Calling in the Operatives

This comes from Sheri's mom. Note that Dave (dad) is an FBI-trained law enforcement consultant with a seventh degree black belt in take-no-shit.

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This is Mission Not Impossible. We need to have someone sneak into the judge's office and move the Lu Yu file from the bottom to the top of the stack. It will have to be someone very familiar with bureaucracies and the way they work (sounds like they are the same all over the world), can b.s. people, has extensive knowledge/experience being sneaky and devious, and the balls to try it. I volunteer Grandpa Dave. Think about it. Professionally and personally he has all the qualifications! He's planning on going to Taiwan anyway so that is not a problem - and I will gladly give him up for the period of time required.

I had not read the last few entries in the Blog until today. He is so cute! And growing like a weed. You guys have been through a lot the last month - no wonder you are stressed. I think you are doing remarkably well, considering. We all know the downside to waiting until end of August or in September - what is the upside? Surely there is something! Spending summer vacation doing fun things with all three of your daughters, having more time to get everything in order before little brother gets here, developing an absolutely foolproof, kickass Spisak-Martin Operating System (SMOS) that will make everything go smoothly always, everyday, without fail, once he gets here. Hah!

Love you all,

Mom/Grandma Jo

June Gloom (at least for us)

Another month slides past. At least in retrospect they're going quickly, even if they're painfully slow on the day-to-day level.

He is eating baby food, running, and hopefully causing enough havoc and heartache that they'll do their best to get this judge to do her job and speed things up a bit. We heard through our agency that a family travelling there saw him and said that he's very sure-footed, a little football player it sounds like. Pretty good for a 16 month old. And, it sounds like he's also a bit of a dramaturge. He tried to draw them back to him with a bit of fake crying. Yes, he'll fit in well with his three sisters.

His current measurements are as follows:

• height: 31.89" / 81 cm
• weight: 25.57 lb / 11.6 kg
• head: 18.7' / 47.5 cm

He has 6 upper and 6 lower teeth.

Easier than Answering

Sheri bought this button for me to wear. Simplifies answering any adoption-related questions. Plus you might get a free drink out of the deal. (That's a martini olive, in case you can't make it out.)

A Matter of Time

Some simple math and I realized why we will hear by 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. No two ways about it. Add 15 hours to PST and you'll see that if the judge makes his recommendation early one morning and sends it to St. Lucy's by 10:00 a.m. Taiwan time, the best they could do would be to call/fax/e-mail Heartsent at 7 p.m. No one in the office, so we wouldn't get the call until the morning. And if the judge makes his decision at the end of the day and sends it on to St. Lucy's and they call by 5:00 p.m., that would be 2:00 a.m. here in California, again no one to take the call.

Therefore, no matter when the referral takes place in Taiwan, we won't receive a call until first thing in the morning the next day. I can handle an hour of stress a day.

The only variable to this equation would be the off chance that Heartsent is closed in the morning (say because of a flash flood, sickness, or termite infestation) and they don't get in and check their messages/fax/e-mail until the afternoon. But we won't consider the variable, because that does little to assuage my anxiety.

Half Full/Half Empty

We got what is either good news or really lousy news today. Yesterday the judge asked for the entire Canadian adoption laws to be translated and faxed to him. I guess that he (or it might be she) originally had been sent a portion of the laws, and it sounds like the laws for Ontario, since adoption laws are different in every province. Kerry dug up the laws yesterday and a translator back in Ohio (that's pretty near Canada) stayed up half the night translating it. Damn Canadians make things so complex.

Here's the half full scenario. The final bit of information he needs to pronounce the first decree is that fax. Quick signature, gavel pounds, hear ye hear ye and all that judge-y stuff, and we'll get the call on Monday.

Here's the half empty, actually the damn near completely empty scenario. The adoption laws were initially sent in around three months ago. Our dossier went to the bottom of the pile. He looked at it yesterday, put it at the bottom of the pile, and it'll be three months until it reaches the top again. By then Quebec will have seceded and Taiwan will be just another Chinese province.

Doppleganger

I know that we must be getting close to the call. I met Lu-Yu's Doppleganger last night. I was looking for Sheri and the kids when I walked into a store and there, running towards me was Lu-Yu, just for a second, until he morphed back into an 18-month-old Asian boy. And I suspect that it was that vision that inspired last night's dream, though the dream's not exactly a positive one. We were either back from Taiwan or it was after getting the "time to travel" call, but I suddently realized that it had already been seven days and I forgot to tell my parents and brothers about it. In the dream I justified my lack of communication on my propensity to over-focus on things, good things in this case.

It's got to be a matter of days now.