- Our story and a letter to our
first daughter: It's never too early to start
embarrassing your children!
- My
account of Gotcha Day
for Raimi: We went to China as regular people
and came back strangely transformed.The shocking
details are all revealed!
-
As
promised, the Questions for the Pediatrician now
live here
in a printable format.
-
The
arm of the government in China that handles almost
every aspect of "foreign adoption" is the China
Center of Adoption Affairs , or CCAA. They
make the rules concerning who can and cannot adopt.
They scrutinize your dossier. And they are also
in charge of the matching process.
-
On
October 26th, 2001, CCAA announced a quota system
for adoptive families, effective December 1, 2001.
On November 29th, 2002, CCAA lifted the quota
system for couples and increased the number of
singles who can petition to adopt. The details
can be found here.
-
Two comprehensive
umbrella sites that provide tools for learning
and using Chinese characters and language are
http://www.mandarintools.com/
and http://zhongwen.com
. You can find characters based on the pinyan
form of a word at http://zhongwen.com/s/ziyin.htm
.
- Find
out what those wacky guys and gals on Capital Hill did when
they passed the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. It's
a long overdue bill that has made a significant
impact on all adoptive families and on how adoption
is perceived in our society.
- Perhaps
you'd like to share some of your thoughts concerning
legislative matters of the day with the Beltway
Boys and Girls. You can contact your Senator
or your Congressperson
via email. Tell 'em I say "Howdy!". Another one
of our favorites are the folks at INS. Drop them
a line, too, when the urge strikes you. Regards
to the cute fingerprint guy at our local office!
- Nothing
says "I love you" better than the Federal
Adoption Tax Credit Law. Read all about it and
then call your accountant and show him/her what
a smarty pants you are.
- If
you are a member, then you know the important role
Families with Children from China (FCC) plays in
your family's life. If you are not a member, you
can find out how and where to contact a chapter
near you on the FCC
general information web site.
- Dumb Frequently Asked Questions:
Questions - we get questions! And we also get comments,
"compliments" and some insight into what a handful
of people consider appropriate conversation. We
invite you to email us with your own "I can't believe
they just said that!" moments.
- If
you're like me, and I bet you are, you are concerned
that your head may explode any at any minute from
the experience called International Adoption. Again,
RUN - quickly, now, hop! hop! - and check out the
list serv/bulletin boards that are available thru
Yahoo. Waiting parents can sign up for the Adoptive
Parents-China (APC) group. When you return from
China ,check out the comprehensive list of all
other China-adopt info groups , meticulously
compiled by the list owners of RaisingChinaChildren
.
- Statistics:
Ralph Stirling, with assistance from the lovely
Ann Tembreull, compiles stats from a large sample
group of families and faithfully updates them on
a weekly basis. They track average wait from DTC
to referral; average time of travel after referral;
average age of children referred and more.
- Audio
Chinese Tutorial for Adoptive Parents: Haiwang
Yuan, website maven and Assistant Professor at Western
Kentucky University, added a page to his already
wonderful audio tutorial of Mandarin Chinese in
pinyin format just for parents adopting from China.
- If
you are trying to pick out a name for your daughter
or son, the world famous Peggy - Keeper of Names
- has a Yahoo group called Names of our Chinese
Children, which is a collection of just that. .
Go here
to find scillions of names - from Adrian Xian
to Zoe Yue Yue.
- More
names that you can shake a stick at can be found
at the Social
Security Names Distribution site , brought to
you by the delightful Office of the Chief Actuary.
Here you can read the top 1000 names for the year
2000 as well as the top 1000 names for the 1910's.
And they've got all the other years in between,
too.
- And
this is the place to find Chinese
names (with translations) for girls:, thanks
to Mark Tooker, China-Dad and part-time name wrangler.
- How
are parents and children matched? The process is
a mixture of bureaucracy, happenstance and magic.That
process is refined and finalized at offices in the
China Center for Adoption Affairs in Beijing called
the
matching rooms . How ever the pairings are determined,
the results are pretty amazing.
- Also
pretty amazing (and more recent ) are some pictures
of the matching rooms taken by a China-Mom who visited
the CCAA in the summer of 2000. Check out the entirety
of this beautiful
site . The rest of this family's story will
have you laughing thru your tears and crying thru
your laughs. It's good!
- Mark
Tooker is at it again with his My
Home Town site. He initially designed
the site so that our children could learn more about
where they came from. But you may find it helpful,
as an anxious, waiting-to-go Parent, to be able
to read about your child's birthplace, place of
residence,and to communicate with other families
with children from the same area.
- This
is a link on the FCC site that will take you to
Asian
growth charts. Upon getting your referral and/or
when you have returned home and gone for your first
pediatrician's visit, this site may be very helpful.
Our kids tend to be judged by Caucasian growth standards
and the discrepancy can sometimes be alarming to
both prospective parents and new parents and their
doctors. These charts may allay some of those fears.
- An
even more comprehensive weather checker than the
Yahoo
site is wunderground.com
. You can find the minutiae of a city's weather;
check out the layout of the night sky; check on
hotels and relevant points of interest in the city(ies)
you'll be traveling to.
BIG
NEWS..... the feature that promises to give you
the weather history of a certain day *at last*
it works! It is a wonderful treat for those of
us with children born in China - we can see what
their world looked like on the date they were
born and include that as one more piece of their
birth story.
- Here
are two ways to find the Questions to Ask at the
Orphanage list(s). Go here
to my own list, which is a PDF of two lists:
1) questions to ask during the referral call and
2) questions to ask her caregivers in China. Or
you can try Bill
McLeans list of Questions to Ask Caregivers
(from whence my #2 list came). They are in both
English and in Mandarin. There is also a page of
instructions in Mandarin regarding the use of the
disposable camera you may wish to send, ahead of
your arrival.
- Planning
a trip overseas? Isn't it time you converted.......................your
currency ?
- And
speaking of conversions...............when you get
The Call and you are scribbling down metric measurements
at the same time that you are laughing and crying
and calling your best friend, you'll be really happy
you can go
here to find out how big a 6.8 kg baby really
is.
Just
don't try to convert your barleycorns to light-years.
It gets weird.
