| May 2000 . . . | ||
Hello all, Next month will be six months since my paperwork went to China and it should be when I will get my referral, unfortunately there have been some delays. Hopefully they will straighten themselves out in the next two months. I really do not expect to hear anything until July. As if that is not bad enough our US Consulate in China, are making more delays which is adding another month onto travel time. (when they could find a more efficient solution). I don't think we will be traveling until September now. The only good thing about that is that it will not be brutally hot in China in September. What is maddening and frustrating is that she is probably born by now. I am all moved into my apartment and I love it!!! I can not tell you the difference another room makes vs living in a studio, plus having that terrace is just soooooooo nice. To be able to hang out outside in Manhattan and be in my apartment, I love it!!! Did I tell you I love it! You should see my bathroom, Mexican blue tiles with yellow duck accessories just too cute!!!! The kitchen is not in as of yet. I can't wait!!! Zoey has her own room too. My first reaction when I saw it was to cry, not because, "oh look, Zoey has a room", it was much more selfish than that, It was more like, "oh look her room took away a good portion of my living room!!! Where are we going to eat??" I quickly made peace with that, she'll eat in her high chair and I will eat at the coffee table (the coffee table that took me forever to find) as usual. I still do have a decent sized living room. Tremendous, huge, big, big thanks goes to my wonderful Dad for doing it all, and my Mom too for signing off on all of the purchase orders. They are my angels for making so many of my dreams come true. I am truly blessed. You all have to come over and see, open invitations, I love to entertain. The great thing is that I have room for you all (in the warm weather that is.) I went with my Mom to buy baby furniture a couple of weeks ago and to register. What an extremely overwhelming experience that was. I found it increasingly hard to breathe in the store and then yes, I started crying. Thank goodness this sales person took pity on me, took my clipboard out of my hands and began to walk me around the store telling my what I needed. Who knew about diaper genies, and all the different high chairs, car seats and strollers and on and on... (My calmness seems to have vanished at least it was here for a few months.) I scare myself because it never even occurred to me to ask my friends, what they use, what is practical or look into all the different brands of products. The bedroom set I picked for Zoey is just beautiful and should l carry her through until her 18th birthday. It is off white and old fashioned looking, I got a dresser that I will use as a changing table too. Apparently you get this attachment that goes on top of the dresser with pads. Then I got this little armoire that is about 5 feet tall and about 2 feet wide and has an oval mirror in the middle, that is my favorite piece. I can imagine it with her little dresses hanging in the closet, too precious. The last piece was a bookcase to hold all her knick-knacks and anyone who knows me or my mom, knows I take after her and love my knick-knacks, I have already collected quite a few for Zoey. I also ordered the crib and the crib mattress. (The mattress does not come with the crib, that's separate, who knew.) So now the big question is .... how is all this furniture going to fit in her 8x9 room??? Good thing I don't have to worry about that until delivery in July. In January I sent a five-page proposal to my company to get them to establish a new policy regarding adoption. I asked that they set up a adoption credit and offer the same compensation to adoptive mothers as they do to birth mothers. I was turned down about a month later without explanation and found this totally unacceptable, so I re-sent my proposal to more senior people in the company. Within 15 minutes I was called back and told that they are reviewing my two recommendations, that I should not have been turned down, and that they will keep me posted. Well it is now May and it is still under review. I honestly do not think they will make a decision in my favor or in time for me to benefit, but the company has recently merged, so maybe they will incorporate my proposal into their new policies. While I am still working here I will not stop pursuing it. They currently offer one month full paid adoption leave and no adoption credit and I can take the family leave act for three months unpaid. If I were pregnant I would get six to eight weeks of full pay. (It is only a question of two weeks pay, but still, I feel it should be the same, and an adoption credit of $3,000 to $5,000 would be a nice gesture too) I currently have three weeks vacation and 1 week that I carried over so I now have two months paid accrued, not bad. As for my other baby, Harry, I am very concerned about his recent behavior with children and how he is going to react to Zoey. He is definitely not going to like Zoey, I have to start getting him used to the idea and I have to do some serious training with him. I heard of a good book "Introducing your dog to your baby." The thing is I can't seem to get through the baby book "What to Expect in the First Year", no less the dog book. I accidentally deleted my adoption updates for the months of December, January & February. It is making me sick, because I am making a memory book for Zoey and I don't have those updates. I would greatly appreciate it if you could check your emails and let me know if you still have any of those three updates. PLEASE!!! PLEASE!!!! Thank you. Until next month... Lisa Continue to June |