Memorial Weekend and the summer begins......

Welcome Home

Meaghan Grace is home. Thank you Michelle and Mike and boys for letting me share in your homecoming. I can't wait to see little Meggie again.

So Proud of Kyle

As many of you know, Kyle has been very interested and involved in writing, and photography since the eigth grade. He has gotten numerous awards over these past years, and is a true journalist. He often writes and takes pictures for 2 local papers, "The Beacon" and "The SUN", as well as Newsday, and a few local Magazines. He also interns at several local radio stations. Wew and all that and he is only 16.
We are very proud of him and I don't often brag, but we are proud of the latest round of awards.
He won 3 Newsday awards. Read below to see which ones... The KROB is the name of his High School paper.....

2007 Newsday School Journalism Awards Contest

Congratulations!
Newsday School Journalism
Awards Contest
Winners 2006-2007


About the Competition
The Newsday School Journalism Awards Contest is open to all middle, high school and college newspapers in Nassau and Suffolk counties. In this annual competition, high school and college entrants competed in eight categories: news writing, feature writing, commentary, sports writing, local news/history, editorial cartooning, photography, typography & layout. Entrants in the middle/junior high school division competed for overall excellence. Newsday journalists, artists and photographers judged the competition.

Local News/History High School

First Place: Bay Shore HS, "Lights, Camera, Action!" Melissa Rivera, Matthew Rotolo, Alex Herd, Cheryl McClaurin
Second Place: Miller Place HS, "Teen Drinking Is Aim At Forum" Kyle Reitan
Tie: Third Place: Oyster Bay HS, "New Attractions Grab Interest At Oyster Fest" Mary Miller
Third Place: Locust Valley HS, "Bayville Threatened By Bacteria In Water Supply" Catherine Hoar


Typography & Layout High School

First Place: Shoreham-Wading River HS, "Wildcat Pause" Emily Hollett, Liz Bland, Kendra Opatowsky
Second Place Tie: Bay Shore HS, "Maroon Echo" Mike Barone, Caitlin Knapp, Diane Picarrielo
Third Place: Miller Place HS, "KROB" Gabrielle Castellone, Kyle Reitan


Photograpy High School

First Place: Miller Place HS, "KROB," Kyle Reitan
Second Place: Westhampton Beach HS, "Hurricane Eye," Merisa Booth, Emily Vallone, Brittany Dankner, Shae Conti, Kierstan Barnish
Third Place: Hewlett HS, "Spectrum," Richard Liebowitz, Sam Dix, Jackie Rubel, Stephen Lee

Meaghan

We have been following the journey of our friends who are in China picking up their daughter. Michelle has been so great with sharing each day through her words and pictures. I copied a picture to show (hope you don't mind Michelle). If you haven't visited their blog you definately should. Meaghan and her forever family looook so happy. I love that they will have so much history and knowledge of their daughter's birth country.

On Monday we officially started the college search with Kyle. We visited Quinnipiac University, the first college that he is interested in. It is in Conneticut and is just a short drive from the Bridgeport ferry. I must say, I wanted to go to college there. It was an extremely beautiful campus. He wants to major in Journalism, and this school has a really reputable facility. I didn't bring my camera, but now I wish I had so I could have shown everyone how nice it is. Of course, it is just the beginning of his college search. I can't believe that he is going to college in another year. For those of you with 1990 babies, we were told that statistically this will be the largest graduating class in the US historically.... WOOWWWW more competition for those college slots.... It is a very involved, nerve racking, exciting time for all of us.... We of course will be very poor for the next 4 years...

SO we will have all parts of the spectrum to deal with... COllege, elementary school and then baby hood. Hopefully we will have our baby before Kyle gets married :)

MEAGHAN GRACE IS WITH HER FAMILY

Today my friend Michelle finally met her daughter Meaghan Grace in China. Click on her blog on the right under "Friends"- Meaghan Grace and you will see her pictures. Words can not express how I am feeling for this great family. I have been feeling sooooo emotional over this for Michelle and her family. I am so happy that I get to share in this time with Michelle... maybe it makes me feel that much closer to "Paige".

YOU MUST READ THIS WITH A BOX OF TISSUES

This is some story.... you will sob....


My First Lesson in Motherhood
By ELIZABETH FITZSIMONS
Published: May 13, 2007

E-mail: modernlove@nytimes.com
Despite the high heat and humidity, her caretakers had dressed her in two layers, and when I peeled back her sweaty clothes I found the worst diaper rash I’d ever seen, and a two-inch scar at the base of her spine cutting through the red bumps and peeling skin.

The next day, when the Chinese government would complete the adoption, also was Natalie’s first birthday. We had a party for her that night, attended by families we’d met and representatives of the adoption agency, and Natalie licked cake frosting from my finger. But we worried about a rattle in her chest, and there was the scar, so afterward my husband, Matt, asked our adoption agency to send the doctor.

We had other concerns, too. Natalie was thin and pale and couldn’t sit up or hold a bottle. She had only two teeth, barely any hair and wouldn’t smile. But I had anticipated such things. My sister and two brothers were adopted from Nicaragua, the boys as infants, and when they came home they were smelly, scabies-covered diarrhea machines who could barely hold their heads up. Yet those problems soon disappeared.

I believed Natalie would be fine, too. There was clearly a light on behind those big dark eyes. She rested her head against my chest in the baby carrier and would stare up at my face, her lips parting as she leaned back, as if she knew she was now safe.

She would be our first child. We had set our hearts on adopting a baby girl from China years before, when I was reporting a newspaper story about a local mayor’s return home with her new Chinese daughter. Adopting would come later, we thought. After I became pregnant.

But I didn’t become pregnant. And after two years of trying, I was tired of feeling hopeless, of trudging down this path not knowing how it would end. I did know, however, how adopting would end: with a baby.

So we’d go to China first and then try to have a biological child. We embarked on a process, lasting months, of preparing our application and opening our life to scrutiny until one day we had a picture of our daughter on our refrigerator. Fourteen months after deciding to adopt, we were in China.

And now we were in a hotel room with a Chinese doctor, an older man who spoke broken English. After listening to Natalie’s chest, he said she had bronchitis. Then he turned her over and looked at her scar.

Frowning, he asked for a cotton swab and soap. He coated an end in soap and probed her sphincter, which he then said was “loose.” He suspected she’d had a tumor removed and wondered aloud if she had spina bifida before finally saying that she would need to be seen at the hospital.

TWO taxis took us all there, and as we waited to hear news, I tried to think positive thoughts: of the room we had painted for Natalie in light yellow and the crib with Winnie the Pooh sheets. But my mind shifted when I saw one of the women from the agency in a heated exchange in Chinese with the doctors, then with someone on her cellphone. We pleaded with her for information.

“It’s not good,” she said.

A CT scan confirmed that there had been a tumor that someone, somewhere, had removed. It had been a sloppy job; nerves were damaged, and as Natalie grew her condition would worsen, eventually leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. Control over her bladder and bowels would go, too; this had already begun, as indicated by her loose sphincter. Yes, she had a form of spina bifida, as well as a cyst on her spine.

I looked at my husband in shock, waiting for him to tell me that I had misunderstood everything. But he only shook his head.

I held on to him and cried into his chest, angry that creating a family seemed so impossible for us, and that life had already been so difficult for Natalie.

Back at the hotel, we hounded the women from the agency: Why wasn’t this in her medical report? How could a scar that size not be noticed? It was two inches long, for God’s sake.

They shook their heads. Shrugged. Apologized.

And then they offered a way to make it better.

“In cases like these, we can make a rematch with another baby,” the one in charge said. The rest of the process would be expedited, and we would go home on schedule. We would simply leave with a different girl.

Months before, we had been presented with forms asking which disabilities would be acceptable in a prospective adoptee — what, in other words, did we think we could handle: H.I.V., hepatitis, blindness? We checked off a few mild problems that we knew could be swiftly corrected with proper medical care. As Matt had written on our application: “This will be our first child, and we feel we would need more experience to handle anything more serious.”

Now we faced surgeries, wheelchairs, colostomy bags. I envisioned our home in San Diego with ramps leading to the doors. I saw our lives as being utterly devoted to her care. How would we ever manage?

Yet how could we leave her? Had I given birth to a child with these conditions, I wouldn’t have left her in the hospital. Though a friend would later say, “Well, that’s different,” it wasn’t to me.

I pictured myself boarding the plane with some faceless replacement child and then explaining to friends and family that she wasn’t Natalie, that we had left Natalie in China because she was too damaged, that the deal had been a healthy baby and she wasn’t.

How would I face myself? How would I ever forget? I would always wonder what happened to Natalie.

I knew this was my test, my life’s worth distilled into a moment. I was shaking my head “No” before they finished explaining. We didn’t want another baby, I told them. We wanted our baby, the one sleeping right over there. “She’s our daughter,” I said. “We love her.”

Matt, who had been sitting on the bed, lifted his glasses, and, wiping the tears from his eyes, nodded in agreement.

Yet we had a long, fraught night ahead, wondering how we would possibly cope. I called my mother in tears and told her the news.

There was a long pause. “Oh, honey.”

I sobbed.

She waited until I’d caught my breath. “It would be O.K. if you came home without her.”

“Why are you saying that?”

“I just wanted to absolve you. What do you want to do?”

“I want to take my baby and get out of here,” I said.

“Good,” my mother said. “Then that’s what you should do.”

In the morning, bleary-eyed and aching, we decided we would be happy with our decision. And we did feel happy. We told ourselves that excellent medical care might mitigate some of her worst afflictions. It was the best we could hope for.

But within two days of returning to San Diego — before we had even been able to take her to the pediatrician — things took yet another alarming turn.

While eating dinner in her highchair, Natalie had a seizure — her head fell forward then snapped back, her eyes rolled and her legs and arms shot out ramrod straight. I pulled her from the highchair, handed her to Matt and called 911.

When the paramedics arrived, Natalie was alert and stable, but then she suffered a second seizure in the emergency room. We told the doctors what we had learned in China, and they ordered a CT scan of her brain.

Hours later, one of the emergency room doctors pulled up a chair and said gravely, “You must know something is wrong with her brain, right?”

We stared at her. Something was wrong with her brain, too, in addition to everything else?

“Well,” she told us, “Natalie’s brain is atrophic.”

I fished into my purse for a pen as she compared Natalie’s condition to Down syndrome, saying that a loving home can make all the difference. It was clear, she added, that we had that kind of home.

She left us, and I cradled Natalie, who was knocked out from seizure medicine. Her mouth was open, and I leaned down, breathing in her sweet breath that smelled like soy formula.

Would we ever be able to speak to each other? Would she tell me her secrets? Laugh with me?

Whatever the case, I would love her and she would know it. And that would have to be enough. I thanked God we hadn’t left her.

She was admitted to the hospital, where we spent a fitful night at her bedside. In the morning, the chief of neurosurgery came in. When we asked him for news, he said, “It’s easier if I show you.”

In the radiology department screening room, pointing at the CT scan, he told us the emergency room doctor had erred; Natalie’s brain wasn’t atrophic. She was weak and had fallen behind developmentally, but she had hand-eye coordination and had watched him intently as he examined her. He’d need an M.R.I. for a better diagnosis. We asked him to take images of Natalie’s spine, too.

He returned with more remarkable news. The M.R.I. ruled out the brain syndromes he was worried about. And nothing was wrong with Natalie’s spine. She did not have spina bifida. She would not become paralyzed. He couldn’t believe anyone could make such a diagnosis from the poor quality of the Chinese CT film. He conceded there probably had been a tumor, and that would need to be monitored, but she might be fine. The next year would tell.

There would be other scares, more seizures and much physical therapy to teach her to sit, crawl and walk. She took her first steps one day on the beach at 21 months, her belly full of fish tacos.

NOW she is nearly 3, with thick brown hair, gleaming teeth and twinkling eyes. She takes swimming lessons, goes to day care and insists on wearing flowered sandals to dance. I say to her, “Ohhhh, Natalie,” and she answers, “Ohhhh, Mama.” And I blink back happy tears.

Sometimes when I’m rocking her to sleep, I lean down and breathe in her breath, which now smells of bubble-gum toothpaste and the dinner I cooked for her while she sat in her highchair singing to the dog. And I am amazed that this little girl is mine.

It’s tempting to think that our decision was validated by the fact that everything turned out O.K. But for me that’s not the point. Our decision was right because she was our daughter and we loved her. We would not have chosen the burdens we anticipated, and in fact we declared upfront our inability to handle such burdens. But we are stronger than we thought.
Elizabeth Fitzsimons, who lives in San Diego, is a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Happy mother's Day to everyone!!! Enjoy the day, cherish your children past,present, and future.

This and that

I find this article extremely interesting because for our book club selection last month we read this book "CHINA DOLL". I was a little overwhelmed with the visuals the author's words provided in visualizing the babies in what she called the dieing rooms. I can only hope that our daughter will not be subjected to too much time in an institution before we go to get her.
Today was referral day for May. China referred 6 days worth of dossiers up to November 1 2005......Now I am hearing reports of waiting 3 years... I certainly hope not. The babies that I have seen so far for this month have been very young 6 -9 months...Hmmm I wonder if that means that there really arent that many babies left to adopt in China.. but then again, there are millions of people that live in that very large country... I don't know what to believe anymore......





Exploring 'Gendercide'
Novelist explores the tragic killing of girls in China
By Nadia Ghattas and Yvonne Marcotte
Epoch Times New York Staff May 01, 2007


(courtesy www.taliacarner.com)
Related Articles
- Sweeping Forced Abortions Used in Regime's Birth Control Enforcement Monday, April 23, 2007
- Preference For Sons Causing Global Shortage Of Women Friday, March 16, 2007
- Chinese Child Policy Increases Gender Imbalance, Study Shows Thursday, August 17, 2006
- Woman, Pregnant with Twins, Dies in Suspicious Hospital Fall Tuesday, July 04, 2006
- China Scraps Move To Criminalise Gender Abortion Monday, June 26, 2006
- China's Abysmal Human Rights Situation Worsening Sunday, April 23, 2006
The world is just beginning to understand the terrible reality of China's one child policy. The U.S. State Department's 2006 Report on Human Rights Practices in China shed light on the width and depth of the problem: "The male-female birth ratio for first births was 118.58 to 100 (compared with norms of between 103 and 107 to 100), and in some parts of the country, the ratio was even more skewed."

In his article "573,000 Orphans in China," Joshua Zhong reported on the miserable situation of abandoned children, despite the efforts of the Chinese Communist leadership's call to "create a more harmonious society."

Novelist Talia Carner recently responded to an Epoch Times email interview about researching her novel, China Doll and the tragedy of female infanticide in China. On her website, the writer states, "What I discovered was that in China there is gendercide defined by singling out baby girls for death vs infanticide which is gender neutral."

Epoch Times: How were you able to do research for your novel in a country controlled by a totalitarian regime?

Talia Carner: There were two parts to my research: during the writing of the novel and after its publication this past fall. My initial learning of China involved the landscape of the country and its people. My protagonist is a visitor to China, a celebrity on a concert tour who is first shown only what her handlers want her to see until she uncovers some ugly truths beneath the haunting beauty of this vast land.

I traveled in China and spoke with women—university professors, industry directors, aging peasants and budding entrepreneurs—about their customs and apprehensions, and I learned how, generation after generation, due to either lingering starvation, the social experiment of the cultural revolution, or the current sacrifice under the one-child policy, women have been losing their baby girls through coercion, prejudice, neglect—and outright murder.

This information was supplemented by videos of orphanages and credible reports from international bodies such as World Health Organization. Then, as my protagonist ends up on a collision course with both governments determined to silence her, I explored U.S.-Sino relationship by interviewing in the USA officers of the National Security Administration, State Department, CIA and Foreign Service.

I consulted maps and studied the fauna and flora and even watched Chinese films for the physical details I might have missed in my travels. I US-based Chinese writers introduced me to the Chinese syntax when speaking English and answered some of my questions.

The plot of China Doll is set in the year 2000. A novel does not presume to shed light on more than one slice of life at one point in time. As much as it attempts to give the real-world feeling, it is not an academic research documenting that world. However, once the novel was published, in my many speaking engagements I faced audiences eager to learn more.

I found myself searching for current, specific data regarding infanticide and child abandonment. Previously, in the process of creating material for my website, I had already posted original articles and photographs which had not been digitalized until then.

Now I searched for hard data from credible sources. Interestingly, while the Chinese government blocks access to information about its orphanages, population figures and sporadic budgets are nevertheless available, and some projections can be extrapolated from data published in China and elsewhere, such as Unicef and universities.

I hired Chinese-language researchers to read internet sources and news, and together we patched a grim picture according to which 1.7 million girls are "missing" in China each year. That is the information I presented recently at the U.N. Conference on the Status of Women. Some missing data left white space in which the questions are louder than the answers.

ET: When you spoke with ordinary Chinese citizens, what was their attitude toward raising female children?

TC: Very old women—mostly uneducated and not given to sophisticated tiptoeing around the truth—reported how the only form of birth control in their time had been killing the babies once they were born. They spoke of the worthlessness of females; often, they regarded killing their baby girls as acts of kindness by preventing the life of misery they knew was sure to come. The educated women I met at the 1995 women's conference in Beijing mostly parroted propaganda material.

However, Chinese who live in the West were eager to speak freely. Some discussed the changes in attitude toward females in urban areas. Others pointed out that the minority of women breaking the traditional mold were still the exception in a society that is mostly rural. Almost all acknowledged the singling out of baby girls for death was a known routine rarely discussed.

ET: This is obviously a terrible situation. Are there any good stories?

TC: The Chinese government is attempting to educate people about the value of raising girls. I've seen city-block posters promoting such sentiments. In recent years, some domestic adoption programs have been successful in encouraging parents of a growing boy to adopt an abandoned baby girl.


Author Talia Carner (courtesy www.taliacarner.com)But overall, the low value of females is not only generations-old, but is also deeply rooted in economic reality: boys, not girls, support their parents at an old age. To balance this real financial dependency on boys, the government must offer old-age benefits to parents of girls.

ET: You are probably aware of the value the present government places on stability. With the shortage of marriageable females, what do you see as the future for stability of China under the present communist regime?

TC: The vacuum created by the shortage of marriageable women attracts criminal activities. Rape, kidnapping, trafficking, sexual slavery and forced marriages are on the rise, and the long, porous borders with other countries increases the foreign trafficking into China. The captured trafficking from Vietnam alone doubled last year.

It is known that the criminal elements involved in such activities are often engaged in other criminal schemes, from drugs to illegal arms. It is for any government's best interest—communist or other—to curtail such danger to its order and security.

ET: What were some of your experiences while in China researching your book?

TC: The strangeness, the sense that nothing was as I had known anywhere else, followed me around like a bubble. The sights, sounds, smells and tastes made the minutes of life in China, and beneath them lay an assemblage of customs and mores entirely different from our Judeo-Christian values. Trying to take a non-judgmental approach to things that were different was a challenge, and one I did not manage to uphold when it came to infanticide.

ET: Why did you choose the fictional route to tell the very real story of female infanticide?

TC: I am a novelist, interested in the internal experience and the emotional landscape that parallel the physical settings. I set out to celebrate the bond between an adoptive parent and a child. On the surface, it seemed that I just stumbled into the tragic issue of infanticide, but in fact, I always latch onto the larger issues underpinning the story because I am fascinated by the forces that shape our lives—political upheavals, big governments, the legal system, or culture. They intrigue me with the infinite possibilities with which the human spirit can either be broken or rise above them.

ET: Was there any interference from the Chinese Communist Party?

TC: My website is banned in China, probably because of the many red-flag words that get filtered. Otherwise I have not experienced any direct threat. In fact, last October, my publisher exhibited "CHINA DOLL" at the book expo in Beijing without any adversity.

However, Western charity organizations operating in China or working for Chinese orphanages have, in most part, disassociated themselves from me for fear of being tagged by the Chinese Communist Party.

ET: Where else is this happening?

TC: India is the only other nation among all developing and industrial nations that show a clear skewed male-female ratio. However, there is a marked difference between the phenomenon of missing girls because India is a free country, and sex-selection abortions and gendercide mostly appear in the upper echelons of society.

In China, infanticide is mostly attributed to the government's policies and their executions, resulting in systematic gender-selected killing.

ET: What can individuals do about this situation?

TC: The upcoming 2008 Olympics in Beijing is a milestone opportunity to raise our collective indignation and to speak out about human rights in China. Many people and organizations are doing just that, but not when it comes to gendercide and infant abandonment.

Readers can educate themselves—there are many good links on my website for sources of information—and write letters to the editors requesting that local media cover these topics. In the coming year, as journalists will be traveling in China, they can poke around to penetrate the shield the CCP has erected around its orphanages.

Talia Carner's website, TaliaCarner.com, has further information about the plight of female children in Communist China. Her novel, China Doll, was published in October 2006 by Windsprint Press.