What to Read??

I just purchased a bunch of books at Barnes and Noble. I got an African inspired coloring book, an Amharic phrasebook and the book "I'm Chocolate, Your Vanilla." Wow--I have lots of reading to do.

I really enjoy reading. I read for fun and every 6 weeks my group of friends/neighbors gets together for book club. Admittedly, I don't always read the book for book club. I usually try but if I can't get in to it I move on to something more enjoyable. Other times I am to busy with other stuff to sit and read.

So at this moment I am reading our next book club book, "Nineteen Minutes" by Jodi Piccoult. So far it is really good and I think I will enjoy it. I have until June so hopefully I can finish it.

I also started to read the first few pages of "I'm Chocolate, Your Vanilla". I have heard and read many wonderful things about this book. It is a book for parents and educators of biracial and black children. It is written by a black women psychologist and deals with how as parents we can develop a strong, independent and proud child regardless of the color of their skin. It is a parent's guide to how to reduce the impact of racism on our child's development. Do I want to believe that our child won't face racism? Sure I do but the reality is at some point while growing up they will encounter someone with an ignorant question. It may be an innocent kindergartner who doesn't think I am my child's mom since we don't look a like or it may be a not so innocent adult with questions about why we chose Ethiopia instead of Eastern Europe or China.

We want our children to be proud of their African heritage and will encourage continuous learning about African culture and more specifically Ethiopia. We know that it is our responsibility to make sure we raise our children to be well educated, independent and secure. We know we may get strange looks or random questions but we feel that by reading this book and being aware ahead of time we can appropriately answer questions and teach our child how to as well. I digress...

Anyway, I also started looking at the phrasebook. Wow--I have never been that great at languages. I can read basic french and understand the same basic french that I can read but now I am looking at a language that uses a whole different alphabet. It will be challenging but I want to learn some basic phrases for when we travel and we want to share the language with our child as well. It will be difficult to say the least but it helps pass the time during the months of waiting.

So my brain is full of info right now but they say knowledge is power right? I don't know if I like power but knowledge is always useful. I will let you all know what I learn and maybe share some Amharic words and phrases.

Worried Dog Momma

Ok--so I don't really post about my dogs but today is devoted to them and how I can definitely be a worried dog momma.

First there is Sebastian, he is an amazing pug who will be 8 years old in June. He is really smart and VERY stubborn. He can be totally independent or super cuddly. He has a mischievous side too and one of his favorite things to do is play in laundry and it doesn't matter to him if it is clean or dirty. He will climb in the laundry basket and fall asleep. In fact as I write this he is sleeping on a pile of my hubby's folded clothes on the couch. I just took a picture and when hubby gets home I will have him help me post it. Anyway, he was super easy to house train and doesn't really destroy stuff unless of course he eats a dryer sheet.



Next there is Badger, he is the cutest, softest pug who will be 5 in September. He is not quite as smart and VERY clingy. He really loves to snuggle and he snores REALLY loudly. He loves to sleep and eat weird stuff in the yard (grass, rocks, feathers, and he licked a dead vole once). GROSS! He really does sleep a lot so he loves to sleep with a toy in his mouth. It is really cute. He was a little hard to house train and still has some issues and he has separation anxiety so when we would leave him he would chew on furniture. He chewed on the rungs of all 6 of my dining room chairs, ate the corner of my sofa table and chewed the legs and ate the corner of the foot board on my bed. He has gotten a lot better but misses us terribly when we are gone which is really sweet.

So the worried momma part comes in when I see something not quite right with one of my pugs. Badger is snoring away and doing fine; he is a little pudgy but not too bad. Sebastian is my problem pug (for now). He recently had a bout of acne on his chin that became infected. That has mostly cleared and now he has developed a limp. It appears to be his front right paw but he still runs and jumps. It is really bad after he has been laying down for awhile and then not as bad when he is walking around the house. We called the vet and they told us to give him aspirin two times per day which we are but I haven't seen a lot of improvement.

I had an appointment scheduled for him today to see the vet but since he was running around and putting pressure on it, I thought it might get better. So I cancelled his appointment and got my hair done instead. (Trust me, I do feel a little selfish) I know he is probably fine but the worried momma in me is going to get another appointment for him tomorrow. He isn't putting as much pressure on his leg right now so that is different and I don't want him to be in pain.

If you didn't know, I don't have kids so my dogs are like my babies. Yes I spoil them like crazy. They sleep in our bed and have too many toys to count. So when one of my babies isn't feeling right, I don't feel right. I know he is fine and it might just be arthritis or he could have twisted it or just slept on it wrong. Stay tuned for updates and super cute pictures.

Shots, shots and more shots

I knew when we decided to adopt internationally and to travel to pick up our baby that I would have to get a lot of shots. Not an issue, I don't really mind that part. The part that I do mind is the hassle it has been for me to set up appointments to try and start some of these shots.

I need to get Hepatitis A and B shots, so I contacted my Dr.'s office to set up an appointment and they asked me why I needed these shots. I told them that early next year I would be travelling to Africa. At that point they told me I needed to contact the travel clinic. Well, the day we were officially approved back in January, I called the travel clinic and they wanted to know our travel date before setting up an appointment. I explained this to the woman and she said she would get back to me. Several messages later, they agreed to set up an appointment with the float nurse at my Dr.'s office to start the series of Hepatitis shots. They are spread out over a number of months so I want to get them out of the way now. I figure it will be one less thing I will have to worry about.

In talking with the nurse she wanted to make sure that I was still planning on going to the travel clinic before I travel to Ethiopia. I told her, of course. There are more shots that I need that I can get only at a travel clinic (yellow fever) and some others I am considering getting as well such as typhoid and meningitis and polio. I also want to go to the travel clinic to talk about things we can do while in Ethiopia to stay healthy and to ask questions about meds we should bring for our baby in case they are sick.

So for now the drama with the shots appears to be over, I have an appointment with the nurse in a few weeks. Let's hope the rest of the process goes well and that my arm won't hurt too much afterward.

Seventy Three

Well, we moved up to #73! Yeah. We are still expecting to wait 8-9 months for a referral so still hoping for November/December.

The plus side is that we will get to travel (if all goes according to plans) in the winter and since I HATE winter it will be nice to get out of WI and to some place sunny.

As for "plans", you really can't plan in the world of international adoption. Things are very unpredictable so we never know what might happen.

Favorite Song with a special meaning

Here are the lyrics to one of my favorite songs (courtesy of azlyrics.com). This song was the first dance song at my wedding and while I heard it on the radio today, it occurred to me that a lot of this song will apply to the adoption of my first child. It brought tears to my eyes.

"From This Moment On"

From this moment life has begun
From this moment you are the one
Right beside you is where I belong
From this moment on

From this moment I have been blessed
I live only for your happiness
And for your love I'd give my last breath
From this moment on

I give my hand to you with all my heart
Can't wait to live my life with you, can't wait to start
You and I will never be apart
My dreams came true because of you

From this moment as long as I live
I will love you, I promise you this
There is nothing I wouldn't give
From this moment on

You're the reason I believe in love
And you're the answer to my prayers from up above
All we need is just the two of us
My dreams came true because of you

From this moment as long as I live
I will love you, I promise you this
There is nothing I wouldn't give

From this moment
I will love you as long as I live
From this moment on

There are lots of songs that really touch my heart and this one by Shania Twain always gets me a little choked up. I value music for the lyrics and the melody and the emotion. This song was the perfect choice for my first dance with my DH and there are certain parts of this song that made me think of my baby. There is nothing I wouldn't give for my child and I will love them as long as I live. And I truly believe that I will be even more blessed when I hold that child in my arms for the first time.

Thursday's on my blog will be song day. Each Thursday, I will highlight one of my favorite songs and explain a little bit about why that song means so much to me. I hope you enjoy and you will notice that I LOVE country music. But no worries I may be a little bit country but I am also a little bit rock n roll.

THANKS!

I want to give a big THANKS to my Secret Pal. I have had a rough few days with everything not just adoption stuff and I got my gift today. It was this super cute picture frame. I will try and take a picture and post it on here, if I can figure that out. I just love it and it made my week for sure.

Also, I was off by a day. Today we have been officially waiting for 3 months. Since we have been pretty open with everyone about our plans to adopt we get lots and lots of questions about when we will know anything. It gets a little daunting to have to keep saying not yet or we won't know anything until towards the end of the year.

I just keep telling myself that everything will fall in to place when it is supposed to and when it does it will be the happiest day of my life. So not only do I need to hang in there in and be patient but I need others in my life to have a little patience too. Trust me when we have news to share, we will shout it from the mountains. Okay we live in WI so the hills.

Eat, Pray, Love...

Well we have been officially waiting for 3 months today. It has gone by fairly quickly really but I am going to take this post to reflect on how I will spend the remainder of my wait.

If you haven't read the book, "Eat, Pray, Love" written by Elizabeth Gilbert. I highly recommend it. There are parts of the book that are slow but the overall message behind the book really moved me. In summary, it is a true story of a woman who takes a year to travel to Italy to eat, India to pray and Indonesia to love after she hit rock bottom. She took that time to focus on herself and figure out who she was and where she wanted to go in her life. She wanted to get re-centered. While I can't take a year off to do those things I plan on incorporating some of this into my life as in some ways I do feel that I hit rock bottom.

I got married pretty young (thankfully) thus I had it set in my head that by the time I was 3o I would have at least 2 kids. Well I as I am rapidly approaching 32 and have zero children I have had to do a lot of adjusting. Throughout the 3 years that we attempted to have children, there were many a day when I just cried. I wanted nothing more than to see those 2 pink lines on that test and month after month it never came. I hit rock bottom in September of 2006. That was the month we called it quits on our fertility treatments. We went on vacation and came back and immediately started the adoption process. None of what I was dealing with emotionally made sense at that time but after reading "Eat, Pray, Love" and listening to her talk about her nights on the bathroom floor I could really relate to that. She made a conscious choice to get up off that floor and make changes to her life and refocus and in essence I feel like I did that to by saying enough is enough and following my heart to adoption.

So for the next few months and possibly the rest of 2008 while I wait for my referral I am going to refocus a little. I am going to eat at the Cherry Festival in Michigan. I am going to pray every day and I am going to love my husband, my friends and my family but most importantly I am going to love myself. I am not sure that I have always loved myself enough in the past few years. I felt a lot pressure (that I put on myself) to get pregnant and then a lot of failure when that didn't happen. I know that God has a plan for me and I lost sight of that along the way. I truly believe that God won't give me anything that I can't handle and I have learned that I can handle a lot.

Lastly, I feel like I should explain while I said thankfully about getting married young. I met and married the most amazing person. He is truly my soul mate and without him my life wouldn't have as much meaning. Sure he has his flaws and some days those drive me beyond crazy but I know we will always be together and I cherish that. I am thankful to have found someone so wonderful at such a young age and to know that for better or worse we are doing this thing called life together. I couldn't have survived those 3 years of trying to get pregnant without him. It was a very challenging time for both of us and in the end it made us that much closer. It all comes back to God. I don't always understand why things happen the way they do but I know that everything happens for a reason and I just have to have a little faith. I lost that for awhile but thank you Elizabeth Gilbert for helping me find it.