One Flaw In Women

Women have strengths that amaze men.
They bear hardships and they carry burdens,
but they hold happiness, love and joy.
They smile when they want to scream.
They sing when they want to cry.
They cry when they are happy
and laugh when they are nervous.
They fight for what they believe in.
They stand up to injustice.
They don't take "no" for an answer
when they believe there is a better solution.
They go without so their family can have.
They go to the doctor with a frightened friend.
They love unconditionally.
They cry when their children excel
and cheer when their friends get awards.
They are happy when they hear about
a birth or a wedding.
Their hearts break when a friend dies.
They grieve at the loss of a family member,
yet they are strong when they
think there is no strength left.
They know that a hug and a kiss
can heal a broken heart.
Women come in all shapes, sizes and colors.
They'll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you
to show how much they care about you.
The heart of a woman is what makes the world keep turning.
They bring joy, hope and love.
They have the compassion and ideas.
They give moral support to their
family and friends.
Women have vital things to say
and everything to give.
*
HOWEVER, IF THERE IS ONE FLAW IN WOMEN,
IT IS THAT THEY FORGET THEIR WORTH.


This was sent by my friend Rosy... thanks Rosy, for making me stop and feel special.

So here I am waiting patiently for the mail to come... for our SN ADDENDUM!!! Yuppie, happiness and glee on Friday (and thereafter of course). I contacted our SW via email, but he had no clue, so I called the Centre de Jeunesse and the very nice lady who answered confirmed, with much fanfare, that the addendum was in the mail!

What does this mean? It means that when the next batch of special needs dossiers comes in to our agency, and if there is a little girl with either a cleft lip/palate, minor heart defect (ASD, VSD, PDA), hernia, mild hearing loss, extra digits, then the agency will call us and ask us if we are interested (as if we would say no!). Then, I think, we get the dossier and we can then go and speak to the specialists to make an informed decision. Now, if there is no one in the next batch that matches us, then we continue to wait for the NSN. We are waiting also for the LID (log in date for our file), which theoretically should be today, as our DTC (date to china of our file) was December 27 2006... if everything goes well that is.

On another happy note, we had our MNO (Mother's Night Out) on Saturday waaaaayyyyy out in Dollard, which is about 1 hour drive from the house. It was worth it - I had a great time talking to Doris, Wanda, Sandra, Rosie, Justina and Lisa. I left them (boohoo) after dinner to go and talk to Karen for a bit - poor Karen is STILL waiting for her TA (travel approval) to go and get her daughter, Presley. She is approaching 200 days of waiting, and it is starting to show that she has had just about enough of the wait. I can't blame her.

Stay tuned for the arrival of the mail - I will be dancing up and down when I get it into my hands let me tell you! (Let's just hope it arrives before I have to leave for the nation's capital tomorrow night for the rest of the week... yes I am leaving THE BOYS alone for 3 days - keep your fingers crossed that the house will still be standing when I get back!)

Beautiful, isn't she? Princess Dai - her serene face, wind swept appearance made me think of conviction and strength in the face of a wind storm. And boy are we in the thick of one.

For those that still check to see if I am posting (sorry about that), so much has been going on in this New Year that I don't even know where to begin. I will start with the adoption, because we really need some prayers.

We have a meeting with our social worker on Monday at 11 am to get an update to our adoption home study which was completed back in November. If you recall, we had quite a delay in receiving our home study from the Centre de Jeunesse because our SW had to "defend" us. Well, it's come to light that he had to defend us for 2 hours. For what, he won't tell us at all (he just responds that "You don't want to know"). Our SW at first refused to do our SN update because he didn't think we would be approved. So Greg and I thought about it for a week, and we finally decided that we were going to go at this full steam ahead. I called the Centre de Jeunesse to ask them what we had to do to be able to proceed. They told me to contact our SW who did our home study. When I explained that he refused to do it, because he doesn't work for them anymore, the lady at the Centre de Jeunesse told me she would contact him and ask him to do it for us. Then our SW called us, all surprised, saying that he would do it for us at it seems that they (Centre de Jeunesse) want him to do. Instead of just doing it over the phone, however, we have to meet in his office for 1 hour and he will charge us for 2 hours, where the second hour will be for writing up the addendum letter. He warned us that its not a given that we will be successful, and that its not going to be easy. So Greg and I are preparing ourselves the best we can for this grilling, but its a little hard to know what to think - should we even be hopeful? - when we have no idea why there is a problem with our dossier.

Our resource person, at Formons, is being very supportive and writing to us almost every night with words of encouragement. Its so frustrating to not know what the problem is, when we know beyond a shadow of doubt that we would be a good family for an SN child. We have so many resources at our disposal - pediatrician, 2 ORLS, speech therapists, preemie clinic, pediatric cardiologist, nephrologist, ergo therapists. I could call any of them up and have an appointment within a day or two! The vast majority of people don't want to go the SN route because they don't feel equiped to deal with health or developmental issues - we've dealt with a great deal of them. SO WHERE IS THE PROBLEM????

The other item on our plate, which appears to be getting better, is the boys and their ability to deal with frustration. We have seen a pediatric psychologist twice so far, once with the boys, and we have made real progress this past week with Tristan. We are now using a Sun/Cloud method of highlighting unacceptable behaviour, with a reward of 10 minutes of computer time if they should finish the day with a Sun. Tristan is trying very hard, and he has so far been successfull 2 out 3 days; Zach on the other hand is not quite able to do it yet.