Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Un-Planning

I had an obvious light bulb moment here:   international adoption is not compatible with the "planner" personality. :)   Lol!      It's so funny/odd to think about traveling to a new place and staying there for 6 weeks, but not being able to really plan for it.   I am used to micro-managing every aspect of trips, from weekend getaways to family vacations, and the more detail we have, the better.    This is completely different though!   We don't know what part of the country we will be traveling to, the history of the city and/or where we will even be staying or when.  One part of me wants to embrace the adventure, but the other part of me is freaking out!   Ha ha.   I think I would be more carefree about it if we didn't have our three boys in tow.   I am not even sure how to prepare?   
We have our passports, luggage and Polish language app on my iPad, but that's about it!

I will admit to slacking these last couple of months , but I think it's been a necessary detachment.  I have been trying to resume life as usual until we get some news.  I do have a question for adoptive families though.   Is there anything special we should bring for our first visit?   I would like to leave our daughter with something she could keep until we return  but I'm not sure if there are any special restrictions?   In my "un-planning" I feel like I still need to slightly plan for things like that.   I know if our child is in an orphanage, we may be limited?   I think I read that somewhere. 

11 comments:

  1. I hear ya about the freaking out. And we are still waiting on that last piece of the dossier! lol I agree you have to "un-plan" as you say because otherwise, the uncertainty will drive you crazy. We have done a little of the same, but I just try to keep my finger on the pulse as much as I can so I stay connected. I get Polish country news updates on Facebook and Trip Advisor hotel/restaurant recommendations. I even found a taped eppy from Rick Steves (the travel guy) from when he profiled Poland. All of it helps to stay connected during the long wait.

    I'm sure you'll get a call soon though and then you can go hog wild researching and planning out the trip. We will also be traveling with our son and the anxiety is definitely different. I can only imagine what it'd be like with 3!

    As for ideas, I have seen some people leave a little stuffed animal or a small photo album with their child, but I'll be interested as well to know what others suggest. Hang in there! :)

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  2. I agree...this waiting is killing the planner in me. Our summer has already booked up with cub scout camps, weddings, birthday parties, and a million other things. I can't even imagine cancelling all the things that I will have to cancel when we finally get a call.

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  3. Oh I know exactly how you feel. I have been going through the same thing. Our daughter is going with us as well which makes not being able to really plan even harder. Every time something new is added to our schedule I keep thinking but will we be here for it. Hopefully we will all get some good news soon and can start planning our trips for real.

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  4. We just got home with our daughter in December from Poland!

    As to what to bring: I made a photo book on Shutterfly to take on our first trip with pictures of all our family members and the pictures we had gotten of our daughter before we went and I left that with her. That way her pictures were included with the family pictures, so she was "part of the story."

    I thought a toy might be difficult to keep for just her since the toys are community property at the orphanage as well.

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  5. Ditto The Jamisons.

    We also included our son's referral pics in our shutterfly family album. We also took a picture of his pictures on our mantle. He LOVED that. Make 2 copies of the album so you can save one and let him/her look at the other. Dominik ended up pulling the album apart from looking at it so much.

    We were told to sleep with a stuffed animal for at least a week to get our "scent" on it. I stuffed a dog from build a bear. I would recommend something smaller than that.

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  6. Thanks so much for sharing! I was thinking about ordering a customized quilt with family snapshots on it. I haven't found a style I like yet, but hopefully that will be one thing. I love the album ideas and sleeping with the stuffed animals. It makes me want to cry just thinking about it!:) Thanks for taking the time to comment.

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  7. Ditto on the photo albums! I also left some pages blank and had some film quickly developed of pictures we had taken of all of us while we were there and placed them in the album. On the second trip I was happy the orphanage still had the albums and they looked as though they had been paged through a million times!

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  8. We also took each of the girls an small photo book we made on Shutterfly. The cover of the book was their referral picture. We also took them each a stuffed animal and a backpack with their name on it. Our girls were will a foster family so they were able to help them keep track of their things. We also took some things to do with the girls. Coloring book, crayons, puzzles. The 1.00 section at Target was great for this. We spend 10.00 had some fun things to do and didn't care if we ever saw them again. It is fun to think about all of these things!

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  9. This is just a crazy idea but do you think it'd be possible to attach one of those cards that record your voice? Then every time she (or in our case, he) looks all the way through the album they could hear you say something like "I love you" etc at the end. Just a thought :)

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  10. We adopted from Guatemala...so I completely understand the pain of waiting!!! Much worse than labor in my opinion :) On our visit trip we took a pink blanket, a build a bear that we recorded our voices on (I was standing in the store in the middle of the mall crying as our son sang out "I love you sissy"), and a photo album toy made by sassy (it holds pictures and is pretty touch...held up just fine even to being chewed on during the teething months). Enjoy your time with your precious daughter!!!

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