Doing the LOA Snoopy Dance!

Yes my friends, yesterday we received our coveted LOA. For those of you (maybe 2 or 3 people) who aren't in the crazy world of adoption but still read my blog, the LOA is a ridiculous document that asks (and I'm completely paraphrasing here), "Do you really want to adopt this child that you have searched for, prayed for, and spent enormous amounts of time and energy to bring home?" I don't know the actual figures but I'm guessing that very few adoptive parents get their LOA (after months or even years of working towards this child) and decide "No, this was all a huge mistake. We don't know what we were thinking! Take us off your mailing list."

Just for kicks, I looked up how long it took us to get our LOA's for Kai and Ash. Take a look at our lightning speed:

Kai: 66 days in 2007

Ash: 75 days in 2009

Molly Kate: 38 days in 2011 (insert me jumping for joy here)

Maybe the CCAA has now learned that the Olivet's are a super-cool nice family and don't feel the need to scrutinize our dossier quite as much as they once did (or maybe they've just hired a few more people and the process is a little quicker these days, who knows?) My guess is that we'll travel to meet sweet Molly Kate in early August but we still have a ton of hoops to jump through before that time. Wish us luck that our next important document, the I-800, comes quickly. I can't wait to hold my little girl!

What Do You Want To Be Called?

As I was completing a mass of kindergarten registration materials today, this conversation ensued:

Me: Ash, your kindergarten wants to know what you want to be called next year. Do you want me to tell them Ash or Asher?

Ash: Just Ash or Asher?

Me: Yes, why?

Ash: Because I really want to be called... Harry Potter.

Asian Excellence?

Deep down I know good and well that there is nothing about the Asian brain that makes those kiddos smarter than their Caucasian, Hispanic, or African-American counterparts (I'm using those races because they're represented in my kid's schools). However, I received an email a few days ago from JD's middle school that made me question that belief. The email was bragging on the math team who recently came in first place at a large tournament. Then they listed the individual award winners for the school.

Their last names were:

Pan Liu Prattipati

Li Qiu He

Xu Bansal Dong

Wei Cho Ching

Zhang Farrakh Huang

Jiang Huang

I know, not all of the names are Asian, but you gotta agree that an overwhelming majority of the names sound Chinese. What are we doing wrong people? Why do American kids seem so "average" compared to their Asian (and Indian) schoolmates? Do you think it's the Tiger Mom mentality? I've watched a few of Amy Chua's interviews and I was honestly not that impressed with her. Can't we teach our kids to excel without removing them from all social interaction (ie. sports, parties, outside friendships.) I've talked to JD about this and he confided in me that his math class at school is referred to as "Asian math" (JD is in the gifted program and takes the highest level math available.) JD promised me that even the Asians call the class "Asian math" and that no one seems offended by it. I will however, promise you that the nicknames for the other math classes are offensive and therefore, will not be mentioned on my blog.

I'm probably opening a can of worms here but this has really peaked my interest. What do you think? Leave a comment and let's figure this out together...