Introducing John Francis

After choosing Therese as our little girl, we planned get her home and then re-use our dossier to bring home a boy.  We got started on our homestudy, and got it approved for two children so we could get immigration approval for two, which would save time for the second adoption.  We talked about bringing home two at once, which has recently been allowed, but we thought we would only do it if we could find a little boy in the same province as Therese.  Adopting a child in a second province would add a week to the adoption trip.  Anyway, in the fall of 2011 I joined an email group of devoted parents and advocates for waiting children.  There are folders on the group with pictures of waiting children.  I was really charmed by the pictures of a little boy on his 3rd birthday, and the stories about his joyful and loving personality.  Here are the first pictures I saw of Fu Cheng Cheng:

He was almost the same age as Thomas, which would be another out of birth order adoption, which along with adopting two, was not normally allowed by our homestudy agency.  And he was in a different province, so I would be committing myself to a three week adoption trip away from my babies at home.  And at the time he was on another agency's list, so he wasn't available to us.   I never had any idea that he would be the little boy we prayed about.  Here is another picture, from the Eagle's Wings foster home blog--since he was 9 months old he has lived there getting great care and nutrition, and developing his charming personality:

Who could resist this face?

Eventually his file was returned to the shared list, so any agency could match him.  After hearing about him for months, I asked Bryan about us adopting him, even though I would have to make a longer adoption trip.  We had to get special permission from a committee at our homestudy agency, after submitting a written request and getting letters from our placing agency.  Since adding him to our adoption would break several of their rules, adopting two non siblings, out of birth order, and virtual twinning, we thought it would not be approved.  It was one of those things where you ask God to open the door if this is what your family is supposed to do.  It seemed a miracle, but we were approved and submitted our LOI for him.

Here is a picture of him from last month:

We talked a lot about what English name to give him.  All our kids have saint names, so it had to be a saint or Bible name.  Eventually we chose John.  It seemed appropriate for a little boy who has been so loved, to be named after the Beloved Disciple, and it was somewhat similar to the sound of his Chinese name and easy to say.  Francis de Sales is the patron saint Bryan chose many years ago, and a great saint and spiritual writer.  Francis was on our list of must use names for future children.  We just didn't know that it would be given to a little guy from China!

A week ago, he was given the family photo book we sent, and told that he has a family coming.  They sent us this picture.  Note that we put a picture of him and of Therese on the last page of the book, and you can just see his picture in the opening of the book in his hand.  He looks like he is pretty happy with the news.

We are so grateful to the wonderful people who founded and work at Eagle's Wings.  What a difference they have made in the lives of orphans!  John Francis has been able to run and play, and he is a healthy size and developmentally on track.  He is used to American and Australian volunteers coming to help at Eagle's Wings, so I hope that my very un-Chinese appearance will not be strange to him.  Being told ahead of time about his future family and getting to see photos of us and our house and neighborhood will hopefully help a lot with his transition.  You can see some more photos and videos of him here.

Introducing Therese Marie

When we first started the paperwork for this adoption, in August 2011, I signed up to view the photolisting of waiting children on our agency's website.  There were rows and rows of little faces, with brief biographical information and a list of each child's special needs.  This was very difficult, because we have never adopted a waiting child.  I was very worried as I looked at so many precious little faces.  How would I know which child was ours?   One little girl's picture jumped out at me.  I can't explain the feeling any better way than to say that she looked familiar, on some deep level.  I looked at her age and list of needs, and I kept looking.  I didn't think I could give her what she needed.  Every time I logged on, I would stop and look at her picture, and think to myself, "if only my kids were a little older, so I could adopt her."  I eventually got her file from our agency.  I was torn between a deep desire to have her as my daughter, and fear that I couldn't handle being her mom.  Here is the first picture I saw:

In her file, we got this picture:

Isn't she precious?  You can see her little bent feet.  I knew her name would be Therese, because this picture reminded me so much of a picture of St. Therese, the Little Flower.  It took a week or so for us to pray on it, but we decided to take the leap of faith and adopt this little girl.  No matter if she can catch up with other children her age, she can be loved in a family.

In November we got an updated photo.  I can't calculate how much time I spent staring at this photo, trying to see how she was doing, trying to look into her pictured eyes to see if her little spirit was all right.  I spent a lot of time when I should have been sleeping, praying for her.  I worried so much about this little girl.  She was almost 4 years old and was barely 19 pounds.  Her height put her in the 2T clothing size range, just barely, but her weight was in the 6-12 month category.

In May of this year, we were able to get some updated photos of her, and she had some hair and had gained quite a bit of weight.  It was such a relief!  I almost didn't recognize her, with hair and plumper.

Her Chinese name is Lan Shi Wu, which means, "I am an orchid," or "an orchid am I."  She lives in far northwest China, on the Yellow River.   The province is not one that does very many adoptions, so it will be an interesting experience to visit there next month.  I am preparing myself for a traumatic few days when we first meet her.  The orphanage does not tell the children ahead of time that they are going to be adopted.  She has probably never seen an American before in her life, and will just be handed off to a strange blonde woman who will be trying really hard not to cry too much and scare her even more.  I can't wait to give her pretty clothes and hairbows and let her know how much she is loved.

Really awful toys

I think we should have a rule that if you want to design products for kids, you should be currently raising some, or involved in caring for them on a very regular basis.  I say this because I recently bought some bathtub crayons, thinking they would be so much fun for the kids.  They were fun for the kids, but the fun didn't stay in the bathtub.  There was abstract art decorating the fronts and backs of several of the white doors in the house.  The marks from these washable bathtub crayons don't come off white woodwork, as we have found out the hard way.  The cleanup in the bathroom hasn't been easy either.  I've spent a good part of an afternoon with a grout brush and Comet, trying to get the mess cleaned up.  When I naively purchased these crayons, I thought what a nice educational activity it would be, to practice writing letters in the bathtub.  What my kids did, in addition to some fairly good penmanship, was to outline each tile on the wall.  Yes, all the grout within reach of kids (and I suspect someone stood on the side of the tub, to increase their range) is stained with several bright colors.  With a lot of elbow grease and the trusty grout brush I finally got most of it cleaned up. 

There are some other things in the toy section that I really wonder about.  There are these little bouncy balls, with pictures or tiny figures stuck inside, that I think are called squeenkies, or something like that.  I'm not sure what the point of them is, because they are very small and most kids would get tired of bouncing them around and trying to catch them fairly quickly.  Probably it is one of those devilish toys where the point is that parents buy them, as many different ones as possible, and the kids just collect them.  All I can think of is that they are the perfect size to block a windpipe.  When we pass these potentially deadly devices in the toy section, I try to distract my kids.  "Hey, was that a bird flying over us?"  I will not allow those things in my house.   And don't even get me started on legos, which I firmly believe reproduce themselves.  I find tiny ones everywhere.  Or else I step on one.  Since I wear shoes, it doesn't hurt me, but there is this distinctive cracking sound.    The kids look at me like I am a horrible person, breaking the toys of innocent little kids.  These are the same toys that they have been told should not be left laying around on the floor.  The most dangerous toy to step on is a tinkertoy.  It doesn't matter if you have shoes on or not.  You step on one of those little things and you are suddenly on the rolling log game from hell.  You can't win against a tinkertoy, especially if you couldn't see what you were stepping on because you were carrying an overloaded laundry basket.  If my grandparents come to visit, I have to confiscate them.  They are hard to see and elderly people with replacement hips certainly don't need to have to try to dodge them.  But, they are very fun and educational for the kids.  I never knew this before becoming a mom.  I had no idea that buying an educational toy could end up with me falling flat on the ceramic tiles.  I guess educaiion is important enough to make sacrifices for.

Existential Symbolism of the Opening Ceremonies

I stayed up past my bedtime last night watching the opening ceremonies.  This post isn't really adoption related, unless you count the fact that I'm adopting from China, and we watched the Chinese Olympic team march in.  And my two Guatlings love to see the Guatemalan team.  Apparently NBC hasn't gotten the memo that there are many children in the US who were born in Guatemala, and they cut to a commercial break when the Guatemalan team marched in.  The boys were very disappointed.  When they came back from the break, the announcers did say something like, "While you were in the bathroom, we also had the Guatemalan team," or something like that.  Anyway, I think the motto of the British opening ceremonies was, "We can't compete with the Beijing Olympics, so let's not even try."  I guess I could look on the bright side, that I learned a lot about British history from the performance.  Long ago, there was a big tree on a grassy hill, and people popped out of it.  There were peasants and they loved the grass and danced around the maypole.  Then the Industrial Revolution came, and everyone spent a lot of time hammering and drumming and most people had really dirty faces.  The air was very dirty and they were too busy drumming to wash their faces.  After that comes rap and the Beatles, and the Queen parachuting from a helicopter with James Bond.  They left that part out when I was in college and took English History Since 1688.

The part that really got my attention, the sense of saying to myself, "Huh?  What?," was that part where a bunch of nurses and doctors danced in pushing kids on hospital beds.  I've watched a lot of opening ceremonies, and that is a first!  No kidding, the theme was British children's literature, and national healthcare.  The announcers, straining to make some sense of it, observed that the author of Peter Pan donated his royalties to a children's hospital.  I can't even imagine what you would have to be smoking to put those two things together.  Part of my college career, I had a second major in English literature.  Professors of literature really like creative interpretations of literature, but I would LOVE to see the reaction of one of them if I had written a paper along those lines.  So, these kids were all in hospital beds, although they all looked quite healthy, and they were all reading storybooks.   Then there are all sorts of scary things and Cruella de Ville and the announcers helpfully said that this the stuff of children's dreams and nightmares.  Most kids would be scared enough about being wheeled around in a hospital bed, especially if it was by some really nutty looking nurses who dance around a lot.  My kids were watching last night and they wanted to know, when the beds came wheeling in, "What are they doing to those kids?" After the monsters came a whole formation of Mary Poppins look alikes, who chased out the bad guys and then they made the kids go to bed.

The best part of the night was the performance by Mr. Bean.  I guess it shows what kind of a performance it was, when the best part was a man making funny faces.  Mr. Bean is very funny and a great British export.  Although almost anything could be more entertaining than a dance routine celebrating socialized medicine.  I guess you save a lot on healthcare costs if you have such fit doctors and nurses.  I think they should have put Mr. Bean in charge of the whole thing. 

We're Going to China--We Feel So Happy!

My kids sing this song from Kai-Lan all the time.  Today we were all singing it, because we got confirmation that we have our consulate appointment on September 5th.  We will meet Therese first, on 8/19, and then on 8/27 we will get John Francis.  I spent the whole afternoon on the phone and computer trying to get airline tickets sorted out.  I hope we will get all finalized tomorrow.  I need to start packing!  My pile of stuff I think I might take to China is so big, I think I'm going to have to cut it down by half. 

Two words----

TRAVEL APPROVAL!!!!!!

I just found out via email that we have TA.  The end of this very long adoption journey is in sight!  We are very happy and thankful today.