Week 29

It has been 29 weeks since we received pre-approval from the China Center for Children’s Welfare Activities to proceed with Kyle’s adoption. 

This week has been…

Hectic.  That is all.

Big Adoption News:  We have our Consulate Appointment!  Our “exit interview” is scheduled for August 20^th, so now we are able to make our travel arrangements, which we are in the process of doing right now.    

Next Up…

Just waiting to firm up the last details of our trip.  Our agency makes some of the arrangements for us and we make some of the arrangements ourselves through a travel agent that is familiar with adoption travel.  Once we have all of the details hammered out I will post our itinerary.  We do know that we are going to meet Kyle on the 11^th of August at 4:30 PM and THAT is very exciting news. 

 

 

Fun Things We Did This Week:

We stayed pretty close to home and are focused on getting prepared for our trip.  We had a fun afternoon out at a shrimp boil today but mostly, we’ve been focused on cleaning, sorting, packing for two back-to-back trips (more on that later) and getting the little necessities taken care of (kenneling the cat, stopping the mail, MASSIVE freezer cooking efforts so we will have meals ready to eat when we get back). 

Yes…this is really happening. 

 

 

 

 

Week 28

 

It has been 28 weeks since we received pre-approval from the China Center for Children’s Welfare Activities to proceed with Kyle’s adoption. 

This week has been…

Calming – at least things were calm around here until Friday night when we got our big news.  This week I have really tried to focus on the things that were important to me and not dwell on the things that won’t matter in the long run or things I can’t change.  Adoption is very stressful…maybe I make it more so than it needs to be, but instead of whining about having no support network, I’ve tried to take the approach of taking care of myself and focus on the people in my life that are important to me.  I have some very important people who are counting on me to hold my poop together.  I know that many people who we interact with day-to-day just don’t “get it” when it comes to our adoptions.  While that makes me sad…it’s time to put on my big girl panties and press on.  Like my friend Suzie would say – suck it up, buttercup.    

Big Adoption News:  We have Travel Approval!  This means that China has invited us to come over and complete Kyle’s adoption.  We were actually a little surprised about this and not expecting this till next week.

This is what TA looks like- what all the big fuss is about!  The picture is one we'd not seen before and is probably the earliest picture of Kyle there is...most likely from his "finding ad".  He was pretty sick when he was found and while I can tell that is Kyle...it is so nice to see a happy/healthy 3 year old boy in the pics we're so lucky to have. 

Next big expense…

We received an invoice from our agency this week for $3,000.00.  There are still some FedEx fees to be paid as well – we have probably spent about $500 per adoption in FedEx fees, which are paid out a little at a time…I really try not to think about it but that is a “hidden cost” that adds up.  Travel will be a MAJOR expense for us.  We will be hammering out the details of all of that this coming week.  I’d hoped we’d have a better outcome with the grants but we are really hoping that we get some good news from the remaining three that we have out there. 

Next Up…

Finalization of our Consulate Appointment (CA) from the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China.  This is the “exit interview” that all American families must go through before leaving China with their newly adopted children.  All other appointments/travel are triggered off of this one appointment, so until the consulate confirms our appointment, we can’t tell you when we are leaving or when we will meet Kyle.  We’ve requested the 19^th of August, which would put us as leaving England around 7-8 August and coming back on the 20-21^st of August, but until we get confirmation of our CA, we are in limbo. 

Fun Things We Did This Week:

I took a much needed day off of work last week and took the train in to London.  I had lunch at Five Guys (the American food fix did wonders) and did some shopping & visiting with a lady who is in my DTC Facebook group (this is about 200 moms who are roughly at the same point in the China process as we are).  This new friend is an American living in London with her family and it was very good for my soul to be able to talk to someone who “gets it”.  The adoption process has been really stressful for me and (what I perceive as) the lack of support we get from others has been wearing on me.  I guess international adoption isn’t something easily understood unless it’s personally touched you, and it was just really good for me to have some of my feelings validated and to be able to talk to someone who understands. 

As far as other fun, just a quiet weekend of hanging out and a little bit of housework, and throwing around different travel scenarios.  Our family calendar got completely screwed up this weekend and I managed to mess up all of our plans by my scheduling snafus, but I think the unplanned down time was good for all of us. 

Cheers. 

 

Laundry, Unmentionables, & Repurposing

Taking a break from some of the adoption blogging to pass on a few recent money saving success stories. 

Laundry on the Cheap

I blogged a few months ago about making my own laundry soap.  I made a batch in mid-March and I’m just now running out in July.  I have 4 people in my family and we do a lot of laundry.  I had always meant to share a cheapie solution for fabric softener, but I never got around to it.  So here goes. 

I have had the same bottle of fabric softener for 4+ months.  It’s about half full now.  I keep a small plastic container in my laundry room filled with diluted liquid fabric softener.  I use 3 parts water to 1 part softener.  I keep a couple of rags inside this container and before I start the dryer, I wring one out and toss it in.  I have no issues with static and my clothes smell nice.  The downside is that it is a little bit messy.  A dryer sheet is neater but my messier method is about one-tenth the cost of buying sheets, so…

 

My cheap laundry solutions have saved me a ton of money and not cost me very much time.  Success! 

Online Shopping

Most everyone shops online these days, especially those of us living overseas.  Don’t get me wrong, its fun to shop in England, but it’s expensive and some things just aren’t the same.  A friend told me about Coupon Cabin shortly after I moved here.  I NEVER buy anything online without checking for an online code.  Through trial and error, I pretty much know which company is always going to have something and which companies never do.  I almost always snag a discount, a freebie or free shipping on whatever I’m buying. 

www.couponcabin.com

The site is user friendly.  Just search for your store.  There is a feedback form for bad codes but I’ve never had any not work. 

Major score today – I bought two bras at from Victoria’s Secret online.  I used two separate coupon codes (some sites allow you to use multiple codes) and got: 

          Free shipping

          A free pair of undies

          A free beach bag

Yes, I know not everyone wants to read about my underwear and trust me, I don’t want to provide more detail than that…but come on!  That’s pretty amazing!  The beach bag I don’t need, but Christmas is coming.  The shipping was about $13.00, so it was nice to have that back in my pocket. 

And finally…

Cuttin’ Up

I try to recycle, reuse and repurpose.  That whole green thing, you know.  I recently started flattening and cutting up thin cardboard boxes (think cereal, granola bars, crackers) in to index card sized pieces.  I can use them for anything I would use a notecard for (notes, a list, etc) but I mostly use them for Doodlebug.  These are great to keep him entertained when we are traveling.  He can draw or color and make “postcards” or I can give him a sheet of stickers and he’ll stick the stickers on the card.  I recently bought a bunch of 75% off stickers, so that makes a cheap way of keeping him entertained on a train or plane for about 30 seconds – a little longer if I am lucky. 

So, I’ve saved some money doing my laundry and keeping my kiddo entertained, got a good deal on some new unmentionables and got a little jump on my Christmas shopping.  Life in the frugal lane is sweet.  Cheers!

100 Good Wishes

This is not a post about sewing.  Everyone knows I can't sew...OK, I can sew a button on in a pinch, but that's about it.  It's something I've always wanted to learn how to do but never got around to learning. 

I am collecting quilt squares for my boys for a Bai Jia Bei, or 100 Good Wishes Quilt. It is a Chinese custom for friends and family to welcome a new baby with patches of cloth and a wish for the child.  Part of the cloth goes in to the quilt and swatch of fabric stays in a notebook/memory book for the child.  The swatches of fabric are said to contain the luck, energy and good wishes of the contributor. 

I feel pretty strongly about preserving any small pieces of Chinese heritage and culture for my boys.  Maybe it's because I feel some sadness that I missed so much of their early years.  Maybe I feel some guilt that I caused them to be taken from their home country, despite the better opportunities that they will undoubtedly enjoy as part of our family. 

I really try to absorb and inject small pieces of Chinese culture in to our lives, but I'm sure I fall short.  Learning to cook a couple of passable Chinese dishes, handing out red envelopes for Chinese New Year and using a few simplified (and what I'm sure are badly pronounced) Chinese words here and there just don't seem enough.  But a quilt I can do...and if I can't do it, I can sure cause it to be done.  I know people who sew! 

So far, I have 30 quilt squares for each of my boys and I have the promise that about half a dozen more are in the mail/will come soon.  I've loved looking at all of the different prints and reading all of the wishes.  Most - though not all - are from a quilt swap I did with other "China moms". 

Any way you look at it, I'm nowhere near 100.  I could make a quilt (again...stressing not me make it exactly but you know what I mean) with 50 or so squares. But I don't want that.  I want to preserve the tradition.  I want the benefit/mojo/luck...whatever...of all 100 wishes. 

Some have asked about things Kyle might need or welcome home gifts.  We don't need a thing.  We've got enough toys for two kids to fight over and I'm a thrift shop/clearance rack girl for clothes and such - we're good.  What I would really love is to get to 100 with my quilt squares.  Who wants a 36 good wishes quilt?  Just not the same!

Here are the details:
Cotton fabric, preferably fabric that has been washed.  It doesn't have to be new and it doesn't have to be any particular pattern.  Something that represents the person who gives it would be nice, but really, any cotton fabric is fine.

Most of my squares are 8X8 - 10X10.  I will probably end up cutting them down a little bit. 

The "wish" can be written/typed on any sort of paper, but a 3X5 index card size is nice.  Each "wish" has a swatch of the fabric attached to it so that we can someday pick out the wish that corresponds to the square on the quilt and see who it is from.  I've got all of our wishes in a photo album.  There are some that are really fancy with craft paper, caligraphy and clever paper craft techniques and some that are really simple.  Some of the "wishes" are scriptures, some are Chinese proverbs, some are just things that were written from the heart.  You can use a line from a poem or a lyric from a song...whatever inspires you and represents you. 

I hope my boys never feel sorry for themselves because of their beginnings.  I hope we can raise them to be strong and confident young men who are proud of who they are and where they came from.  That said, the fact that their birth families chose not to raise them might cause them some pain one day.  I'm not sure if the wishes in tangible form that 100 people made when they were small and just joining their new family would mitigate any angst they might someday feel.  But...it comforts me to know that I did my best to make sure they had some reminders to show how much they were loved, welcomed and wanted by our family. 

If you are reading this, I would love for you to be a part of this quilt.  I would love for you to share this with anyone you think might be interested in being a part of this project.  If you would like to swap squares with me, you can leave a comment here or email me at jillhudkins@hotmail.com.  I'll accept a square from anyone who has a good wish, but you will have to let me know if you would like to collect a wish in return. 

My mailing address is: PSC 41 Box 2764, APO AE 09464.  It's a military post office box overseas - no foreign postage, but the envelope may need a customs form.  It's New York postage rate. 

I am collecting squares for BOTH Zack and Kyle. I didn't swap squares while we were in the process of Zack's adoption - the whole sewing thing scared me off.  But...I learned a little more about the tradition behind the quilt and I think it's a lovely sentiment.  I would like to be able to sew these myself but in reality, I probably won't.  I do want them to look nice and be the heirloom piece that they're intended to be and I don't think my "entry level" sewing would cut it.  I've had a few very kind ladies offer to help me, and I will most certainly be taking someone up on that. 

Cheers, people!