Things the make me happy

Things that make me happy:

My sister's getting married to a guy she loves... in three days.

Four-year-olds say charming things to waitresses like, "My Uncle Kevin's name is Kevin."

After waiting months and months for GrandCentral to officially change hands (they were bought by Google) and become operational, I finally got an invite to go grab my Google Voice phone number. I honestly feel like I've won something! Imagine the best phone/Internet thingy anyone could ever invent and Google Voice is better, really. You pick one phone number--whatever area code you want--and then you can choose to forward a whole buncha different phone numbers to it. It's attached to your gmail account, so when you're at work, all calls can forward to your work number, when you're on the road, they can go to your cell... you get the idea. I'm beyond psyched about it. The best part is that all your voicemail winds up in the same spot AND Google transcribes it and e-mails it to you!!! My days of leaving weeks-old messages unchecked are over. I'm in LOVE. Alas, it's invite-only at this point but I promise you... it's going to change your life too!!! See, I can't stop using exclamation points! I'm that excited about it:-)

Not quite as cool as Google Voice (okay, kidding), but quite a few families working through our adoption agency received referrals, including some folks who were waiting for slightly older children than our 0-24 month request but who had been waiting fewer months. This gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, we'll one day get some good news as well... perhaps delivered via my brand spankin' new Google Voice phone number! Hmmm... speaking of...

That's an excellent reason to call our adoption specialist tomorrow:-) Always looking for excuses to fill up her voicemail inbox. A new phone number is even a fairly legit reason to call. So see, another thing to be happy about:-)

Gabriel and his modesty cooler

This is Gabriel.


See Gabriel play.

Gabriel is not wearing pants. Or underwear. In fact, he's quite taken with naked time recently. On Sunday he played school. For the occasion, he got naked, wore his knee-high soccer socks as a scarf, carried a cooler as his "purse," and put on his new shoes (which he hasn't taken off since we bought them). I'm the one who insisted on the positioning of the modesty cooler in the pics.

July 4 and some 90s nostalgia

Hope your Fourth of July was as fabulous as ours!


We were treated to two days with glorious weather... I'm not sure it ever broke the 80s! The fireworks were fab and we got to spent lots of time laying on the grass, looking at the sky and explaining things like clouds and lightning and cannon fire to Gabriel.


And then on the third day, it rained. Which was actually perfect in its own way because it forced us to stay in doors and get things DONE. After so many weekends away, we needed it!

Like for instance, I went through our medicine cabinet and our closet and purged, purged, purged. I even got rid of these:


Recognize them, Anne? Yup, my Birks from... wait for it... eighth grade! What the heck am I doing still hanging onto them, you ask?!?! Pure sentimental rubbish. I LOVED these shoes. I mean, loved them. Wore them until there was practically nothing left. It was around the same time that I loved him, watched a whole lotta this, and listened to these fine folks. Ah, the mid-1990s. Wow... is there already nostalgia for the 90s? Judging by the fact that I hung onto these shoes for nearly 15 years, I guess so:-)

Tell your senators you support the FACE Act

I sent the following letter, in support of the FACE Act, to my senators. You can find your senators here. Feel free to steal any parts of this letter that might help you make your own case. Help our Senate recognize that internationally adopted children should receive the same privileges as children born to American parents. Learn more about the Foreign Adopted Children Equality Act.

Dear Senator,

I am the mother of a four-year-old boy named Gabriel who my husband and I adopted from Guatemala as an infant. We are currently in the process of adopting a sister for him from Ethiopia. I urge you to advocate for and support the FACE Act (S. 1359 Foreign Adopted Children Equality Act), which was introduced in the Senate in June.

When we adopted Gabriel from Guatemala, we were able to travel to meet him before his adoption was finalized in the Guatemalan courts. This allowed us to bring him home to the United States on an IR3 visa. He became a U.S. citizen the second our plane touched down in Atlanta, Georgia. Even then, we went through months of additional paperwork in the U.S. to finalize the adoption in our state court, complete a name change, and apply for a domestic birth certificate, social security number and a U.S. passport.

This time, adopting from Ethiopia, our daughter will travel home on an IR4 visa. Despite the fact that this adoption journey has taken nearly two years to complete, it will be far from over when our plane touches down in the United States. Without automatic citizenship, we'll be forced to apply for visas for her to travel to and from the U.S. We will also be unable to file our taxes (including applying for the federal adoption tax credit) until we have secured a social security number for our daughter. The adoption won't be able to be finalized until we've had multiple post-placement home visits. In essence, our two-year adoption process will take at least an additional year to complete once our daughter is back in the United States.

The FACE Act also guarantees internationally adopted children the same benefits all children born to Americans in this country receive. Watching Barack Obama be elected to our nation's highest office this past November was exhilarating - particularly because my children will grow up assuming that anyone, of any ethnicity, can be president. As we watched the presidential election results come in and my son was joyfully shouting "President Obama!" at the television, it was truly heartbreaking to acknowledge the fact that my son, no matter how hard he works in school and how much he accomplishes in life, will never be able to aspire to be president of the United States. President Obama's story is a story of the American dream realized. Please give that same American dream to each and every child who is adopted internationally by American parents.

Vogue.com article on adoption

Vogue.com has a great article on celebrity adoption (and really international adoption in general), written by a gal who participates in our agency's online forum and who brought her infant daughter Nettie home from Ethiopia just last year. The article's a great read, so I thought I'd pass it along. Enjoy!

A sign?

There's an up-scale thrift store in Richmond called Clementine, which also happens to be a favorite name of ours. Sometimes when I think of a wee girl entering our life in the future, I imagine a Clementine. Anyway, I bought a pair of earrings at Clementine a few weeks ago and left the tag on my bedside table. I think that just seeing the name every so often gave me a little more hope... or something.

A few days before we headed to the beach, Gabriel found the tag. And fell in love with it like only a four-year-old can fall in love with a scrap of paper. It was "his card" and he lovingly carried it everywhere. And I mean everywhere. For three days, the card accompanied him to school. He'd carefully tuck it into his cubby for safe-keeping and grab it on his way out the door in the afternoon. Even in the middle of the night when he wandered from his bedroom into ours to climb into our bed, he'd first move the Clementine card from his bedside table to mine. In the morning, when I'd carry him downstairs, the card came too... clutched tightly and slightly the worse for wear.


When we left for the beach, the Clementine card was misplaced and eventually forgotten by G. But not by me:-) I don't really believe in signs, so I'm not sure why it makes me a tad sad that Gabriel's fallen out of love with a scrap of paper. But it sort of does. Could just be a sign that the waiting is making me insane! Truly.

Seeing stars

When I'm all done catching up on missed Bachelorette episodes (sad, I know) I'll post all our beach pictures along with a few cute stories to go along with them. But first, I have very pressing business that requires feedback!

My sunglasses broke on the beach one day. Kevin was on his way out to Target to buy bandaids so I asked him to pick me up a pair of shades. My sisters and mother looked at me in bewilderment... how was I going to trust Kevin's taste in eyewear?!?! I really didn't want to have to pack up and leave the beach midday, so I gave him some basic instructions: Buy girl glasses. You know, big and black. How tough could it be, right?

He almost nailed it. The glasses he returned with were indeed big and black. They also happened to have gigantic silver stars on them. Guess I forgot to say no adornments:-) No matter, they did the trick.


So here's the question I pose to you... can my superstar shades be worn in public (as opposed to "beach public," which as we all know, is a lot more forgiving of fashion blunders)?!?!