I'm sure many of you know, International Adoption has its ups and downs, and really isn't for the faint of heart. However, today, all I can think of is, I should have used the money we've spent and just remodelled the bathroom.
It's with an extremely heavy heart that I have to announce that the baby we were promised was taken away from us. I got the call tonite. It is an extremely long story, but the crux of it is that the province the baby came from has had a 'past.' The US government has said that corruption was happening in this province. While it has yet to truly be proven, the US government has been on a witch hunt of sorts with this province. Our baby was one of the last that was to come out of this area, and then our adoption agency was no longer going to be working with this province.
Since this province has been so scrutinized, and for other reasons, our adoption agency has decided to pull our referral to spare us the pain of possibly losing our baby when we travelled to adopt her.
We have some options, and I will post those later on. For now, I just need to be sad.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Good News in Vietnam!
Just found out today that none of the babies in Vietnam that are connected with our adoption agency have been affected by the Rhino virus! Yay! The Fabulous Miss M is healthy!
Now, let's hope it stays that way!!!
Now, let's hope it stays that way!!!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sad News In Vietnam
This article came to light today from http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=01HEA210208. I just pray that our baby waiting for us to bring her home is being well treated and isn't sick. I pray for all the babies waiting for their forever homes. We need to get these babies home NOW.
Rhino virus turns killer in country’s north
(21-02-2008)
Infants affected by virus Rhino A virus receive treatment at the National Paediatrics Hospital. — VNA/VNS Photo Huu Oai
HA NOI — Paediatricians have yet to find the best way to treat a Rhino virus that has killed nine of 19 infected infants in northern Viet Nam during the past two months.
Another six of the children – all less than a year old – have fallen seriously ill.
The virus was not normally dangerous and the children had died because they were not taken to hospital quickly enough, National Paediatrics Hospital deputy director Nguyen Van Loc said yesterday.
The hospital’s director, Nguyen Thanh Liem, said it was the first time the virus had caused acute pneumonia in Viet Nam.
The disease developed quickly and the damage done to the lungs was as critical as that of SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, he said.
"The virus infected many patients in the past, but we lacked the equipment to identify it," the director explained.
"We did not give it much attention because no deaths were reported.
"But there was as yet no vaccine against the virus or medicines specific to its treatment.
"Physicians are using respirators, injecting them with the antibody globulin and medicines in an effort to save the stricken children."
The director said the hospital’s paediatricians now planned an on-line consultation with Japanese physicians in an effort to identify the best treatment.
Regarding possible causes for the fatalities, National Paediatrics Hospital deputy director Loc pointed to the prolonged cold spell and poor caring conditions.
He said, "All of the cases were of babies less than five-months-old, all of whom had fallen ill due to the harsh weather conditions.
The infants were not breast fed and lacked their mothers’ care, causing their overall health to plummet, in effect making them more vulnerable to the virus."
Loc said that though these causes were inconclusive, they could be proved by the fact that none of the infected children had come from a family.
Most of the infected children are reported to have been from orphanages in Ha Tay, Bac Ninh and Bac Giang provinces and Ha Noi’s outlying Dong Anh District.
A hospital delegation that visited the Dong Anh orphanage before the lunar new year found that about 80 per cent of the children showed symptoms of the virus.
The physicians wanted to understand the reasons for the outbreak and devise methods for its treatment but they have not been able to identify why the virus has caused acute pneumonia in children.
The hospital’s Dr Pham Viet Hung said the Rhino virus was common throughout the world and was not new.
It accounted for more than 20 per cent of common colds and from one to five per cent of pneumonia in children.
It had not been thought of as deadly, he said. — VNS
Rhino virus turns killer in country’s north
(21-02-2008)
Infants affected by virus Rhino A virus receive treatment at the National Paediatrics Hospital. — VNA/VNS Photo Huu Oai
HA NOI — Paediatricians have yet to find the best way to treat a Rhino virus that has killed nine of 19 infected infants in northern Viet Nam during the past two months.
Another six of the children – all less than a year old – have fallen seriously ill.
The virus was not normally dangerous and the children had died because they were not taken to hospital quickly enough, National Paediatrics Hospital deputy director Nguyen Van Loc said yesterday.
The hospital’s director, Nguyen Thanh Liem, said it was the first time the virus had caused acute pneumonia in Viet Nam.
The disease developed quickly and the damage done to the lungs was as critical as that of SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, he said.
"The virus infected many patients in the past, but we lacked the equipment to identify it," the director explained.
"We did not give it much attention because no deaths were reported.
"But there was as yet no vaccine against the virus or medicines specific to its treatment.
"Physicians are using respirators, injecting them with the antibody globulin and medicines in an effort to save the stricken children."
The director said the hospital’s paediatricians now planned an on-line consultation with Japanese physicians in an effort to identify the best treatment.
Regarding possible causes for the fatalities, National Paediatrics Hospital deputy director Loc pointed to the prolonged cold spell and poor caring conditions.
He said, "All of the cases were of babies less than five-months-old, all of whom had fallen ill due to the harsh weather conditions.
The infants were not breast fed and lacked their mothers’ care, causing their overall health to plummet, in effect making them more vulnerable to the virus."
Loc said that though these causes were inconclusive, they could be proved by the fact that none of the infected children had come from a family.
Most of the infected children are reported to have been from orphanages in Ha Tay, Bac Ninh and Bac Giang provinces and Ha Noi’s outlying Dong Anh District.
A hospital delegation that visited the Dong Anh orphanage before the lunar new year found that about 80 per cent of the children showed symptoms of the virus.
The physicians wanted to understand the reasons for the outbreak and devise methods for its treatment but they have not been able to identify why the virus has caused acute pneumonia in children.
The hospital’s Dr Pham Viet Hung said the Rhino virus was common throughout the world and was not new.
It accounted for more than 20 per cent of common colds and from one to five per cent of pneumonia in children.
It had not been thought of as deadly, he said. — VNS
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
And Now for Something Completely Different
Tonite in my inbox, I received the Weekly Words of Wisdom selected by Lama Surya Das. (He's an interesting man, I might add here...a New Yorker who travelled to Tibet in the '70s and became a Lama. I'd highly recommend reading his books.) Anyway, a lot of the time lately I've had a cluttered inbox, too much email, too busy, or whatever reason, to read the Weekly Words of Wisdom, but I read it tonite. Very short and sweet, it was the last line to an e.e. cummings poem. The line really made me stop and ponder, and I had to look up the whole poem. I share it with you tonite:
love's function is to fabricate unknownness
(known being wishless;but love,all of wishing)
though life's lived wrongsideout,sameness chokes oneness
truth is confused with fact,fish boast of fishing
and men are caught by worms(love may not care
if time totters,light droops,all measures bend
nor marvel if a thought should weigh a star
—dreads dying least;and less,that death should end)
how lucky lovers are(whose selves abide
under whatever shall discovered be)
whose ignorant each breathing dares to hide
more than most fabulous wisdom fears to see
(who laugh and cry)who dream,create and kill
while the whole moves;and every part stands still:
e.e. cummings
This is a wonderful poem that speaks of love, ignoring the monotony of life, and how a lot of magic in life is in the unknowing. But, the last line, the line that I found in my inbox, spoke to me tonite and reminded me of a great lesson I haven't been practicing of late. For those of you trying to endure the waiting and trials of International Adoption, my hope tonite is that you just read that last line one more time. It won't solve any of the problems we're all enduring, but my hope is that it brings you a minute of peace. While everything keeps moving, seemingly out of your control, just stand still for one moment. Just. Be.
Goodnight.
love's function is to fabricate unknownness
(known being wishless;but love,all of wishing)
though life's lived wrongsideout,sameness chokes oneness
truth is confused with fact,fish boast of fishing
and men are caught by worms(love may not care
if time totters,light droops,all measures bend
nor marvel if a thought should weigh a star
—dreads dying least;and less,that death should end)
how lucky lovers are(whose selves abide
under whatever shall discovered be)
whose ignorant each breathing dares to hide
more than most fabulous wisdom fears to see
(who laugh and cry)who dream,create and kill
while the whole moves;and every part stands still:
e.e. cummings
This is a wonderful poem that speaks of love, ignoring the monotony of life, and how a lot of magic in life is in the unknowing. But, the last line, the line that I found in my inbox, spoke to me tonite and reminded me of a great lesson I haven't been practicing of late. For those of you trying to endure the waiting and trials of International Adoption, my hope tonite is that you just read that last line one more time. It won't solve any of the problems we're all enduring, but my hope is that it brings you a minute of peace. While everything keeps moving, seemingly out of your control, just stand still for one moment. Just. Be.
Goodnight.
Monday, February 18, 2008
What's New
So, I haven't posted since Tet. What's new? Nothing. Nada. Zip. The hubby and I have had the flu. He was generous enough to share with me. Nice, eh? We are both getting over that. It was the honest-to-goodness, fever and chills, headache, coughing, chest pain, stomach woes, stop the world I want to get off, flu. Even after a week, we're both coughing and tired and feeling generally yucky. But, at least we no longer have that 'lower than snail slime' feeling that we did last week!!
As far as adoption news, we are currently waiting paperwork. We are waiting for our I 171 form to be approved. This is the permission granted by the US Gov't for us to locate an orphan in our designated country. I had to fill this form out long before when we started with China. However, it does expire and I let that lapse. Yes, I'm a dork. So, I had to refile. Currently, we are waiting for that. I HAVE had previous good luck with getting things back from our local immigration office quickly, so, hopefully this will be the same.
After we receive that, we are waiting for our dossier and paperwork to match up with our baby's paperwork and dossier. Then we can file our I600. This is the big one, this piece of paper, in a nutshell, says that yes, The Fabulous Miss M is an orphan, she will be adopted by us, and is free to travel to the US. There have been issues lately with the I600 filing, and I will be posting more on that soon. For now, though, we are just patiently waiting for the paperwork needed to file the I600. Patiently.
As far as adoption news, we are currently waiting paperwork. We are waiting for our I 171 form to be approved. This is the permission granted by the US Gov't for us to locate an orphan in our designated country. I had to fill this form out long before when we started with China. However, it does expire and I let that lapse. Yes, I'm a dork. So, I had to refile. Currently, we are waiting for that. I HAVE had previous good luck with getting things back from our local immigration office quickly, so, hopefully this will be the same.
After we receive that, we are waiting for our dossier and paperwork to match up with our baby's paperwork and dossier. Then we can file our I600. This is the big one, this piece of paper, in a nutshell, says that yes, The Fabulous Miss M is an orphan, she will be adopted by us, and is free to travel to the US. There have been issues lately with the I600 filing, and I will be posting more on that soon. For now, though, we are just patiently waiting for the paperwork needed to file the I600. Patiently.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Happy Tet!!!!
Tet Nguyên Đán, more commonly known by its shortened name Tet, is the most important and popular holiday and festival in Vietnam. It is the Vietnamese New Year which is based on the Chinese calendar, a lunisolar calendar. The name Tet Nguyên Đán is Sino-Vietnamese for Feast of the First Morning, derived from the Hán nôm characters 節元旦. In modern Chinese, the characters for Nguyên Ðán (元旦) have evolved to refer to New Year in the Gregorian calendar, that is, January 1
Tet is celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year though exceptions arise due to the one-hour time difference between Hanoi and Beijing. It is celebrated from the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar (around late January or early February) until at least the third day. Tet shares many of the same customs of its Chinese counterpart. Many Vietnamese prepare for Tet by cooking special holiday foods and cleaning the house. On Tet, Vietnamese visit their families and temples, forgetting about the troubles of the past year and hoping for a better upcoming year. Tet traditionally marks the coming of spring, so "spring" (Xuân) is sometimes used interchangeably with Tet in Vietnamese.
There are many customs surrounding the celebration of Tet:
Dos:
One should give people lucky presents to enhance the relationship between themselves and others: new clothes, peach branches (for expelling evil), cocks (wishing for good manners), new rice (wishing for being well-fed), rice wine in a gourd (wishing for a rich and comfortable life), bánh chung (or bánh tét) and bánh dày which symbolize sky and earth (for worshipping the ancestors), red things (red symbolizes happiness, luckiness, advantages) like watermelon, dogs (the bark – gâu gâu – sounds like the word giàu - richness in Vietnamese language), medicated oil (dau in Vietnamese, also sounds similar to giàu).
One should give lucky Dong Ho Paintings such as: "Gà đàn" (wishing for having many children), or "Vinh hoa", but should not give unlucky Dong Ho paintings like "Đánh ghen" related to legal proceedings.
One should buy a lot of water for Tet, because people wish for money to flow like water currents in a stream (proverb: "Tien vô nhu nuoc").
One should sprinkle lime powder around the house to expel evil.
One should return all things borrowed, and pay debts before Tet.
Don'ts:
One shouldn't say or do bad things during Tet.
One shouldn't hurt or kill animals or plants but should set them free. The reason for this originates from Buddhism's causality.
One shouldn't sweep the house or empty out the rubbish to avoid luck and benefits going it, especially on the first day of the new year. One shouldn't let the broom in confusion if people don't want it to be stolen.
One shouldn't give these presents to others: clock or watch (the recipient's time is going to pass), cats (mèo in Vietnamese language pronounced like nghèo, poverty), medicine (the receiver will get ill), cuttle fish (its ink is black, an unlucky colour), writing ink (for the same reason), scissors or knives (they bring incompatibility).
One shouldn't have duck meat because it brings unluckiness.
One shouldn't have shrimp because they're afraid that they would move back like shrimp, in other words, they would not succeed.
One shouldn't buy or wear white clothes because white is the colour of funerals in Vietnam.
One shouldn't let the rice-hulling mill empty because it symbolizes failed crops.
One shouldn't refuse anything others give or wish you during Tet.
Tet is celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year though exceptions arise due to the one-hour time difference between Hanoi and Beijing. It is celebrated from the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar (around late January or early February) until at least the third day. Tet shares many of the same customs of its Chinese counterpart. Many Vietnamese prepare for Tet by cooking special holiday foods and cleaning the house. On Tet, Vietnamese visit their families and temples, forgetting about the troubles of the past year and hoping for a better upcoming year. Tet traditionally marks the coming of spring, so "spring" (Xuân) is sometimes used interchangeably with Tet in Vietnamese.
There are many customs surrounding the celebration of Tet:
Dos:
One should give people lucky presents to enhance the relationship between themselves and others: new clothes, peach branches (for expelling evil), cocks (wishing for good manners), new rice (wishing for being well-fed), rice wine in a gourd (wishing for a rich and comfortable life), bánh chung (or bánh tét) and bánh dày which symbolize sky and earth (for worshipping the ancestors), red things (red symbolizes happiness, luckiness, advantages) like watermelon, dogs (the bark – gâu gâu – sounds like the word giàu - richness in Vietnamese language), medicated oil (dau in Vietnamese, also sounds similar to giàu).
One should give lucky Dong Ho Paintings such as: "Gà đàn" (wishing for having many children), or "Vinh hoa", but should not give unlucky Dong Ho paintings like "Đánh ghen" related to legal proceedings.
One should buy a lot of water for Tet, because people wish for money to flow like water currents in a stream (proverb: "Tien vô nhu nuoc").
One should sprinkle lime powder around the house to expel evil.
One should return all things borrowed, and pay debts before Tet.
Don'ts:
One shouldn't say or do bad things during Tet.
One shouldn't hurt or kill animals or plants but should set them free. The reason for this originates from Buddhism's causality.
One shouldn't sweep the house or empty out the rubbish to avoid luck and benefits going it, especially on the first day of the new year. One shouldn't let the broom in confusion if people don't want it to be stolen.
One shouldn't give these presents to others: clock or watch (the recipient's time is going to pass), cats (mèo in Vietnamese language pronounced like nghèo, poverty), medicine (the receiver will get ill), cuttle fish (its ink is black, an unlucky colour), writing ink (for the same reason), scissors or knives (they bring incompatibility).
One shouldn't have duck meat because it brings unluckiness.
One shouldn't have shrimp because they're afraid that they would move back like shrimp, in other words, they would not succeed.
One shouldn't buy or wear white clothes because white is the colour of funerals in Vietnam.
One shouldn't let the rice-hulling mill empty because it symbolizes failed crops.
One shouldn't refuse anything others give or wish you during Tet.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Hair Info
This weekend I was talking with my very good friend Shelly, who happens to be Chinese. (She's Angela's mom for those who have followed my blog). I mentioned that I had gotten new photos of the Fabulous Miss M and they cut her hair. Shelly nodded and said yes, but it was okay. I then remembered seeing a baby photo of her second daughter Fiona and her hair had been shaved, too. I asked Shelly what the significance of head shaving in infants was. Apparently, it's an Asian custom to shave the first hair the baby grows. Since that hair is really soft and fine, they shave the hair so the 'real' hair grows in better and not fuzzy.
So, when you see referral photos or baby pictures of Asian children and their heads have been shaved, don't feel bad...it's actually a custom. Made me feel better about the Fabulous Miss M's recent haircut!!
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