Dossier to China

Our dossier is officially on its way to China. Various portions of it have been "authenticated" at the China consulates in Chicago and San Francisco and now, having been gathered together again as one big sheaf of documents again, was express mailed to our adoption agency's office in Beijing. From there it should be just a few days before being submitted to the CCAA. And then the next wait cycle begins. If the normal estimated time frames are used, we should be able to travel sometime in October.

Meanwhile, Abigail will be celebrating her 9th birthday on July 6. Being separated by twelve time zones, we won't be able to celebrate it with her, but we'll be sending a care package to her. She will at least have some pictures of her family on that day.

Dossier Away!

This morning I packaged up what amounted to about five months of work, copied in fourplicate (that's one more than triplicate), and notarized, certified (there may be a few more "ied" terms that are applicable), a bunch of required photographs, checklists, and a few other sundry items, and stuffed the whole business into a FedEx small box.

Each step of the way has added more value to that sheaf of papers, from the 51-page questionnaires that Deb and I each had to fill out for the homestudy, to the medical exams, to the numerous trips to the bank to have documents notarized. Add to this trips to be fingerprinted, loads of information to be digested from our adoption agency, not one, but two trips into Grand Rapids Secretary of State's office to certify all the documents and varying amounts of cash for many of these steps.

But the most valuable thing that package represents is an 8-year-old girl waiting in a Chinese orphanage, waiting for her Dad, Mom and two older brothers to come and pick her up and take her home to join the family.

All this, in a FedEx small box, which is now on its way to begin the next phase of the adoption process.

Please handle with care.

FDL

Today we received a letter from the US Department of Homeland Security. It was the long-awaited FDL, or Favorable Determination Letter. This single page sheet was the culmination of nearly 11 weeks of waiting, a trip across town to be fingerprinted, a rather hefty application fee, and a rather large set of documents that were sent in near the end of February.

The next step now is to get state certifications for this and most of the other documents in our dossier, make several copies of the whole business, and then ship the stack of papers to our adoption agency so it can be authenticated, translated, spindled and mutilated and finally sent off to China.

Antipathy

Several years ago, Deb and I placed a spare mattress and a bed frame in our three-season porch. We slept out there for many of the Spring and Fall months that year. The combination of the evening breezes coming through the windows, the crickets, an awesome view of the night sky, the morning songbirds and other factors made this a pleasant sleeping experience. It was sort of like those delightful summer evenings, camping in a tent with all the flaps rolled back to let in the night air, only without having to sleep on the hard ground.

The next year, we extended this into the winter by piling more blankets on the bed, and into the summer by opening more windows. We soon swapped the spare mattress on the porch with the good mattress in the master bedroom, because now the master bedroom was only used on those torrid July nights where air conditioning was the only way to sleep, and on those winter nights in the teens when our breath would condense and freeze on the pillows. Our master bedroom now serves as a guest bedroom, because we don't use it much anyway.

We've had some rather interesting experiences while sleeping out there. About ten years ago when straight-line winds tore out many trees and caused lots of property damage in the area, we were one of the first to know the winds were coming, because they lifted all the blankets right off the bed. We had a duck take flight early one morning and attempted to fly through one of the windows. The noisy crash and quacking that went on didn't break the window, but it did jolt us rather violently awake. It's amazing how loud a duck sounds when it hits a window 18 inches from your head.

We also can hear, in crystal clear surround sound, when a raccoon decides to start eating the corn out of our garden, which is just behind the porch. More than once I have dashed outside in the middle of the night and lobbed apples from the nearby tree at the corn-stealing varmint to chase him away.

I suppose you could say we're a little closer to nature out there. We're probably as close as we can get to being out in nature while still maintaining a roof over our heads and a few of the human creature comforts that we've come to enjoy.

Last week, nature came in to us.

Deb noticed while cleaning that there were several winged ants peeking out around the window trim near the floor in one corner of the porch. We cleaned these up using some bug spray and the central vaccuum. But we could tell there were more where they came from. Several minutes later, there were a few more ants peeking out from the same location. After a few rounds of cleaning up ants and then seeing more of them, we decided to call it a night and go to bed.

The next night was a warm spring night, and as we were getting ready for bed, we noticed that the floor around the bed was black with ants. Most of them were dying or already dead, but there were hundreds of them. They seemed to be literally coming out of the wood work, from the trim around the windows, to coming out from behind the window tracks, whereever there was a hole or a gap. We spent quite a bit of time vaccuumming them up, and eventually had the place looking ship-shape again.

I did some looking on the Internet to figure out what kind they were. Carpenter ants. The article I read indicated that swarms of ants could indicate a colony nearby. Do tell! I'll bet it's in the wall right next to the bed. So now I have a new project, removing the trim and the wall below the window so that I can go ant hunting.

We had some family over the next day. My 8-year-old nephew brought over something he wanted to show us. He took it out and placed it on the kitchen counter next to where Deb was making dinner. It was a small clear plastic box that glowed a soft blue when you plugged it in and turned it on. An ant farm. Lots of little ants making their tunnels through the blue-illuminated clear gel.

Ants. On the counter. In the kitchen. Sure, they may be contained, but its about the last thing Deb wanted around while preparing food. After the appropriate ooh-ing and aah-ing over the ant farm, it was moved to the floor of the dining room so Deb could finish the preparations without all that company.

This one was at least easy to remove. It went home with my nephew when they left. The carpenter ants in the porch walls will be an entirely different matter. Probably fit for another story.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

I was awakened yesterday morning by the characteristic squeak of our bedroom door. The squeak is not all that unusual, as one of us will occasionally get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. However, this particular squeak arrived in my unconsciousness out of order. If Deb is the one who gets up, her movement wakes me up first, and then I hear the squeak of the door when I am awake. So to a person who is aware of the order of things, even while asleep, this particular squeak was particularly jarring.

While I was still clawing my way into a state of semi-consciousness, a three letter word floated about just beyond my reach. I think it was repeated a couple times before finally sinking into the mire far enough to be recognizable, but it eventually got there.

It was a distinctly male voice.

"Dad!" the voice said.

It took a few seconds to assemble all the pieces of my mental facilities together. The fog was still pretty thick. Auditory cortex... check! Prefrontal cortex... check! Brain stem... check! Primary visual cortex... Primary visual cortex.... Oh! check! Motor cortex... having a little hard time of it, but, check! Cerebellum... down!

"Dad, I need some help!"

All those brain facilities that have lurched to a start have been brought up so fast that they are now overreacting. Stark visions of fire, flood, ceiling collapse and other apocalyptic events swirled about as I struggled out of bed. Josh has been in his new bedroom for about a week, so I imagine there could be many things that go terribly wrong that I haven't even thought of.

I sure wish that cerebellum would come on line. I could use a little balance about now.

"Dad, there's a mouse in my bedroom!"

A mouse. No fires, no broken pipes and flooding, no major gas leaks, no cataclysmic events. I just went through the laborious process of brain initialization and startup at 4:30 in the morning for a mouse?

I followed him downstairs to his bedroom, grabbing the first weapon I could find along the way--one of Deb's shoes. I entered his bedroom, armed with the shoe, ready to do battle with a mouse. I squinted in the dazzling brilliance, not able to focus on anything at all, as Josh described hearing the mouse running back and forth beside his mattress. I imagine it was a little disconcerting, hearing the little rodent scrabbling about so close to his ears. I wouldn't be able to sleep either.

We drew up our battle plan. He would pull the mattress away from the wall and I would go in for the kill. I held the shoe high while he yanked the mattress up. No mouse. We searched the rest of the room for our prey. Nothing. I finally told him to get some sleep. We'll set traps or mouse bait in the morning.

I rolled back into bed, but sleep had long since fled. Deb noticed several minutes later that Josh's light had come back on. It was on for a while and then was back off.

When I arrived home from work that day, we pieced together the rest of the story. The mouse was active again immediately after Josh got back in bed so he got back up and managed to corner it against the wall and then trap it in a small bucket. He then carried his captive into the garage and left it there, where it later escaped. He also discovered that it was not a mouse but a vole.

It didn't take too long to figure out what a vole, which normally does not live in a house, was doing in Joshua's bedroom. It was rather warm the night before so we told him to open his window. He discovered that the screen I had bought for the window was the wrong size and could not be used so we told him to just open the window anyway because there are no mosquitoes or bugs at this time of year.

The thought of rodents coming in through the window didn't even cross my mind. As near as I can figure, the vole had fallen into his window well during the night and could not climb back up the smooth plastic sides. So it took the only path available to it--Joshua's open window.

This evening was rather warm again, so I went down in Joshua's room to open the window. I had looked for a screen at Lowe's this morning but they were out of stock. So I made sure to check all the corners of the window well before opening the window.

This time it was a young rabbit that was huddled in a corner. I removed the rabbit but wisely left the window closed. I can just about imagine what a rabbit would do for someone's sleep.

I am also wondering just what's next... a raccoon? Or maybe a snake?

Initial Contact

We received an email from China today. I had contacted a woman who lives in Beijing and she put in a phone call to the orphanage where Abigail is at (did I mention that we have decided to name her Abigail?). I had Angela (the person in Beijing) ask about ten questions of the orphanage staff. This also is usually the first indication that a child is being adopted, when the adoptive parents make some form of contact. After making the phone call, she emailed me back with the answers. Following is the text of her email:

From: angela
Sent: Fri 3/21/2008 9:30 AM
To: Friend, Tim
Subject: ??: Orphanage Phone Call {FRIEND}

Hi Tim and Deb,
Sorry it took so long! Here is what I got today.

1. Updated measurements: Height: 121cm [right at about 4 feet]; Weight: 22.5kg [50 lb.]; Head: 50cm; Chest: 59cm; Foot:18.5cm; Teeth:23

2. Any updated pictures?
We have taken many pictures for her. We will give them to the family when they come. (I have asked them to send me few through regular mail. I am hoping to get them next week. If so, I will scan and forward them to you as soon as I can).

3. Does she know she is being adopted? Could you let her know and explain the process to her?
She knows she is going to be adopted. We told her: Your Daddy and Mommy are Americans, they love you! They are coming to take you home soon in the future.

4. Does her name have any special meaning?
Her name was given by a doctor, no special meaning.

5. How is she doing in school? Are any subjects difficult for her?
Abigail gets along well with her school mates at school. She studies hard. She often helps other students. She likes to help others. Teachers and classmates all love her very much! She is especially good at Chinese subject. She has her own opinion and she often gets on her feet to speak. She gets praise from the teachers and classmates often. Her math and other subjects are on the ordinary level.

6. How would you describe her personality?
She is fairly extroverted, active and enjoys helping others.

7. What makes her happy?
To buy her new clothes and toys make her happy. Such as: Barbie dolls and stationery.

8. What makes her angry or upset?
If other children take away her favorite stuff, she will get angry and cry. But after uncles, and aunts talk to her, she will be fine soon.

9. Is she frightened of anything?
She is afraid of stuffed animals and worms.

They didn't answer last two questions. When you come to adopt her, you will get a copy of a finding ad. Make sure you ask them on the Gotcha day, in case there is no one. And on the Gotcha day, they will have a piece of paper tells you if there was anything left with her when she was found. Make sure you ask that, too.

Have a wonderful Easter!
Blessings,
Angela

We're putting together a care package to send to Abigail and it was good to receive this email because we had several stuffed animals in it. I wouldn't want to send along anything that she would be frightened of.

In the mean time, we are progressing on the new bedroom in the basement. I had a guy come out last week and cut an enormous hole in the concrete foundation wall of the house. I now have installed a daylight window and have been working on trimming it out today. The drywall is just about done and we should be able to start painting hopefully next week.

Today was the first full day of Spring here and Mother Nature celebrated by dumping six inches of wet snow on us (and counting; it is still snowing). We didn't make it to the Good Friday service at church because all the roads are pure ice. After sliding through a major intersection, we decided to just stay put at home. I'm hoping the snow won't stay around long. The large hole I dug in the back yard for the window is now full of snow, and I would like to install the window well sometime soon.

A New Direction

Today begins a new direction for our family. We have accepted the referral of an 8-year-old Chinese girl through the adoption agency All Gods Children International. We received this referral October 18 via email in a message containing three pictures and a translated medical profile. Not really a lot to go on, but this appears to be typical with international adoptions. Now that we've accepted the referral, we have one week to fill out and turn in a bunch of contract paperwork and become official clients of this agency. This starts a rather lengthy process (9 to 12 months) after which we will have a new daughter as part of our family. Stay tuned!

Acidic Eruptions

I hate plumbing. If you've read anything I've written previously about plumbing, you already know that. This could be reason number 235 why I hate plumbing. I have nothing against the profession of plumbing. It's a good honest way to make a living. It's a good honest way for somebody ELSE to make a living. Just not me.



This latest episode involves the house we bought last December. If you know about this house, you are probably wondering what ever possessed me to buy an old house that has six bathrooms and six kitchens. One where the pipes were all frozen a couple winters ago.

When I finally got the water turned on (which is a separate story all by itself), it began to rain in several rooms from the split pipes in the ceilings. I did what any good handyman would do. I hired a plumber. When it became obvious that this plumber would not finish the job in time because he was so busy, I hired another plumber. About four weeks later, when he was wrapping up the last details, I told him to replace a section of pipe in the basement that came from a second floor kitchen.

"When I turn the water on in the kitchen," I told him, "it drains for a while and then suddenly stops. I estimate from the amount of water that actually does go down that the blockage is in the basement."

He took a look at it and told me that they don't handle that kind of work anymore. "Roto-Rooter and the like has taken all that business from us," he said. "That line needs to be snaked out and we don't have the equipment to do that." He told me that he didn't think just replacing the pipe would do it.

I called Roto Rooter. They said they could be out there that afternoon. Later on in the day, he called me back.

"That one is pretty bad," he told me. "It's completely clogged with grease. I snaked it three times before it would drain at all. And it's still a little slow. I put a whole bottle of Pipe Shield down the drain. It should clear it out. It's an enzyme which will dissolve the grease. Just don't use it for 24 hours to allow it to work. If it doesn't work, I have some other stuff called EZ Flow which should do the trick. It's sulferic acid and should eat right through it. It's expensive stuff so we save that for the really bad cases. Let me know if the Pipe Shield doesn't work and I can come back."

Two days later I called him back. "The water doesn't go anywhere," I told him. "It just fills the sink up."

He came the next day. I received a phone call at work from him.

"I put a whole bottle of EZ Flow down the drain, and it is still stopped up. I think you are going to have to replace the section of pipe in the basement. From the amount of water that goes down before it stops, that's probably where the problem is."

Hmmm. It seems I told the last plumber that. An now I just paid another plumber to come out and confirm what I already knew. I told him I would replace the pipe myself. I had enough into this already. Time to roll up the sleeves and dive in. Tim the Plumber strikes again.

This past Friday, I came to the house armed with a new section of plastic pipe, a few fittings, and my odd assortment of plumbers tools. The fittings on the iron pipe were too rusted to take apart so I attacked it with a hacksaw. It dribbled a rather viscous solution of brown goo as I was doing so, but I soon had the suspect section down. As I suspected, it was completely full of gunk. The section in the ceiling was also full of gunk so I stuck an old paint stirring stick in it to get it out.

The pipe drooled brown every time I pulled the stick out and I soon had most of the gunk out of the exposed section. I ran upstairs and ran some water down the drain to see if it was starting to clear. When I got back to the basement, none of the water had made it down. It just dribbled slowly onto the floor. At this rate, it would take all day for the sink to empty out.

I found a piece of flexible tubing and shoved it into the pipe. The tubing was longer than the stick and flexible so it could go around the elbow in the pipe. More thick brown goo ended up on the floor every time I pulled the pipe out. It was also starting to smell pretty ripe.

After I probed as far as the tubing would allow, I ran up to the kitchen and ran a little more water down the drain. Back downstairs to see that none of it had made it out the open end of the pipe. Just a slow, steady drip, drip of dark brown sludge.

I studied the situation for a little while, wondering what to do next. As I sat there looking at it, there suddenly came from the open end of the pipe a gurgling sound. This sound rapidly rose in crescendo until all at once, with a hissing, splattering sound, a column of brown water erupted out the end of the pipe and splashed to the floor about eight feet away. In a couple seconds, this mixture of enzyme, sulferic acid, and water dwindled to a fast dribble, but not before the entire section of the basement, including my tools, supplies, and an old clothes dryer that happened to be in the line of fire was covered with thick, sludge-like substance. A big wad of stuff resembling a giant hairball also ended up on top of the dryer.

When the flow died away completely, I figured I would leave it until the next day, perhaps it would be more tolerable when it had dried out.

The next day, a Saturday, I waited until the afternoon to give it a good chance to dry. It didn't take long to put the new section of pipe in now that all the hard work was done.. Now when I fill the sink with water and then pull the drains, I get these cool little whirlpools in the water, and the water goes away fast. One more item finally checked off the to-do list. The other task that I did on the same day was to replace a sink in a third floor bathroom. More plumbing, more headaches, fit for another story.

This Old House

I've sometimes wondered how some families manage to keep everything together. They homeschool their children, run a family business, manage all the intricacies of modern life, and then they show up at all the homeschooling conferences looking like they have everything together. I'm sure you've seen them, they're the ones who have the booths at the shows with a bazillion books or other things for sale, their little cherubs are happily running the cash register, keeping the shelves full, or answering questions. I'm not condemning this in any way, in fact I'm in favor of it, I just wonder how they do it.

I've also thought that it would be cool to do this in my own family. Our family support comes primarily from my working outside the home, but, wouldn't it be great if I could bring that home and involve the rest of the family? Unfortunately, the field of electrical engineering doesn't lend itself very well to that sort of thing, so the family involvement would have to come from some other area.

We found that area a several months ago, in the form of a tired, 100-year-old house that was badly in need of some serious renovations. We decided to take this on as a family remodeling project. The boys are at the age where they can contribute to the project and it would provide a great opportunity for some life-skills learning.

We were grateful for the warmer weather in early January, because the place had no heat. The day after the heat was turned on, the weather turned decidedly colder. But now we could do interior work in relative warmth. We didn't have to protect the paint from freezing, and didn't have our heavy overcoats interfering with our motion.

Over the last several months, we have been spending several evenings a week, along with many Saturdays, working at this house. One of the first major tasks was patching and painting. Nearly everything needed painting, either because the existing paint was badly applied or because it was a weird color. None of us particularly enjoys painting, and David tends to wear a lot of it, but it's a task that needs to be done. This is one life-skill that the boys have had plenty of experience in, and they are always happy to move on to something else.

That "something else" has been a variety of tasks, including installing flooring, fixing plumbing, installing trim, changing light fixtures, refinishing hardwood floors, and a host of other things typical for an old house. It's been quite a challenge for me to keep four people busy doing productive tasks. Many times there's some training that goes along with it, and there are the invariable questions or problems that need to be addressed. These problems show up in a variety of ways, including a child standing beside me holding a broken section of pipe saying, "What do I do now?". Sometimes I just want to tell them, "Don't ask me, I'm making this all up as I go!" I have a new appreciation for a contractor trying to keep a crew busy.

Old houses tend to have a few surprises in store, and this one was no exception. One of those surprises showed up when we replaced a floor. After tearing up the old floor, including the subfloor, the boys discovered a trap door which led into a closet downstairs. They thought this was great fun; they could drop into the closet on the lower floor without using the stairs. We spent a while speculating on why there was a trap door buried under the floor.

Other surprises were not so benign. After sledge-hammering a hole in the basement floor to investigate a water leak, we discovered that the main water pipe into the house was made of lead, and needed to be replaced. Now instead of fixing a small section of pipe, we will be coordinating with the city with their lead abatement initiative and having part of the yard and the street torn up to replace the pipe. Maybe we'll get the water turned back on by next Christmas.

Surprises aside, it's been an overall positive experience. It has been encouraging to see the growth in the boys, from having to lead them through a task step by step, to just telling them to do a particular task, and having them come back a while later saying, "It's done." It's been a stretch for me as well.

We figured when this is all over that we will have a clothing-burning party. We'll throw all the paint-saturated work clothing we have been using into a bonfire and roast marshmallows. And then it's on to the next project.

You'll just have to stay tuned for that one.

Dribbles and Dads

It can be a tough job being a Dad sometimes. It is quite a privilege to have two boys who look up to me and I would like to say that I always earn that respect, having led and instructed my children wisely. The trouble is, I am human and can really mess things up. Sometimes I don't deserve the respect I receive.

We have been restoring a 100-year-old house as sort of a family project. Having been vacant and neglected for three years, the place is badly in need of quite a few fixes. So we have been patching plaster, fixing doors and floors, and (of course) painting. Having gone through and painted several rooms, we arrived in the kitchen a couple weeks ago. This was the perfect place for practice painting. This kitchen was missing all the cabinets and the floor, so paint dribbles would not be a problem.

Painting is one of those tasks that none of us really enjoys doing, but it does dress the place up, so we will swallow our pride and pick up the paintbrush. David is no exception to this. Being the youngest, he has been assigned the job of taping and painting trim quite a bit, and was pretty sick of it by the time we started on the kitchen. He was pretty excited when I told him he was going to run the paint sprayer. Somehow the job is much more fun if it can be done with power tools.

Both boys had used the paint sprayer in other rooms, and this would be a great time for additional practice. David, however, had the least experience with the sprayer so I gave him some instructions on how to prime the sprayer and hold the gun and then turned him loose on a large blank wall.

He soon had the bottom half of the wall covered and started on the top half from a ladder. I noticed a few runs in the paint so I cautioned him on the correct distance from the wall. "Keep it about ten inches from the wall and don't pull the trigger until the gun is moving," I told him. I watched him do a few more swipes and then set about fixing up the paint runs with a paint brush.

After getting the runs fixed up, I started noticing more runs and went to fix these up. "Try moving the gun a little faster," I instructed. "I think we're still getting too much paint on the wall.

David continued the upper part of the wall and I continued to fix up running paint. I began to notice many more runs in the paint and scrambled to keep up with them. "Less paint on the wall, make sure you're holding the gun straight" I told him a couple more times, growing a little more impatient.

Now I was noticing that large sections of the wall were forming lots of little rivulets slowly oozing their way towards the floor. I was getting hopelessly behind.

"Hand the gun to Josh," I commanded. "Grab another brush and help me fix up these dribbles!" I was having visions of the entire wall drying to the look and texture of a frozen waterfall.

David quietly handed the gun over and Josh started on the next wall. After working a while on the rivers of paint, I noticed three things. David had disappeared, Joshua's wall was starting to flow in spots, and the areas I had fixed up were also starting their dribbling descent anew. I began to suspect that the paint was part of the problem. We had switched types of paint for the kitchen and it appeared to be going on differently than the paint we had used in other rooms.

I chased paint rivers for the rest of evening. Trying to fix paint runs as the paint is drying can make quite a mess, and this kitchen was turning out to be a big disaster. We managed to take care of most of the streams, but when we left, the texture was still looking rather tough.

We talked about it on the way home. I told David about the different type of paint and how it acted differently when sprayed on the wall. I also apologized for my rather rough demotion of my budding painter. I could tell almost immediately after I demoted him that he was hurt by it. I told him that we will just deal with the kitchen somehow and that he shouldn't worry about it.

The next day, we came back to find very little evidence that there ever was a problem. The rough lines from the paintbrushes had dried smooth and the walls looked good. I felt sheepish and relieved at the same time, sheepish because I had blamed my son for something caused by a difference in paint and relieved that I wouldn't have to do it all over again.

When we started trimming the floor, I instructed the boys on how to measure and cut the shoe moulding. This time, I was not so impatient when things went wrong. There were several pieces that the boys cut incorrectly in some very interesting ways. Instead of getting impatient about it, I bantered with them about creating scrap.

Sometimes I wonder who learns more when we instruct our kids. The kids may learn about handling paint sprayers and shoe moulding, but Dad is continually learning how to handle kids.