New pictures

Dear Eli,

Last week we got new pictures of you from a visiting family. These pictures are my lifeline-- they're the only glimpse into your life. So when I got these pictures, I noticed three things-- first, that you were crying your eyes out, second, that they had moved to the new building, and third, that you were back in your crib in the middle of the day.

Sometimes, getting pictures of you is harder than not getting pictures at all. As a mom of (almost) six, I can explain away the crying-- maybe you'd been taking a nap, maybe the room was too cold, maybe you were sick. But when I only get updates of your sweet face once a month (or less) and you're crying in those pictures, I'm not gonna lie-- it does something to me.

It's great that you've moved to the new building. Last year when we visited, we were really excited to see all of the babies and the rooms in the old orphanage, and the orphanage director was really excited to guide us through the mud to the building site of the new orphanage. I know it's been a huge project, and the space looks fantastic. You have a new crib and new bedding and there are murals on the walls and the ceiling. It's institutional, to be sure, but it looks like a nice children's hospital might in the United States, not a crumbling building with dangerous heaters at baby level.

But back in the old orphanage, there was a room for the toddlers to sleep and a room for the toddlers to play. You spend nighttime and naptime in your crib, but for most of the day, you were on the floor (great) or in a walker (less great, but still better than the crib). When I talked to one of the other waiting moms, she said that it was her impression that you were now spending lots and lots of time in your crib.

And that depresses me. I have pictures of you crawling. Pictures of you standing (holding onto something, but still standing). Pictures of you in a little huddle of a dozen babies in matching outfits. Getting you out of bed and on the floor gave you the chance to build your muscles and your brain, to explore, and to have relationships with your little guys. But if you're in your crib all day...

The good news is that it won't be much longer. But when I was thinking of you crawling around, learning to stand, maybe even learning to walk, that made the wait so much less anxious for me. Now, I'm just eager to get on the plane and get to you. It will come soon, but it can't come soon enough.

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: The Hollow City by Dan Wells

Title: The Hollow City
Author: Dan Wells
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Personal Copy
This book would be rated: PG-13 for violence

Dan Wells, of I am Not A Serial Killer Fame, gets into the mind of Michael, who wakes up in a hospital after a schizophrenic episode that left him with a two-week gap in his memory. Unfortunately, this gap coincides with a murder, and people think Michael may be tied to it in some way. It's a little hard to read a novel where the narrator is a schizophrenic, because it's difficult to know what is actually happening and what are his delusions, but that makes the first part of the book feel like an entertaining puzzle. Who is real? Who is in Michael's mind?

I can't talk about the plot too much without giving away spoilers, but I was fascinated by what I thought the premise of the book was-- exploring the mind of a murder suspect with schizophrenia, much like Alice La Plante did with an Alzheimer's patient in Turn of Mind. But this is a Dan Wells book, and I could tell early on that he wasn't concerned with verisimilitude-- with making the details of the story hold up in real life, so I was not surprised when it took a decidedly more supernatural turn. A little disappointed, yes, because I would have enjoyed the book I'd created in my mind more (one more along the lines of Memento than Invasion of the Body Snatchers), but it's still well-written and well-paced, just not my kind of tale.

Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes

Dear Eli,

Rose has finally developed an attention span for reading books (if I read really quickly and pick books without too many words). One of the few books that she'll sit through is Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury's Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes which Mimi and Granddad brought her when they visited last summer. The illustrations are adorable, and it shows babies from all over the world, including Asian babies, which are noticeably absent from most of the books we'd had until last year.

About a month after we got the book, we saw your face for the first time. And the next time I read it to Rose, my voice caught a little bit on the refrain, repeated at least half a dozen times in the book: "And this little baby, as everyone knows, has ten little fingers, and ten little toes."

"The baby's got all ten fingers and toes," is almost a stereotype in prenatal ultrasound. I remember hearing the techs say it when I was pregnant and thinking, "Duh, now move on to the real stuff, like the chambers of the heart and whether or not it's a boy or a girl." The possibility that one of my kids might not have all their fingers and toes didn't even register with me. 

You have most of ten toes. But honestly, we're not sure how many fingers you have. I know it's not ten, though. It appears more in the order of seven or eight. And from the moment I saw you, it didn't matter to me-- not even one little bit. I've seen pictures of you holding toys in your hands, clutching a bottle, even turning pages in a book. Other people might be surprised when they see your hands, but I am confident that they will soon realize that you are much more than your fingers.

There might be times when people think you can't do something because of your hands. Kids might make fun of you. Adults might say stupid things. I might say stupid things. But I'll always be there for you-- to protect you, to fight for you, and eventually, to equip you so you don't need me to do those things for you. Most of all, I will love you. It won't be much longer now.

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Title: Me Before You
Author: Jojo Moyes
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Personal Copy
This book would be rated: PG-13 for references to sex, some language

Louisa Clark is twenty-six years old. She lives in the small English town where she was born, in the house where she was born. She's worked as a waitress at the same cafe for the last seven years, and dated the same guy for at least that long. And when the book opens, it seems likely that she'll eventually marry the boyfriend and die in the town where she's lived her whole life.

Then Lou loses the job, and the only new job she can find is to become the caretaker for a quadriplegic. The quadriplegic, it turns out, is Will, a 35 year-old who was run over by a motorcycle while waiting for a ride to his job as a wealthy powerbroker in London. Since his accident, Will has been living with his parents and generally mourning the fact that instead of deep-sea diving and climbing mountains, he will spend the rest of his life in a chair, cared for by others.

When Louisa discovers that she has been hired for a six-month trial period, and at the end of the six months Will plans to have an assisted suicide, she has a mission-- to show him that life is worth living and change his mind. But she ends up changed in the process as well.

I've only read eleven books so far this year, so it seems a little lame to proclaim this my favorite read of 2013, but of the books I've read so far, it's a definite favorite. In fact, I was barely done reading it before I texted a friend and told her she had to read it and pushed it into her hands that night. It's just that good. You'll love it. You'll cry. You'll make your friends read it. And then you'll want it back so you can read it again.

Book Review: The Fallen Angel by Daniel Silva

Title: The Fallen Angel
Author: Daniel Silva
Enjoyment Rating: **
Source: Audible for iTunes
This book would be rated: PG-13 for violence and sexual situations

I read Portrait of a Spy, the prequel to The Fallen Angel, last year sometime. Portrait of a Soy is the eleventh book in a series of books about Gabriel Allon, an Israeli spy/art restorer who is one part Indiana Jones, one part Robert Langdon and one part Ethan Hunt. In other words, he's almost too good to be true. In the first ten books of the series, Silva introduces lots of complicated situations and characters. This probably makes the books incredibly satisfying for readers who have read all of the books. But I was lost reading book eleven. I thought the writing was good, so I decided to give this one a try, but I was disappointed to find that I was just as lost reading The Fallen Angel as I had been reading Portrait of a Spy. There's just too much back story, too many layers, too many cities, too many characters for a new reader to jump in mid-series. And I don't like the book well enough to go back and read the first TEN books so I know what's going on.

Anyway, for people who have read the first eleven books (which is probably no one reading this blog), in The Fallen Angel, Allon is "retired" and working to restore a Caravaggio at the Vatican. But someone ends up dead, and then someone else ends up dead, and pretty soon, Allon is jetting from Rome to Paris to Jerusalem to Berlin to Vienna to Switzerland and back again. I felt like I had whiplash and had entered a party where I knew no one and they were all old friends. The last hour or two of the book was pretty satisfying, but up until that point I felt hopelessly lost.

Step eleven!

We've entered the two-week wait. In almost all of the steps of the adoption process, the timetable is variable. It can take two months (like this time) or six months (like last time) to complete a home study. It can take a few days (like 21) or a lot of days (like 160) to get a Letter of Approval from the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA). But step eleven on the chart I posted a few weeks ago always takes ten business days. Step eleven is pre-approval for Eli's immigrant visa, and it is being processed at the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China (which is also where we will spend the last half of our trip). Our paperwork was dropped off on Wednesday, January 23rd and will be picked up on Wednesday, February 6th and overnighted to the CCCWA in Beijing that day (which is step 12). We will be waiting for our official travel approval (which is issued from the CCCWA) when Chinese New Year starts on February 9th. While the Article 5 wait is always 10 business days, the Travel Approval wait is highly variable. I've heard of people getting theirs in 3-4 days, and others waiting a month. Last time we waited 16 days. This time we know that the CCCWA will be closed for a week for Chinese New Year, so I'm expecting it to take about three weeks. If the approval isn't here by March 1st, I may have to place another moratorium on all friend calls until I get the call from my agency. We hope to leave March 13th or 20th (or maybe sooner if we're blessed with a quick travel approval) but we won't know any more than we know right now until we get the all-important phone call.

Book Review: Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows

Title: Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language
Author: Deborah Fallows
Enjoyment Rating: ***
This book would be rated: PG
Source: Library Copy

Last year I bought a CD called "Simple Chinese for Adoptive Families," planning to listen to it every day on the way to and from school. I popped it in the CD player a couple of times, and pretty soon I was hopelessly lost. It hadn't been this way when I was learning French and zipped through hundreds of vocabulary words in a night. I gave up, reasoning that since I was adopting a baby, she probably wouldn't need me to have a huge vocabulary, and I haven't given learning Chinese a second thought.

One of the things I've gleaned from both Kosher Chinese and from Deborah Fallows's Dreaming in Chinese is that it wasn't just me-- Chinese is a hard language for Americans to learn. What I appreciated about Dreaming in Chinese is how Fallows relates what she's learned from her fledgling language studies to larger patterns she sees in Chinese culture. It sounds like she's making a lot of generalizations, but that's not how the book feels. She focuses on experiences from the years she and her husband spent living in Beijing and Shanghai to show how language and culture are related.

Book Review: The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch

Title: The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to Be a Better Husband
Author: David Finch
Enjoyment Rating:
This book would be rated: ****
Source: Personal copy

As the parent of a child with Asperger's, I often wonder what is in store for his future. Will he move out of the house (now that he's in junior high, I'm confident this will happen)? Go to college (also a yes)? Get a job (still not convinced)? Marry someone? Stay married to that person? In The Journal of Best Practices David Finch explores what it's like for a person with Asperger's (in his case, diagnosed as an adult, although he seems at least as Aspie as my kid) to flounder in a marriage and then try to turn it around.

Finch has a way with words, and he tells his story in a way that I wanted to keep reading. I'd heard him interviewed about his experience on This American Life several months ago, and I think that my initial desire to read the book was so I could hand it to Bryce and his future wife (if he ends up with a wife) to help them through the inevitable difficulties that Asperger's places on a marriage. But that wasn't why I kept reading. I kept reading because I saw so much of my own marriage, and all marriages, in Finch's marriage. And I saw that when one partner really works at overcoming their shortcomings and being a better husband/wife, it can really turn things around for the whole relationship. It was fun to follow along with Finch's "best practices." I love that he was unself-conscious enough to write honestly about both the man he was before he embarked on his quest, and his failures along the way. 

Book Review: A Night on Moon HIll by Tanya Parker Mills

Title: A Night on Moon Hill
Author: Tanya Parker Mills
Source: Borrowed copy
This book would be rated: PG, although slightly more explicit than other LDS books
Enjoyment Rating: ****

Daphne Lessing, a novelist and a college professor, is comfortable with her life. She teaches creative writing. She eats cheese quesadillas. She writes. And morning and night, she swims in her pool. She doesn't yearn for friends or companions, and other than her high school boyfriend, Steve, she hasn't had any relationships that she misses in her simple life.

And then, one night, she finds the body of one of her students floating in her swimming pool. He's left her a note-- a poem. And Daphne's life is suddenly complicated-- because it turns out that the boy in her pool is the son she'd placed for adoption when she was a teenager, a choice she'd never second-guessed, a son she'd never thought much about. And in his will, this son has left Daphne as the guardian of his half-brother, ten-year-old Eric, who has Asperger's. Daphne agrees to take temporary custody of Eric, which breaks her safe little world, and her heart, wide open.

As a mom of a preteen with Asperger's, a lot of Mills's characterizations rang true to me. But more important than that, Mills does a nice job creating a story with complicated, nuanced characters. Daphne is prickly-- and while she undergoes a transformation, she's still prickly at the end. In fact, all of her characters are complicated in interesting ways. I like that she doesn't take the easy way out and have everyone live happily ever after and fall in love. Mills also places the story within the LDS framework, but off to the side, with minor characters who are LDS, which sort of releases the narrative from being bound to our doctrines. The writing is also very good. Once I got into the groove of the story, I read it quickly. I hope to see this on the list of Whitney finalists in the General category. I think it will be a strong contender.

The forest for the trees

Dear Eli,

The other day my friend Julia took me out to lunch. I'd spent the morning hanging out with your brothers and sisters, periodically breaking away from the chaos to check my email and the Facebook boards of other parents waiting to get their kids in China. The Facebook board is amazing-- it's really nice to have people out there who can support each other through the process, especially since it's a process that is so different from the way most people build their families. But it's also easy for us to spur each other on to become almost pharasiacal in checking off the steps to our adoptive kids. I've fallen in with about ten other ladies who will likely travel the same time we will (give or take a week, maybe), and it was a little hard to tear myself away from the computer to go to lunch with a real person. What if something happened while I was gone?

As it turned out, I couldn't help myself, I checked my email during lunch and I had an email from the National Visa Center with our GUZ#. This means nothing to people who haven't been through the process, and in actuality, it's about a quarter of one of those steps I posted a few weeks ago on my blog. A teeny tiny wiggle forward. But still, I was eager to get home and write the email that would move us on to the next wiggle forward.

I sat down at the computer desk, took a deep breath, and got ready to type. But out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of you staring back at me. We now have about 50 pictures of you tacked up to our bulletin board, but they've been there so long now that they're just like the other pictures and artwork in the room-- I hardly notice them. But at that moment it hit me that all of these incremental steps forward, these friendships I've made, these emails I've sent and the checks I've written, they're not for some great vacation with my mom-- they're for you. And while I know that, sometimes I'm afraid that I lose sight of the big picture and put too much emphasis on checking off the items on my list as quickly and thoroughly as I can.

I love you, bug. It won't be too much longer. The list of steps grows shorter every day!

Love,

Mommy