Trial Run

While we are in China, Kim E. will be receiving an e-mail from us which she will post on this blog. So, thank you, Kim, for your willingness to do this for us! This post and Easter photo are our trial run. The picture is Chris' family. All three sets of Grandpa and Grandma's children are expecting this year! So far we know two are girls!

Another Family Took a Picture!

I belong to an e-mail group of families who've adopted from Chloe's orphanage, so I quickly found one from Josie's orphanage as well. These groups do much to fill in the gaps of what is known about those first months or years our children were waiting to be placed in their families. I was happy to have one mother volunteer to take pictures when she visited the orphanage during her adoption process. Around 20 of us sent her our baby's name and date of birth. This is the picture her husband took of Josie. We think she looks sad and it makes us want to get her in our arms as quickly as possible. This mom said the babies were quite overwhelmed to have someone rush into their room and want them to pose for a camera; several were crying in their photos.

Tickets: Check.

Yeah!!! We have purchased our tickets! It is so good to have that part done. We will be flying out of a near-by city on May 3rd, early in the morning. We will arrive in Beijing at 3 pm on May 4th. We have just a tiny three-hour layover in Chicago. Yeah! Then we will leave China via Hong Kong (which is much closer to our final destination than Beijing would be) at 1pm on 5/18 and arrive back at our near-by city at 10pm the same day. I don't expect anyone will want to be there to welcome us at that hour! But we'll just have a couple more hours to get home. Amazing, huh? Who would have thought you could travel 1/2 way around the world in just 9 hours? Okay, so a 13 hour time change does make a difference. We'll actually be travelling with Josie for around 25 hours, depending on when we leave Guanghzou.

We "met" another family through the CCAI waiting child listserve and they are traveling from Chicago to Beijing and then Hong Kong to Chicago with us! They will be one of the four families in our group traveling to Nanjing to adopt a waiting child. One more month!

Time to Book Tickets!

CCAI called this morning. We are to be in Beijing no later than May 5th and will leave China with Josie An on May 18th! Our consulate appointment (on which the whole schedule hangs) is on the 16th. We will stay in Beijing a couple of days to recover from jet lag and get used to the 13 hour time difference. Then our group of four families, all adopting from the waiting child program, will fly to Nanjing where we will meet our children! Today or tomorrow we need to book our flights! I have e-mailed a travel agent who works with adopting families and am hoping to be able to use her. The travel agencies CCAI recommends are usually over-priced. Our other option is to call the airline directly. It is a bit tricky since we have two over and three on the way home. Also, it would be better for us to arrive in Beijing and leave via Hong Kong! Please pray for wisdom for me as I ask questions and decide what to do. Please also pray for good rates. Thank you!

We have Travel Approval!!!!!!!!!!

CCAI called us today while Chris was home for lunch! We are so excited. Normally, we'd travel in two weeks, but we'll be delayed an additional three weeks (due to a two week trade fair and a week off for China's government). So we will be traveling in May instead of April. This will allow us to get some more homeschooling weeks underway and possibly allow us to get better airfare (we hope!).

I am anxious about all the details (booking flights, flight insurance, hotels, packing). If anyone can find any "Dawn Wash N' Toss" dish clothes, please get them; I'll pay you back! Wow, we are going to China!!!!!

Minor updates because I can't write "TA!!!"

(TA is travel approval and that's what we are waiting on! Meantime, we are checking on travel insurance, packing lists, and the best way to buy flights on short notice!)

Updated prayer requests are at the bottom of the page; just scroll down!

We were saddened last week when we received a statement from our insurance denying payment on our immunizations. It seems the County Health Department is not a network provider so insurance did not have to pay. I know, I should have checked first. When we called the health dept. I told them our insurance coverage was supposed to be the same as whatever would be covered by BC/BS, so they thought it was 100% coverage. But I didn't think about county health departments not being network providers.

As I was finding this out over the phone this am with the insurance rep., she told me immunizations to travel to a foreign land wouldn't have been covered anyway, even in network. Surprised, I said, "But it's for an adoption; we could be exposed to those diseases by her, so even if she were escorted home, we'd need the immunizations!" Immediately the demeanor of this lady changed and she put me on hold. When she came back on, she said she would re-process the charges as if they were in-network! Yeah!! Then she asked some questions about Josie. The typhoid fever won't be covered, but the Hep A and MMR updates will be!

On another happy note, my sis brought up the bunk beds she found so I have those to re-finish. And we are 3/4 of the way done with the paperwork for our two grant applications. I think we have a shot at one of them, the other is iffy since they take 60-90 days to process and don't help post-adoption. Josie will probably be home before the board would make their decision. And they want to know what we've attempted for fund raisers. Um. Nothing. They also wanted to know if we are in a small group currently at church. Um. No. Oh, I so wanted to say, "It's just a one semester reprive!" Then they wanted contact info for our senior pastor. Um. vacant. But we have two awesome associate pastors! We'll see what God does.

Feast or Crumbs?

Often friends and family let us know how sad they are that we didn't have biological children or they try to be very sensitive when telling us their good news of expecting a child. I have not struggled with feeling sorrow or anger in being infertile. Before we were married, Chris and I planned to adopt. So being entrusted to raise our children has never felt like "plan B." Still, I know other couples really do struggle with why God gives children to mothers who abort them. I belong to an e-mail list serve and one woman shared her grief after a friend announced her pregnancy. Others rallied to her support on the list and she wrote back the following note, quoting her favorite response. I want to share it because I believe the author quoted expresses my heart so well!

"Dear, sweet friends -- I will never be able to thank those of you enough who responded to my sad little e-mail about my girlfriend's pregnancy. It's good to know that I am not alone in my sadness! The BEST response I got...one that will truly get me through this long wait...was:

'...when I asked God for an older, special needs child from China, I was begging for the crumbs at a feast where everyone else was getting their fill. But now that I have my son here, I see that God was refusing to give me the crumbs because he was saving the best seat at the banquet for me. [Name removed] is the son I was always meant to have. I am sooooo thankful for just how perfectly he fits into our lives and hearts. The truth is there are no "crumbs" at God's banquet, only perfect matches that He makes in His infinite wisdom. Children perfect for the families He has chosen for them. Your place at the banquet is being prepared. I know it's hard, but hold on to the thought that He is making it Perfect for you.'

"I think I will always struggle when I hear about people getting pregnant. And it will probably tear at my heart that [name removed] will never look like us or be told things like, "You have your mom's eyes" or "You look JUST like your dad"...things our bio daughter hears every day and DETESTS!! I'll have to take comfort in the hopes that maybe she will get [my] offbeat sense of humor or [my husband's] love of cooking!"

Josie's Reports

Here is a glimpse of the daughter we already love (from her Nanjing Social Welfare Institute reports):

*She has 16 teeth!
*In November she weighed 10.6 kg (probably including several layers of clothes) and was 82 cm tall.
*She was sitting at 6 months, but only in her crib.
*She eats eggs every morning.
*At around nine months, when her hands touched for the first time, she "laughed out loud."
*"When she is having fun, she makes "da da" noises and saliva dribbles out of the corners of her mouth."
*Her "personality is open, lively, and extroverted."
*"She loves sweet food."
*She lives on the Rainbow floor. (Perfect for a rainbow family.)
*She sleeps "soundly and well"! (8:30 pm to 6 am and then naps from after breakfast to 8:30 and noon to 1:30.
*Her favorite person is her Half the Sky (see link) grandmother.
*She has a good appetite.
*Favorite activity: playing outside.
*Favorite toy: toys that move when she presses them.
*She imitates words (a local dialect of Mandarin).
*She is active, fond of playing with toys, has a ready smile, gets along well with others, and is fond of reading picture books. She is "obstinate sometimes."
*Her update says "They love that her personality, she is very docile."

China, Here We Come!

Nanjing is in Jiangsu Province which in in pink (includes Shanghai) on the east coast. We will spend one week there. The other week we will spend in Guangdong Province where the US Embassy is located. We will later decide whether to fly into Beijing (north), or Hong Kong (south), but if we go in a group, we may not have a choice!

Mail Call

It's in the mail, trust me, I have tracking numbers going for the USPS and Fed Ex! Our confirmation letter was "over-nighted" on Monday and as of Wednesday noon, still has not arrived. It has been to Nashville though! But it may work out well. Our other package left the Chinese Consulate in Chicago today, so maybe it will get here tomorrow and all the little papers can go their merry way back to Colorado Thursday or Friday! We'll see which company better delivers (pun intended). Meantime we had four documents notarized yesterday and have another one to do today. Yeah, Lori! She is always so willing for us to interrupt her day with these notarizations.

Her Name

When we received the referral, we were told her name, Cao (surname) An Hong. Cao, we were told is one of the 100 traditional surnames in China and Nanjing Social Welfare Institute gave this surname to all the children who entered their orphanage in 2005. We were told it is pronounced "TS" but the way they said it did not sound like that to me. I'm still working on figuring out how to pronounce it. They also said it had no translation since it was not the "chosen" name to which the Chinese people give much thought. Since then I have read it can mean "people of the same kind."

An means "peaceful" and this was chosen by her caregivers soon after her arrival at Nanjing's SWI. At that time, since An would have been in much pain from her nerve injury, the nannies were probably hoping she would experience peace! In her report from the SWI they said "she cried nonstop" and that "we hope her life will be peaceful." Hong means "red" according to our agency, but I've also noted it can mean "rainbow."

In chosing her name, we knew right away we wanted to keep the "An." We have kept part of the original name of each of our children. But we had a more difficult time with the first name. We'd long thought of "Katie." Then came "Lucy," "Sarah," and "Sophie." When Aunt Janice thought we should name her "Pizza," Chloe retorted, "she's our baby; we get to name her!" But we think we have decided on Josie. Our baby name book told us it derived from "Joseph" and we immediately thought of Joseph, from Genesis, who was sold into slavery, taken against his will to another land, falsely accused, imprisoned, forgotten, and yet he held tenaciously to God's promise for his life. He later said to his forgiven brothers, "What men intended for evil, God intended for good." What an inspiration for our daughter as she faces the injustices of her own life! Joseph means "God will increase" and a friend has told me Josie relates to increasing in wisdom.

We're in the Match Room!

Okay, I know this is a bit confusing since we already have our match. But it is still wonderful news, let me explain briefly. Before we were just a file, a reviewed file, but just a file, sitting among thousands of files in a storage room. Now, in the match room, they have taken our file and put it with Josie's file. Here's the important part, as soon as we sign our acceptance letter (which is flying to us as I type) and return it to China, they will move our joined files into the TRAVEL ROOM! Once in the travel room, they will wait for our documents which are being authenticated by the Chinese Consulate in Chicago. Once they have those, they can issue our travel approval. After we receive travel approval, our agency makes our appointments and we fly in 2-4 weeks (depending on if we hit the no-travel zone of the trade fair). So, please pray our authenticated documents hit the post office tomorrow, arrive by Wednesday and are sent to China by Chloe's birthday! I have a tracking number on that return envelope. Any guesses how many times I check it tomorrow? They received it on the 7th and say it takes 4 business days to process. If this goes very, very well, we could travel and return by mid April! If not, it will be May. Either way is a month plus better than our previous best-case scenerio! If we do get to go in April, we will get to be there with our friends, the Hoods! Okay, can't get my hopes up like that...

Tomorrow we'll try to squeeze in school between our many new documents that need to be notarized and our visa applications! Little did I know when I planned this week's unit on birds I'd feel like it was "for the birds"!

Our Family

From Grams

March 7, 2007

Dearest An,

Today is your birthday! You don't know it yet but you are being adopted into a family that already loves you very much! I am so happy for you and for us that I get tears in my eyes just thinking about you! I can hardly wait to hold you and tell you in person that I love you. Your daddy's family and your mommie's family are eagerly waiting your arrival. I know Chloe and Michael are ready to be your sister and brother. We have waited for you for a long time. You will be brought up in a home that loves Jesus and will teach you about Him. I and others have been praying for you for a long time. We have prayed that you would be in good health and that God would watch over you while you are in China, on your flight [home] and all of your life. So Happy Birthday, An. Welcome to our family. We love you very much. Grams

Attachment Issues

The following is a little story about hope, adoption, and the ability to learn to love.

I am About to Cry

By Christina S.

I am an adoptive mother of a beautiful 8-year old girl. My daughter had bounced around in 5 different foster homes before she was 5 years old. Some of the professionals expressed concerns that she may not be able to fully attach to us given all the moves and trauma she experienced. However, we found that over time, with patience, love, and consistency, she learned to trust us more and definitely learn to attach to us. We saw this especially after she experienced adoption milestones (e.g. at 18 months when she had lived with us longer than she had lived with any other family).

Well, one morning, I surprised her with a little gift. I framed a large postcard she liked that had a picture of a cute dog (the one that the Post Office has on their "pets" stamps) and set it out for her to see when she came down for breakfast. She was so overwhelmed by this small gesture of love - I think she was moved that I really paid attention to what is important to her - that she covered her face with her hands and kept repeating quietly, "I don't believe it… I don't believe it." She then sat down and wrote me this poem:

"The time has come
It has opened my heart
Sweet of all I love
Rose mine
I am about to cry
I love you."

Written by Sharonda S., age 7 to her mom.

She writes "I am about to cry." I have the same reaction every time I read this poem. I hope that other adoptive parents of older children will feel encouraged by this poem, to know that children can heal, and that they are definitely key in helping their children to heal.