Where's Jenny been?

So yeah, aside from the odd random post and a couple of memes, my online/blog presence has been practically nonexistent.

Thing is, I've been kind of avoiding my computer in the evenings.  Maybe it's a backlash against all the hours I spent practically chained to it for the past 6 months or so, and certainly the last weeks of my SFD-push.  I've also been working a lot, and I have stuff to do around the house, ranging from laundry to little projects to sitting on the couch watching DH play Assassin's Creed on his Xbox 360.  *g*

My "official" start time for rewrites will be after LB's birthday the first week of March.  I initially thought I'd take a month off, then decided to give myself until the end of February for an even six weeks (I think I've earned it!).  But his birthday is only another week or so beyond that, and it made sense to put major writing work off until after party plans.  And I've still got stuff to catch up on and some nights it's kinda nice to have *gasp!* actual free time.

(Even so, I'm doing a bit of story work here and there.  Some initial feedback is coming in, I'm doing the firsts workshop over at CompuServe, and I'm putting together lists of changes and arcs and added tension to hit the ground running when I do get started.  This week I really need to get over to the Forum and get into the first paragraphs thread before it blows out of all proportion, which it may well have already done, but first I have to rewrite my first page - again - so I know what my first paragraph is.  I hope to get to that tonight.  We'll see.)

All this isn't to say I haven't been online at all.  I have.  But for the past week or so (and to a lesser extent in the few weeks previous) when I've been on the internet I've been doing mostly one thing only: obsessively researching international adoption from China.

Yeah.  What's really crazy is that I'm doing so and we're not even eligible yet.  Minimum age for adoptive parents is 30.  We have 3 more years before we can even start our paperwork.

In that time, DH and I plan to have at least one more bio child (ideally in fall '09 after I pass the oral board exam for my medical physics certification).  But for years now, since about the time we were married - and before we started having kids - we have felt called to adopt a little girl from China.

I'll think about it from time to time, and research like I'm doing now, and then knowing I've got years yet before it's a possibility, the drive will go dormant until something brings it up again a few years down the road.  But over the years, the desire to adopt from China hasn't diminished, as an impulse would have.  In fact, the closer I get to 30 the stronger the desire is.

This particular go-round was prompted by the decision of a couple in our Sunday school class to adopt a little special needs boy (he's deaf, or partially so, but they think it can be corrected with surgery and hearing aids) from China.  Of course I told them of our plans, and I've been following their blog as they prepare their paperwork and hope to travel to get him this summer.  It's the closest I've been to the whole thing (it's slightly different for a special needs child, but large parts of the process are the same) in all the time since we made the decision, and it's sent me into a flurry of internet research - on the paperwork process, homestudies, the new requirements for potential adoptive parents, attachment issues and bonding, and transracial/transnational adoption attitudes within the adopting family and within society as a whole.  (I admit the idea of it being a "transracial" adoption hadn't really occurred to me.  I never thought of a potential adopted daughter as anything but that - a daughter, a child who needed a family, and one we would welcome with open hearts and arms.  But there are issues of "race" and cultural identity that international adoptive parents need to be sensitive to and able to help their child deal with as they get older, in addition to the issues associated with adoption in general.)

So for now I'm just absorbing the information and filing it away, following a few adoption blogs and websites, and trying to stay generally current without spinning my wheels uselessly for the next 3 years.  In case anyone is interested, here are a few of my recent haunts:

Adoption.com
Shaohannah's Hope
A Helping Hand Adoption Agency
China Adopt Talk
Families with Children from China (FCC)
Half the Sky Foundation

(If you go to none of the other sites, go to Half the Sky.  Have a box of tissues handy.)

Anyway, looks like no writing tonight.  LB is still crying - he's been in bed for almost 2 hours, and one of us has been up to him at least 4-5 times now - and I may have to lie down in his floor till he falls asleep.  So I'll post this and try to get him to sleep and get a few other small things done.

Oidhche mhath.