
A brief history of adoption records-Part 3

WORD Wednesday - Korean in a flash(card)

Found some handy flashcard sets at Amazon, including the Korean in a flash Vol 1. They look like they are really well done, and smartly organized. There are 448 cards included with common Korean words and phrases, and frequently used expressions. It's organized in a way that makes sense, categorizing the words you'll learn sensibly--numbers, geography, family relationships, body, etc.

I think it looks like it might be a great learning aid although I wonder if you need to have a good understanding of Hangul already. They include the Romanized pronunciation and English meanings for each of the 448 words included. And there's another 1,792 related terms. Yikes.

If this works for you, there's a Vol 2 as well.

I'm thinking of starting a bit smaller. I'm like a child learning this myself, so why not just go for the kid's version? The same company (Tuttle) also has a Korean For Kids flash card set. This kit includes 64 flash cards PLUS an audio CD, wall chart and learning guide.

What's also pretty cool (and might be VERY useful when Seoul Baby arrives) is the addition of Korean games to play, and Korean songs on the CD such as Happy Birthday and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Feet (a slight difference from the Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes version I grew up with).

There's also a Vol 2 available on this one!

When they have arrived

Found these cool adoption announcement cards by October Designs on Etsy. Created by an adoptive mom who couldn't find announcements that suited her needs, she took it upon herself to start designing ones herself. Right now she's got 28 different options and I think it's a bargain at $25.

Looks like they are super easy to order. Just send her a pic and the wording you'd like, she'll send you the proofs, and once the design is finished she sends the high-res version of the announcement. Then you can have it printed any way you want, including printing right from your own printer. How easy is that?

Can't wait until we can use her services! Here's a few more examples of her great work.

(image credit: all images from October Designs)

South Korean hotties...er...men

OK. Sometimes I feel weird doing this. But I'm fessing up to it anyway.

Chances are that we are going to be paired with a little boy from South Korea. I've only ever seen myself with a girl, so I'm working on changing my mental picture.

But the thing is, in my head there aren't a lot of  pictures of what Asian boys or men look like. So I've been trying to pay more attention to Asian boys and men so I can picture our family. (This is the curse of being a visual person--you are always trying to pre-visualize what things will look like.)

One goes about this process very carefully. For example, you don't want to Google "pictures of Asian boys" or you are likely to wind up at some freaky disturbing sites.

This is where CNN has stepped in to help a girl out. I'm sure they didn't do it just for me, but I appreciate their timing nevertheless. They just announced the 20 hottest male celebrities from South Korea. Plenty of boys/men to look at and my mental photo album is growing by leaps and bounds.

The only glitch--the men on the list were chosen "purely on the basis of how much drool they elicited from the female members of the staff." Other factors to making the list were "their chocolate abs, sublime faces and lean, mean, sex-machine bodies."

This is a little disturbing since I'm trying to be all motherly and thinking that my future son might look like one of these guys. Yikes!

Go here to see videos of all these musicians, actors and celebs.

Mothers be warned.

(image credit: STARNews)

Dog + Baby = Happiness

Happy 4th of July!

We met up last night with our friends M & C and their adorable little munchkin (AKA Giggles) to watch fireworks. She's 10 months old and so much fun! Super cute with huge blue eyes and a great giggle that she's willing to share with everyone. She's crawling, exploring and very interested in everything around her. Ten months is a very good age!

We brought our little munchkin too (the four-legged one) and it was so much fun to see how the two of them got along. Gus was very excited by Giggles and she seemed to feel the same way. So a good portion of the evening was spent watching the two of them hang out--Gus licking Giggle's fingers and she crawling around trying to get closer to him.

When I saw this onesie, I thought of Giggles and Gus and how much fun they had last night. You can find them at Dogmom Productions and they are made of organic cotton. For all the Giggles and Gus's out there, and the Dog-Mom-soon-to-be-kid-Moms will enjoy them too.

(image credit: Dogmom website)

Is it him, or is it her?

When folks find out we are adopting, one question isn't far behind. "Is it him, or is it her?" Most people believe that one of the pair has to be broken for them to decide to adopt. A couple capable of biologically producing a child certainly wouldn't choose to grow their family through adoption, would they?

Well, yes they would. The Man and I had chosen adoption as our preferred method a long time ago.

My boss, who adopted domestically a few years back, warned me that we would hear this question repeatedly. He fields the question regularly when people ask about his wife. "They won't ask you, they'll ask him," he explained.

So far, The Man hasn't fielded many of those questions because he hasn't told anyone at work. But we know without a doubt there are several folks who won't refrain from personal interrogations.

We haven't heard it from our friends at all, thankfully. And if they did ask it would be at an appropriate time and manner because they care about our health, not because they needed to know if we are fertile or not.

And after talking with my mother-in-law the other day, I realized that she has been asked this question too. I felt angry that people thought they had a right to ask her to share such personal things. What the hell is it to them anyway?

My question to the askers is why DIDN'T they adopt? Just because they could pop out their own kids, why wouldn't they want to adopt as well? Is it such a shock that some people don't need to add to the world's population, and choose instead to care for the children already in the world?

OK. Simmer down. I'm not bitter that they had biological children. I just don't understand why is it important to people to know about the details of people's fertility health, or to pinpoint which one of the couple is to blame?  And when they want to know "is it him or is it her" that does seem like they are trying to pin the responsibility on someone.

Sometimes it's neither. And sometimes it's true that there are fertility issues.

But every time, it's none of their damned business.

Friday roundup--7.2.2010

Oh lordy. This was a crazy freaking week. No time for me. No time for blogging. Not sure which made me more frustrated! Poor little dog is feeling neglected too. So thankful for a day off, and a Friday at that!

• Found this delicious tomato and mozzarella tart recipe (and funny blog post) over at Happy Loves Strawberry. Thinking it would be the perfect thing to make for a BBQ with our friends this weekend. The Man discovered a new love for tomatoes despite insisting for 40+ years that he doesn't like them. That's why I love him dearly--he doesn't hold fast to his "likes" and "dislikes" when it comes to food. But some of them take longer than others to come around. So he'll particularly enjoy this tomato dish.

• I really loved the post  "Anyone else hear that ticking sound" over at Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed. It's an honest post about the conflict you feel when friends/family are pregnant or have a child.

• And one last story about the daily experiences of being an interracial family in the column View from the Borderland: On raising an interracial family in Vermont". The Man and I have discussed this very thing often and aren't sure how we'll react to it. No one will go up to any other family and say "so why did you decided to conceive" so why do they feel it's OK to come up and ask "so why did you decide to adopt?" We know that how we answer these questions will have a big impact on our children and their beliefs about their adoption, so I'm always fascinated to hear how other adoptive families handle these situations.

Happy Friday all!

Adoption slogans

Found this sweet quote and wanted to share it. Klose adopted a child from Russia, and documents his experiences in the book Adopting Alyosha: A Single Man Finds a Son in Russia.

"I realized at the start that whether a child is biological or adopted, one does not know all the ingredients in the package. That is what growth is all about. A child is the slowest flower in the world, opening petal by petal, revealing the developing personality within."   -Robert Klose