Our Red Thread Journey

Giving Thanks

2006-11-23T08:15:00.000-05:00

Well, it’s been a while since I last posted. As I alluded to in a post back in August I will most likely not update this blog, that is unless blogger implements some of their privacy features in their new version and release it for the masses. In which case I will update infrequently. I am reclaiming our privacy and do not relish the idea of sharing pictures of our daughter out of safety considerations.

Now with that being said this will be the last photo I publish of her since we’ve returned until I can password protect pictures in Blogger.

Words cannot describe the joy Jen and I have in our hearts over having this beautiful little girl in our lives. We are humbled and feel unworthy to be graced with her. She is a constant source of happiness and wonderment for us. Indeed, when everyone was saying the waiting anxiety will wash away once you get your little one, they weren’t kidding. And the waiting was more then worth it. I would have waited another year or two or more to have this little one in our lives.

Teresa’s progress since we came home has been tremendous. We had a developmental needs assessment done on her and she did not qualify for the program as she is progressing normally for her age. She is now picking up food and feeding herself, she holds her bottle now, and will take baby food via a baby spoon. She did none of these when we were in China and shortly after our return. She loves music and will dance to her little music tunes. It’s very cute. She is also just beginning to learn how to walk.

The most important thing is that she sleeps through the night and we no longer have to sleep in her room. She will sleep 11-12 hours in her pac-n-play. After Thanksgiving we’ll move her into her crib. We also use the Fisher Price Aquarium swing to rock her to sleep, which works like magic and was instrumental in allowing us to migrate her back to the pac-n-play and us out of her room. It’s expensive but worth every red cent. We also bought a video monitor system and have it hooked up to our TV in our room to keep an eye on her without disturbing her sleep. It works great and again another worthwhile investment.

As for her special needs classification we did get confirmation from her cardiologist that she has a heart defect called pulmonary stenosis. It is a constricting of her pulmonary valve. It is not life threatening but will need to be monitored every 6 months as she grows. It is hoped that the valve will widen as she grows and no surgery will be required. However, in extreme situations open heart surgery or catheterization is required. We hope it will not come to that. Fortunately she is active and healthy otherwise.

So Happy Thanksgiving everyone and thanks for following our red thread journey!

Impressions of China

2006-09-30T11:09:00.000-04:00

Well it's been a fast two weeks since we've come home. A lot has happened but I'll save that for a later post. Teresa is doing great and we are all adjusting to a routine and sleep schedule. However, as promised I want to leave you all with my impressions of China looking back now, after our very brief visit:

1. The people we dealt with were terrific, our guides were phenomenal and any service personnel we encountered at all the hotels were very courteous and helpful. The service we received was first rate and the hotels we staid in were first rate and equal to if not better then any in the U.S.

2. Squatty potties, at least for me, were not that bad. The caveats are: bring purell hand cleaner and plenty of tissues/travel toilet paper while you’re touring. I did not see any western toilets at the Great Wall, although the facilities were clean and for the most part everywhere we went the restrooms were reasonably clean and some had attendants all the time. There did seem to be plenty of western toilets everywhere we went and at least the handicapped stalls were western, so use those in a pinch.

3. If you have never been to China then the first thing that will strike you other then the insane traffic, is the absolute crush of humanity consisting of one race, one people. Even though our guides liked to stress the fact China has some 50 plus minority populations, these minorities will not stand out like in the U.S. First 90 plus percent of China is Han Chinese so the odds of seeing these minorities are slim unless you travel to their home regions. There is probably very little commingling of peoples. Now, I fully understand that within China, people can easily tell the differences; however to Western eyes you will not see the diversity like you do here in the states. It was an amazing thing to witness and enjoy.

4. As an American, you will be stared at a lot, and, if you are overweight, you will probably be snickered at, either to your face or behind your back. Plus some folks will take pictures of you. The fact is we did not see any, and I mean any, obese Chinese in the three cities we traveled to. I did see one tall and heavy set Chinese man at the White Swan but that was absolutely it.

5. The thing that blew me away, especially in Nanchang and Guangzhou was the large number of tiny, and I mean tiny ladies. I am only 5’5” and consider myself to be very short; however I towered over some of these gals. It made me feel better about Teresa’s weight, since she is very tiny as well, but healthy and well-proportioned for her size. Odds are she too will be small growing up, unless her new American diet adds a few inches, heehee.

6. Hard to say this, but we did not see a patch of blue sky in the three cities we visited throughout our entire trip. Even when we flew from city to city, looking out the window, you could not see clearly to the ground. I hope this is not entirely because of the pollution; however I strongly suspect it to be the cause or certainly it compounds the problem during the summer months in China as the weather turns muggy and hot throughout the country. Picture LA on a bad day and that is what we encountered almost everywhere. Although it was overcast all the time in Guangzhou, it was amazingly cool and very pleasant with some rain. We really lucked out there.

7. Beijing is one giant construction site. They are busting a move to get ready for the Olympics. It’s pretty amazing to see. They are adding a giant new airport terminal which you can see when you land or take off. It is sorely needed as the existing terminal is way over burdened with traffic. The Guangzhou airport is gorgeous and modern and parts are still under construction.

8. Speaking of airports the courtesy carts to haul your luggage are a godsend. They are free and can be found next to the luggage carousels at all the airports or where you are dropped off to depart.

9. I honestly wish we had just focused on touring one or two sites more extensively then we did in Beijing. We barely scratched the surface and everything felt so rushed. That being said our journey was not to just tour but to meet our daughter. There is no doubt in my mind that I want to return to China hopefully with my family when she is older to really soak in the wonderful historical sites.

10. Shamian Island and the White Swan are terrific, however, all the adoption oriented stores were a little annoying to me and do not sell high quality merchandise so be careful about those so-called “good deals”. Some exceptions to this are the gal that does these amazing finger paintings with the side of her hand and little finger. Truly beautiful art for an amazing price. You can watch her do her artwork there next to the 7 Eleven. The other exception are the stone etchings these little shop girls do. You can give them a photo and they will have these stone etchings done of the photo within a couple of days, very nice gifts for family.

11. Bring cash only and do not fool with traveler’s checks. Exchange services are super easy at the hotels, plus I found out by using my ATM debit card at one of the White Swan’s ATMs that you can avoid any of the transaction fees they charge at the exchange desk. Be sure to notify your credit card and bank ahead of time about your travel and use of your credit cards.

12. By all means make sure you have crispy, totally unmarked U.S. dollars. It really helped that I spent 45 minutes at my bank ahead of time with our cash to make sure each one was practically perfect. They will scrutinize your dollars and will not exchange marked, torn, or wrinkled dollars.

13. Try to take advantage of the tours and trips your guides will arrange. We really enjoyed our village trip it was probably the closest we got to a slice of real life in China as the majority of the population still lives in the countryside. The trip to the Buddhist temple was very cool and was indeed a pond of tranquility in the middle of the bustling city of Guangzhou.

Well that’s about it for now. I’ve heard some rumblings about posting some new pictures. When I get some more time to upload them I’ll do that. For now, cheers!

Finally Home!

2006-09-17T09:49:00.000-04:00

Yes, we've been home the last 2 days but I haven't posted for the obvious reason that this jet-lag is unbelievable. We knew ahead of time that going over the jet lag is easier, but coming back it's a real drag and now we can vouch for this. I'll recap our arrival home.

Our flight leaving Chicago was delayed by one hour so we were very concerned that we would miss our connecting flight in Atlanta. When we landed in Atlanta I noticed our jet going near our connecting flight's departing gate and prayed out loud for our plane to turn left and park at the nearest gate to our connecting flight's departure gate. We were supposed to park at Terminal A and then we'd have to run to Terminal B to catch our flight. Well the good Lord heared us and our plane suddenly turned left and sure enough, parked at Terminal B near our connecting flight's gate. The flight attendant made the announcement then that our arrival gate had changed. It was unbelievable!

We easily made our connecting flight and got home safe and sound, however our luggage did not, but they delivered it the next day. We were met at the airport by some friends of ours and it was wonderful. It was a very nice homecoming and on top of that my brother, niece and nephew had decorated our house with some signs when we came home.

Our first night home was really rough. Teresa was tired but did not want to go to sleep in a strange new place. She cried off and on all night and we were up and down all night with her. Her schedule and ours are totally shot. On top of that we think she has an ear infection. Baby tylenol really helped. We've got our pediatrician appointment Monday morning and we'll get that checked out ASAP.

Saturday morning was spent picking up our little dog, Ceasar from the boarding resort and our cat Mary from the vets. Teresa already met our other cat, Sarah because we kept her home while my brother looked in on her. The homecoming went well when Teresa met all the critters. She was initially unsure of them but since today she has really warmed up to them and they have responded surprisingly well also. Although Ceasar is still mad at us for sending him to the kennel for two weeks.

Last night went much better, and we are starting to get more into a normal sleep pattern although we still have a ways to go before we get into a normal sleep pattern.

I want to thank everyone who followed us on our journey and for all your kind and wonderful comments. It has been an amazing experience and will continue to be so with our beautiful little girl. If I continue posting it will be very infrequent. I do want to post about my impressions of China during our brief visit, but for now we need to get our rest and recover.

Our newest U.S. Citizen

2006-09-14T22:09:00.000-04:00

Finally made it to Chicago and passed through immigration. So now it's official, Teresa is a U.S. Citizen. I'm making this extra short cause we have major jet lag. Flight from Beijing went great, except for one major screaming episode as I had to change her leaky diaper in the only bathroom on the plane with a changing table. Teresa was not happy and let everyone on the plane know about it. Ah, parenthood, ain't it great! So now we're chilling out with Julie and Jeff and enjoying their hospitality. Teresa is having a ball with her Uncle Jeff and Aunt Julie, especially crawlin around their monstrous basement.

We're on track to make it home tomorrow so we look forward to seeing all our friends and family and especially our bed!

We made it back to Beijing! (i.e. we got Teresa's U.S. Visa)

2006-09-13T08:08:00.000-04:00

Quick post, no pics, our local agency in our state was able to fax over to the U.S. Consulate last night an addendum saying we can handle a child with a minor special need (like a heart murmur). This morning our guide went and picked up our U.S. Visa for Teresa and gave it to us as we were boarding the bus on the way to the airport. Hooray! Now we are staying overnight in Beijing before flying home, yippee! We have a 13 hour flight ahead of us to Chicago tomorrow so we are on schedule and on track. Boy, we are so ready to get home! Take care and the next time I'll post will be stateside!

Goodbye to Guangzhou (we hope)!

2006-09-12T10:16:00.000-04:00

Well we will either be leaving tomorrow morning for Beijing or Jen, I and Teresa will set up some kind of ladybug shop here on Shamian Island and live the remainder of our lives here. All kidding aside, it seems the pinheaded U.S. Consulate bureaucrats want our agency to fax them an addendum to our homestudy indicating we can parent a special needs kid. All this because of that dang medical exam from last Saturday and the notation of a heart murmur that is physiological in nature (i.e. not life threatening). We went to the consulate only to leave empty handed with no travel visa and we are due to fly out tomorrow morning. Even when our group's pediatrician was trying to assure consulate staff that Teresa does not need to be classified as a special needs child they still insisted. So basically tonight our agency has to fax over the addendum to the consulate and our guide will have to run across Guangzhou (NOT easy by any means) back to the consulate to pick up the visa (hopefully) and run to meet us at the airport. Oh, did I mention that we don't even have Teresa's Chinese passport for her to fly domestically? Nope, the stinkin U.S. consulate still has that until they release her travel visa. Needless to say we are furious but too darn tired to fuss much about it.

Oh, I forgot to mention we did the red couch thing today. Anyhow, here are some photos. Through all this Teresa has been awesome. This little girl is amazing. I will probably not blog from Beijing as we are there for only one night and then we fly back to the states (hopefully). So, I will keep you all in suspense as to whether we make it back in time or not. I will post from Chicago if we make it.

(These are the 3 girls in our group from the same orphanage, from Left to Right, Teresa, Danielle, and Kailin.)

Another fun filled day, (hmmm, can we go home now?)

2006-09-11T09:48:00.000-04:00

Well this is really boot camp parenting. Traveling around the world to meet your daughter and then traveling with your daughter from hotel to hotel and making havoc with their schedules. I think most of us are anxious now to get home. Teresa continues to be awesome and thrill to parent.

The morning was spent vegging out in our rooms until 11:00am. If our guide did not call us then the coast was clear with the U.S. Consulate and our U.S. paperwork from the I-600 party and the medical exam. We used the time wisely and introduced Teresa to Spongebob Squarepants.

At 12:30pm we had a pizza party with pizza, soda, and beer! provided by our wonderful guide Candy. We held it on the 11th floor in the White Swan. It was excellent pizza. After the pizza party Jen and I put Teresa down for a nap and then after she got up we did some more last minute shopping.

At around 5:45pm we gathered to go do the Pearl River dinner boat cruise. It was very nice and it was very cool seeing the lights of Guangzhou from the river. Some of the neon signs are amazing, like the ones where there is basically video being played on the entire side of a high rise. We then came back to crash in our rooms once again exhausted.

Tomorrow we go for the swearing in ceremony at the U.S. Consulate and the red couch photo op.

As a special treat I am posting some photos of Michelle and Kailin (hope I'm spelling that right) for her friends and family to see.

Temple blessings

2006-09-10T09:31:00.000-04:00

Today we went to a beautiful Buddhist temple to receive a blessing for the babies. It really was an area of tranquility in the midst of the City of Guangzhou. The most gutwrenching part, however, was seeing some of the beggers outside the temple who had missing limbs and/or hideous injuries of some fashion or another, very sad. For lunch we ate at a local restaurant and had dumplings which were extremely good. Our afternoon was a nice and lazy one. Teresa had a nice long nap and so did Mommy and Daddy. After our naps we went down to the Mattel playroom at the White Swan and had some fun. It is really nice and well equipped for the kids to have fun in. We met another couple from our group who are adopting a special needs girl, Gloria. She is adorable and has malformed digits on both her hands but is in great shape. For dinner a group of us went back to Lucy's to have some more American style food. I had the grilled ham and cheese with french fries and boy was it good. After dinner we went to an ice cream place next to the White Swan and we had ice cream cones which was a nice change. All in all it was a nice laid back day. We still cannot believe that we are parents to this wonderful little girl. She has truly been wonderful to be with and take care of and we feel unbelievably blessed.

Medical Exam Accomplished

2006-09-09T09:41:00.000-04:00

OK finally got through with the medical exam nonsense. Jen got a little scared when the one nurse kept listening to Teresa's heart. She finally said it was a heart murmur and to have our doctor look at it when we get home. I have no problem with that so long as they give us the medical green light to get her home with us. The worst part was that Teresa wet herself while the medical technician was examining her and she got her dress wet, poor thing. We had unfortunately forgot to pack an extra outfit in her diaper bag but did have a sweater for her to wear. She was not happy with that technician.

The medical exam process was chaotic noisy and a general mess. I can't take it too seriously and consider it a necessary evil to get the U.S. visa paperwork started. Later after lunch we paid our U.S. visa fees and had our guide double check our U.S. documents from the I-600 party.

In the afternoon we shopped at Jennifer's place and a couple other stores. The whole area is crammed with adoption stores and such with everyone promising the best price. It's a bit of a racket but we fell into it. I did pick up a free stroller to borrow while we stay here after I dropped off my laundry to be done right across from the hotel. I have to admit that Shamian Island is nothing like I pictured it to be. It is very pretty, and much more pedestrian friendly, plus without the absolute crush of humanity that we experienced in Beijing and Nanchang. The people are amazing and very friendly wherever we go. I have to say the breakfast buffet at the White Swan is awesome. And to answer Johnny's question about the beds here, yes, they are as hard as rocks. You may as well sleep on a concrete floor. Luckily there are comforters galore you can use to act as a pillow top. The White Swan itself is shockingly beautiful, especially the pool area and fountain are in the center. Plus the stunning oriental pieces for sale. It's like being in a museum of fine art.

We finally ended the night with dinner at Lucy's Bar & Grill which was an extremely nice change of cuisine for us. It was our first dinner alone with just the three of us and we had a ball. I'm going to sign-off for now and just leave you with some pictures from the past 2 days.

Quick Update

2006-09-08T18:51:00.000-04:00

I'll probably do a double post today one this morning and one tonight. No photos yet as I just setup the laptop at the White Swan and haven't downloaded them. We went yesterday (Friday the 8th) to pick up Teresa's Chinese Passport (it is Saturday morning on the 9th as I'm posting this). Later in the morning we had what is called the I-600 party. This is where you all meet in a conference room or somewhere at the hotel and have your guide hold your hand filling out the Brown Envelope paperwork we received from the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou. It takes about a couple of hours depending on how large your group is.

We packed up and checked out in the afternoon and then flew to Guangzhou late yesterday afternoon. It was only an hour flight and yet, China Eastern still served an outstanding dinner. Talk about service. Teresa did fantastic. She has yet to rear an ugly head and was a complete sweetheart throughout the whole trip. She played and laughed and carried on. We gave her two bottles one going up in the air and the other going down to help with the air pressure in her ears. She fell asleep on the bus trip to the White Swan. The Guangzhou airport terminal is massive and modern, much larger then Beijing's terminal, although they are building a massive one for the upcoming Olympics. You can definitely tell where the money is in China. It's in the South and in these New Economic Zones down here who experienced the first taste of Capitalism.

The White Swan is, well, stunning, it is definitely a luxury hotel of the first rate. We have a large room with a king size bed and a very nice sitting area. Internet is great although you have to pay for it separately. It's like $35.00 for a week which is cheap compared to the states.

After we checked into the White Swan we went with one of the guides to have Teresa's Photo taken, I believe for the Medical Exam which we will do this morning at 10:00am. I'll be sure to post pictures tonight of the past two days.

Countryside tour

2006-09-07T03:14:00.000-04:00

Today our provincial guide, Jenny took us to the countryside to get a feel of the possible environment our daughters came from. On the bus ride out there she gave us the lowdown on the one child policy. She also told us why we were not being allowed to visit the orphanages our daughters came from. The people we bumped into at the village were kind and gracious enough to allow us to take photos and intrude on their lives. The grandmother pictured with Teresa is 72 years old and has 6 sons and 2 daughters along with 10 grandchildren. The sons have built 3 houses for all the family and appear to be prospering. The stories she could tell.

I took the chicken shots for you Julie along with dinner lying on the kitchen floor waiting to be plucked. I also got a great shot of Jen and Teresa in the rice fields surrounding the village.

In the afternoon, Jen and I took Teresa to the 11th floor playroom area and she had a ball crawling all around. Every day Teresa shows us more and more of her personality and we love it. Today she downed about 5 bottles of formula which we are mixing 1/2 and 1/2 with Chinese and U.S. formula. The playtex liner based bottle system we brought is working out great and we are using the fast flow nipples with no problems whatsoever, but every kid is different. Teresa doesn't eat much solid food and does not feed herself. Other babies in our group at the same age are feeding themselves so we can tell Teresa was spoiled a bit by her foster mom. This whole thing has truly been amazing and we feel so unworthy to receive such a beautiful child.

Tomorrow we finalize the paperwork here in Jiangxi and will fly out to Guangzhou to stay at the White Swan for the remainder of our trip except the night before flying out of Beijing. I may not get to post tomorrow because we are due into Guangzhou late but we'll see.

Nanchang Wal-Mart Day

2006-09-06T02:28:00.000-04:00

This morning our guide took our group to the Nanchang Wal-Mart. The first floor is pretty much a little mini-mall crammed with dozens of small stores and a KFC. The second and third floors are the Wal-Mart portions. We purchased some diapers and some clothes we hope will fit Teresa. Jen went bonkers and almost bought the whole store out, (just kidding), but she did buy some stuff for herself naturally.

I should mention that last night our guide arranged for a tailor to come to the hotel to measure authentic outfits for the girls and ladies. Our guide also provided us the opportunity to purchase chops for Teresa and a calligraphy scroll for our daughters as well. The dresses should be here before we leave Nanchang and the chops and scroll will be in Beijing for us before we leave for the states next week.

We weighed Teresa today and if our hotel scale is accurate she is 13.2 pounds at 11 months! She is healthy and in proportion for her tiny size, so we don't think there is anything wrong and that she is just one heckuva peanut! In walking and driving around Nanchang it is apparent that being ultra petite is not unusual. Teresa is beginning to come out of her shell and wow is it great! This parenting thing is a hoot! She slept extremely well last night from about 7:30pm to 7:00am. When I got her up this morning I could tell she was straining and sure enough, she had her first BM with us! After a change of diapers she was one happy little girl and was a total sweetheart all day. The cutest thing was having her fall asleep in the combi baby carrier Jen was wearing at Wal-Mart. She's so tiny that we don't think we need to purchase a stroller and the Combi baby carrier worked great. We put her down for a nap after lunch today. She fusses and cries but eventually falls asleep. The most heartbreaking thing she does when she's crying is she'll cry out "mama" before falling asleep. It is clear her foster mom really babied her and cared for her. Here is a terrific night shot I took of her sleeping in her crib.

On a more serious note we've had one of our travel mates fall seriously ill and who may have to head back to the states. He may have some kind of bacterial infection that's been exacerbated with all the running around we've done the last few days. He was feeling ill before coming. One thing I should caution any parents who travels to China in the Summer. It is hot, humid, congested, with lots of pollution. Drink tremendous amounts of bottled water while you're here and do not partake of any of the tours if you're feeling the least bit ill. We've had an intense schedule these past few days and even the healthy of us is beginning to feel run down. By the grace of God, Jen and I have done remarkably well. Everyone in our group is pitching in to help John and Carol. Say a few prayers for them.

Tomorrow we are to visit a rural visit to get a feel of the environment where our daughters may have come from.

Officially her parents today!

2006-09-05T02:13:00.000-04:00

We are now officially Teresa's parents as of today, in the eyes of the Chinese government. We all trouped back over to the Nanchang Civil Affairs Office and finalized some of the Chinese paperwork, paid our fees, and received a very nice gift from one of the officials, we also exchanged gifts to two officials. Speaking of the gift thing, for waiting parents, don't sweat it too much. It's not as big a deal as it seems. Also another word of wisdom to all you parents out there waiting to travel for your babies, listen to your guides and do as they say. Our guides have been stellar and I cannot say enough about their patience, courtesy, and understanding dealing with all these uptight Americans.

As for China itself, having read other blogs before traveling here ourselves, I can say none of them do China justice and nor can I. It is stunning and amazing to behold and witness. It overwhelms your senses. An analogy I've been using with how people drive around here is like witnessing a choreagraphed tai chi demostration with every vehicle you can possibly imagine. Pure chaos but with the most extreme fluidity and grace about it that you will stand there dumbfounded witnessing this spectacle. Everywhere we've been the people have been gracious and courteous. I've been to major cities like Chicago and the downtown empties out after hours and on weekends, but not so in Beijing and now Nanchang. I think the population density of Nanchang is vastly greater then Beijing. There are hundreds of apartment highrises in various conditions above little mom and pop type shops at street level selling anything imaginable. It is just as busy in the evenings and weekends as during business hours. There front porch is on the sidewalk and they are all out and about enjoying themselves in whatever fashion.

As I write this Teresa is in bed. She fought it for a while but finally gave in. I also learned a dirty little secret. Girls can shoot you while your changing their diaper! So watch out future fathers of daughters! We had to give her a bath because she made a mess, which she was not too happy to have.

We had a Pizza Hut pizza party this evening and it was great! Very good pizza and it tasted just like home. Tomorrow we will go to that great Chinese iconic symbol, Wal Mart! It's in downtown Nanchang and next to the August revolution plaza. Kind of ironic, I think.

METCHA DAY!!

2006-09-04T08:21:00.000-04:00

Forgive me if I'm not to verbose in this post. I am one tired puppy. As I write this Jen is sleeping sound asleep with Teresa, who is also one tired puppy. The day began with us anxiously preparing to go over to the Civil Affairs Office in downtown Nanchang. Our bus was a little late but we got there all right. There was one group of families from another agency ahead of us when we got to the 27th floor and we got to witness their receiving on the babies. Complete chaos, lots of crying and happy parents.

After they left our group went first. The parents in our group with babies from the Fenyi Orphanage got their babies first. The three couples in our little mini group had to wait as our babies had not arrived. We waited about 1/2 hour and then boom! they walked in and I got these great first shots of Teresa. We shortly received our girls and did not have one peep out of our little peanut (in spite of how the photo looks). And boy is she little, at 11 months she really is only wearing 3-6 month clothes. Our 6-9 month clothes are too big! However our diapers are perfect for her but we will need to buy some more. Honestly having to wait for our babies after the others received theres calmed me down so I may look a little relaxed in the photos which is not how I was earlier before going to the Civil Affairs Office. Everything pretty much went efficiently. Gifts were exchanged and we got a photo with the orphanage director. Since we already had our update report from China Babies.com we did not ask many questions.

The one thing you'll readily notice is she has a very bad bump on her forehead and the side of her nose is scrapped up. She apparently fell while trying to walk. We have an ID picture of her taken earlier when she got it and was a real nasty bump. Also, she has a runny nose, so hopefully we can take care of that soon. We went back to the hotel freshened up and then had lunch together and that is where we finally got our first smile from Teresa. She looks adorable!

Anyhow, I'm fading fast so I need to upload these photos and crash while she and Jennifer are still sleeping.

2nd Day in Beijing

2006-09-03T16:17:00.000-04:00

Well, it's 4:12am Monday morning in Nanchang and I cannot sleep a wink. Let me recap our 2nd day in Beijing. Basically the day was a whirlwind and we were flat out exhausted by the time we got on our flight to Nanchang. We began the day with a tour of Tiananmen Square and then the Forbidden City. Words really cannot do justice to our very brief experience there. The thing that has struck so far in two days in China, especially in Beijing and now in Nanchang is how overwhelming the cities are. Cities like downtown Chicago go realitively quiet after business hours and on the weekends. Not so in Beijing or Nanchang. Thousands upon thousands of people live their lives in the downtown areas. Vast apartment complexes, hutongs, mom & pop like shops are right next to the Forbidden City. It's just stunning to witness and observe. Also the extremes of human life can be seen all around you and can overwhelm you.

Tiananmen Square is stunningingly huge and since it was a Sunday was very crowded with people visiting. The Forbidden City was equally enourmous. Unfortunately most of the major structures were covered in scaffolding for reconstruction in preparation of the Olympics but we were still able to see a lot in a very short time frame.

After we finished the tour we hurried to catch the bus. We waited beside the outskirts of one of the hutongs next to the Forbidden City and I took a shot of these people playing cards on the sidewalk. Also, everything they say about the driving and traffic is 100% true, amazing and stunning to witness, as well as scary.

We caught a Chinese lunch at a very nice restaurant before we headed out to the airport. I should mention that the night after visiting the Great Wall, some travelmates went exploring down the WangFuJing Blvd. which is a major shopping center for Beijing and they described what they saw down a side street. A complete menagerie of anything and everything available to eat.

We flew China Eastern down to Nanchang. Very different experience then flying in the U.S. Frankly it was like going back in time when there were in-flight meals, even on a 2 hour flight and really nice service even in the economy section.

We got to the Jin Feng hotel which is beautiful and has stellar internet connection. The battle plan for today is the following: we have to do some minor paperwork and money business before 11:00am. At 10:40am we will head to the Civil Affairs Office and meet the babies at 11:00am and exchange gifts. We will head back to the hotel, do lunch, and then one of us (guess who) will remain to fill out additional paperwork in the afternoon. Later in the afternoon all 3 of us will head back to the Civil Affairs Office and finalize some of the paperwork.

Probably will not post anything until this Monday evening so that will be Monday morning for those you in North America. It's still hard to believe we're actually here. It all seems very surreal.

1st Day in Beijing

2006-09-02T09:09:00.000-04:00

Well today's schedule called for a trip to the Pearl Market where one of the staff gave us a presentation on how pearls are cultured and had someone in our group pick out an oyster to be opened and it contained about 20 pearls where each couple picked one out for themselves. Jen went into power shopping mode after that and bought plenty of goodies for herself, Teresa and others. She didn't waste any time.

After the Pearl Market we went to the Summer Palace. Yes, the photos show the incredible haze that was everywhere. It was very warm and humid but not really overbearing. The Summer Palace was beautiful. Our guide, Candy, gave us a very good tour and then we took one of the dragon boats across the lake back to the exit. We then had a buffet lunch at a nearby restaurant and then proceeded to the Great Wall.

What can I say the Great Wall was amazing. All along Jen and I were saying we cannot believe we are halfway around the world about to receive one the most amazing gifts of our lives let alone touring some of these amazing historical sites. It all seems so surreal.

The weather at the Great Wall was much cooler but still humid and very hazy. No, we did not hike up to the first tower you see off at the distance. We wanted to take our time and really enjoy the surrounding sites because our tours were very limited on time and did not afford us much opportunity to explore for a great length of time. Which is fine because touring is not our main objective here.

We finished the day out by going to another restaurant in Beijing, having brief meeting about what to expect the next couple of days and then eating some Peking Duck! Very delicious and yes, they did not have the head still on the duck when they were carving it.

Tomorrow we go to a silk market, tour the Forbidden City and then fly to Nanchang. We supposedly are not going to receive the girls until Monday because we are to receive them at the Civil Affairs Office and they are closed on Weekends. I'm actually OK with that because it gives us time to settle in at that hotel and get prepared for Metcha Day on Monday! Needless to say I probably will not be able to post until tomorrow night if our hotel has a good internet connection in Nanchang. So until then have a good night if your on Beijing time or a good day if you're on U.S. time!

We made it to Beijing!

2006-09-01T05:21:00.000-04:00

As the message says we are safe and sound in Beijing with a great view of the Forbidden City from our hotel room. Pretty cool. The flight was long and cramped and took us up through Canada next to Hudson's Bay then near the north pole and down through Siberia, Mongolia and then into China. Going through customs and finding our luggage was hectic but it turned out all right. We were too busy listening to our guide to enjoy the ride from the airport to the hotel. She was giving us the lowdown on what to expect the next few days and where we will be sightseeing. Also what to expect when we fly out to Nanchang this Sunday. I think we also have one of the hutongs next to our hotel. These are the old alley homes near the forbidden city slowly being removed as new apartment buildings are built. We did see a tremendous amount of construction going on everywhere we turned. Anyhow, going to sign off for now and get ready for dinner.

Phew, made it Chicago

2006-08-30T18:20:00.000-04:00

Ok, if any of you waiting parents have to book connecting flights to catch your international flight to China learn one thing and learn it well, travel one day in advance to the city where your international flight departs from!

Thank God we did just that. Our flight was delayed from our home town by 45 minutes because Atlanta was fogged in. When we got to Atlanta, we barely made our connecting flight to Chicago. This was only because our connecting flight was delayed by 15 minutes. We made the connection but our precious luggage did not. Thankfully, because we were traveling a day in advance, we simply waited for the next flight to come in from Atlanta which had our luggage on it. So it ended well, but can you imagine if your luggage did not make your international flight connection all because of a lousy 45 minute delay!?

So now we're just chillin out now at La Casa de Julie & Jeff, enjoying some stunning Illinois weather (72 beautiful degrees!). Their house is huge and beautiful and nestled in the corn fields of Northern Illinois. Tomorrow we will hit the road early and get back to airport to catch our flight to Beijing, so our next post will probably be either from the airport or Beijing. Hasta la vista!

Obligatory luggage shot

2006-08-30T04:51:00.000-04:00

Ok, we're heading out the door and here is the obligatory luggage shot. I can't believe we crammed all that stuff into these bags. I'm sure we've violated the weight limit of 44 lbs. but what the hey, we'll pay the luggage fine. We have two pieces we'll check in and two carry on pieces each.

Not sure where my next post will be so stay tuned.

One day until lift off!

2006-08-29T07:59:00.000-04:00

We will be taking off tomorrow morning! In honor of the short time I'll treat you all to some cute photos of our little dog being embarrassed by his parents and not having a clue what's going on. We decided to have him test drive Teresa's stroller and walker.

We'd also like to give major congratulations to Mary-Mia and Rod on their referral of TWINS! They're beautiful and can you imagine packing for twins! Go check it out at Do They Have Salsa in China?

One week before metcha day!

2006-08-27T15:29:00.000-04:00

One week from today we should meet Teresa! Hard to believe. We did some last minute shopping today and will now clean the house and start packing our own stuff. We've got Teresa's stuff pretty much packed already.

Woohoo! We're off from work!

2006-08-25T18:29:00.000-04:00

Today marked our last days of work until we become a family of three. Jen will take a few months off and then tag team with me and I'll take a couple more months off. The both of us are off of work for our journey to meet Teresa and then I'll go back to work a week after we're back. In one week we'll be in China, Woohoo! THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY!!

Happy Birthday to my beautiful bride!

2006-08-23T19:38:00.000-04:00

Just want to give a birthday shoutout to my beautiful bride. A week from this Sunday she will receive the best gift of her life.

2 more weeks to go...

2006-08-20T20:19:00.000-04:00

until we meet Teresa for the first time. Hard to believe it but we're finally down to our final two weeks. We spent the day organizing all of the stuff we have to bring for Teresa, grouping like items and putting them into zip loc bags and going through the checklist. The realization that we're going to be parents for the first time is starting to set in and it's a little nerve-wracking. But, something tells me we'll be just fine. I just pray we have no more terrorist scares between now and then causing any disruptions or worse, delays.

Tonight's blog brought to you by...

2006-08-18T20:00:00.000-04:00

Since Johnny over at Down To This blog likes his whines (er, wines) I thought I'd treat you with the following: Tonight's blog post is brought to you by La Fin Du Monde. This means the "End of the World" in Francais. It is an outstanding beer, brewed in Quebec and it has a wonderful kick (i.e. 9% alcohol per bottle compared to U.S. averages of 3% per bottle). It's a really smooth beer with a wonderful taste and has become a fav of both Jen and I.

So, what's been happening this past week. Well, our Pediatrician totally rocks! With no quibbling whatsoever he mailed us our prescriptions for Teresa and letters for both our employers so that we can charge family sick leave when we meet Teresa because of all the potential bonding and health issues related to international adoption. We have also received our vocabulary travel cards from China Connection.com. These little gems are great and we can carry them around our neck to reference quickly. What's really great is that they have the phrases spelled phonetically so you can actually say them. I don't much care for the phrase books that try to use some form of Pinyin to show you how to pronounce Mandarin. Just spell it phonetically to make it easier for us to immediately say the phrase or words. I also confirmed with our airline that the seats we have do not have power ports for my laptop so I had to buy an extra battery, bleh. And finally I let the cat out of the bag at my work that Jen and I are adopting. I kept it quiet except for a select few because I didn't want to be bothered with all the pestering questions until we actually had our travel dates set. Now we do and folks have been very cool.

Anyhow, that's it for now, so go grab yourself a nice La Fin Du Monde and enjoy your evening!

All shopped out...

2006-08-13T22:05:00.000-04:00

Ok, I think we've purchased everything we need for this trip and then some. We spent the better part of today purchasing some last items. Foremost of them were dried, pitted prunes. We had some friends tell us they're great for helping the little one's BM's if they are constipated. Anyhow, I think we are flat out disgusted with shopping for anything else. This past year has been practically spent on doing nothing but shopping. Since we're down to our final two weeks we'll start to practice pack and make sure we don't violate the 44lb. weight limit. By the way, don't get too worked up about that because if anyone in your travel group violates the weight limit they just fine you or the group you're traveling with which I've heard doesn't amount to a whole lot. Oh, I will mention that I bought some cool nylon travel shorts/pants from REI.com and also some of the nylon based, uh, underwear. The point is, these items will be super easy to hand wash and then air dry in a few hours, thus reducing the amount of clothes I need to bring for myself and making it easy to wash items myself. Of course, laundry service is cheap and bountiful in China, so that will be available as well, but I figure if I need clothes I'll buy them there.

Thank you Julie & Jeff!

2006-08-10T06:01:00.000-04:00

Just want to give a blog shout out to Julie and Jeff, my SIL and her husband! We will be traveling a day early to Chicago, to compensate for any potential flight delays and foul ups before catching our international flight to Beijing. As a result we will stay overnight at their place. When we come back we will do the opposite as our flight from Beijing will be arriving late in the afternoon into Chicago and we will not be able to get back home that evening. Aunt Julie and Uncle Jeff will be the first in her family to see little Teresa Lingzhen! Making our flight arrangements has been extremely stressful as our international agency is using a travel agency operated by a very nice lady but who speaks english very poorly and as a result you must have the patience of job. In spite of a letter I had sent them detailing our travel arrangement desires, I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon over the phone trying to finalize the flights. I finally got through to her that we will make our own domestic USA flight arrangements if she will just book the roundtrip flight to and from Beijing. In spite of the costs, if we ever do this in the future, we will make our own flight arrangements to China, as this stress was not necessary, given all the other stressful things we have to do between now and the time we leave. For you first timers out there make darn sure you know how your agency is making travel arrangements for you and get to know their travel agent early to gauge your comfort level in dealing with them. Ideally, if you do not feel comfortable with the travel agency being used find out the international flights that most of your group will be traveling on then book it yourselves. It may cost you more money but at least you have more control. The other weird thing we had to do on our own was when booking our domestic USA return flight home we had to find out about infant accomodations. It felt surreal. Ugh, the stress meter is already kicking in. I've got to get a final list together!

Post Travel Meeting

2006-08-08T19:49:00.000-04:00

Well here we are post travel meeting with our international agency. We flew up to attend this meeting and I am writing this post after Jennifer and I went and had a few beers at a pub next to our hotel we staid at. We decided to celebrate ourselves and enjoy the moment as best we could. We bought a couple rounds of Killians and toasted not only our last 3 weekends before we travel but also a few toasts to our favorite brewery, Coors, which by the way, is where Killians is brewed. Oh, and we also threw in a few more toasts to our favorite state, Colorado and dreamed up schemes to make sure Teresa ends up going to the Colorado School of Mines. Which is located in Golden, Colorado and home to the Coors brewery, which has a terrific brewery tour that ends at the Coors pub with 3 FREE 10 ounce drinks of freshly brewed Coors products. Jen’s favorite is freshly brewed blue moon and I’ll try pretty much anything. (I will be glad to accept payments from Coors for all the free advertising, heehee.)

It was a good meeting and we got to meet our very large group. Our travel dates are finally settled and we will be leaving for Beijing on August 31^st and return on September 14^th. Our metcha date should be roughly September 4^th. It was a good opportunity to grip and grin with our travel compadres. The great news is that we will be traveling with a pediatrician and a nurse! We’ve got a very large group and after Beijing will be split up into smaller ones. A couple of good suggestions we got out of the meeting. One, ladies, wear some kind of sparkly necklace on your metcha date and two, wear orthopedic socks on the long flight over to China to help prevent possible blood clots. Another good tip is to not pack too many baby clothes as there is more than enough shopping for these items (and others) while you’re in China. Also, don’t sweat the gift bag stuff, it really is not that big of a deal yet we Americans get really wrapped up about it because it is very unusual for us to have to do this. Also, put your name on a label for the back of your passport to help your in country guides sort through them when they are needed and put a label on your luggage when the hotel staff pick up your groups luggage and have to sort through the luggage to have it waiting for you when you get into your room.

Anyhow, still a lot to do in the next three weeks so we’d better bust a move.

WOW! Our little Bao Bao!

2006-08-05T09:18:00.000-04:00

Well, our little girl is quite the little peanut! We finally got our status update report from China-Babies.com and we are ecstatic! It's like receiving our referral all over again but better! As I alluded to in my previous post, it was up to us and our fellow orphanage networking buddies on Yahoo to find out about this wonderful service. I wanted to wait until we got our report before I felt safe mentioning anything about the service. Now I feel comfortable highly recommending them. They operate mainly out of the Jiangxi area but are expanding into other provinces. This is a fantastic service allowing post-referral a-parents to get an up-to-date report on your child, independent of any agency or government entity.

Because of this we have found, contrary to our referral information, that Teresa has been in foster care since her first month! She is doing great, is very healthy, appears to be loved, and has a little roomate, playmate Ling Wu Ling. She is also very small and we've estimated around the 6-9 month clothing range at 10 months old on the U.S. growth charts and is even small by the China growth charts. She weighs only 15.4 lbs. She has 6 teeth already and cannot feed herself, but loves bananas and fruit, along with congee, rice cereal, steamed eggs and milk based formula. The brand of formula her foster mom uses is San Lu. We even received the Chinese characters for it so we can shop for it when we get there. She likes her bottle warm. She receives a daily bath during the summer in a little plastic bathing basin. They call her "Bao Bao" which she understands and is described as "very active, out-going, and full of energy." She likes playing with chidren and also enjoys playing with any kind of toys. She is a described as a happy child and enjoys life. Although, based on her photos she is definitely suspicious of the stranger taking pictures of her :-)

We got some wonderful pictures along with our report as you can see. We are very glad she has been in foster care and also saddened because it will be hard for her to separate from her foster mom. We are attempting to get their address so we can maintain contact with them. I am really glad we did not send a care package now to the orphanage as it would definitely have never gotten to her.

As a result, the previous photo taken of the little one in the walker which we posted a few weeks back is not her. These photos are most definitely her and match very well with her referral photos. This is truly amazing information and if you have already come back from China they do offer a research service to find out more about your child's past. Oh, we also received the name of the individual who found Teresa at the county social welfare institute! She was not found with a birth note and was wearing white clothing. The report also mentions that she is most likely of Han Chinese descent.

We are more in love with her then ever before and now have more photos to stare and gawk at until we meet her!

Let's talk about agencies...

2006-08-03T21:39:00.000-04:00

First I want to give a special thanks to Johnny for shining some light on this issue for me. I had pulled a rant blog from the other day because I got a little nervous my agencies might read it. I have a little paranoia streak in me so I tend to play it a little too safe sometimes on this blog. Now I've mustered up the courage to plow ahead.

I do not want readers to take this as some rant from a post referral, nut job daddy to be, who is getting stressed out. (Note: while this may be true, this is not where I am coming from in this post, ;-). I think it important to share a little of our experiences for those of you starting off for the first time into the wild world of adoption.

We have two agencies we are dealing with, one a local, state licensed agency and the other an out-of-state international adoption agency. Each share many similarities in how they do business based on our experience. We honestly came into this whole thing a little blind and our state agency came recommended to us and we had heard good things about them. Generally speaking each agency has so far performed what we contracted with them to do, nothing more, nothing less. Our state agency Social Worker did have the good fortune of having a good connection with U.S. Immigration and this helped tremendously in getting our paperwork through that process quickly. So from this aspect we honestly cannot complain. I was relieved to read that others have similar experiences with their agencies so this appears to be fairly common.

However, where I begin to see differences is when you start looking at the little extras that help adoptive parents endure the wait, share experiences, network, learn, and just plain deal with the stresses surrounding adoption, especially for those who have to endure a prolonged referral wait. You have some agencies like ours that play it ultra-conservatively safe with any information and I’ve read there are other agencies that are little more open with information sharing, such as referral waits, TA’s, etc. So you sometimes feel like a raft floating without paddles in an ocean.

I guess what I’m getting at is that when you enter into this process for the first time you are pretty ignorant about any resources available and as the previous letter from LWB, which I posted, pointed out, it is surprising the number of adoptive parents who get all the way to receiving their child only to have some issue arise because of their misunderstanding, lack of knowledge, etc. I think a lot of agencies, including both of ours should do more outreach and assistance to adoptive parents, both during the paperchase, waiting for your referral, after referral, and post adoption assistance. Most of you are left to our own devices to network with local a-parents and those on the Internet going through all this to increase your understanding and learning process.

You have to be very proactive and do the work, which I accept and embrace, since I am a very independent person. But there are simple and cheap things agencies can do to make it easier. Like establishing their own agency chat groups or forums like the yahoo groups for each referral group to immediately begin networking with families and agency support staff. Also doing monthly emails during the referral wait that truly keep families informed instead of generic ones that are repeats from previous emails. Weekly emails for post referral families describing where the agency is now, what they have done so far, and what they will be doing next. Post adoption assistance and parenting programs so you’re not left hanging if you have any issues or problems. One thing that I wish our state agency had done was actually offer parenting courses and baby care courses specifically for adoptive parents during the referral wait. These were not available to us and you end up piggy backing onto parenting classes for pregnant moms offered by your HMO. How awkward is that? This is just another reminder that you will never experience pregnancy or the early months of your child.

There are also wonderful 3rd party businesses, resources, etc. out there that agencies do not inform you about. This may be due to legal reasons, CCAA reasons, etc. but honestly what harm is sharing information with waiting adoptive parents to let them decide for themselves as to whether to use these resources?

Anyhow, just setting the record straight regarding the reality of all this. I’ve heard from others who have used our international agency before and they praise their ability for all the China travel arrangements and adoption process while in China. So, stay tuned, and we will see.

Pulling the plug after we get back

2006-08-02T22:02:00.000-04:00

I've pretty much decided to pull the plug on this blog after we get back with Teresa. The reasons are many and varied but it can be summed up to the fact we enjoy our privacy and anonymity. I do not have the mojo to keep this up, nor do I have the desire to continually self-police myself on this blog out of fear of offending a friend, family member or others I deal with. In real life I am anything but politically correct, yet I feel I have become that in this blog. My major regret about this blog is not keeping it more anonymous and gaining back my freedom to truly write and express myself. Oh, and there is an adoption update, I think, according to those in the know in my agency's yahoo group, TA's did come in this week. But It's not official given our agency's desire to be ultra conservative with any information ;-)

Follow-up

2006-07-27T06:03:00.000-04:00

Talk about dedication. We've been following this blog for some time now and after I posted the LWB letter below I felt compelled to post a link to this blog, to illustrate the strength of adoptive parents caring for a special needs child.

Our Journey With Sydney

Heather and Mario are part of the July Dragonflies group but received their referral several months ago for a special needs child, Sydney. She has just received her second round of open-heart surgery and Heather's writing is inspiring.

LWB Letter

2006-07-25T06:09:00.000-04:00

Came across this letter in our Yahoo group and thought I'd repost it here because it really touches on a subject near and dear to a lot of our hearts regarding the reality of international adoption. I've blogged a little about this in the past but this was so well written that I felt compelled to share it with those of you out there still going through the process. Below is a letter from Amy Eldridge from Love Without Boundaries that every parent getting ready to adopt should read:

I have been so saddened by this situation. I most definitely wish there was a way to educate ALL adoptive parents about the truths of institutional care, however I have come to realize in my daily work that there are just as many parents who are not online reading everything they can find on adoption as are.

There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of parents out there who have no idea what life is like for a child in an orphanage, and who head overseas to pick up their "China doll" only to be handed a baby who is unresponsive, thin, unable to eat, and on and on and on. While adopting my son last month, I walked several times over to the White Swan to talk to parents, and over and over I spoke with moms and dads who had no clue whatsoever about the issues their kids were having. I heard so many times things like, "she won't eat solid foods" (oral aversion), "she has no muscle tone" (muscle atrophy from lying in a crib all day), "she won't smile" (pure grieving from being taken from her foster mom). I guess since I live China 24/7, I assume everyone adopting does, too, which is not the case.

I talked to at least a dozen parents who didn't even know their child's orphanage name, and while I gently said "you might want to memorize that for your child's sake", at the same time I was trying to process how many parents get all the way to China without ever reading about post-institutional issues. It was sobering to me.

Babies in the NSN as well as the SN path can have issues with attachment, motor skills, emotional issues and more. I think all of us on the WCC list acknowledge that, while also acknowledging that all children (whether bio or not) can have these same issues. Living in an orphanage of course increases the odds.

I think the easy out is to say that agencies have to do more, as well as social workers, but I do think that most of them do try to give information to the parents but often parents don't want to hear it or else think it won't happen to them. Again, I am often surprised to talk to parents leaving soon and to realize they are not prepared. One family was adopting from our foster care program, and when I told them that the child was deeply attached to the mom, the father said, "guess she might cry for an hour or so then?" An hour or so? She had been in foster care for over a year! I tried to explain that this little girl was about ready to lose everything she had ever known, and that they should not expect her to be sunny, happy, and full of personality after an hour. I told them to please remember the 72 hour rule.......that after 72 hours they would probably see her spark, but that she would probably grieve for a long time after that as well.

I think for many adoptive parents, they just don't want to read the "bad stuff", and so I do think that ultimately it is the parents who are at fault for not doing more to educate themselves. There certainly are books galore out there about post-institutional issues. I equate this to when I was pregnant with my kids and I would read "What to Expect When Expecting", and I would get to the C-section part and always skip it. Each and every time I would jump to the next chapter as "that wasn't going to happen to me". Well, on my fifth baby, when they were rushing me in for an emergency C section, I sure was wishing I had read that section earlier! But at that point in the OR, while they were strapping my hands down to the table, it was too late, and so I felt complete panic when I could have been prepared. I think adoption from China is very similar to giving birth.. it is much more rosy to only read the happy stories on APC, but I now encourage every family I meet to read the harder ones as well, because if you are the family who is handed a child that is limp and listless and who looks autistic, what you have learned in the past will help you make the right decision for your family during those very emotional first few days.

I have been called many times in the last few years by parents in China worried about their children. I agree that having a support network to help you through the initial time is essential. Everyone should go to China with at least one phone number of someone they can call if they are panicked upon meeting their new child. I remember feeling so alone when I was handed my daughter and she was so tiny and limp. Because our foundation often helps with the kids who have been disrupted, I am aware that sometimes there are children who have much more serious issues than originally reported. and that is such a hard thing for a parent to get to China and then discover their child is truly autistic or has serious mental delays. I think everyone on both the China and international side would agree that it is absolutely wrong of an orphanage to not be honest in their reports, and no one would excuse that, but I also know without a doubt that the majority of kids who are disrupted are just suffering from institutional issues and would catch up quickly in a loving home. It is always a very sad day for the orphanage and everyone involved when a child that they know is absolutely fine, but perhaps thin and grieving, is returned by their new parents for being "delayed".

I think far too many people believe their child's life is going to begin the moment they meet them. The truth is, and everyone must realize it. a child's life is going on RIGHT NOW in China, and all of their experiences are shaping who they are. The vast majority of aunties that I have met in China are such kind and caring people, but it absolutely is not the same as having a mom and dad at your beck and call. I have had new parents call and say "we didn't think living in an orphanage would affect her at all", and those statements truly puzzle me. How could they not contemplate life in an orphanage?

Walk through Babies R Us and you will see every gadget known to man to make our children's lives here as ideal as possible. Now Americans have two way video monitors, so that when baby awakens not only can mommy see when to immediately rush in and comfort him, but she can talk to baby so that he doesn't even have one single second where he feels alone. How many new parents would have a newborn and then put that baby in a crib 22 hours a day on their own? How many would only feed their baby, even if they were really crying hard, every 8 hours? Or prop the bottle in her crib and then not watch to see if she ever really ate?

Of course no one would do that..we feed newborns on demand, comfort on demand, love continuously..and whether people want to recognize it or not, that is NOT the life of an orphan in an institution. ...even when the aunties are as good as gold. I remember one night when I took some volunteers in for the night shift in an orphanage, when normally just a few aunties are working. One mom looked at me with tears in her eyes as she slowly realized that it was absolutely impossible with just two hands to feed every child, to comfort every child, to soothe every baby who was crying. She said her heart was aching to realize that her own daughter most likely had many, many times where she cried without someone to comfort her.....and she told me that for the first time she finally understood why her daughter had such a deep seated fear of being out of her mom's sight.

The aunties are trying their absolute best, but that doesn't equal mother/child care. I remember being in an orphanage in the north this past winter and the aunties were so proud of how they had 6-8 layers of clothes and blankets on every baby to keep them warm. They were swaddled so tight that they couldn't move, but it was freezing in the orphanage and so the aunties wanted the babies to stay as warm as possible. What alternative did they have? It really was freezing there. I was cold in my wool coat, so the babies couldn't be up and about with just 1-2 layers on, with the ability to move their arms and legs. To stay warm they had to be immobile, and so of course all of those kids have weak muscle tone. But the aunties were truly trying their best, and when a parent is given one of those beautiful children on adoption day, I am sure they will go back to their room with concern and say "she can't sit up by herself..she can't put weight on her legs". That is absolutely the truth, but she also survived 10 degree weather in a very cold province and she will catch up soon enough with parents to encourage her.

To not acknowledge that living in orphanage circumstances can cause lower body weights, low muscle tone, inability to make good eye contact is very sad to me. Can it be overcome? Most definitely! The one thing I have learned over and over again about the kids in China is that they are fighters and survivors. But for some reason, people seem to want to ignore these issues in public forums.

Recently, one of our medical babies that we had met several times in person was adopted, and we all knew that this child was a "spitfire". When the family arrived and spent a few days with her, they decided she was too much of a handful for them and they wanted to disrupt. She absolutely was not what they expected. When they called their agency, they were told they had two choices: adopt the child, bring her to the US, and change their expectations of what they were hoping for, or adopt the child, bring her to the US and the agency would have a family waiting at the airport to adopt her locally. Option three of leaving the child in China was never once given. I admire that agency so much, as they were thinking of the child and the child alone. The family followed through with the adoption and handed the little girl to a new family upon her arrival in the US. As horrible and tragic and emotional as it was for everyone involved...I still feel this was the right decision for the agency to make. It was done in the absolute best interest of the child, who had waited a long, long time for a family. I wish more agencies would advocate for the rights of the child, instead of always seeming to give in to the parents, especially in those cases when they know with absolute certainty that nothing is permanently wrong with the child. Recently with another disruption, the agency I spoke with told me that it was "easier" to just get the family a new baby.

Sometimes easier does not equal right. The first baby who was rejected has now been labeled "mentally challenged" even though the agency knew the child was really going to be okay.

I think all of us, who do realize that delays occur and that babies can usually overcome them, should be these children's advocates by continually trying to educate new parents on what to expect in China. By helping them be better prepared, we just might help stop a disruption in the future. I love Chinese adoption with my whole heart, and it is my life's work..but I also want every family who goes to get their baby to go with their eyes open and to be as emotionally prepared as possible, for the child's sake.

Whoever said that the waiting to travel bit is...

2006-07-21T21:12:00.000-04:00

WORSE THEN THE WAIT FOR A REFERRAL IS RIGHT!! ARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!! Ok, that was my internet equivalent of yelling and venting. What sucks is that you have these beautiful pictures of a little girl waiting for a family and the more you gawk at the photos, read posts from others who have visited her orphanage, read about the rampage Tropical Storm Bilis made through Southeastern China and wait for your Travel Approvals (TA), the more you go insane. Time has slowed to a glacial pace. Nevertheless we persevere and carry on! In spite of not having our TA yet, our agency has arrange a travel meeting for our group in early August. So that is one more step closer. We also got our agency's letter today with the Visa application instructions. So all is not negative. However, the waiting madness still swirls around us. A curse upon the waiting gods and all they are made of!

Shopping

2006-07-17T05:50:00.000-04:00

We went shopping for baby items on our packing list. Wow, well over two hundred bucks and that was doing all our shopping at Wal Mart! Guess we'd better get used to it. We also put together the high chair and stroller. The high chair is an Evenflo Expressions and the stoller is the Safety 1st Acella Alumilite.

On another note, we contracted with an outfit which provides status report updates on your child still in China. We'll see once and for all if the photo I posted earlier are of her or not. I'll withhold mentioning the company's name until we get the results, which will hopefully be in around 2 weeks. I don't feel comfortable recommending an outfit until I get the results.

Resemblance or Not?

2006-07-12T21:32:00.000-04:00

Take a look at these two photos and see if there is a resemblance. The photo of Teresa in the red outfit is of course one of her referral photos. I found this photo on someone's adoption journey website who just got back from adopting an SN baby from our same orphanage. They visited the orphanage and took a bunch of photos and we found this one very intriguing. The one in the walker was just taken a couple of weeks ago. Teresa is around 9 months old now. We're pretty sure it's her but you never know. The key factor

was her ears, let's just say they stand out ;-) and between this photo and one other I haven't posted we are pretty confident it's her. Oh, also notice the eyes, button nose and pouty mouth.

Technology is an amazing thing. Two weeks ago we didn't even know what our daughter looked like. Then we get referral photos where she's probably around 6 months old. Now we find these photos, if it's her, she is 9 months old. I'm hunting down some possible additional photos from a charity organization who recently visited the orphanage to see if they have any.

Care package or not?

2006-07-11T20:58:00.000-04:00

We first were hot to trot to get a care package prepared and sent out. We even had the orphanage's address and everything. Well, that came to a crashing halt tonight. We were able to find and join our orphanage's group and read posts from other parents who have recently visited. We were desperate to see if there were any pictures of Teresa or read any comments about seeing the babies there.

What we got instead was a hard dose of reality. The reality is the orphanage is temporarily in a disused old hotel while a new one is supposedly being built. It's dingy, poor, run-down and the kids, while well fed and apparently loved, were also dirty. Furthermore we read mixed messages about whether care packages were received and given to the kids. Very few indicated they got anything back when they met their child for the first time.

Our agency advised that they discourage care packages because the CCAA discourages it, as it may show favoritism between those children being adopted and those that aren't. However, I also think it has to do with the risk these packages may be sold for whatever an orphanage can get for other necessities or worse for personal gain. The hard reality is that many of these state run orphanages are dirt poor and while there may be graft and corruption there may also be some good folks who are struggling to make ends meet at these orphanages by any means necessary. You've got to take the bad with the good sometimes.

Seeing those photos reminded me of my years in Central America when I was a kid and the poverty there. Far too many of us Americans have no clue how the overwhelming majority of people on this planet live and it is very hard for us to see photos like that. But some of our girls are not coming from pristine American day-care style orphanages. All we can hope for is that she was well fed and got at least a little bit of attention until we can get to her. So, no, we will not be sending a care package, since the reality is that she will probably never see it or keep anything from it.

When Teresa was born...

2006-07-08T04:48:00.000-04:00

I looked back at our blog to see what we were doing. We don't know her exact birthdate. They estimate it was around September 20, 2005. I had just finished putting up some cabinets next to our laundry room and Jennifer had just come back from visiting her sister, Julie, in Chicago, to help while she was having a chemotherapy treatment. We were also glued to Gwenblog following Scott and Karen while they were in China to meet Gwen. Ironically they were in Jiangxi province, Teresa's province. Teresa was found abandoned in front of the orphanage with a bottle and half a bag of milk powder on the 27th of September.

We find ourselves thinking of her often and anxious to bring her home to her forever family. But, it seems clear that her birth mother knew exactly what to do with respect to the Chinese version of the "adoption" plan. We don't have a clue about the circumstances but the one thing we do know, her birthmother carried her to term, connected together for 9 months. She did not have an abortion and she did not elect to "dispose" of her in any other way. Instead she was found in front of the orphanage, hopefully with the intent that Teresa may somehow have a better life. We hope to bring that to her.

Stage 6 of Operation Teresa Complete!

2006-07-06T06:01:00.000-04:00

We have completed the following successful stages in our journey:

Stage 1 - Successful Paperchase - complete!
Stage 2 - Successful Dossier Log In Date - Complete!
Stage 3 - Successful Long March, err Wait - Complete!
Stage 4 - Successful House Preparations - Complete!
Stage 5 - Successful Referral - Complete!
Stage 6 - Successful Referral Acceptance - Complete!

We mailed all of our acceptance forms to our agency yesterday and also talked to our pediatrician regarding Teresa's medical information. Based on what he read she is roughly in the 25th percentile when you take her weight and height into account. Of course, we've all read that you have to treat the weight measurements with suspicion because they will typically weigh the kids with all their clothes on. Overall he said her medical information looks good but will get complete bloodwork done on her when we come back and a health checkup.

On another note we had a wonderful Fourth of July visiting my family and pretty much just relaxing. My mom is doing a framed embroidery of butterflies with Teresa's orphanage name, birthdate and her forever family name and family date. She did an outstanding job of copying her name in Mandarin characters.

We will check in with our agency to see what's going to happen next. I am assuming we'll have to wait for Travel Approvals (TA) and then they will schedule a meeting for all of our travel group to attend a couple of weeks before we go.

What's in a name?

2006-06-30T18:58:00.000-04:00

Today I was fortunate enough to get Teresa's orphanage name translated and get the meaning behind each name. Ling means smart, clever. Qian means Lead. Zhen means chaste. Since the county she was found in has lots of lead mining that is probably why they used Qian, to represent the area she was found. We can combine Ling and Zhen into one name Lingzhen and a native mandarin speaker will be able to understand the meaning.

I found all this out by having a co-worker down the hall translate the mandarin characters for me. Yen is from Beijing and speaks mandarin fluently as well as reads and writes simplified and traditional mandarin. It was amazing watching her write in mandarin. She told me some amazing stories growing up during the cultural revolution. She's been in the U.S. since the early 80s and has made a life here for herself, but travels back to Beijing on occasion. Her mother's apartment is only 2 blocks from the Forbidden City. I was very grateful for helping me translate. She even read Teresa's medical report for me. So it was nice to have independent confirmation of the translated medical report.

We will be taking off the next few days to visit family and celebrate for the Fourth of July among other celebrations ;-) Thank you all once again for your comments. Stay tuned because the fun is just beginning.

Teresa Lingzhen!

2006-06-29T12:24:00.000-04:00

Introducing our beautiful new daughter, Teresa Ling Zhen! She is absolutely gorgeous! We checked out her measurements using Babycenter.com's growth calculator. These measurements were taken when she was 6 months old. Accordingly, she falls into the 5-10th percentile for 6 month old infants in the U.S. If these are accurate measurements, she is very small and we will have to pack accordingly.

According to her medical report she is active, restless, quick in reaction, fond of playing games sometimes obstinate, and her favorite toys are dolls (gee, sounds just like me). The report says she is already crawling in her crib. Again, if this report is accurate, it looks like we have a live one here! She'll run us ragged! Hooray!

You may have noticed that we switched her middle name around. That's because when we got the package I think they went ahead and put her name in the order that English speakers would have it. This is how it appears all throughout her referral documents.

We're going to quickly Fedex the acceptance form today so our agency can quickly start preparations for the trip. The rest of the documents don't have to be back for a few more days.

Woohoo! We will be celebrating tonight!

RP -1 Day

2006-06-28T20:18:00.000-04:00

RP stands for Referral Package and we are one day away from receipt of it and little Teresa's photo. We finally got the call that the package was Fedex'd out today and we should get it by tomorrow afternoon! So stay tuned. We are about 90% sure that we will keep her orphanage name Zhen Ling as her middle name. But, we need to see the characters first to do an accurate translation. There is a great website (http://www.mandarintools.com/worddict.html) where you can type in the pinyin spelling and get a link to pronunciation as well as character links. It's great fun to play around with and learn the pronunciation of the various words.

Thank you!

2006-06-27T18:40:00.000-04:00

Thank you all for your comments! We really do appreciate them. Now we hurry up and wait again (now that we're experts at that). This time it will be for Teresa's complete referral packet with pictures! Bleh, another 3-5 days for the translations to occur then it will be Fedex'd to our house. Right now we are leaning towards having her orphanage name Zhen Ling as her middle name. But we want to see the actual mandarin characters and get the translation accurate to make sure.

WOOHOO!!

2006-06-26T21:00:00.000-04:00

Well, after waiting on pins and needles and seeing all the referral announcements in our little group way before we got the call we finally got our call around 3:00pm today. All we have so far is a name , DOB and location. So here we go, her name is Ling Qian Zhen, DOB 9/20/05, Jiangxi Province! If anyone out there knows what Qian Zhen Ling translates to please post a comment. So far I'm pretty sure Zhen means precious and Ling means something like clever, nimble, or bell, I think.

We won't get a picture until we get our complete referral package toward the end of this week (we hope). Our agency has to translate the package, prep it and get it mailed to us. We will post her picture as soon as we get it.

Wow! It's really surreal. This has been one heck of a day. We followed the delivery of the referral package to our agency on DHL's website. They delivered around 11:30am EST. Our agency started calling around 12:30pm with this preliminary information. Jen and I were both at work but anxiously following everything. Our little agency Yahoo travel group was ablaze with referral announcements, so we were really getting nervous. I then had to go into a meeting at work. Fire alarm goes off in our building, we evacuate, false alarm, burnt popcorn, restart the meeting and then viola! Our local agency social worker calls me on my cell phone. So I ditch the meeting and rush out to write down the information. Call Jen, give her the info and then sit in my office dazed. We finally get off work and we're on cloud nine. To top it off we have a local Families with Asian Children potluck dinner tonight, so we attended and shared the wonderful news. We also got to see another couple who recently returned with their daughter. She is hilarious and made everyone laugh.

What a whirlwind of a day. I wish we could take the rest of the week off to celebrate but we'll just have to wait until the day we're to receive our Fedex package (which I will most definitely videotape).

Oh did I forget to mention it's also my brother's 40th birthday today? HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK AND CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING A NEW UNCLE!

4 Miles from Our Future

2006-06-25T09:04:00.000-04:00

Our referral package has now made it to within 4 miles from our agency and is waiting to be delivered Monday morning. We are sitting here in our Sun Room early Sunday morning, quietly enjoying our coffee and tea, reading the newspaper, blogging and surfing, surrounded by our 2 cats and our 9lb wonder dog, enjoying all of our birds at our birdfeeders. Tomorrow, we hope, our lives will change forever. It's a bit overwhelming when you think about it. This little child will be such a gift to us that I hope we're worthy of it.

Tracking the Stork

2006-06-23T05:57:00.000-04:00

First we want to say a big thank you to all your well wishes! We've enjoyed reading about everyone's journey like ours and have gotten some great tips, laughs and smiles. It's truly amazing how technology has changed our lives and our little corner of the world. We can't wait to see the referrals for those of you still waiting and have been inspired by those of you who have already completed their journey for their daughter and now share their experiences.

One of those amazing technology changes is overnight mail and the ability to track it. No sooner did we find out that we were in this referral batch then one of our travel group members was able to get the DHL tracking number for our agency's referral package! So now we can track the stork as it makes it way to us. Right now it should be over the Pacific Ocean. It left Beijing at around 6:00am on today's date, which of course was yesterday for us. It should arrive sometime by noon on Monday at our agency. So we hope to get a call either late Monday or definitely Tuesday.

What a way to spend our one year LID anniversary. Talk about timing. I guess the CCAA was serious about trying to stick to a 12 month referral turnaround time.

Once we get some preliminary information we'll be sure to post it. Thanks again for all your congratulation comments!

Stork Alert!

2006-06-22T06:50:00.000-04:00

Holy cow! Just checked my email and saw the comment posted in our previous post below. The CCAA has updated their website (link on the right) and it says: "The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before June 28, 2005." My understanding is that it includes the 28th as well, our LID is June 23rd.

This means little Teresa is on her way! Wow! I don't think we'll get any work done today! We're going to be parents soon, OMG!

The Edge

2006-06-16T20:49:00.000-04:00

Well, it’s been a while since I posted. I’ve been taking a break from it all and figure it’s time to post something. Especially since the referral rumor mill is going amuck. Please note, I’ll believe it when I see it, and we’ll wait for the fat lady to sing, etc. etc. So stay tuned along with us, you can follow the rumor mill via the link on the right side of the blog.

Now, on to other topics, I recently realized that it’s been 20 years since I graduated high scruel. So now everyone knows how old I am. No, my piddly little high scruel did not have a 20th reunion. Heck, there were only 35 of us, so why bother?

Pretty interesting when you think about it, I always wondered were I’d be when I got into my 30s. Who would have thought? As far as keeping in contact with any high school classmates, I’ve only kept in contact with one, one of my best friends in High Scruel, Connie. She’s pretty amazing and has done some amazing things in the last 20 years. She’s worked and traveled around the world. She finally ended up joining the Peace Corps not too long after college and worked for 4 years in Burkina Faso, West Africa. She went back to school, this time in London to get her masters and now works in Ethiopia for a Non-Governmental Organization. I think doing Aids education and awareness. Apparently Ethiopia is one of the hardest hit African countries with Aids, which has also led to a corresponding high orphan rate. She recently spent a “vacation” in Yemen, which I would never consider in a million years. She is quite the adventurer. Oh, did I mention she also recently did a safari in Kenya?

Holy cow, in 20 years what have I done? Nothing quite that adventurous. I think this adoption is probably the most adventurous thing I’ll be doing. In many ways it’s quite terrifying, totally flying into the unknown here. Sure we can all edumacate ourselves and read and listen to others, etc. etc. But the reality is once we get that referral what then? So here we are teetering on the edge between our past lives, reminiscing, and our future lives, with hope, fear and determination to see this through. And, finally, with God’s blessing we’ll be all right as parents.

Have a safe summer!

2006-05-30T05:57:00.000-04:00

Going to take a little time off from blogging and want to wish everyone a very safe summer. We are still praying and hoping for an end of June referral and remain positive since the CCAA got through 9 days this last round and we are only 8 LID days shy of a referral. I'll post once in a while but with the dog days of summer fast approaching it's getting closer to hibernation time for us peeps in the South. Besides it's getting freakin hot down here!

Remember Our Fallen Hero's

2006-05-28T19:27:00.000-04:00

Here's to our fallen soldiers who gave to this country so that we can continue to live free. While most of us are off tomorrow, please take time to remember why you actually have the day off. Here are some things you can do to remember our fallen soldiers:

1. Fly the American flag at half-staff.

2. Travel to Washington. Tour some of the city's many memorials to fallen heroes, and attend the always-poignant ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

3. Take in the National Memorial Day Concert on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol. If you can't make it in person, tune into the PBS broadcast of the performance by the National Symphony Orchestra and a crew of special guest artists

4. Join in the observances at a military base or cemetery near you if you can't make it to Washington. Check your local paper, or call the closest military base, American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars post to find out what's happening and when.

5. Remember those who fought and lived to tell about it: Take some flowers, books or cookies to a nearby veterans' hospital.

6. Continue a classic tradition: Put flowers and flags on the graves of departed friends and family ' civilian as well as military. If you live far away from the final resting place of anyone you knew, decorate the grave of a stranger.

7. Have your annual beginning-of-summer barbecue, or spend the three-day weekend at your favorite getaway spot, but take a little time out from fun and games to reflect on the day's real meaning and the fact that freedom isn't free.

11 Months Since LID and Hangin Tough

2006-05-23T05:42:00.000-04:00

Well, today marks 11 months since our LID. Rumors are not looking good right now for a June referral based on the CCAA's posting of referrals up to June 15th. If the rumor queen is to be believed then the next cutoff date will be June 22nd. Cutting us off just shy of one day. Oh well, at least we're 8 LID days closer to our referral.

So to have some fun and not be down in dumps over this I have to share this site with you all. It totally had me in stitches as it deals with the dreaded squatty potties in China. Now, keep in mind I'm not that concerned about it, but Jen is having nightmares, LOL! So here is the link:

China Dispatch: Using the squat toilet

Personally, I am used to the idea of how these toilets work as anyone who has gone camping in the great outdoors should be. The technique should be exactly the same. Besides, folks I've talked to said they rarely encountered these toilets since most of their travelling was in the cities and there were plenty of Western toilets available. Hope this put a smile on any of you who may be waiting.

2006-05-18T20:19:00.000-04:00

At approximately 5:20pm, two years to the day, Jen and I were witnesses to the passing of a great lady, Teresa, Jen's Gram. She was surrounded by Jen, myself, and the three men who meant the most to her, her grandson Chris and her two boys, Eric and Mike. We honor her memory today. She was kind, thoughtful, strong, considerate and excessively generous. She really was an amazing lady and is sorely missed. One of the last things I ever did with her was sit with her and watch cardinal after cardinal flying to the bird feeders where she was staying. She absolutely adored them. We were sitting in our backyard talking about her this evening and of all things a cardinal flew right up to us and lingered, like it was listening to us. This little cardinal did this in spite of our little dog being right there. It was as if Gram was saying everything's all right up here and will be all right when we get little Teresa.

China Central Television

2006-05-16T06:00:00.000-04:00

While visiting my folks I finally had the opportunity to watch China Central Television. My parents have watched it on occasion and It's available on the Dish Network Satellite TV service. Pretty interesting and pretty cool, even if it is a government run television station. Technology really has made this a smaller world.

Happy Mother's Day!

2006-05-14T20:55:00.000-04:00

Just want to say Happy Mother's Day to my Mom and to my Mom-to-be beautiful bride. We spent a wonderful weekend hanging out with my folks and playing with my Mom's new puppy, Diamond. We took our little dog, Caeser, to play with Diamond and they got along pretty well. It was really nice and relaxing. Just the thing we needed after a long and hard week.

Refingerprinting

2006-05-11T05:53:00.000-04:00

We had to get refingerprinted with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Sounds silly because they take a digital image of your fingerprints the first time. I guess they don't archive them when they do the initial background check. So, just in case you haven't turned into a scumbag within the year they have to do another fingerprint/background check. Anyhow our "fingerprints" expire this July so obviously we aren't travelling to China before then. The whole process was very quick, although we had to take a day off work to get it done since the BCIS office is in another city. The actual process involved us having to write a cover letter to the Adoptions Unit in the BCIS office requesting a refingerprinting plus $70.00 a person. They responded rather quickly with an appointment letter just like before. However they gave open office hours for you to come have it done so you were not restricted to a particular date and time. When we got there it went very quickly and we were in and out in under 45 minutes. The staff was also very courteous and helpful. I've heard of horror stories by others in other offices so we are lucky to have a good office.

Exhale...

2006-05-04T20:50:00.000-04:00

well, I've decided to tell all the negative nancies out there to shove off! We're on the home stretch now and there's no turning back. I'll continue to post to this blog infrequently but will definitely slow it down until the referral. We'll try to cover the referral and our trip for family and friends to follow and then I'll decide whether to shut this blog down or not. I will also refrain from straying down the rant road. I've got others to rant for me at other blog sites and I could never do it justice like they can. One thing is for sure, I will not continue to post after we have returned. It's just too much to have to worry about considering that we will probably both be very busy.

Well, it's been one year...

2006-04-18T06:02:00.000-04:00

Just realized that it's been one year since I started this blog. Funny, I had thought we would be done with our adoption journey by now and I'd pull the plug. But it seems our journey is to take a little longer. Lately it's been a bit of a struggle to keep up the blogging. I've also noticed a trend that does not please me. I'm beginning to rant more. This is not the path I wanted this blog to take. I simply wanted to use it to share our journey with friends and families and any others out there contemplating adoption. I'll be honest with you all out there, go into this with your eyes wide open. We did not realize the level of adoption phobia in our culture, especially transracial adoption phobia. I don't think we were adequately prepared for some of the nonsense we would see or read about. Be sure to read up on the issues yourself and educate yourself because no one else will do it for you. I'm coming to a bit of a crossroads with what to do with this blog, so I think I'll take a break for a while and catch a blog breather, while I make a decision.

60 Minutes' Too Many Men story

2006-04-16T20:44:00.000-04:00

Well sh*t, just got done watching 60 minutes typical drive by media reporting and this time it was Lesley Stahl reporting on China’s gender imbalance. Granted there’s only so much you can cover in a 15 minute hit piece so I wasn’t expecting much. Unfortunately the issue of China allowing those ding dong, ugly Americans to adopt, primarily girls, from China came up, along with the question of why China continues to allow this, given the horrible gender imbalance. They even showed footage from the White Swan of those ugly Americans and a family returning from China with *gasp* their second daughter from China. I had to admire the Chinese official for her response to Lesley. She basically said these girls were fortunate to be adopted overseas even if it may not be in China’s long-term interest.

I will give this story credit for pointing out some of the unintended consequences of China’s one-child policy. The rise of girl kidnappings, trading in girl babies so there is a future bride for a particular family, the use of black market ultra-sounds to sex the baby before it’s born, the huge amount of abortions allowed up to nine months of pregnancy (which is legal) and the rise in social unrest and increase in crime. Face it girls, gettin married calms us crazy guys down and reigns us in. Sociologists do point out that marriage is a “civilizing” influence on us guys. The story also showed that China is instituting government measures to promote the value of girls.

I think the main point should have been when government starts fartin around with regulating the bedroom then all hell’s bound to break loose. China is no exception. Countless studies have shown and so have developed countries population growth rates that with increased economic prosperity birthrates go down. This should be China’s policy, not the one-child policy. It is far too destructive and the long-term consequences have yet to unfold but the signs are already showing. I cannot even imagine the amount of time and money Chinese authorities have spent on the one-child policy when it could have been used elsewhere. It’s one thing for government to have a campaign to encourage certain behavior; it’s entirely different when they try to force that behavior through physical means. It is inherent to the human being to rebel against such things and the consequences may be devastating.

(WARNING excessive use of sarcasm straight ahead!)

So, congratulations 60 minutes! Thanks for making adoptive parents appear yet again like douche-bags, especially evil American douche-bags for stealing China’s daughters, when we all know they would be much better off growing up in an orphanage to encounter this gender imbalance problem head on. Hell, do you moronic reporters actually think disallowing approximately 12,000 foreign adoptions (by 60 minutes numbers) per year will make one damn dent into an already existing huge gender problem?

P.S. If you really want to get pissed then go to the following 60 minutes link and click on the Reporter's Notebook listen to the last asinine question by the reporter to Lesley Stahl:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml

Happy Easter!

2006-04-16T17:50:00.000-04:00

Hope all my friends and family out there as well as those in Blogistan had a very joyous and Happy Easter!

To our fellow adoption waiters, you ever get the feeling...

2006-04-11T05:54:00.000-04:00

what the hell were we thinking!!?? Sometimes I hate the internet (no, not really, but sometimes). Here we are waiting for our referrals, mostly prepared, with nothing better to do but read stories on the internet. One of which was a satirical story by none other then "The Onion." For those who don't know about it, it is a very funny, comical, satirical on-line newspaper. This one story was poking fun of the whole Hollyweird adoption craze and those ding dong adoptive parents who have adopted for all the wrong reasons. It was funny but also hard to read at the same time. You begin to ask yourself, what the hell are we doing? Are we like that? God, I hope not!

It really is surprising the amount of guilt one begins to get thinking you have absolutely no business adopting overseas, let alone from a developing nation. Sorta the adoptive parents equivalency of white man's guilt. These articles don't help, nor do some of the assinine comments from boobs like Jessica Simpson about adoption. Worse yet, are other adoptive families who go hard core into adopting and taking on their child's culture. You meet and talk with these folks and somehow you begin to feel totally inadequate to the task of acclimating your future child to their birth culture. Argh! This must be what they mean by adoptive parent guilt! And we haven't even successfully completed our first adoption! Well, a pox on all those doofus adoptive parents adopting for all the wrong reasons along with the Hollyweird crowd who make ignorant statements!

Yawn...

2006-04-09T09:39:00.000-04:00

So, the blogging has dropped to a crawl and so has our concern about referrals. I gave up receiving any email summaries of postings from our Yahoo groups and we have just decided to take a step back and chill out. I think Mary Mia said it best in her blog Do they have salsa in China? , adoption, what adoption? We're just going to take a step back and focus on us and enjoy ourselves. Yeah, it's selfish, but so what, it keeps us sane. There for a while we were getting sucked into this whole adoption craze and getting massively disappointed about the increasing delays. We finally said screw it, let's cut it out and give it over to the Lord. What will be will be, and the referral will happen in it's own good time and we will get the child God intended us to get.

One thing we have done for ourselves for quite a while is ballroom dancing. Now, mind you, we are NOT that good, but after two years of doing this we've managed to grasp some of the basics. We attended a 4 hour salsa workshop yesterday and had a good time. The instructor and his wife were unbelievable. We picked up one of their beginner's DVDs so we'll check it out. I think we'll add salsa dancing to our current list of dances we are working on. Right now it stands at waltz, merengue, swing, hustle, rumba.

So for all you referral waiters out there, just say screw it, I'm going to find other things to distract myself, and enjoy life for a change!

Springtime in the South

2006-04-02T10:02:00.000-04:00

Well, here we are, hangin out enjoying a beautiful spring in the South. The azaleas and dogwoods have bloomed. The pollen has come raging back and so have the allergies, LOL! Really not much to blog about. Easter is fast approaching, Jen's been working a lot lately and we're naturally doing some spring cleaning around the yard. We hung out with the niece on Friday. Jen made an appointment to get her hair cut and it turned out great. We also took her shopping at Target. She is really growing up. Must be pretty scary for my brother. We also managed to take some time to go to a local festival here. All in all a pretty quiet week.

Good News for Julie!

2006-03-28T22:12:00.000-05:00

Well we have some good news from my sister-in-law, Julie up in Chicago. Her and her husband Jeff went in today to get some follow-up tests to see if her cancer was successfully treated. Based on results it appears she is cancer free. She'll go back in 6 months for more follow-up testing. To commemorate this good news I'm posting a link to her website:

Click Here

Julie will be participating in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in June. Here is what she has to say in her own words:

"Dear Friends and Family,

As you probably already know I have decided to participate in Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. This is such an important cause to me because this year, an estimated 40,000 women will die from the disease. Breast cancer takes another life every 14 minutes. Another woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every 3 minutes. An estimated three million women are living with breast cancer. One million of them don't yet know it.

As part of the event, I pledged to raise money. People can make donations on my behalf, so that I can reach my fundraising goal. With the donations raised, the Avon Foundation will provide support and resources for women affected by this terrible disease. This will help so many people in our own community and throughout the country. Any amount you can give is great; I just appreciate your support.

It is faster and easier than ever to support this great cause - you can make a donation online by simply clicking on the link at the bottom of this message. Whatever you can give will help! I truly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress.

Thank you for supporting me always, but especially in this challenge; you really do make a difference."

I'd like to encourage anyone viewing this to consider helping out a very worthwhile cause. Breast cancer is a very devastating disease and to help those less fortunate get the care and treatment they need really eases the burden on their loved ones. This is a sobering reminder that referral waiting is really not that bad compared to what our loved ones have had to endure. We hope and pray that Julie continues to be cancer free.

To learn the ways of the force a jedi must learn patience...

2006-03-24T05:54:00.000-05:00

and patience we are learning. We just got word on our 9 month LID anniversary from our agency confirming that referrals will only cover up to the end of May LID's. So congrats to those long languishing end of May LID'ers! It's been a long road for you all. Since our agency sends only one batch of dossiers a month, our group's DTC is June 13th and LID is June 23rd. Our agency will have no referrals this month. We were told to expect an increase in the wait time to 10-11 months. But, I think realistically the wait time will be more like 12 months or longer. First we have to assume this to protect our emotions, second, since the CCAA is supposed to be moving sometime soon, (I've read April), that has to cause further delays. Also, I firmly believe the Hunan situation is causing an impact. They have to be reviewing the orphanages' paperwork with greater scrutiny. It is the least any government agency does when confronted with scandal. So, we have to give ourselves some kind of hope and solace that the CCAA is attempting to do the right thing.

So, we are learning patience with the mysterious force powers of the CCAA.

We have a pediatrician.

2006-03-21T18:27:00.000-05:00

Well, while everyone in our June DTC Yahoo group is freakin out about these crazy referral rumors (we are desperately trying not to get sucked in), which are now gushing out in a torrent after a long silence, we are slowly but surely plodding ahead. Today we met with our pediatrician for the first time and had a consult with him. Very nice guy who happens to have a number of girls adopted from China as his patients along with some East European adoptees. He even travelled to China last year and is aware of the current state of affairs of the various medical facilities there. Even better, he has no problem prescribing us zithromax (antibiotic), and elimite (scabies) for our trip. We have to schedule an appointment within 48 hours of returning from China and he will schedule 3-6-9-12 week follow-up appointments. He's also aware of documenting Mongolian Spots right away if needed. Needless to say we were very impressed. Our next task is to get on the waiting list at our favorite day care.

So to all my Yahoo June DTC'ers out there, hang in there and read my post below as to why I think it's taking a little more time for these referrals to get out!

Yet another edumacated guess as to the referral delays...

2006-03-17T20:34:00.000-05:00

Well it seems everyone lately in our little blog world has been commenting on a recent Washington Post article. The gist of the article was about baby trafficking in Hunan Province, China. It led an ignorant reader to believe that this trafficking was due partly because of Americans adopting from China. I’m intentionally not posting a link to the article because it can be found easily at other sites, including the site here: http://research-china.blogspot.com/

I would highly recommend reading Brian Stuy’s take on all this. I have found his website to be the most fair, balanced and informative regarding this story and China adoption in general. I tend to believe Brian’s take on all this because he and his wife have spent the time in China, because of his work and are in this for the long haul, unlike some Washington Post reporter. I also tend to believe Brian because I work in government. Not only do I work in government but I’m an internal auditor. My profession requires that I adhere to strict ethical guidelines and integrity in the conduct of my work. Furthermore, our profession requires standards for documenting any findings and recommendations related to any problems or issues we find during the course of our audits. I have personally seen and witnessed how the media and reporters can have agendas, twist facts, and distort the truth. The media is never held to the same standards of evidentiary requirements that I am and suffer zero consequences for coloring the truth.

All this got me thinking (amazing that I can do this on occasion). I started putting two and two together regarding the recent slowdowns in referrals. I think it was around October/November timeframe that it started hitting the China adoption community that the CCAA would be slowing referrals down. This is about the same time frame this Hunan story and others were hitting the papers. I may be wrong about this but I believe along with reviewing foreign adoption dossiers, the CCAA also has to review each orphanage’s paperwork for the babies before the matching process can occur. It would make sense that because of the recent problems with baby trafficking in some of the orphanages, the CCAA would scrutinize their paperwork more thoroughly. So it’s possible this may be one of the reasons for the slowdown. It would seem very simple to me to conduct a test of the average number of babies available for foreign adoption by each orphanage, track back the numbers and see if there are any spikes in the volume and if this spike persists. This type of outlier would raise a red flag and require further scrutiny of that particular orphanage.

So there you have it, one person’s pure speculation and SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) as to another reason for the slowdown in referrals. I’d like to remain positive (very hard thing for me to do) and hope that maybe the CCAA is scrutinizing the paperwork more closely for the babies coming in from those orphanages authorized to conduct foreign adoptions.

Thoughts

2006-03-15T05:54:00.000-05:00

I was reading some of the comments from my post below and found a couple to be interesting mainly one dealing with this not being a "pity party" and toughening ourselves up. I thought about it for a few minutes, even pondered deleting it, but then decided to leave it. What the hey, people are entitled to their opinion. The other one was actually from my Mom, LOL advising this was a patience test. Well, first off, I think we have actually NOT fallen into a pity party over the wait. I have always viewed this blog as a means of documenting our journey to Teresa. Part of the beauty of this is to share thoughts and concerns that frankly are widely held by others who have gone through the adoption process or are going through it now. In RL (real life) most of us charge ahead and try not to let our emotions get the best of us. To yes, attend those FCC potluck dinners with the kids, to be patient and not succumb to the hysteria on the internet. One of the most profound impacts on our lives for Jen and I was taking care of her Gram for a little over a year before she passed away. Talk about a test of patience and an emotional roller-coaster, but we had to be strong and patient for her as well as for us. I don't think we have any illusions over the reality of raising a child. We both come from large families with large age gaps and have had a hand in one fashion or another with raising our younger siblings. We have witnessed the growth and heart ache of nieces and nephews and our siblings struggles to take care of them the best way possible. I've got a co-worker who's oldest son has raging diabetes and hear his war stories all the time. The point is that the internet and this blog is NOT real life. Any post is a snapshot of one's thoughts at that given moment in time and a wonderful avenue to vent. It's the equivalent of virtual therapy. So there is nothing else to do but be patient and NOT wallow in a pity party, plow ahead and continue to enjoy what little free time we will have before starting the roller coaster of parenting.

Gotta rant!

2006-03-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

Well, we're reading in our Yahoo Group that given the worst case scenario, with the CCAA issuing 2 week referral batches that there is a possibility our referral may not come until JUNE!! This is of course a worst case scenario and we can always be surprised. At least this is what one major adoption agency has told their people. My agency has been more optimistic, so I will approach all of this with guarded optimism. You can easily see that the CCAA is already 2 months behind and the gap appears to be getting larger. If referrals get any longer we will have to get refingerprinted with the USCIS which we were hoping to avoid. Honestly, the gross lack of consistency by the Feds is appalling when it comes to this fingerprinting stuff. We got off very lucky last year, but we understand the person that did it last year is gone.

What is really frustrating about all this is that most people do not realize the constant pain waiting families go through. This is especially true if you are first time parents and have already dealt with the pain of infertility. First you go through trying to have your own child, then for many others you go through failed IVF's, then you go through the trepidations of exploring adoption. When you take the plunge you begin to think it's possible that there is a child in your future. So you go through the bureaucratic probe into your personal life, after which you hurry up and wait. During the wait you get ready in anticipation, baby room, check, baby clothes, check, long-delayed house projects, check, edumacating yourself about child rearing and adoption issues, never checked always learning. When all this is done, you suddenly find yourself in limbo. Then as time starts to drag out, you are confronted all over again with the bureaucratic process of having to renew everything, whether it's fingerprinting, updated homestudy, etc. It's deja-vu!

The quiet pain and anguish is only relieved somewhat by the internet, with the DTC groups and others or the local FCC group functions. But even though you attend these functions it's a double edged sword. You see the joy and fun with all the families, but you can't help but feel like an outsider and wondering if your turn will ever come, it's human nature. You begin to start backing off and slowing down the learning process, because your gut instinct is to protect your emotions, not wanting the pain and hurt to come roaring back. You begin to play psychological warfare with yourself and begin to scramble and find other distractions to quiet your mind on this whole adoption saga. What was once supposed to be only a 7 month wait appears to be dragging out to more of a 12 month wait and if it weren't for the internet and other easily available resources the longer wait may have been more tolerable. But, such is the curse of the information age, where rumors and such can be spread around the world in minutes and hit you very hard. So you struggle to be realistic, curb your emotions, be patient, and hang in there, even though you have been doing this for 6 years. That turns out to be one helluva long pregnancy.

Homestudy Update

2006-03-12T09:21:00.000-05:00

Well, we need to have our homestudy updated since it's been a year. Our state requires this once a year until we have completed our adoption. Should be straightforward and don't anticipate any problems. I think we will need to bring the update with us to China for either the U.S. consulate and/or CCAA authorities, not sure, but we'll find out. We also checked our fingerprint deadline dates as well as the I-171H expiration dates for the U.S. government. We should be fine so long as we complete our adoption before July 22, 2006. So, here's hoping for a referral soon.

I've got the blues!!

2006-03-08T18:57:00.000-05:00

LOL! Had you all going there for a second. Actually I've finally graduated to the blue slopes in skiing. Wow, what a rush. We got back yesterday from our ski trip. We had 3 days of terrific skiing at Loveland, Colorado and I finally got the confidence and nerve to try out the blue slopes. I have to say skiing is so much fun and if you haven't given it a shot then try it out. It's taken me about 6 years of skiing to finally get up the nerve to graduate to the blue slopes. Of course, we don't get much oppotunity to ski here in the South. Jen did great as well and is lookin really good. She has made some tremendous improvements in her confidence level. Janet also did great but she realized her skis are too long for her size so she will probably get a shorter pair, like the ones I usually rent. All-in-all it was great get away trip as we wait for our referral and recharged our batteries. I made sure that I took my last trip down the slope nice and easy to take it all in, with the hopeful realization that this was my last kid-free ski trip. Hopefully little Teresa will like the snow as much as us and become our little snowboarding queen.

Good news!

2006-02-28T06:14:00.000-05:00

The CCAA posted over the weekend that referrals have been sent for dossiers logged in up to May 25, 2005. We also received information from our agency that we should be in the next batch of referrals sent to them (fingers crossed). Basically from what we understand our agency sends one batch of dossiers a month, so they typically get logged in at the same LID (Log-In Date). All of our agency's May dossiers have received referrals. Now, there may be referrals sent out to other agencies who have smaller batches well before any referrals are sent to our agency. Since our LID is June 23, 2005, we probably will not get a referral until the end of March or early April if the current trend continues. Here's hoping that it does.

On another note, we attended our local Families with Asian Children monthly potluck, last night. We had a great time seeing all the families. The thing that's really nice about this group is the very laid back, family feeling, with all the kids running around being kids. It's a great time to enjoy fellowship and get tips on childcare and our trip to China.

8 Month LID Anniversary

2006-02-23T21:10:00.000-05:00

Well, today marks our 8 month LID anniversary. What can you say about this? Not much really, other then the cliche'd comments of how this waiting sucks. We've just been trying to keep busy doing other things (like going to Colorado, yay!) to keep from focusing on "the wait". We've Also been reading a lot of a blogs out there. Johnny's blog had a real thought provoking post today about receiving a referral of a child only to find out when you arrive to get him/her they are "Special Needs" and not the "healthy" child you expected. What would you do? From what I've read, when these instances are encountered, Chinese authorities are all to willing to get you a "replacement" child. What would anyone do? Honestly, I don't know what we would do. We've talked about it, but we just have to trust in the Lord to help guide us and make the right decision if that were to occur. Life is not perfect, we are not made perfect. I myself have a congenital heart defect. I look at the in-waiting lists on occasion and see some of the babies with similar type conditions and they are listed as Special Needs. When we take a hard look at ourselves aren't we all special needs in some way or another?

Caught the Winter Olympics spirit

2006-02-21T18:35:00.000-05:00

Well, since we've had to endure the extra delays in referrals and we've been watching the Winter Olympics, we figured, what the heck, LET'S GO SKIING AGAIN!! So next week, we'll jet off to beautiful Colorado and hit the slopes. We're about to go bonkers waiting for our referral so we need as many distractions as possible. In honor of our upcoming ski trip I give to you some photos from our last trip in December:

This is Jen and her sister Janet.

Mmmm, nose hairs. Wind chill was easily below zero and bone chilling on the lift.

This is Jen at about 13,000 feet elevation.

Happy Valentines Day!

2006-02-14T06:11:00.000-05:00

Just want to give a shout out to my favorite valentine, Jen! Happy Valentines Day, sweetheart! This is our 12th Valentines Day together. We've been through a lot together, but I can't imagine sharing it with anyone else. Hopefully we'll have a little Teresa to share it with next year. And, on that note, we're hearing good rumors from our June DTC Yahoo Group's Spanish members about referrals coming very soon, and it MAY include a large batch this time, so as always stay tuned :-)

So what's up with this ladybug stuff?

2006-02-09T05:49:00.000-05:00

Being a guy I'm normally pretty disinterested in ladybug symbolism for adoption from China. I mean it's cute and all and we do have a couple of ladybug outfits already, but generally speaking it doesn't mean much to me. So here I was at work and Jen calls me from her office. She proceeds to tell me this story of how she found a ladybug in one of the trash cans in their offices. She rescued the ladybug and then set it free. She had never seen a ladybug in any of the offices before and was very excited about spotting one. I politely listened but just wrote it off as a cute coincidence. So later on that afternoon, I'm in my co-worker's office and guess what I see? Of course, a ladybug. In the 10 years I've worked in this office suite, I've never seen a ladybug. Well, naturally I had to catch it and free it. I called Jen and we got a laugh out of how bizarre all this was. So who knows, maybe this was some kind of sign.

Heck of a week

2006-02-04T08:37:00.000-05:00

Not much to report on except that it's been one heck of a week for us. Jen's been sick and I have had some horrendous home network and PC issues. Finally got the home network resolved the other day and hope to have my main PC issues resolved next week (involves rebuilding my main PC from scratch). Anyhow, we did have fun seeing my niece and nephew yesterday. We went to my niece's talent show where her and a bunch of her friends danced the merengue. Very cute. I must say this was the first talent show with kids involved that we've ever been too. Some of those kids are very talented, and while others may not have been so talented they were sure cute to watch. Another cool thing we did is finally start checking out day care facilities. We went to one near our house that came highly recommended. One thing we were told is to be wary of any facility that will not take you on a tour right away if you come in out of the blue. Well, these folks were great and immediately took us on a tour. The little toddlers they had were adorable and seemed very curious about these weirdo adults among them. We'll check some more day care facilities in case this one doesn't pan out. The next thing is to line up a pediatrician. I have to admit it seems a bit surreal to be doing all this and it's also hard to believe that we might be getting our referral in 2 months.

Happy Year of the Dog!

2006-01-29T09:07:00.000-05:00

Well today marks the Year of the Dog for Chinese New Year. In celebration of the new year we give you our very own dog, Caesar. He is a 9 pound, Yorkiepoo and is a HUGE baby. Honestly, if it were not for this dog, we would have had a real problem waiting for our referral. He is glued to Jen, always on her lap or snuggled up with her. And as I write this he is sleeping in Jen's arms on the couch. For us, he has been the easiest dog to travel with and train. At first I did not want a dog, but when Jen kept bugging me about this I finally relented. Wow, did my heart ever melt when I first saw a little, 1 pound, black furball. We've had him for 7 years now and he has been a Godsend to us while going through this pregnancy/adoption stuff. We hope he will adjust well when Teresa arrives, but I'm sure at first it will be a struggle. He will be very jealous. He has behaved fairly well around my niece and nephew, even when they bugged him when they were younger. OK, I could go on forever about this dog but I'll stop here.

For a great link on Chinese New Year and what it's all about here it is: Chinese New Year Link.

Thoughtful Gift

2006-01-28T10:38:00.000-05:00

Our ballroom dance instructor, Kelly, gave us a wonderful gift the other night and here it is. She made this herself with modelling clay which you bake to make hard. Very cool and very thoughtful. The detail is amazing, since all the parts are hand made from the clay.

Happy 7-Month LID Anniversary to us!

2006-01-23T21:22:00.000-05:00

Well it's been 7-months since our LID of June 23rd. I guess you can say we kind of celebrated by going to our local Families with Asian Children monthly meeting. The theme was Chinese New Year and bringing in the Year of the Dog. The kids were adorable and we got to chat with some friends who recently gave birth to a little boy, Mathew and also brought their little girl, Alexa, adopted last March. The girls were all dressed in beautiful little Chinese outfits and put on a little parade. Pretty cool, but boy does it make the wait seem forever when you attend these functions. This is definitely an exercise in patience. Latest rumor is that referrals have been sent out for the April 26th to May 13th LID crowd. But until I actually see it on CCAA's website, I won't believe it. The CCAA's offices should be closed for about a week soon for Chinese New Year and then I've read elsewhere they will be relocating offices. So, I imagine this will hold up referrals again. We will be surprised if we get our referral in April and stunned if it comes sooner.

Update: Just checked the CCAA website this morning and it finally said the following: The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before May 13, 2005. So good news indeed this morning. I am still under the belief because of the Chinese New Year and the move that we will not get our referral until April.

Baby steps closer...

2006-01-20T05:34:00.000-05:00

Well good news to post. The CCAA posted yesterday the following message on their site:

The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office in June 2005.

You can see for yourself on the links to the right. Just click China Center for Adoption Affairs. Little by little we are stepping closer to our referral. They still have the message that matching has been done for dossiers reviewed up to April 25, 2005. But the latest word/rumor is that there will be a batch of referrals for dossiers reviewed up to May 12, 2005, next week! This is coming from our Yahoo June DTC Group's Spanish members. Note, Spain is apparently the lead recipient for first batches of referrals, possibly because of the order the dossiers are worked in the matching room at the CCAA. So apparently any rumors coming from Spain are highly prized. I just take it with a grain of salt and prefer to keep track of the CCAA's own website. They were kind enough to recently put the document processing information on their website.

Baby steps closer to our referral :-)

Baby's Room Finally Completed

2006-01-02T15:18:00.000-05:00

Except for a few things to put up on the walls, here are long promised photos of the baby's room. Again, many thanks to my Mom who did the curtains for us along with the baby blanket on the crib and the pillow on the little toy bench under the window.

Yes, there is a lot of stuff in here. We will probably take most of the stuff off the armoire and the bench when Teresa arrives home. We don't want to overwhelm her. We've been told and have read that it's best to try to keep things simple for the first few weeks of adjustment. The walls around the crib have been kept bare for this reason. But later on I'm sure we'll add more stuff.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2005-12-31T22:41:00.000-05:00

Here's to 2006 and the many hopes and promises it will bring for a lot of us in the adoption wait mode!

THANKS MOM!

2005-12-29T19:23:00.000-05:00

Just have to say major thanks to my Mom. She hand made this wonderful baby blanket with matching pillow for us and it turned out wonderful! We got it for Christmas and boy was Jen ever surprised. It's extremely soft and comfortable. She even has mitered corners (suppose to be a sign of quality so we've heard). She also finished the curtains to go into Teresa's room. Once we get everything hung we'll be sure to take photos.

We also got some more goodies which I'll post later from my Mom for the baby's room.

Interesting Television Show

2005-12-27T21:18:00.000-05:00

We just got done watching an hour long documentary on the History International Channel entitled: "China: The Dragon's Ascent: History as a Mirror".

Here's what the History International Channel has to say about it:

Sichuan is a province of 80-million people in southwestern China. Over 2,000 years ago, the armies of Emperor Qin Shihuang tied it into a united Chinese empire, governed in a new way--by a bureaucracy of imperial officials. The Emperor used rigid laws to keep chaos at bay. But later emperors turned to the more humane teachings of Confucius to hold the empire together. Today's officials face the same tension between the need to govern and the need to keep the population contented and quiet. And new rural law courts give the peasants another card to play in the ancient game between the rulers and the ruled.

I have to admit it really fascinated the geek in me. Very insightful and interesting on how government policy is directed down to the local level and provides some insight into the current changes and problems locals are facing when these policies clash head on into their livelihoods. There will be repeat broadcastings of this show so check the website for the next airing.

Merry Christmas, Happy Channukkah & Happy New Year!

2005-12-24T08:05:00.000-05:00

Just want to say Merry Christmas, Happy Channukkah and Happy New Year to all my friends and family out there!

Taking time off

2005-12-06T05:46:00.000-05:00

Well, Christmas is right around the corner. I deleted my previous post I put up last night. Too much ranting, possibly induced by the increase wait for referrals. We had hoped to get a referral sometime in January as we will hit the 6 month mark December 23rd for our LID. But since months are now being split and early April referrals are said to be close at hand that would put us 5 months away from a referral. So looks more like May, if we're lucky.

Our Thanksgiving break was nice. We didn't do much except loaf around with family in Central Florida. We did manage to see the Harry Potter movie, and must say it is the best one so far. We also managed to get to BabiesR' Us and buy a few things, of course.

We'll be heading to Colorado this Friday to do some skiing at Loveland for a few days, so we're looking forward to that.

Basically we're trying to keep busy and not focus too much on the extra referral delays, but heck, every now and then it does get to you, especially when you realize most of your home projects are complete and you stare at an empty baby's room.

As a result of this, I'll probably be taking some time off from blogging, because frankly, I need a break and am not as eloquent as a lot of those other bloggers out there in adoption land (unless it's ranting, which I do very well but don't want this blog to become my personal rant forum). We'll continue to post occassionally, but I'll definitely be slowing things down a bit.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-23T05:53:00.000-05:00

Just want to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there and here is what I'm thankful for this year:
1. My beautiful bride, Jen;
2. My Mom and Dad;
3. My family;My pets;
4. The freedom we enjoy in this great land of ours;
5. The freedom of religion and worship we enjoy here;
6. That my brother-in-law made it back from Iraq safely;
7. That we have an abundance of food to share with others;
8. That the greatest generation that ever lived (WWII generation) left us with this great prosperity we live in;
9. And finally, that we have an opportunity to start our family by adopting from China.

Hope everyone out there in blog world has a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

And now, with the clutter returned, enter into the man cave...

2005-11-21T20:48:00.000-05:00

Here's the final cluttered result of two weekends worth of work. I finally got all the CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes moved to these shelves and the photos below are the same ones I posted earlier but now with all my gear filling up the space. The only thing missing is for me to pull out my GI-Joe collection and put them up on the shelves. Yes, it's true, I still have a couple of my original Joe's I played with as a kid and a Jeep. I even have a classic 1964 GI-Joe that my neighbor gave me in the mid 70s when we lived in California. Luckily I had enough sense to not really play with him and took special care of him, so he's in great shape. All my Kung Fu grip Joes bit the dust during their battles, so I don't have any of those. I do have one last remaining Joe along with my 64 Joe left. Since then I've added some new additions so I have a WWII action figure collection to go along with my Joe's. Hope to get them set up soon. An interesting sidenote is I found a box with some of my old pinewood derby cars, still in great shape. So I pulled those out and will place them in my man cave. Have to give most of the credit to my Dad for those cars. He made the best pinewood derby cars for me and my brother. He made this black, totally smokin 70s corvette for my brother. I think I sorta helped on mine but I can't remember.

On another note, we have finally completed our Master Bedroom. We have waited 4 months for the last two remaining pieces, our nightstands, and after much BS with our furniture store they finally came today. So I swooped down to snag those bad boys. Now, if I can get my beautiful spousal unit to tidy her side of the room, ;-) then we'll post photos of that little completed project. I must say the room looks amazingly like the room we staid in, at the Don Cesar in St. Pete Beach this past summer, which is exactly the feel we were going for.

Man Cave completed...

2005-11-21T06:05:00.000-05:00

Well this is the end result of the painting, the new cabinets and new shelves. Used a Pecan color for the walls that I got from Wal Mart and the shelves and cabinets are courtesy of my local Home Depot. Yes, it's true I have a couple of workstations. I completed moving all my stuff back into the office last night along with a bookcase which sits to the right of this desk with the shelves above it. I also completed putting up some shelves in our hallway leading to this office for all our CDs, DVDs and Videotapes and make sure they are out of reach from little hands. Between work and other stuff this little project took 2 weekends to complete. I'll try to get photos posted of the complete project with all my clutter shoved back into this little space. All in all I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Finally doing the home office...

2005-11-13T18:03:00.000-05:00

Well, feeling pretty good right now. I've finally tackled my shoebox of a home office. It's my little 10x10 "man cave" and probably the only part of the house that I can "decorate" on my own. I think every guy should have a "man cave" to hide out in, besides the garage! It amazes me how much junk we can accumulate. In this case, it's all my computer junk, videogame junk, techie junk, etc. I've been wanting to paint it and put up some cabinets and shelves for the longest time to get rid of the mounds of clutter. So I set out this weekend to do my little version of "Clean Sweep". Hopefully sometime this week I'll post photos when I'm done.

God Bless all our veterans this Veteran's Day!

2005-11-11T08:17:00.000-05:00

Just want to give a shout out to all the vets out there, including my Dad and Brother-in-law and wish them a happy Veteran's Day and a big thank you for your service to our country! Below are some terrific WWII posters which can be found at the following links: WWII Posters & More WWII Posters that I thought were quite appropriate for today, especially in light of all the ridiculous politics going on regarding our current war on terrorism. Now I'm going to go into an area that all too many Americans feel is controversial when it shouldn't be. It disgusts me watching the current political gamesmanship going on in Washington regarding this war on terror. These politicians are not statesman they're only out for their own power and publicity. Can you imagine any of this going on in WWII. Just take a look at these posters and you can get a sense of how united this country was back then. We haven't been that united since then and we should be, because of what happened on 9-11. We have gotten so bogged down in rampant political correctness, fear of law suits and the religion of one's political affiliation that this nation is losing its way in doing what needs to be done to protect us from the world wide threat of global terrorism. I thank God every day that there are men and women out there still VOLUNTEERING (NOT BEING DRAFTED) to fight this war and maintain the freedoms we enjoy here, so those few Americans here can continue to have the luxury of tearing this nation down. God Bless our veterans!

(These are some great quotes from FDR which I feel are still appropriate for today.)

Better late then never...

2005-11-09T19:38:00.000-05:00

Well, given all the sad news about adoption referral delays and my miserable lack of blogging, I thought I'd share a great pic of my niece and nephew from Halloween night. My brother emailed this shortly after Halloween. My nephew dressed as a Jedi and my niece dressed as a belly dancer. Pretty cool costumes. It's hard to make out but their pumpkins have a skull and kitty carved into them.

To distract us futher from the wait, we're going to go for a little ski trip to Colorado around mid-December and hang out with friends and family.

So, sorry for the lack of creativity in my blogging but lately I've got writers block and haven't been too motivated to write much about anything. I sometimes envy those peeps out there in blog land who can write prolifically, like Johnny's Blog or Gwenblog, so go check em out.

4 Months and counting along with other stuff...

2005-10-29T12:23:00.000-04:00

Hit the 4 month mark since our LID on my Mom's b'day last Sunday! Current rumor and speculation circling the internet is that the CCAA is starting to work on April LID's. That would put us, as I suspected, on track for a January referral. So that means a roughly 6-7 month referral wait time. The only bad thing about that is we were hoping to travel sometime late Winter, but our agency seems to have a 2-3 month wait time for Travel Assignments (TA) so that means traveling to China in the Spring. We have some friends who went last March and they said it was unusually warm, even in Beijing. We prefer traveling in cool weather, so lets hope for a cool spring in China!

On another note we attended a great Families with Asian Children meeting last Monday. We did the potluck thing and got to meet some new folks and some folks we met through the In-Waiting group, as well as see all the wonderful kids. Since it was a Halloween focused pot-luck, many of the kids came dressed up, so that was a real treat to see. We had a great presentation provided by our local adoption agency regarding developmental needs assessment for adoptive children. After we've come back and had time to bond, we can seek their services, at no direct cost, to have a developmental needs assessment done and see if there are any areas she can get help on.

On the home front, we are trying to get motivated in our never-ending saga to clean-up our cluttered house, clean the yard, fix the grill, get the pine straw, etc. Bleh, guess my honey-do list continues, so I'd better get off this computer for now...

The melting pot...

2005-10-27T06:24:00.000-04:00

The other day "So, its come down to this" wrapped up the topic of the concept of taking adoptive Chinese kids to language and Chinese culture classes, as many adoptive parents do. I guess I’m one of those who does believe this nation is a melting pot. This idea has been ridiculed and impugned over the last 30-40 years in this country by today’s overly politically correct environment. I suppose the reason I believe in it is because of my own personal life experiences and by the environment around me wherever I go in this country. As I may have mentioned previously my father is Puerto Rican and my mother is from northern Minnesota. I grew up as an Air Force brat and lived overseas as a child for a period of time. We’ve driven the Pan American highway all the way from Panama to California. I’ve also lived in California and the deep South. My parents must have taken us from one end of this great country of ours to the other. In all of our travels we experienced local culture both overseas and domestically. With the exception of living overseas, there was never one overwhelming dominant culture. Now I am totally aware of ethnic neighborhoods in numerous cities throughout our nation. They have always existed and will always exist because we are a nation of immigrants. But for those of you in the huge metro areas of this country I encourage you to get out of there in your travels and realize that there are whole neighborhoods in suburbia and elsewhere that are made up of a multitude of various ethnicities and cultures. All I have to do is look in my own slice of suburbia, where we have Indians, Chinese, and others living as our neighbors.

(Warning, straying into a semi-political area here) I should warn the reader that I am a student of history and international affairs (having a graduate degree in the subject), so don’t stereotype me as one of those naïve, flag waving types, who don’t know squat about this nation’s past or the world’s past. If we were not a melting pot of different races and cultures then we would essentially be another Yugoslavia, balkanized and eventually torn apart, or another Soviet Union, (same scenario there), or numerous balkanized African nations (look at what happened in Rwanda). I’m not going to get into a history lesson here so do the homework yourself. The fact is our nation does have it’s share of problems, BUT we are not at each other’s throats killing each other or slaughtering each other over some aforementioned grievance that happened hundreds of years ago. We fought a bloody civil war and then a hundred years of government condoned racism to unite this country. We are one of the only nations to truly bring together numerous cultures and races under one system.

We do have an amorphous and ambiguous American culture. The beauty of it is it takes the fun parts of all other cultures and takes it as it’s own (seems to always be centered around an excuse to drink, LOL). Look at what has happened to St. Patricks day (Aren’t we all Irish on that day? Mmm, beeeeeeerrrrrrr.) Look at what is happening with Cinco de Mayo, Bastille day, etc. Ever gone to a Celtic festival, or an Asian festival, etc.? What other nation on this planet do you find such true diversity? Most other nations out there would be too busy killing each other if this were going on.

So this is the wonderful culture we hope to expose our daughter to. Give her a taste of all of this. We won’t force feed her any single culture or try to be fake about it unless we want to experience it ourselves. I firmly believe in knowing as much as you can about your past and your roots always with an eye toward the future. And believe me, if she wants to learn Mandarin, great! Because this will be immensely valuable as our economic relationship with China continues to grow and is very practical for her future. But, I want it to come from her with maybe a little guidance and encouragement from us.

Parenthood?

2005-10-23T19:03:00.000-04:00

So, I was checkin out Mary-Mia's Blog Do they have salsa in China? the other day and she had a question of when does parenthood begin? I did post a response to her question but it got me thinking. When does someone feel like they are a parent? Honestly, I don't feel like one now. We live with our two cats and one dog. Our dog Caesar is a 9 lb. Yorkie-Poo, is spoiled rotten and we treat him as if he were our kid. He is totally codependent on Jen and never leaves her side. The cats, Mary and Sarah, well, they're cats. We love em, take care of them, but they can pretty much function on their own. Although, for some strange reason they totally gravitate to me and can't keep off of me whenever I'm lounging on the couch or bed, not that I'm complaining, since they're kinda comforting.

We've pretty much been on "adoption autopilot" since last January. The nursery is almost done and we've certainly bought a lot of baby "stuff" and have attended some adoption group get-togethers. But, for me anyways, I certainly don't feel like a parent or that parenthood is fast approaching. I'm a tangible asset kinda guy. I've got to see it, hear it, touch it, etc. Right now it all seems a bit surreal. I guess following these blogs and going to Families with Asian Children meetings makes it a little more tangible for me, knowing that this will be the eventual outcome for us. But for now, we're just a couple of DINKs with spoiled pets who can pretty much do whatever we feel like without considering a 3rd party if you know what I mean.

P.S. Speaking of parenthood we'd like to say, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM AND DAD!!

China doesn't mess around.

2005-10-21T17:37:00.000-04:00

During the course of my web surfing I stumbled on the following news story: 'Babies for sale' on Chinese eBay. This in turn led me to the following article: China executes child traffickers.

This led me to thinking about how does one respond to anyone who asks you "How much did you pay for your baby?" We've already had similar questions like this asked by well-intentioned friends. But this is a very loaded question to ask and it also comes from popular misconception and ignorance.

The primary reason why so many Americans do opt for China and/or Korea, is that they have extremely stable, well-regulated, and reasonably safe international adoption programs. The articles above give a prime example of what the final outcome will be to anyone caught in China of child trafficking (funny how we seem to have a hard time doing this to child abusers here, but I'll save that for another article). Does it go on? Sadly, probably yes, but so does child abuse, hideous foster care, and worse in this country and we certainly don't execute any of those it seems. It doesn't mean that all foster care in this country is horrible, nor do stories like the above mean that child trafficking is the norm let alone acceptable in China. It is all too easy for those who are against international adoption (yes, there are those out there) to point to these terrible stories and say "see I told you so." It's unfortunate, but these stereotypes do exist and will continue to exist.

As for the question of "How much are we paying for our adoption from China?" There are state fees we've had to pay just as if we were adopting domestically, there are U.S. Government Fees to process federal adoption forms through the Bureau of Citizen and Immigration Services. There are Chinese federal fees to process our adoption application through the China Center for Adoption Affairs. There are orphanage fees we will pay and there are also the international adoption agency fees we will pay, not to mention the travel fees.

Basically the cost of adopting from China is not all that different then the costs of adopting domestically, especially if you were going through a private attorney and maybe a little bit more then going through a domestic adoption agency. Nor is this cost all that different then if someone were to try just one IVF or surrogate pregnancy.

So are we buying a baby? NO! We are NOT paying any money to procure a child. These children have already been sadly abandoned for one reason or another. Blame China's one child policy, blame extreme poverty, blame economic turmoil, blame a bias for a male child, blame a series of catch-22 laws in China, etc. These adopted children were not kidnapped from other families and then sold on the black market. They were willingly or unwillingly in some cases, abandoned because this is the only way to effect an "adoption" plan in China. They are in government run orphanages, which, just like any government institution here, have varying degrees of care.

What we are paying for is the right, the privilege, and the honor to give an abandoned little girl all the love and care we can as if we bore her ourselves and to give her a hopeful future.

Back from the Windy City...

2005-10-18T20:12:00.000-04:00

Well, after an adventurous travel portion of our trip to Chicago we finally made it back. We had a great time visiting with Jeff and Julie. Not sure if we were all that much help for Julie during her Chemo treatment last Thursday, but it was good to see her. She is really an inspiration and has a positive attitude. She has a good prognosis and Rush University seems to be doing an excellent job of aggressively treating the cancer. It is an extremely nice facility near downtown Chicago.

We did manage to make it downtown to visit our favorite restaurant, The Russian Tea Time. It's just a block from the Art Institute on Adams Street. They have the best tea I’ve ever tasted and terrific Russian food. Yes, hard to believe it, but Russian food is very good, at least the way they prepare it. For the most part we just lounged around eating and drinking our Leinenkugel’s beer for the remainder of the week and enjoying good family company. It’s nice to get out of town for a change and just take some lazy days off.

The adventurous part of our trip dealt with the traveling. Lately I’ve gotten to really dislike flying. I do a fair job of bottling my anxiety while we are flying, but it seems to be getting worse each time we fly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hollering or screaming out while flying. I keep a decent enough outward appearance, but the butterflies are spinning out of control while on the plane. I think it’s compounded by my natural claustrophobia and the fact we are unnaturally flying at 30,000 feet in the air at 500mph. I’m definitely going to need to take something if we are to fly 15 hours to China.

The worst part was flying up to Chicago. We got saddled with these 8 middle aged, yuppie, has-been Barbie doll type, ding dong mommies sitting in front of us. They apparently were flying up to Chicago on some pleasure trip and insisted on acting like a group of sorority girls going on spring break. These group of ladies got liquored up at the Sam Adams restaurant before getting on the flight (author’s note: we too had a beer before the flight, to, ahem, calm my nerves). So, needless to say I’m not against having a beer or two before flying. However, these ladies had to carry-on the whole flight being rowdy and noisy. The worst part was when one of the flight attendants, who happened to be Asian American, shushed the ladies, after one of these middle aged junior leaguers, started repeatedly hollering “No mo fo you know” to a friend of hers when the flight attendant was handing out the snacks. This certainly didn’t do anything for my flying jitters.

The hilarious thing was that these same group of ladies showed up for the same return flight we had last Sunday. We began dreading our flight back home after we saw this. Luckily, our plane had mechanical problems and the flight was cancelled. We just re-booked for the next day since all other flights outbound from Chicago to our destination were booked. So, we made it back yesterday to home sweet home. Now to look into this flying anxiety business, because I used to love flying and I’d like to get that fun feeling back.

The "I'm Surrounded By Kids" rant!

2005-10-09T20:13:00.000-04:00

So there we are, arriving at church early this morning. We actually got there a little early for a change and had the pick of where to sit. So we sat in the middle with tons of room all around us. (Sidenote: we went to the 11:45am mass because the 10:00am mass we usually go to is CRAMMED with kids and babies everywhere.) Usually our 11:45am mass doesn't have near as many kids going to it, so we thought we'd have a break. Well, no luck. Sure enough two couples, with grandparents in tow, with a total of 5 kids and 1 baby HAD to sit next to us and in front of us. Three little boys 5 and under sat next to Jen and one little baby sat in the row in front of Jen. Worse yet, they HAD to be the extra cute and fidgety kind of little boogers. Nevermind that there was a ton of room elsewhere, they specifically targeted us, LOL. Hmmm, must be God's way of teasing us. Yes, this is the part where we hit the midstream of referral waiting and slowly sink into insanity! Funny how you read about this in other blogs and think you'll be too busy to have it affect you. Wishful thinking, so I guess we'll continue to be surrounded by kids, wherever we go until we can fixate on our own little "booger".

Past the 3 Month Mark...

2005-10-04T05:46:00.000-04:00

Well, the blog posting is slowing down and the wait seems to be dragging out. We hit the 3 month milestone mark September 23rd since our LID. Not much to report, lately. We went to visit Jennifer's Grandmother this past weekend, so that was nice to get out of town. She's 86 and still doing well and is feisty as ever. She was aksing a lot of questions about the adoption and seems to be excited. Jen and I will be celebrating our 9th anniversary this week and next week we'll be going up to Chicago. We'll start our immunizations after our Chicago trip. Pretty boring post, I know, but hey not much else to report.

2005-09-26T18:27:00.000-04:00

The Asia Festival was fun. We hooked up with some friends of ours and had a good time. We also met some other friends with their daughter from China. She absolutely didn't want anything to do with me. LOL, good judge of character if you ask me. She would look at me with a very suspicious and wary look and then turn and bury her face into her father's shoulder. Pretty funny. Got to see a demonstration of Indian dancing and music which was pretty cool. Don't know what it is about Indian music but I like it. We also got to listen to a demonstration of Japanese music on a koto, which is a multi stringed instrument that rests on the ground.

The day before the festival, I was browsing around at Borders looking for the Evanescence CD with no luck. So I figured I'd check out the travel book section and see what they have for China. Well, I stumbled on this little gem. I think the author is Kathy Flower. It's pocket book size and very easy to travel with. It has chapters on the land and people, values and attitudes, the Chinese at home, religion, festivals and rituals, health and well-being, food and drink, banquets and entertaining, business conduct, and communicating. Heck it even has a nice little section on "squatty potties". It says on the back of the book "Culture Smart provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs, and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies and sensitve issues. These consice guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and sucessful business relationships." Heck I just don't want to come across as the "ugly" American. Lord knows we get enough bad press out there as it is no matter what we do. Let's hope all those years as a military brat and living overseas pay off for our trip to China.