Five, Six... Pick up sticks

Overdue for an update

2011-04-11T12:59:00.000-05:00

Let's see, Claire has been home now for almost 15 months. What is it like around our house?

First, let's start with all the good stuff.
Claire has amazed us all academically. She is completely caught up in all areas and has been reading at grade level for a couple of months now. She still gets small group reading intervention but her reading teacher has told us that if other students are recognized as needing the intervention, Claire might be dropped because she is now at the top of the small group. Wow, in just 7 short months she went from not reading at all to reading most words on her own. Her grasp of phonics is incredible, much better than our other children at her age. I worked with her on phonics a lot the first 6 weeks while we homeschooled. And, the Leap Frog DVDs are fantastic. I would recommend those to everyone!

She struggled a bit with math at first and I think that was mainly because she hadn't had any schooling in her first 7 years of life. Children are absorbing numbers at a very young age here in the US. Claire had to learn the numbers in English and then learn all the processing of addition, time, money, subtraction, pie charts (fractions) in such a short time. I had to help her understand concepts a lot at home the first semester of first grade but now I can let her finish a worksheet on her own and then check it over with her and explain only those things that she missed. Time and money have been exceptionally hard, but I think many children struggle with those concepts. I try to incorporate time and money into our daily lives to help reinforce what she's learned. Small things like "You usually go to bed at 8:00 but tonight I want you to go to bed one hour earlier, so what time would that be?" Telling the time isn't hard for her but the earlier and later part really mess her up. She had to learn what earlier and later meant just to understand the problem. As her vocabulary grows she should grasp these concepts easier.

Claire has always been a popular student at school, a mini rock star if you will, but she has really come out of her shell in the last few months. She makes friends very easily and even performed with Emily in the school talent show. I was so proud of her courage to be on stage in front of an entire gym full of people.

She is completely fluent in English and can sound out and read a lot of things around her. Once in awhile I will still get the blank stare which means she is trying to figure out what a word means so when I see that look, I stop and ask her if she knows what it means.

Now the not so good. I don't want to say these are bad things because they're not really bad, but just issues I see with Claire that I think are mostly rooted in being adopted at an older age.

Hoarding-
This is hard for me because I am not a hoarder. I realize the issue is with me and my sliver of type-A personality of wanting everything organized so I really try to stop and understand that this is a direct effect of her time before us. She wants to keep everything; every coloring page, every valentine, every kids meal toy, every sticker, every half-eaten lollipop, you name it. We find cubbies in the van full of miscellaneous items that are many times trash. I find many things stashed in small purse type bags in the closet, or drawers, or under the bed. How do I tell her that you don't need to keep every kids meal toy when she's never had them before? I am certain this issue would be even bigger if she had been in the orphanage for those 7 years instead of with a foster family. She had toys, candy and other things with her foster family so I know our small issue with hoarding is nothing compared to what some adoptive families face. Claire does not hoard food; a sign that tells me she didn't regularly go without food while in China.

Split personality-
Claire is one way with adults and another way with children. Now, I know most children do this and our other children do as well but it is a bigger swing with Claire. She does not want to upset authority figures, a carryover of culture from China, so she is usually a model child around us, teachers, grandparents, etc. But, when around her siblings she has hit, bit, pinched, called names, etc. I have walked in on one of these episodes and she immediately froze and started crying. Sometimes I don't intervene and sometimes I do. I think she is still learning how to deal with 3 older siblings and some of those behaviors is her sticking up for herself, so I let it go. Other times it is not warranted and the behaviors are simply a result of her being stubborn (oh my, she's stubborn!) so I step in and tell her that her sister/brother aren't being mean, they are actually trying to help her.
In the same regard, she has thrown a few temper tantrums. Think two year old, screaming, flailing, temper tantrum because she didn't get what she wanted. Again, these don't happen if we are around, only when she is with her siblings. I knew of a couple of these tantrums but didn't address it but I walked into the room once when she was doing it. She immediately stopped and I had a discussion with her. I told her that temper tantrums are not allowed; they've never been allowed by any children of ours. We won't address them, we simply ignore it and you will never get what you want by throwing a tantrum. I had never approached the idea of time out with her before this day but I explained what time out is and told her she would go to time out if she threw another tantrum. Now she doesn't do the standard two year old tantrum but she will usually look for something of importance to Emily or something Emily has made and destroy it. She sat in time out for that; her first time out ever. She sat there very quietly for about 5 minutes and then broke down crying. We talked about destroying other people's things, controlling anger and I let her know that I didn't love her any less. She emerged from that time out and chat as a completely new child; she was happy, agreeable and sincerely apologized to Emily.

Fear
Claire has a fear of anything unknown. 'We're going to the bowling alley' invokes a look of "what is that, what does that mean, is it scary? etc." An amusement park is a terrifying experience for her because she is constantly wondering what is going to happen and genuinely afraid of what each ride will do. And, I'm not talking roller coasters, I'm talking Dumbo, spinning tea cups, etc.
We recently took the kids to Disney World and she cried on several rides that were nothing more than a boat ride. Before each ride we would hear, "is it scary? is it dark? does it go upside down? is it fast? is there a hill?" But, once she lived through it and realized it wasn't scary she emerges with "wow, that was fun!". I think this is partly due to her personality but also because she was picked up from her foster family and driven away with an unknown destination. She didn't know where she was going, what was going to happen, who we were, etc. What a terrifying experience for a 7 year old child. So, even though we are sitting right with her on any ride, the unknown produces fear in her. I told her many times at Disney World that nothing would hurt her there and that we love her and would never put her in a situation that we knew would hurt her.
Of course, the one ride we were able to get her one stopped at the top of the hill and sat there for a few minutes. "Is this the ride?", she said. J replied with "Oh yea, this is the ride!" while we exchanged glances of "they better get this thing going again because walking down this hill with her won't be any fun." Thankfully it did start back up and we plunged down the waterfall in our log plume with Claire's head buried firmly in my side. Once off the ride she said with teary eyes, "well, that wasn't bad!" *sigh* At least it made for a great Disney World story.

The "no mom" thought process-
I don't really know what this is technically called but Claire has asked me several times, "does he/she have a mom?" We sponsor a boy in Kenya and his picture is on the bulletin board by my computer. We were talking about him this weekend and Claire asked me if he had a mom. I explained to her that he lives with his grandmother and the area where he lives has many people with HIV so I would guess his mom and dad were victims of HIV and that is why he lives with his grandmother. She casually said "oh" and I could tell she was thinking really hard. She lived with a foster grandmother so I'm sure she was equating his grandmother with the same thing. I really expected a question of him being adopted but she never said it.
Later we were watching an episode of Minute to Win It and there was an Asian father/daughter team competeing. After watching it for awhile she asked us "does that girl have a mom?" I saw her mom in the audience so I told Claire that yes, she had a mom and then pointed out the lady in the audience. She responded with "oh". So, while we don't often wonder if someone has a mom or not, it is definitely on Claire's mind more than we realize.

There are way more positives than negatives in our life with an adopted child. I can't imagine her not being here and I feel bad sometimes pointing out the negative things. It's not that they're bad things but just different and obvious impacts of her life before us and her adoption transition. Some times I scratch my head and wonder "where did this come from?" when she says something and then I remember some blog I've read from another parent who adopted an older child and it helps to know this is "normal" and I'm not messing it up...yet. So, I hope this helps even just one person who might be experiencing the same things.

I am still posting pictures to my 365 Project blog; the button is on the sidebar. Sometimes I get one on there each day and sometimes I slack off and don't upload for a week or more. But, there are pictures of Claire on there occasionally so you can follow that blog and see her grow and progress through the year.

ONE YEAR!

2011-01-28T07:41:00.000-06:00

A video to take you through our first year with Claire.

It is unbelievable to me that today marks one full year that we have had Claire as our daughter. The past year has gone by so incredibly fast compared to the nine months we waited for her. I initially made this video for Claire; to capture her first year with us, from her first minutes through all of her firsts. After working on this video for several hours it became therapeutic for me, which I didn't expect and didn't even realize I needed. It brought me back to that initial time one year ago when we were so head over heels in love with a little girl from another country. Every thing she did was new, or funny, or brilliant. Somehow that tends to get lost among the teaching to read, sight-word flash cards, math fact practice, numerous "pick up your room," breaking up sister fights, reminding about rude tone when talking, etc. etc. etc.

Looking back has reminded me that we have been given an incredible gift; a gift straight from the hands of God and we can't mess it up; much in the same way I feel looking back at newborn photos of my first three children. That feeling of amazement and awe are still there and I will try harder to find them when I'm drained and tired and walk into a bedroom covered with girls' clothes; when I'm knee-deep in sister bickering I will try to approach it with more patience and understanding (although, there are always THOSE days when the patience are gone) and I will try harder on a daily basis to show Claire that she is a gift to us and most certainly not the other way around.

Claire, you are an incredible gift to our family. It is my hope that you will always feel safe, cherished and loved by us, your parents and your siblings.

Claire is 8!

2010-12-08T09:53:00.000-06:00

My baby girl is 8 years old today. It's official, I sound completely crazy when asked what ages my kids are- 12, 10, 8 and 8. Let me tell you, that raises an eyebrow; especially if I tell them my last two are 8 months apart and my kids aren't with me. I tell them sometimes just to see their face.

It has been a joy watching Claire enjoy and soak up the special attention her birthday has brought. She has shared with us that she would have a small cake on her birthday in China but never a birthday present. She was very loved by her foster family and having a small cake is more than most children waiting for adoption receive but she has definitely been waiting for those presents.
She patiently waited through all the birthdays in the family and commented frequently about "my first birthday in America!" I was a little worried she was expecting a pony or something with the amount of her excitement, but no, she was just looking very forward to her special day. I found this t-shirt months ago and tucked it away for today. Now the whole world will know it's her birthday and I'm sure she will be quick to tell them it's her FIRST birthday in America.

Click here to view these pictures larger

Older Child Chronicles: Part 4

2010-10-29T12:32:00.002-05:00

Siblings and More

I feel very unqualified to write this post. For, I don't know the answers, haven't figured out the answers and feel far less than qualified to pass on answers to anyone else. This post has been swirling around in my head for a couple months now. To me, it feels like normal life so I'm having a hard time trying to separate what is just sibling behavior and what is related to adoption and adding an older child to the family. And, I think when you're in the thick of it you don't have a subjective viewpoint as someone on the outside looking in would. But, I guess this could just be a "this is how it's been for us" type of post and take from it what you may.

Keep in mind though, every adopted child, every child already at home and every family is different so you may experience none, some or all of this in your older child adoption because we all have different personalities that make relationships all different.

First let's tackle taking siblings to China.
There are so many personal opinions on this topic and some agencies even weigh in heavily with their opinion so the question of "should we take our other children to China" becomes a very hot button topic. I don't think there is right or wrong answer; let me explain.

We really wanted to take our three other children to China with us. We knew it wasn't going to be a vacation in the traditional sense but we also knew we couldn't load up the van and take a road trip to China next summer either. The main (and probably only) reason we didn't take our other children with us was because of cost. Three more plane tickets at $1500 each and adding a hotel room at each location made our travel costs almost triple. It simply wasn't feasible at the time. They also would have missed three weeks of school and that would have been hard to make up but I'm certain we could have made it work if the finances would have been favorable.
We thought by having our other children with us it would help Claire see and understand a parent/child relationship simply by observing. We also thought they would help make her comfortable through play and normal child to child bonding. And while it wasn't a vacation, it would have given our other children the opportunity to see the culture that Claire grew up in and maybe help them understand a bit more why she may do some of the things she does.

Once we decided it was too much of a financial strain to bring them with us we began looking for the positives of leaving them at home. Their schooling wouldn't be stressed by missing so much, it would give us time with Claire to really bond without the distraction of other sibling interactions or behavior, it would make the official adoption visits easier because we wouldn't have to keep 4 kids entertained with only 2 of us, we wouldn't have to pay extra fees because our agency strongly discourages siblings on the trip (and shows their discouragement with additional fees,) we wouldn't have to juggle luggage and transportation for 5 (and then 6) people. The kids are old enough to carry some of their own stuff but a suitcase outfitted for 3 weeks is a bit beyond their capacity so we knew that would fall back to us.

Now, our experience traveling without our other children.
The travel part was obviously easier with just the two of us (and then 3 on the way back) than making sure the kids were comfortable and entertained on the 14 hour airplane ride. We were able to bond solely with Claire without the distractions that other children bring. We didn't have an issue, beyond those first couple of hours, with Claire being shut down so the benefit of our other children to play with her wasn't necessary; not that it wouldn't have still been nice. Growing up in a foster family for most of her life, Claire understood the parent/child relationship fairly well. She grew up more with a grandma relationship but still, she had that authority and caring adult figure before she came to us. The official adoption visits weren't hard but I'm sure it would have been harder having 4 children with us. For some of those visits (notary, medical exam, consulate appointment) you just sit for an hour or more, so entertaining 1 instead of 4 was definitely easier.

Now for the flip side. Being with Claire, and Claire only, for nearly 3 weeks brought a few negative things as well. For the first part of her time with us, it was only her and us; she didn't have to share us with anyone. She had 100% attention and while that is probably the way it should be, it did bring home a bit of attitude when she had to share us with the other children. It's a double edged sword, no right or wrong answer here. She needed the time with us to bond but then that proved to cause some difficulty when we got home and she no longer had that undivided time with us. I could see it in this picture I posted, taken when we arrived home at the airport. Others may not see it but I can tell Claire's face is really thinking "wait, I didn't have to share these arms for 3 weeks, who are you?"
If we had just one, or maybe even two, other children we would have most likely taken them with us. I think the positives of having them on the trip outweigh the negatives. This would be based solely on your other children's personality too, though; some children travel really well and some would rather be at home. But, after going on the trip and everything we experienced I would take them, in a heartbeat, if the finances allowed it.

The first few months at home I did see Claire trying to put herself between us and the other kids; sort of like a hierarchy in her mind and she needed to be at the top. I noticed this the most with Daddy and pointed it out to him because it's really hard to see for yourself when you're in the middle of it. But, if I subjectively stood back and watched I could see her turn on some charm when he was around and get different treatment from the others. It would be very helpful if you spoke with people who will be around you after getting home and ask them to look for behaviors that you might not realize are happening. Speak with your other children that treatment of the new child is bound be different than them, simply because they started out in your family a different way and that requires different treatment at times.

Claire would often point out when one of the others would get in trouble that "I never get trouble." At first I ignored it and then warned her that those comments would indeed get her into trouble if they continued. Even now, 8 months later, she will once in awhile make reference to the fact that the other kids get in trouble more than she does. Her idea of getting in trouble is a bit skewed as well. If I get onto Matthew more than once about Legos being all over the floor and threaten to take them away if they aren't cleaned up, Claire will sometimes say "I always pick up my Legos, I never get in trouble." I have started to point out that she's not much different than the other kids; they all leave toys out, including her. I now make it a point to include her in my griping about clothes being left strewn around rooms or toys left in places they shouldn't be. I didn't at first because she didn't know the rules but she took that as special treatment that made her better than the others. I've encouraged our other children to speak up when they feel something isn't fair and many times I've agreed with them and tried to consciously make an adjustment in how I treat Claire. Not that I treat her worse because they say it isn't fair but if I complain about Emily having 4 pairs of shoes on her floor I will now look around and see that Claire also has several pairs on the floor and I'll make them both put them away, whereas I didn't do that the first several months she was home.

The relationship between the kids is fluid, ever changing. The first month or so was a honeymoon period. Matthew invited Claire to play with him, Emily made it a point to play with dolls with her (which she never touched before), Jacob would do silly things to make her laugh, etc. The next couple of months brought some real adjustments instead of just accepting everything Claire did as OK. Emily wanted to read at night but Claire needed to go to sleep, Matthew decided that he didn't want Claire in his room all the time playing with his things but Claire didn't understand that because she could play with them before, Jacob turned back towards being a 12 year old boy with a 7 year old sister; he didn't want her hanging around him asking questions all the time but she didn't know why that wasn't OK anymore because it was before. I would get onto the older kids for not including her as much but at the same time try to explain to her that I will let each of them have their own space and time and they don't have to play with her or entertain her all the time. I encouraged her to play with something that she wanted to but it became more obvious that she wasn't used to that. She was the older sister to a handicapped brother in China; he played whatever and whenever she wanted to. She was the boss and never really played alone. She spent some time unhappy because nobody would play with her; she still does occasionally but she's learning how to entertain herself a lot better now. When I'm in the kitchen preparing dinner she will color or play with her dolls or go outside. This is a huge step in independence that she didn't show before.

Around this time she became obsessed with one of Emily friends who lives in the neighborhood. "Kate" would come over to play with Emily but end up entertaining Claire the whole time; imagine that struggle for Emily. Claire was getting nearly 100% attention from Kate, so she "loved" her. That has backed off quite a bit as the newness has worn off and the 10 year old girls want to hang out together occasionally without a younger sister. They still involve Claire a lot when they play but I've noticed Claire's obsession with Kate has faded as Kate wants to be with Emily more.

I noticed the next phase between the kids as more sibling rivalry. I've always had an attitude of kids can work out their issues without parent involvement (to an extent) but I've noticed that I settle many more sibling fights now than I used to. This is hard. Sometimes I get upset with the older kids for nit-picking stupid things that Claire is doing, or saying. I remind them that even though she's conversationally fluent in English, there are still a lot of nuances in speech that she does not understand. Instead of helping her make sense of something she's not saying right they tend to tell her it doesn't make sense in a nit-picky way. I usually step in and remind them and then help Claire reword what she's wanting to say so she can also learn from it. Then other times Claire gets upset because one of the other kids tells her what to do. All of a sudden that stubborn streak shows up and she will get feisty with them. Sometimes I get onto her about that because it wasn't that the other kids were trying to boss her around, it was more that they knew I would say something if she left her toothbrush out, or clothes in the bathroom after her shower, etc. So it may start out as Emily saying "Claire, you left your toothbrush on the counter" and Claire responds back with "don't tell me what to do" and then progresses to "Claire, I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just telling you that you left it out" and then I'll hear "Emily, why you so mean to me?" and a response of "I'm not being mean, Claire!" and of course the voices shriek a little higher each time and then Claire gets downright mad.

I don't want to come across to the older kids that I always choose Claire's side but also don't want it to be that I always defend Claire and the older kids can't do anything right. It's a balancing act, a tight rope at times. I fall off the rope a lot, sometimes upsetting Claire, sometimes upsetting one of the others. It's a good thing that kids are very forgiving.

So, if we take this sibling situation back to the idea that bringing home an older child is really like bringing home a newborn, this is how you could interpret the stages.

Bring home the baby: Older siblings are in love, they are being such "big helpers" and everything in your world is rose colored.

Baby starts to crawl: Older siblings are finding toys for the baby, who can now hold onto things and get around, a little bit. This is fun, the baby can play!

Baby turns into a toddler: Mom! Baby is messing with my toys. MOM! Get the baby. Mom doesn't come quick enough, of course, so then the baby starts crying. "what did you do? Why is he crying?" Older sibling has a look of "uh oh, maybe I shouldn't have whacked him with that toy." look on his face.

Older sibling and Toddler, now preschool age learn to get along and play a bit better and you sigh a sigh of relief that the 2 year old stage is over.

Older sibling goes to school and gets his own friends. "Mom, make him get out, he's bothering us!" And so it begins again.

It's fluid and it changes.
It's not easy, it's not hard (at least all the time).
It's cool to watch your family swell with love for another, it's covering your head up with the pillow at the end of the night and hoping that morning is a long time away.
It just is.

Older Child Chronicles: Part 3

2010-09-15T11:27:00.002-05:00

What can happen at and after Gotcha

I had read many, many stories of other adoptions before traveling. Just when I thought I'd read enough, I'd read more.
I knew the children being adopted would most likely be shut down when you first meet them.
I knew that nearly all children cry, some even hitting, kicking and screaming.
I knew all of that. I even understood it; the child really has very limited understanding of what is happening and they are frightened and may even be (in their eyes) fighting for their life.

I expected it.

And then it happened.
When we first met Claire she was smiley, said 'hi" to me after I said "ni hao" to her and let me hug her. She gleefully went through the backpack we brought and quickly finished a package of teddy grahams I'd stashed in there. When her last teddy graham was gone we watched as she quickly realized what was happening. We were forced to sign paperwork while she watched and then she broke out in full hysterics. She cried, and cried, and cried while saying in Mandarin "I want my grandmother, I want China, I don't want to leave China." I don't know anything that the orphanage worker or our guide told her as it was all in Mandarin. After about 10 minutes of her heartbreaking cry it was time for us to leave. The orphanage worker walked us out of the orphanage and Daddy carried Claire to the van, while she was crying, pleading and begging to stay. We were put in the van, Claire sitting on her new Daddy's lap and we left. She was crying, I was crying and our guide was repeatedly trying to reassure her.

It felt like we had just kidnapped her, and by all accounts, I'm sure that is what it appeared like as well. Two Americans in the back of a van with a Chinese child being held while she screamed; not exactly what I had pictured in my head of the day we met her.

Once she stopped crying hysterically she rejected anything our guide would say. Our guide would try to redirect her attention to the baby doll we brought, she grunted and pushed it away from her. Our guide would say something about her new Mommy and Daddy and she would yell out a very hostile "bu shi" (NO).

Even though I knew this could happen and actually expected it to happen, it still caught me off guard. I was surprised by the way it made me feel.

I felt so wrong, like we were not doing the right thing, like we just kidnapped a child. I questioned everything.
I questioned our motives. Were we being selfish and doing what we wanted and not what was really best for her?
Was she better off staying here in China with her foster family?
I felt completely helpless.

I didn't know what I was supposed to feel; immense joy that we were just given our daughter we'd dreamed of or extreme guilt and hurt that we were breaking this little girl's heart? I didn't really know how to process what I was feeling; I wasn't really able to think beyond that exact moment and what Claire must be feeling. I couldn't see past that moment and it was almost like I had blinders on and the future was literally one minute at a time. I focused on the time in the van and didn't think much about getting back to the hotel; I simply couldn't think that far ahead. The only thing other than Claire that my mind thought of is that we needed prayer. I prayed the whole time we were in the van and used the rented cell phone to call my mom back in the states to tell her to start praying for us. Honestly, I have no idea what time it was in the states and I didn't even think of that at the time; I just knew we needed as many prayers as we could get.

We stopped at a Kodak store on the way back to the hotel to have our photo taken for our adoption registration. Our guide and the worker at the Kodak store dried Claire's tears and tried to make her look somewhat happy in the photo. That didn't work, she has one mad scowl on her face in our registration photo.

We got back to our hotel and had about an hour and a half to get some lunch and hopefully get Claire to calm down. She was very quiet at first. I can't begin to imagine what she must have been thinking. Two people that look nothing like her nor speak her language picked her up, took her picture and brought her to a place unknown to her. Looking back now, I'm surprised she didn't fight longer.

We fed her a big plate of egg fried rice, her favorite, and opened up the suitcase full of toys. By the time we left for our appointment with the government official she had warmed up and showed our guide the toys she brought to play with. The second time we arrived back at our hotel she went with us willingly and the rest is history.

God is good.

Letting the guard down

2010-09-02T10:12:00.000-05:00

After reading many stories from other parents who adopted older children I expected Claire to resist affection from us and also not want to share affection with us either. I was surprised when she kissed Daddy on the cheek the first day and didn't physically resist a hug. In fact, she never resisted hugs or kisses so I was a bit surprised after reading that most older children do resist it. I mean, I can understand not wanting someone you just met to hug you.

I never really thought much about it except for the fleeting thought of that it was one challenge we didn't have to work through. That is until about a week or so ago. Even though Claire didn't resist affection from us and would show us affection as well I noticed a shift in her; almost like a guard came down and we worked our ways into her heart a little more.

She hugs back now. I mean really grabs on and hugs back instead of having her arms around us but we're really doing the hugging. She seeks me out to give me a kiss. When it's time for the kids to catch the bus they wait in our front yard until the bus starts coming down the street and then they hurry to to the bus stop. Every day this week she has run back up to the front porch towards me. The first day I said "what's wrong honey, did you forget something?" and she smiled and said "no, I give you kiss." She had big puckered lips and laid a big fat kiss on my cheek and then ran off saying "bye bye Mommy, I love you." It just made my heart melt.

She initiates the affection now and I can clearly see it is different than before; even though I didn't know before that anything was off. It is so neat to see the guards come down and her heart fully open up to us.

Older Child Chronicles: Part 2

2010-08-25T11:42:00.000-05:00

Packing Your Suitcases

I dug around for the packing list I used for our trip and luckily I found it. Here are the basics:

Clothes
I recommend casual clothes with one outfit that is a little nicer for appointments with government officials and "gotcha" day. I took more clothes than recommended and ended up glad that I did. Our laundry in Beijing took 4 days so if I had only taken 3-4 outfits as recommended I would have been wearing the same thing for 4 days while I waited for the laundry to be done. It is going to be easier to rewear clothes if you travel in the cooler months because your clothes are going to get raunchy quick when it's hot out; especially in Guangzhou. Pack one outfit for each person traveling in a carry on so if your luggage gets lost you will have at least two outfits to get you by until the luggage is found. I packed two sets of undergarments in my carry on as well so I could change during the flight if I wanted to and still have another set if my luggage got lost.

Clothes for your new child
A lot of people say to take only a couple of things and then buy clothes in China after you have them so you have the right size. I didn't do that. I used the measurements I got and bought clothes according to size charts. The most helpful ones I found were Lands End and Children's Place charts. If the measurements you receive are during the winter, assume they are a bit bigger than what your child actually is. They layer on those heavy winter clothes and that adds a few pounds. The measurements I got for Claire right before we left were 44 lbs and 45 inches tall. She was really about 38-39 lbs and 43-44 inches tall. This made a difference of an entire size. So, I would estimate on the smaller side of clothes. I brought everything for her, clothes, panties, pajamas, socks, shoes, coat, mittens, hat, etc. I thought she'd come to us with a coat but I wanted to be prepared in case the orphanage wanted to keep it.
Also assume the foot measurement you get (if you get one) was taken with their shoes on, not of their actual foot. The measurement I got for Claire was 7.1" (after I converted the cm to inches) which was a size 12. This sounded right to me because my nephew was about the same size and wore a 12-13 shoe. So I bought size 12 boots and took them with us. Imagine my surprise when I saw the size of shoe she really wore! She actually wore a toddlers size 9 shoe and is just now in a 10 1/2 toddlers.

Goodies for your new child

I had to go back and find a couple of pictures to try and remind myself of the things we took for Claire. I took a lot of stuff but I'm glad I did because she moved from one thing to the next very quickly and I had enough to keep her occupied. Here is a list:
Calin Doll- I bought this doll long before we traveled. As part of our last care package I wrote a simple story book with pictures for Claire to introduce our family and also help her understand what was going to happen. We took a picture of everyone with the doll to include in the book and then I brought the doll with us when we met her for the first time. She immediately recognized the doll and got the book out of her backpack and showed us that they were the same. Definite hit! I took clothes for this doll too so she could change her clothes. She played with the doll and clothes a lot while we were in China.
Back Pack- Hello Kitty is huge in China so I got one with Hello Kitty on it. Now I think Dora would have been even better. We took this backpack with us when we met her filled with Teddy Grahams, M&Ms, sunglasses, small coloring book, crayons, little ladybug and her doll.
Leapster- We already had a Leapster (and lots of games) from Matthew so it wasn't something I had to buy just for her. But, if I had to I probably would because it was the most played with toy I took. Even though she really didn't understand the games, she enjoyed playing with it and was hearing English while she played. The favorite game was Mr. Pencil because it is coloring and drawing; even though she didn't know English yet she figured this game out really quickly.
Kids Meal toys- When we eat out I get a kids meal most of the time so I saved those little toys and put them in the suitcase. These were small and could be crammed down inside a shoe for packing and she liked a lot of them.
Purse
Sunglasses
Hair bows
Hair brush- Bring one for the child just in case you run into an issue like lice.
Water bottle- the one I found had a snack container that screwed onto the bottom. We used this during our outings in case she got hungry or thirsty.
Books- I wouldn't take too many and I'd only take easy ones. The wordy books I took kept her attention for a total of 20 seconds; she had no idea what on Earth I was saying so she lost interest really fast. The toddler books I took were the best. Ones like First 100 Words (Bright Baby), My First Colors Board Book (My 1st Board Books), Big Board Books Colors, ABC, Numbers (Bright Baby) are the best, in my opinion. You can open it, tell the child what the words are and when they lose interest you can put it away until next time. We taught Claire all the colors in English before we left China and it was with a simple colors book aimed at toddlers. We also knew the colors in Chinese so we would show her a blue page and say "lanse, blue."
Crayons, coloring books, blank doodle books- Try to get one of the smaller, top bound books so it fits in a backpack easily for plane rides, etc.
Slippers
Beach ball- a definite must have. I brought two and we played with them a lot. We also used it to help her learn the colors. We would point to a color on the ball, say it's name and then throw it. She started doing the same thing quickly.
Inflatable swim ring- She really liked this too; she thought it was fun to lay on it on the floor and we also used it to play beach ball basketball.
Bubbles- Don't forget bubbles! They brought the first smiles and giggles from Claire.
Bath toys- I bought small, cheap ones and then left them behind when we came home. Claire loved taking a bath so these were a good thing to bring. They could also help a child who is scared of the bath feel a bit more comfortable.
Pictures of your house, their new room, and family members.

Most of what I brought, except for the doll, backpack and Leapster were things I found at Target's dollar spot. That way if something got broken, lost or left behind it wasn't a big deal.

Medicines
I dreaded taking up precious space and luggage weight by packing all the different medicines. But then I'd think, if I get XYZ in China, do I want to try and find a medicine to treat it? Short answer- NO! So, I packed all the medicines, just in case and I would probably do the same thing again. There are pharmacies in China and the pharmacists are very helpful so if you don't want to take all this stuff but find you need treatment for something there get your guide to take you to a pharmacy.

Pain relievers- Adult and child (If your child has a special need that compromises the liver, take only Tylenol,)
Sleep aid- Some people may feel as though they don't need this but having something to help you fall asleep is very helpful on the airplane and the first few days in China while you're getting used to the time difference. You could take a pain reliever PM, or something like Simply Sleep or Melatonin.
Cold medicine- Bring one antihistamine and one decongestant. You may need the decongestant if you will be in a large city with a lot of smog. Bring allergy and/or asthma medicine if you use it here. The air quality there is atrocious and will make asthma sufferers miserable. Saline spray would be helpful for pollution induced issues too. Bring a child version of cold medicine as well.
Acidophilus- the good bacteria in yogurt that helps "right" your digestive system. There is plenty of things in China that will mess up your digestive system so you can try and keep it balanced by taking Acidophilus regularly. Another help is to eat the yogurt there to help your system stay balanced eating food there. The yogurt there is very good; it has a thinner consistency than our yogurt and a bit sweeter.
Stomach settlers- Pepto Bismol and Immodium. We didn't need the Immodium but I did take Pepto Bismol for the first several days because my stomach just didn't feel "right". I never got sick but I did notice the Pepto Bismol took away that feeling of "oh my, this isn't headed in a good direction." When we ate traditional Chinese food I would take it before I ate.
Cipro- You will have to get this from your doctor. It is an antibiotic you will need to take if you get sick from the water. It is also a broad spectrum antibiotic so if you need one for something else it will probably work. My doctor wasn't comfortable giving us medicine to take just in case but this one she was OK with because it is a CDC recommended treatment for an illness related to water supply.
Band-aids, antibiotic ointment- bring fun ones for the child because you'll probably need at least one or two. Or you'll need a whole bunch if something like this happens to your child too.
Thermometer
Hydrocortisone cream
Yeast infection treatment- hopefully you will not need it but this is one of those "do I want to be in China when I get this and not have a treatment box written in English?" Big fat NO.
Powdered pedialite- This may apply more to younger children but I took it just in case. The only store I found this at was Walgreens.
Sunscreen
Insect repellent
Lotrimin AF for rashes
Lice treatment- Again, one of those you probably won't use but if you need it the $10 box will be priceless.

Toiletries
Shampoo, conditioner- I bought the bottles in the travel section and filled them with my own shampoo, conditioner. That gave me enough stuff for the 20 days but also took up less room than a full size bottle. I brought child shampoo as well.
Soap
Hair products that you can't live without
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Razors (make sure to pack in your checked bag or it will be taken away at airport security)
Shaving cream
Brushes, combs
Nail clipper and nail file
Travel packs of tissues
chapstick
Q-tips
lotion
hair clips, rubber bands
make-up
moist wipes

Misc. Items to pack
Travel sewing kit
Locks for your suitcases- make sure you get the TSA approved locks. It is very important to lock your suitcases when taking domestic China flights as well. We went with combination locks even though they were a few dollars more. I can't imagine losing the key to my suitcase half-way around the world.
Food- Dry snacks, something you can cook with boiling water like oatmeal, easy mac, etc. I forgot to pack our instant oatmeal and was so bummed because there were many times it would have been a welcomed lunch or dinner in the room. Also pack a small thermos so you can have something to make your food in and then eat it. We bought plastic silverware there but I'd throw a few in your suitcase as well.
Peanut butter and you can buy crackers there. Since I forgot the oatmeal, peanut butter on crackers became lunch and dinner sometimes. I bought the individual peanut butter containers so I could only use a little but at a time if I wanted.
Gum, mints- this will help keeping you from tossing your lunch when hit with the many smells of China
Ziploc bags- a MUST have. Bring different sizes. I packed a lot of stuff in ziploc bags to keep it all organized and then I could use them for other things I needed in China. I packed Claire's clothes in ziploc bags, by outfit, so I could get them in the suitcase in the best way to take up less space. The most useful bags I packed were the x- large ones with a handle. I found them at the dollar store- 2 for $1. We used them a ton! We used the snack size bags along with a thin piece of cardboard to transport our money within our money belts; that way the money wouldn't get wet if we got sweaty.
Travel size detergent- Powdered is the best for traveling. I make my own detergent so I placed enough for 2 loads in a ziploc. I washed many clothes in the bathtub of our room. See?
Hand sanitizer- squatty potties don't have sinks usually
Travel alarm- find one that uses batteries
Magazines, books- something to occupy all the time you will sit on a plane
Plug adapter- This worked great until I tried to plug in the hair dryer with it and POOF, it blew a fuse. That happened on the second or third day there so we didn't have the rest of the trip. That was OK because we took things that were dual voltage and the hotel had a plug (usually on or around the desk) that would accommodate western style plugs. It was not a voltage converter so you still have to make sure what you plug in will handle 220V.
Laptop- Some people are able to travel without one but we couldn't. We skyped every day with our 3 other children back home, and updated our blog. We bought a cheap netbook that was lightweight and small.
Plastic zippered envelope for all your adoption papers. I bought two, one for papers we needed to carry with us (USCIS approval, travel approval, etc.) and one for documents and receipts we received from officials. Make sure you write on the receipt what it was for and the amount because it will all be in Chinese. That way when you get home and organize your receipts for tax purposes you know what each one was for. I also took along a separate folder that had a copy of all critical documents, our entire dossier and several copies of our passport. Just about every official visit in China will require a copy of your passport and Chinese visa.
Gifts- We needed 4, orphanage director, nanny, civil affairs official and the notary. Make them small and don't stress too much about it. They don't open them in front of you and it is seriously just a formality and not personable. I included: lotion, lipstick and hand sanitizer (travel sized and bought during clearance time) from Bath and Body Works (made in the US), a postcard from our city with Chinese on the back thanking them for their role in our adoption, and a package of Jelly Belly jelly beans (also made in the US). They can't buy Jelly Bellies there and they like them. I packed small red bags (like a lunch bag) and gold tissue paper and assembled the gift bags there.

Try not to let packing stress you out. It IS stressful but the most important things are your passports, visa, money and adoption paperwork. If you have those then you can wear the same clothes every day and buy shampoo and a toothbrush when you get there. It will all be OK.

Good luck! Pretty soon you will have your bags all packed for the biggest trip of your life, just like this.

Older Child Chronicles: Part 1

2010-08-18T13:56:00.007-05:00

Preparing Yourself and Your Children

I read, and read and read as much as I could before we adopted Claire. We read the required books for our home study but then we also sought out books that others recommended.

Hands down, the best book, in my opinion, was The Connected Child: Bring hope and healing to your adoptive family. I found this book not only helpful for bringing in an adopted child but great for handling difficult and everyday situations with biological children as well, especially those who fall on the Autism spectrum in one way or another.
Other books that we read:
Parenting with Love and Logic- Probably my second favorite book and it really deals with children across the board, not specifically adopted children.
Adopting the Older Child- This book is old (1978) and out of print but was recommended to us by our home study agency; I was able to find it online. It does have a lot of good information in it. The biggest piece of information I took out of this one is taking your child back to infant stages when you get them. (more on that later) Raising Adopted Children, Revised Edition: Practical Reassuring Advice for Every Adoptive Parent- We read an older version of this book so I'm not sure what the revised version has changed. This book does not deal solely with international adoption, or older child adoption but some things about raising adopted children are the same across the board, such as the feeling of abandonment, rejecting their birth family, etc.

Preparing yourself:
I've read and heard some statements about adopting an older child that equates to it being easier because you don't have to deal with the baby stage. Please don't fall into this thinking. It is in no way easier than adopting a baby who will wake up several times a night, need feedings every few hours, and so on. You will still do those same things with an older child and then have additional attachment issues on top of it. In China I woke up several times a night, Claire had to potty, she needed a drink, she fell out of bed, etc. Instead of waking up for a bottle, she woke up for other reasons. She was completely on edge, and in a full alert sense when we first got her; she didn't know us at all!

Seek out the "worst case" scenarios, google RAD (reactive attachment disorder), and really read what those families go through, then ask yourself if you can handle it. One thing we know with international adoption is you really don't know most of what a child is like before you travel and have them with you. I'm going to be honest, I don't think I could handle a child with full blown RAD. Maybe I could if they were our only child but with other childrens' safety to factor in, the decision would be very difficult. To lessen the possibility of RAD I scoured the information on the children we were considering. I read into anything that I could. When a child who has lived in the orphanage has descriptors like "introverted" or "quiet" I read into it that it could mean they weren't given attention in their earlier years and now don't even seek out attention or acceptance. Is that the case in every child's file? No, but it could be.
We knew going into adopting an older child we wanted a child who had lived with a foster family. All literature we read said her initial grieving would be harder but if she had formed the attachment bonds to one family, she can form those bonds again. Children raised solely in an orphanage are dependent on the staff for forming those healthy attachments and some orphanages do a better job than others; and some countries do a better job than others.

We had many discussions with our other children (ages 11, 9 and 7 at that time) about what it will be like when Claire comes home. Things we talked about:
*We asked them to imagine having one name for their entire life (so far) and then one day someone started calling them a different name. We talked about the fact that we may call her by her Chinese name for awhile and ultimately we would let her decide what she wanted to be called.
*We told them that she might start crying for an unknown reason and explained grief in the simple terms of relating it to a death of someone very close to them.
*We explained to them that she might not like them at first and although we have been anticipating her for months she would most likely not share in that excitement. She may reject them or act out behaviorally towards them.
*We talked about the reality that we might not be able to go places for while like we are used to. This was wrapped up in the talk about the possibility of behavior issues relating to attachment.
*We went over the ethnic differences with them including culture, habits and food. We explained that I might make two different meals for awhile to help Claire feel comfortable until she liked American food.
*We role played situations they might face at school or anywhere relating to their sister being a different race. Questions like "is she your sister? No, I mean your REAL sister?"
*We talked with Emily a lot about sharing a room. She's had her own room for 10 years and now shares with Claire. She was very excited about this but as her parents, we knew this newness would wear off so we really talked about how they will still share a room when Emily is done with sharing and wants her own room again.

And then after all that, turn all those situations and discussions around and ask/tell yourself the same things.
*Your child will most likely reject you at first, how will you feel? What will you do? What if they reject one of you for longer than you thought they would? How will you handle the situation if your child rejects one of you and the other parent gets overwhelmed?
*How will you handle the name situation? I know some feel strongly that you should keep their Chinese name first because that is all they come to you with. Many parents use their Chinese name for their middle name and a few give them all American names and don't carry over any of their Chinese name. Will you start calling them by their new name immediately or ease into it?
*How do you think you'll handle the grief episodes? Holding, rocking, talking or more of a hands off approach (and I don't mean that in a bad way) if they reject your touch and talking?
*How ready are you for behavior issues related to attachment?
*Are you comfortable preparing two meals for awhile? How comfortable are you preparing Chinese food? Do you know of any Asian stores or supermarkets you can visit?
*What if your new child doesn't want to sleep where you've arranged for them to? Will you set up a bed in your room, or let them sleep with you? How will you handle moving them to their room (either own room or shared room)?
*Think out what you might say when people question your adoption. Questions like "Are you her real mother? "Why didn't you adopt from the US?" or "Could you not have any of your own?"
*Will you incorporate Chinese culture into your life? If so, how?
*What are your plans for school? Will he/she attend regular public school, private school, mandarin immersion school, etc? What programs (ESL, reading, speech, etc.) are in place to ensure your new child's success?

I'm sure there are more questions and things we contemplated before adopting Claire but those things came to mind right now.

Next post: Packing those suitcases!

6 months home

2010-08-12T09:03:00.002-05:00

This may look like any standard 'ole picture but this picture has taken 6 months to fully mature. See that little girl with 1, ONE ponytail? Claire's hair has been growing since we met her in China. She has had a couple of trims to try and even up the layers she had before but other than those trims she hasn't had any hair cuts. I was able to put her hair into pigtails about 6 weeks ago but today was the first time I got it into one ponytail, successfully. When I finished fixing her hair she reached back to see what I'd done and got very excited.

"Mommy, you one ponytail?! Oh yay, that is cool!"

I guess that sums it up well. We've had our little girl home with us for six months today; I can't believe they have gone by so quickly but at the same time it feels like she's always been here. Now that all of our kids are back in school I'm hoping to write some blog posts/articles on older child adoption; things that I think would have been helpful to know before we traveled. The key word in that sentence is hoping, because keeping up with 4 kids is a full time job.

In one day

2010-07-12T07:00:00.003-05:00

Claire got on a bike today for the first time since arriving in the U.S.

I insisted that she start with a bike with training wheels and J insisted that she could do it without. I.was.wrong.

We both insist she should ride the first few times wrapped in bubble wrap because as soon as she falls one time that will be it, owies are the end of the world for this girl and we all know how bad bike owies can be.

Grief sneeking up

2010-07-10T22:28:00.000-05:00

Things have gone so well the last four months that these last two weeks really snuck up me. Claire has been grieving a lot lately, a lot more than I anticipated. I think this is related to many things all adding up together.

*School is out and her routine of keeping busy during the day is not happening.
*The more English she gains (which is a lot, she's basically conversationally fluent) she is able to tell us stories. For a couple of days last week she talked non-stop about China, her aunts, her grandmother, her friends, everything. We loved hearing her stories and it seemed as though everything would trigger a story. One time we were looking for fabric and she told us her "sister" had something that looked like a particular fabric. (I say "sister" because this girl was actually a friend who lived in another house.) But then she had a hard grieving cry later that night when she went to bed and had some quiet time to think on her own.
*She's forgetting Chinese. When she realized she was actually forgetting the words it made her sad and she said she wanted to remember Chinese but then when we would practice with her she didn't remember some words and would start off a sadness circle.
*The "honeymoon" period is pretty much over and the tip toe of "don't make Claire upset, give her want she wants" is starting to wane. Going from the oldest of two and dictating how things are done to the youngest of four isn't making her too happy. We encourage the kids to play fair and all but in reality there is a pecking order in siblings; there just is. Even if everything is fair, with four kids they only get what they want 25% of the time.
One example: The other kids had to prove they could handle a Nintendo DS by starting with a Leapster, progressing to a Gameboy and then purchasing a DS with birthday money. We don't make the other kids share their DS with her and then she gets upset that she doesn't have one.

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I typed the above post on 6/20 and then stopped. I always intended to come back and write more but summer things, like swimming, were just too important!

Claire has started to have less grieving than a few weeks ago when I started this post but we still see more than we did initially. She cries most often when she is upset, rather it be from not getting her way, getting hurt or being scared. Recently she was at a playground and I was watching her while sitting on a bench. The bench was in the sun and I got hot so I moved 4 feet to other side of the sidewalk to stand in the shade. A couple of minutes later she ran off the equipment with a look of panic on her face and when she saw me she started crying and said "I not see you, I think you leave me." While we don't see much fear of abandonment on the outside, it is definitely there inside and it is probably something she will always wrestle with. I reassured her that I will never leave her but the mood was set and we had to get through a grief episode and tears before moving forward with the rest of the day.

So, what does a grief episode look like?
This may be different for each child but here is what happens with Claire.
I can tell when a grief episode is coming. When an episode is triggered by something she doesn't like, she gets quiet and reserved. She is usually talkative and very happy so I know something is up if she stops talking, won't answer questions and especially if she just looks at me without a response when I ask her what is wrong. She gets this look in her eyes that she's not really here, almost like I can visually see her "check out" and go to another place. I'm sure that place is her memories from China. As I see her check out, her eyes will usually fill with tears and one more "what is wrong" is enough to bring the full episode of tears. Most of the time she answers with "I want China" or "I miss China" but sometimes it is that she misses her nai nai and a yis. We usually just hold her, hug her, kiss her and rock her. Several times we have told her we miss China too and we always validate her feelings. Her grief is real, it's raw and most times all we can do is hold her and reassure her that she is safe here and we are forever.

When she was telling many stories during the day a few weeks ago she cried several nights in a row after I tucked her into bed. Around the third night I was starting to wonder if we were doing the right thing. I actually looked at J and said "what should I do? Are we making it better or worse?" He didn't know either so then while holding Claire I looked at her and said "what can mommy do to make you feel better?" Her response? "Sing me rock a baby"; the song I sang to her when she cried that first night we had her in China. By the end of the song she had stopped crying and smiled.

I thought to myself "wow, why didn't I just ask her all this time what would make her feel better?!"

Last week my sister-in-law and her family stopped by for a visit and we talked about the increase in grief episodes lately. She lost someone very close to her last year and when comparing Claire's grief to that of losing someone she said that her grief peaked out about six months after he had passed away. It was about that time that she realized that the person she lost was really gone and not coming back.

Claire has been with us for 5 months now and I think the same thing is happening. The honeymoon is wearing off and she's really here to stay.

I always thought that we'd have the most grief at the beginning and then the time between episodes would get longer as time went on. This is not what has happened. We saw very little grief in the beginning and it really snuck up on us around the 4 month mark.

It's happened at home, at the houses of our family members, at a restaurant and most recently at the amusement park; grief doesn't care where we are.

I hope this is helpful to parents adopting older children. I read as much as I possibly could before we traveled to bring Claire home and thought I knew what to expect. While I do think we were fairly well prepared, there have been a few things that I wasn't expecting and this is one of them.

the end of kindergarten

2010-06-11T19:59:00.001-05:00

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This post is also published on our regular family blog, Living With Chaos. As I try to combine the two blogs I will start publishing regular "kid" stories, pictures and things there if it doesn't directly deal with adoption. To make sure you get all the Claire "fix" you can handle, you can follow that blog too.
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Recently we attended the end of the year program for Claire. They didn't dress the kids up in cap and gowns for the traditional kindergarten graduation but this program was very cute. The kids sang several songs (we now know why she loves the song "My Country Tis of Thee") and then went through the class showing their picture and saying what they want to be when they grow up. Imagine our surprise when Claire said she wanted to be a doctor; what about all that medical anxiety?!

Here is Claire with her teacher who has been amazing and helped Claire adjust with so much patience and understanding.

On the last day of school we pulled into the driveway and as I was helping the kids out of the car I look back and see Claire crying, big crocodile tears running down her face. I asked her what was wrong and she was able to sniff out a "Ms. V..." She doesn't understand yet that Ms. V will get new kindergartners and she will be OK in a new classroom with a new teacher. I anticipate the first week of school to be a bit rough but hopefully nothing like the very first week of kindergarten a couple of months ago.

These two girls are a couple of Claire's friends; we hear their names the most. She is such a social butterfly and loves having fun with her friends.
One of her friends "N" asked me on a recent field trip "does anyone in China have blond hair?" I told her no, mostly everyone has black hair and she said "so is that why Claire loves my hair?" I had to laugh because if a blond haired person visits China you will nearly be assaulted; everyone wants to touch blond hair and have their picture taken with blond haired people.
Claire has become very aware of the American flag; so much so that she points it out every time she sees it. Do you realize how many American flags are flying just on a simple drive to school? We cannot say our country isn't patriotic if you base it solely on number of American flags flying! Claire tells us that she likes the China flag and the American flag and we always tell her that we like them both too. One day she made this picture for me to scan and email to her foster family showing both of the families she loves.

ache

2010-06-10T22:51:00.002-05:00

My heart aches to go back to China.
Just as much as my heart was ready to return home after being there for nearly 3 weeks, my heart wants to go back.

I miss all of it,

the history
the beauty
the colors

the people
the children
the need

the simplicity
the technology
the two of them intertwined

the red lanterns
the jade
the porcelain

the great wall
the temples
the culture

the subway
the hot pot
the supermarket

the hackey sack dances
the exercise parks
the morning exercise routines

the stores
the language
the food on a stick carts

the river
the trust
the amazing blessing

the need
oh, the need
realizing I can't fix all of the need

I miss China at times like I miss my own home. I look at my daughter, the amazing blessing China has entrusted to me and somehow feel like I'm away from home and need to go back. It's a physical yearning that I want to be there. I've been thinking of ways that will take me back to China to experience even more of it, to help fill a need, to do something, whatever that is.

I struggle with not being able to help all the children that need it. I mentally know that I can't fix it all but I feel, hmm, almost unfulfilled if I don't try to fix what I can.

I will be back in China one day; I know I will.

I have family

2010-06-09T19:11:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I received a quarterly email from an adoption agency granting access to a website where they list waiting children available for adoption. I don't know why I must look at all of their sweet faces; we are not in any position to adopt again and not even talking about it but I just have to look when I know a new list has been posted. Self control is not a strong suit of mine when I know there are so many children needing families.

As I was looking at the many, many sweet boys on the list I clicked on one and both girls appeared over my shoulder. Emily said "oh, he's so cute, isn't he cute Claire?"
Claire looked at the many children on my computer screen and looked a bit confused. Eventually she asked "mommy, whasthat?" in her cute accent. I told her all these children need a family to love them....just like you did. I knew when it came out of my mouth that the answer I would get back wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear but I continued anyway.

Me: You needed a family and we wanted you to be our little girl.
Claire: Huh? I have family...China.

What do you say? At the tender age of 7 and not a full understanding of English, I left it fairly simple.

"Your family in China couldn't keep you forever but we can; we will be your family forever."

She looked at me sort of confused and I left it at that. Most likely it will be years before she understands her whole story. We have good reasons to assume she didn't know she was a foster child and after six years with the same family, I'm sure she feels like the rug was pulled out from under her. The only thing we can do is reassure her each and every time that we are forever, that she will never be taken from us. We also tell her that her family in China loved her and they still do and it's OK for her heart to love two families. Right now she doesn't want any contact with her foster family and it is hard for me to tell them that but I have reassured them that we know they love her and we will keep a dialogue with them so she can have the opportunity to explore that time in her life when she's ready.

Four months ago

2010-05-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Four months ago today we walked into an orphanage in China with so much excitement and uncertainty to meet our new seven year old daughter. While the first few minutes of our meeting were happy, Claire eventually realized what was about to happen. She was about to leave with people who don't look like her, don't speak her language and her hope of returning to her foster family wasn't going to happen. This picture is the last one we took at the orphanage before Claire started crying. While I'm smiling, you can see the pain and fear in her eyes. Looking at this picture brings tears to my eyes now; just seeing her emotions written all over her face.

And now, four months later this is what we see. No more fear, no more sadness, her anxiety of being abandoned is starting to diminish, she's speaking nearly fluent English, and she's even beginning to read! Her face looks much happier now, almost relaxed in way. Do we still see some grief? Yes, but it's getting more and more rare that she cries for her China family.
Some big news that I haven't shared yet is that she remembered her phone number in China and we had a contact in the country call it to see if it was indeed her foster family. It was. We have their phone numbers and email address and I've been in contact with her foster aunt (a yi). We have sent them many pictures of YaYa and I've talked on the phone with her a yi. Claire knows that we have contact with them and that she can talk with them if she'd like; she doesn't want to. The one time she thought she did want to call her foster grandfather answered the phone and Claire melted into a puddle of tears on my shoulder; it was too hard for her. We don't know the entire story yet of what her life was like in China. She tells us lots of stuff and we ask her questions but it will probably be a year or two before she can really tell us what her daily life was like with her foster family. One funny story she told me is her two a yis (one big, one little she says) took her at nighttime and they went swimming and came back in the morning. The tone she used made it sound like it was a secret swimming trip. I know her a yis loved her very much. The one I have email contact with has said she will send us photos of Claire when she was little. This would be a priceless gift!

Another long update. You know, I would be able to stop posting such long updates if I did this more often but with 4 kids to raise and a house to manage, the time just seems to slip by so quickly.
School
Wow, Claire loves school! She fits in wonderfully and has made many friends. She's somewhat of a celebrity among the students and has sparked a puppy love crush in many boys. She decided that she'd like to ride the bus so I let her try a couple of days and she liked it. I still pick the kids up in the afternoon but they ride it to school in the morning. She has abandoned sitting with Emily or Matthew on the bus in favor of sitting with a friend from her class.
She has found her independence while at school and will push Emily away in the hall if she feels like Emily is trying to help her (read: control her). Her teacher is amazed at her progress and has been extremely helpful in Claire's transition. At the start of next year I have consented to have Claire assessed for extra reading help. If she qualifies for the help she will get daily sessions with the reading intervention teacher. This extra help has made me feel secure that declining the ESL services was the right decision. With the work I am doing with her at home and daily reading intervention at school I am confident that she will be caught up and achieving grade level skills by the end of 1st grade, if not before.

All things medical
Claire has a huge amount of anxiety when it comes to doctors or dentists. It took us 20 minutes just to get her to open her mouth at a recent dentist appointment, and that was after I reassured her over and over that it would not hurt.

A bit of advice for parents adopting older children- if any way possible, try to get both parents to attend medical and/or dental appointments. If you both can't attend then try and split them between mom and dad. With J's job it isn't feasible for him to attend appointments during the day and I understand that. After a few appointments where blood was taken or dental work scared her it really started to impact other areas of her attachment with me. I was the bad guy. I was the one picking her up from school and driving her to appointments and I'm sure in her eyes, I was the one allowing others to cause her pain even though I know it's actually to help her. She doesn't understand that we're trying to help her, trying to treat her teeth to make them better; right now she only sees it as pain and I'm allowing it. Not only would splitting up appointments between mom and dad help with the attachment stuff, I have to admit that it is emotionally exhausting on me. I feel selfish even saying that because I know it's 10 times worse for her but it's the truth. For over an hour recently at the dentist I reassured her, stayed positive, gave her choices, tried rewards, tried bribes, got a little irritated and said she needed to open her mouth, felt bad for telling her that and went back to being happy and positive, etc. Then I gave up. THEN, that night she said it didn't hurt. grrrr

The other bit of advice is start out with a dentist who will do sedation dentistry. Claire did so well with her first dental appointment and let them clean her teeth and do x-rays so we stuck with our family dentist to start treatment of her many dental problems. I would count on any child adopted from China over age 2 or 3 to need fairly extensive dental work. Claire needed 4 extractions and 4 fillings. The first treatment visit started out very well but when one tool popped on her tooth and made a loud noise she freaked out. I really don't think it hurt as much as it scared her. From then on getting her into a dentist chair willingly has been difficult. We had an oral surgeon sedate her for the extractions and now we just need to get her fillings complete and her space maintainers in. She won't do it so in June we have an appointment with a pediatric dentist who will do conscious sedation for treatment. If I knew then what I know now, I would have started out with that route to begin with. I do not want to scar her forever with dental anxiety but I think it has already happened.

Siblings
Claire bonded very quickly to Emily and Jacob but Matthew took a bit more time. I don't know if it's because they are the closest in age or something else but Matthew really had to try to win Claire's affection. If he did something wrong she was right there to dime him out and he really couldn't do anything right according to her. Once she got over whatever it was that she didn't like about Matthew she realized he is actually a good big brother. She even chose to sit with Matthew on the bus at first, which really irritated Emily. Look at this picture taken in the airport when we returned home. I love how Matthew and Claire are checking each other out. He was so happy to meet her and she's thinking "yea, who are you and why is MY mommy so happy to see you?"

Now we hear and see this around the house a lot between the two of them.

Oldest to youngest

2010-05-23T22:35:00.003-05:00

In one picture.

Sight Words

2010-05-22T08:57:00.004-05:00

Wow, Claire is learning amazingly fast! About a month ago I asked her teacher to send us home a list of sight words for the entire year. I had planned to work with her over the next few months so she knows all 57 kindergarten sight words before starting 1st grade in July. At the rate she is going I'm fairly certain she will know all 57 of them before school is out in 3 weeks.

On the official kindergarten list she knows 39/57. I have also added words to her flash cards that I thought we should work on as well; they include the written word for numbers 1-10 and the word of the most common shapes (circle, triangle, etc.). I printed those off on Monday of this week and she can already tell me what they are without any clues.

She's also taking her known sight words coupled with phonics to read! To say she's blown away any expectations I had for one quarter of school is an understatement.

Here is a picture I took of Claire earlier this week. The cards on the right of the picture are words can recognize by sight; the words on the left were the ones she didn't know that day. She learns so much every day that some of those words have already moved across the table!

Climbing the Wall

2010-05-21T09:25:00.002-05:00

Here is Claire, climbing the Great Wall of China in January. I love this picture and plan to frame it for her eventually.

We originally took the picture to show how the stones are wore down close to the handrail but now I love having a picture of Claire on the wall without anyone around her.

Mother's Day

2010-05-09T12:34:00.004-05:00

While I cherish my four blessings on this Mother's Day, I can't help but to also think about the mother on the other side of the world who does not know her daughter. The little girl who is now my daughter, my blessing.

Legacy of an Adopted Child

Once there were two women who never knew each other.
One you do not remember, the other you call Mother.

Two different lives shaped to make you one.
One became your guiding star, the other became your sun.

The first one gave you life and the second taught you to live it.
The first gave you a need for love, the second was there to give it.

One gave you a nationality, the other gave you a name.
One gave you a talent, the other gave you aim.

One gave you emotions, the other calmed your fears.
One saw your first sweet smile, the other dried your tears.

One made an adoption plan, that was all that she could do.
The other prayed for a child and God led her straight to you.

Now which of these two women are you a product of?
Both, my darling, both. Just two different kinds of love.

Flower Child

2010-04-20T14:37:00.000-05:00

ESL

2010-04-19T10:18:00.002-05:00

Four weeks after starting school I got a phone call that really should have been made much earlier. The school district had to test Claire's proficiency in English so they can offer services if they are needed. I was welcomed to attend so I did.

Claire was tested in four areas but definitely the hardest one was the auditory section. It was determined that Claire is just below or right at the kindergarten level of a native English speaker. To me, I think that sounds awesome. She obviously qualifies for services but we declined them. If we chose to have her be in the ESL program it meant that she would attend a different school than Emily and Matthew.

I am 99% sure ESL services would be beneficial for Claire but I've already witnessed that being in the same school as her siblings is even more beneficial. If she were our only child I would bus her to the school that offered ESL services. If ESL was offered at our home school, I would definitely have her receiving services; but it is not offered due to space issues.

I made sure that declining services now wouldn't affect the possibility of needing ESL services in the future. So, if our school does get an ESL program in the future we can have Claire start receiving services. She assured me that we can reevaluate anytime in the future and she can still receive services, if needed.

We were told by the adoption doctor that most children are fluent in age-appropriate conversational English in six months. The disconnect comes in academic English. Someone who is fluent in conversational English can have poor academic English skills. ESL works to close this gap and bring them up to grade level academic English. Since Claire will not be receiving these services at school, I will be working with her at home to try and close the gap.

It is amazing how much she has learned in only two months. She can recognize all the letters in the alphabet (upper and lowercase) and she has learned all the phonic sounds for them as well. She can sound basic words out using phonic skills and has started to read. She is starting to learn sight words and I hope to have her finished with the kindergarten sight words by the time school starts again in July.

Today on the way to school I heard one of the sweetest sounds. The kids were listening to a patriotic CD with their headphones on and I heard this tiny voice from the back of the van singing something. I listened for a bit and then realized she was singing "My Country Tis of Thee." Oh my goodness; it was so sweet. Then when the song was over she said "Emily, you know what? I like-uh America."

Two months home

2010-04-11T16:43:00.007-05:00

I've put this off for some time; always coming up with something else to do because putting up these posts usually takes quite a long time. I tell myself that I'll do it once the kids are in bed but then I just want to sit. So, here we are; one week? Two weeks without a post? I've lost track.

Language
Claire pretty much refuses to talk in Chinese to us. I think she still understands some but when we say something in Chinese that we know she understands she looks at us, shrugs her shoulder and hands and says "I don't know?" in her cute accent and inflection. Today I asked her if she wanted bing jiling (ice cream) and she tried to act like she didn't know what I was talking about but then after some prompting I asked her what it was and she said "ice-uh cream." So, it's in there. She doesn't point and grunt so much anymore; she asks for everything in English. You'd probably never guess that she's only been home two months if you didn't know already. She is starting to use pronouns and talk in 3rd person a little bit less.

Family life
Imagine children when they are about 2-3 years old. In their mind they think "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine" and when they want something they just take it. The idea of sharing hasn't formed in their thought process yet. Well, even though Claire is 7 and has the mental aptitude to understand sharing, I think she is almost like a 2-3 year old level with her siblings. Remember when I said it was very much like bringing home a newborn when we first arrived home? Well, she's aging fast and we have issues occasionally with sharing or not sharing I should say. She wants to play with the toys that belong to the other kids but no one can touch her toys and if one of them has something that she wants, she will just grab it sometimes and try to take it away from them. She's gotten upset and cried because she wanted to play with a toy of Emily's that she'd just gotten and was a bit more protective of. I let Emily have her space and didn't make her share with Claire (she had already shared that toy several times) and Claire got upset. I let her pout it out and didn't over talk the situation. We've always let our kids have some toys that are only theirs and if they don't want to share them they don't have to. Claire gets the same treatment with her things but doesn't fully understand yet that the rule goes both ways.
Other than the younger than age appropriate sharing issues, the kids all seem as though they've lived together forever.

School
Claire really likes school now that she knows I am returning each day. I took her some medicine in the middle of the day this week and asked Emily to walk her back to class. I looked down the hallway and saw Claire telling Emily to stay away because she could walk on her own. I had to laugh and it made me realize that she is really comfortable at school now.

Stories from China
We learned last night that the story of Claire attending school in China is not what we thought. When looking at a photo album I had kept with the pictures we received during our wait she said "school" when she saw the orphanage pictures. I said "Beijing?" (what she called the orphanage before) and she said "yes, big big school." Well, now that ALL makes sense. Other families who adopted older children shared stories that their children were taken back to the orphanage much earlier than Claire was and were told it was so they could attend school. Her "really big school" was the orphanage which would also give a lot of insight into why she really freaked out when I told her she was going to school. I also think it has something to do with the melt down when we walked into the Sunday school class a few weeks ago. In her mind, school is where she was taken to when she left her nai nai.
Claire has also started talking more and more about her house in China. She calls it "China house" or "China home." She says it was a little house with three beds. The harder things for me to hear are that her older brother cried "where is my sister" when she left. I asked her if nai nai cried and she said yes and Claire said she cried too. These tid-bits have made it hard for me because it makes me question if bringing Claire here to the US really was the best thing for her. What would have happened if nobody selected her from the list? Would she have stayed with her foster family forever? When she aged out of the orphanage at 14 years old would her foster family allowed her to stay and keep her in their family? So many questions which simply have unknown answers but it makes my heart question if taking her from her China home was best. I know we love her, I know she will have a good life in the US, I know there have been so many times in this journey when I know we are experiencing the hand of God and it makes me think this is the best thing for Claire. But, the lingering questions are still there.

Dentist
This week was long and I'm sure very scary for Claire. She had her first visit at the dentist on Monday and it was to extract one of her upper teeth. The dentist told me it was the easiest and quickest thing to do so that is why we started with it. It didn't go as planned. The dentist was able to get one tooth filled but when she attempted to extract the tooth it cracked and the noise freaked Claire out. After that she was done and would not open her mouth to allow a second try. We left there with her in tears saying "I no like the dentist" and half of the tooth still in her mouth.
Two days later I took her to oral surgeon to have that tooth removed and three others. She was very nervous and repeatedly told me "I no like the dentist" and I just told her "I know" each time. They put her to sleep to do the extractions and thankfully, she doesn't remember any of it. She was groggy and grumpy for a few hours afterward but was running around the back yard by evening time. She's rebounded quite well but knows we have to return to the dentist to get her "new teeth" (space maintainers). She tries to tell me no but I keep a happy face and attitude and tell her "Yes! You'll have new teeth to eat hard things!" I'm going to win an Emmy yet, even if it is just for the Mommy Red Carpet Club.

And, I know you love reading and all but what you're really checking here everyday for is pictures. So, without further ado, here are pictures of Claire.
I saved very few of Emily's clothes from this size. Emily wore this when she was around 4-5 years old so that means this dress was in a tote for nearly 5 years. Claire loved it when I pulled out of the closet and insisted on wearing it to school. It is actually too big on her but thankfully it has a tie around the waist so I could cinch it down a couple of inches.
Claire has learned how to spell quite a few words. First was her name, then mom, dad and few other easy ones but the first word outside of family relations she started spelling and recognizing is stop. I had no idea what she was writing on her easter egg before dyeing it so we got a good laugh to see she very proudly wrote "STOP" on her egg.
Claire's first Easter with us; isn't she a doll?

Stories from China

2010-04-03T17:13:00.004-05:00

Update:
We talked about China more that evening before going to bed and I asked Claire if she went to school in China. We hadn't asked her that yet because we didn't think she fully realized what school was, that is until she started going here. None of the information we received indicated that she'd been in school but imagine our surprise when she told us Yes, she went to school in China! We asked her if it was a small school or a big school and she said "BIGuh, really BIGuh school." She also told us that she had friends there and that her teacher was nice. She finished up the night telling us "I like-uh China" and I told her that I like China very much too. She understands now that when we talk about China we are referring to where she lived before us.
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Original Post:
To my surprise, Claire decided to start telling us about her life in China today. She told us that she had a dog at her Nai Nai's house and that he was big and black with a white chest. I asked her if the dog scared her and she said no (which isn't what I was expecting with her fear of dogs here) and then I asked her if he ever bit her and she said no. We have avoided talking about her China Nai Nai too much because I didn't want to make her sad. But today when she started talking about her dog I asked her if the dog stayed in Nai Nai's house and she said no. I asked her if she misses her nai nai and she said yes and then I asked her if she loved China Nai Nai. She smiled and said yes and then I told her that I love China Nai Nai too, to which she responded by giving me a kiss. The last thing I asked her is if China Nai Nai loved Claire and she said yes. I told her that I love China Nai Nai because she loved Claire and took good care of her. I can't wait to learn more about her first seven years.

Claire Happy

2010-03-29T21:59:00.004-05:00

Sunday evening at dinner I went around the table and asked each child if they were going to have fun at school the next day. All three older kids looked at me with that "are you serious?" look and I looked back at them with that "you better say yes if you know what's good for you" look. Then I got to Claire and asked her if she was going to have fun; she responded with yes! Then she smiled and said "Claire happy!" I cheered for her and told her that when she's happy, I'm happy.

This morning she hopped and skipped downstairs for breakfast and then while doing her hair she told me about seeing Madeline at school today and playing on the playground with her. While driving to school she made sure to tell me "Claire happy" again; you know, just in case I forgot. I used the drop off lane this morning and she was a little bit confused but figured it out when Emily and Matthew jumped out and after she got out of the van she looked back at me and smiled.

Emily walked her to the classroom today and helped her get her stuff put away and she said Claire started to get tears in her eyes when she was leaving. I think this should get a bit better each day. I'm so proud of her!

School

2010-03-26T20:05:00.010-05:00

The first time I took Claire to the school to drop something off for Matthew she shut down so it made me realize that we needed to start talking about the fact that she would be going to school and it is a lot of fun. From that night forward she was excited about school and would tell everyone how many days were left in the school countdown. The night before her first day she realized that she was, in fact, going to school when she saw me picking out her clothes for the next day. She started telling me that she didn't want to go to school but I told her how much fun it was. Yea, that tactic didn't work all that well.

Day 1
The next morning she woke up happy and was excited to get dressed and eat breakfast and was even excited to see the school saying "Claire, school!" when we pulled up. We dropped off her enrollment paperwork and I took her down to the classroom. We met her teacher who showed her around the classroom and was more than accommodating to let me stay in the classroom for as long as needed. Claire settled in and started her morning worksheet and then joined the class on the carpet to do calendar and story time. Just as I was thinking ‘this was too easy, she’s doing great!” I could hear her sniffling. When she sat down for story time I was no longer in her line of sight and she thought I’d left. This set the tone for the rest of the day. I joined her on the carpet and reassured her that I was not leaving; she got better but remained very quiet. I stayed with her through lunch and recess but once they got started on new activities in the classroom I decided it was time that I leave. I could stay all day but that wouldn’t make the next day any easier; eventually I had to leave and see how she did.

From what I hear she was pretty upset all afternoon. She cried and refused to do much of anything. They brought Emily down to her room who initially helped comfort her but then when Claire got upset again Emily did so as well. Emily is very protective and has taken her sister role very seriously so having Claire be upset made her upset as well. The counselor came and took her on a walk around the school and I think that helped a lot. She was very happy to see me when I returned and even jumped up and down saying "Claire happy happy!" but I noticed something throughout the evening. Claire will usually say "I love you" many times a day and that day she would not. Even when I would tell her that I loved her she responded with silence; that just broke my heart.
Later that evening she got quiet and said "school tomorrow?" and responded back very excited "yes, it will be fun!" and she said no, followed by "Claire no happy."

Day 2
Before school I had Claire pick out a necklace to wear and she picked one with hearts on it. I pointed to each heart and said "Mommy loves you" and told her she could look at her necklace when she got sad. She fully understood that because once we were at school she pointed to her necklace and repeated "mommy loves you.' I didn't plan on staying in her classroom because I had an appointment to be at. I went in her room with her and helped her get her stuff put away but when she got seated and I told her I was going to go she started crying. I told her many times that I would be back and then I left. The counselor checked in on her several times and then called to give me an update after lunch. She said Claire calmed down but didn't engage for awhile but then decided to participate and from then on she had a great day. When I arrived to bring her home she was happy and told me "mommy, me playground 3 times!" and then showed me her good character stickers for the day. Later that evening she again said she didn't want to go to school the next day.

Day 3
I did the same thing as the day before- walk her in and help her get settled before leaving. She held onto my coat this time and got a little more upset than the day before. It sounds like she didn't engage any quicker than the day before but once she joined in she had a great day.

Day 4
I was hoping to walk Claire to her classroom and let her go into the room and put her stuff away without me because starting on Monday I plan on using the drop off lane instead of walking her to her room. This didn't quite go as planned. Instead of putting her stuff away, getting seated and then starting to cry she latched onto my arm immediately and refused to do anything. I kissed her several times, told her I would not leave her and that I will be back, and then I left. When I came back at the end of the day her teacher said she had a great day. The counselor reassured me that even though it seems like it is getting harder for her to separate from me that it is actually normal. She said most kids get a little bit worse before getting better because after a day or two they realize how long the day is. Today she brought home artwork and papers and was very excited to show us her work. When J asked her today if she had fun at school she said yes.

Misc. Tib-bits
*We made the decision to put Claire in kindergarten. Age wise she would be in 1st grade if she started kindergarten at 5 years old. If we had half the school year left I probably would have put her in first grade but with only one quarter left in the year we really had to think ahead and having her ready for 2nd grade in only 3 months (they start school in July here) seemed like a much bigger jump than ready for 1st grade. I homeschooled her for a month and was able to bring her to the equivalent level of 4th quarter kindergartners so I am a bit worried that once she is fluent in English and reading she might be bored. But, a bigger worry was that she'll always be behind and struggling. Before enrolling her I spoke with the principal who reassured me that moving Claire up a grade would not be a problem if it appears that we didn't make the right decision. With that peace of mind I decided that kindergarten would be the best place for her now.

*The school has been absolutely amazing with Claire's transition. The counselor even took the time to visit with me and ask for tips because she wanted to handle Claire differently than normal separation anxiety. She understood that her situation was different because Claire truly thinks I am leaving her there and not coming back since that it is her history. Everyone at the school has gone above and beyond to make Claire feel safe and welcomed and reassured her that Mommy is coming back. Since we move often we have been in several schools and I know beyond a shadow of doubt things would not have been handled so well in past schools; another visible God moment in our journey.

*I've packed Claire's lunch each day because I'm not ready to have her tackle the lunch line and choices yet. I have packed her thermos a couple of days, one day was fried rice and today I put vegetable lo mein. She was excited to see that I packed noodles for her. My hope is that she has something familiar and comforting at lunch to help with all the different things in her day right now.

*We had to make a decision of putting Claire in a different school within our district to receive ELL (English language learners) classes or put her in our school with Emily and Matthew and forgo the ELL. We made the decision, along with the principal's support, that she would be better served in our school with her siblings than in a different school with ELL. In the first few days at school this has proved to be the right decision. Claire has seen Matthew and Emily several times during the day and tells me after school that she saw them. She's seen Matthew after lunch and on the playground and she spotted Emily outside during a fire drill. I told the counselor that walking Claire by their classroom to show her that they are still there might be comforting to her so she has done that. I know this has helped Claire because she knows she's not alone in the school. Today Emily came out of her classroom and talked with her in the hall and reassured her that I would be coming back.

*With the increase in English that Claire is speaking we have noticed a sharp decrease in her mandarin. Last night she could only write the characters for 1-5 whereas before she could write up to 10. When we asked her to count to ten in mandarin (we started with e, er, sahn 123) she counted up to 5 and then stopped and looked around. My heart broke. We counted to ten in mandarin and after a couple of times she spit it out just as quickly as she did in China. I know it's too much to expect her to maintain both, especially when she isn't with mandarin speaking people every day but it is still sad not hearing her talking freely in mandarin. My hope is that having 7 years of mandarin in her brain before learning English she will be able to pick it up later in life if she chooses. Most children stop speaking mandarin all together and won't even talk to other Chinese people after being home for awhile. We still use mandarin words for quite a few things mixed in with our normal speech. She knows the English word and Chinese word for many things now, so if we say beeng jee leeng she knows we are talking about ice cream. When we say the mandarin words for the colors she usually responds back in English. I think it's amazing that she can translate in her head at only 7 years old.

*One cute thing- Thursday was library day so Claire came home with two books that she checked out. When I took them out of her backpack she was excited to show me the front cover. It had an illustration with an Asian man and Claire pointed to him and said "something something China!" Then she flipped to the back and showed me that it had instructions for making origami birds. I asked her if the teacher helped her find the book of if she found it and she said she had found it by herself. We want to maintain her Chinese heritage and raise her to be proud of being Chinese so it made me happy to see she sought out a book with an Asian subject and illustrations.

The longest of updates

2010-03-22T08:06:00.004-05:00

Consider yourself warned- This is long and will entail a lot of scrolling. Don't start this until you have a drink in hand and time to kill because it will take awhile.

Before we came home from China we tentatively planned a trip back home to introduce Claire to all of her extended family. We thought a month after arriving home would give her time to settle in for a bit before taking a trip. In hindsight, I would have waited longer and/or done things differently.

Here is what we did:
Throughout our adoption journey we had many, many prayers lifting us and Claire up from the church that several of my family members attend. In particular a group of school children took a real interest in our journey to Claire and prayed for her every morning during their Sunday school class. In addition to introducing Claire to these family members (one of which is her great grandmother) we attended church with them on Sunday morning.

I don't want to say this was a mistake but we learned first hand that Claire definitely has issues relating to her adoption. This sounds like an obvious statement, almost like "well, of course she does!" but we don't truly see them every day. 99% of the time she appears to be very well bonded and attached and is genuinely happy so her sudden fear and emotional response was a little bit of a surprise to us. The minute we walked into the Sunday school room she burst out in tears even though Daddy was holding her and had no intentions of putting her down. We aren't sure why she broke down but the theories we have are maybe she thought we were leaving her there or seeing pictures of her at the orphanage triggered memories. We are leaning towards the first theory because she showed signs of abandonment fears a few times during our trip.

Before leaving for our trip I told her we were going to Meme's house (J's mom) and she looked at me and said "NO." I told her again that we were going to visit Meme's house and even though she knows exactly who Meme is, she still said no. I assured her that we were all going and she would never be without Mom or Dad and that we were going to stay 7 days and then come back home. She cheered up and the day went on, until I actually packed her suitcase later in the evening. When she saw me putting her clothes in a suitcase she told me no again; she did not want to go to Meme's and I reassured her again that I would be with her.

After getting to Meme's she was very happy and adjusted well and a couple of days later we were going to my Mom's (Nana) house for dinner. When I told her we were going to Nana's house to eat she gave me the look and said no and began to cry again. I told her that I would be with her and told her I would never leave her, she still told me no. We went to visit Nana for dinner, she adjusted well and was happy all evening.

For the rest of the week she was great and then I told her we were going back home, to our house and I got the look again. Just when she got comfortable after a few days I told her we were going yet another place and I could see her brain going into abandonment fear again. I explained to her, our house, your bed on top and Emily's bed on bottom, mommy's bed, etc. She asked "my bed top, Emily's bed bottom?" and I told her yes. She got it. You know how I know she got it? She literally jumped up and down several times and yelled "YAY, YAY, our house!"

So with our first trip done she has learned that we leave together and return home together. But, I would give advice on doing things a bit differently than we did if I had to do it again. This is really a trial and error type of thing and what worked or didn't work for us might be completely different for another child.

1. I would wait longer before taking a trip for a long period (we were gone 9 days).
I really think she thought we were leaving our house for good and if we had done a one night trip it would've been less time that she mentally separated herself from our home. All of our family lives 4-5 hours away so a one night trip to visit them would've been too much so a one night trip staying in a hotel with just our family would have worked. It would have been a quick trip to show her that we leave and come home together and we most importantly, we return to our house. The next time we take a trip I will be taking along a picture of our house with a visual countdown so she can see how many days until we return home just to try and solidify to her that we are going back home.

2. I would have family come to our house to meet her.
Would we would have family members who couldn't come 4-5 hours to our house to meet her? Yes. Is it more convenient for us to go the 4-5 hours and meet everyone in one trip? Yes.
But, in a few days Claire met her grandparents, great grandma, my aunts and uncles, my cousins and their children, our siblings and their children and close family friends. It bordered on too much sometimes. She handled it extremely well and she may have the same response if we did it more gradually but she was all of a sudden surrounded by people who love to look at her and I could see the thoughts of her head written all of her face. She was shy with each new person for a bit but then once she warmed up she was very comfortable with everyone; which I think that is to be expected.

3. One night towards the end of our trip J and I decided to try and get away for a few hours; we left the kids with a very gracious Meme and explained to Claire that she was staying with Meme while Mom and Dad went to eat together. She seemed to understand so we left but stayed close to home in case she needed us to return. Towards the end of the evening we got the phone call that we needed to return home. Claire did fabulously until bedtime which is when we thought she might fear that we wouldn't return. The first night in China she was fine during the busy daytime but it was at night that she slowed down and realized she wasn't with her nai nai. We immediately went back home and she was happy to see us. I got her out of bed and cuddled with her on my lap for a bit to reassure her that we will always return and then she went to bed fine. J and I were able to spend a few hours together and even got to see a movie so the night was definitely not a waste.
If I were to do it over I would do the time away during the day so we weren't gone at bedtime. After a few times of that I would venture into trying to be gone during bedtime but this would only be with one of our Moms because she knows them and is comfortable with them.

4. Before meeting anyone new I would show her pictures of them and explain their relationship. She had never met my mom in person but had talked with her on Skype so when she saw Nana in person she knew exactly who she wasn't near as shy as with those people she'd never seen. When she'd meet one of our brothers she was all of a sudden face to face with a grown male who wanted to talk to her and she was pretty hesitant. She would sit with me or J and eventually warm up and then she was OK but I think it would have gone better if we had shown her pictures of everyone before meeting them.

5. Explain to everyone that although she doesn't speak English all that much she actually understands quite a bit so try and talk to her normal. She's not 3 and she's not deaf so speaking slow and loud isn't really going to help; she'll either understand it or she won't. At the same time explain to people that putting her on the spot in front of people is probably not the best idea. We are guilty of that as well but once I realized that she was very uncomfortable with everyone looking at her I tried to treat her like any of the other 3 kids so she didn't feel singled out.

I guess with all of this it almost appears that our trip didn't go well but that isn't the case; it was a great time and we all had a lot of fun. We also watched Claire overcome her fear of two more dogs and learned that she really loves cats. She was not afraid of putting her face right next to the cat and she loved to pet it whenever she could.

Today she started school and I was going to tack that onto this update but it truly deserves its own post; it will probably be another long one. I also have a lot of pictures from our trip and I plan to get to those after the new school stuff calms down and I finish unpacking and cleaning up around here.

First trip to the dentist

2010-03-11T10:53:00.004-06:00

We knew before traveling to bring Claire home that we would most likely be spending a fair amount of time with her at the dentist. Children's teeth are not a priority there and unfortunately Claire's 7 years of no dental care and no fluoride has taken its toll.

To my surprise she did wonderfully at her first visit. I was only hoping they could look in her mouth and come up with a treatment plan but she let them take all x-rays, polish her teeth and put fluoride on! And just as we assumed, we will be spending a lot of time in the waiting room while Claire is having dental work done. She has 7 teeth that need to be fixed, ranging from simple fillings to extractions and spacers. I just wish I could snap my fingers and have it all done for her.

Doggie Love

2010-03-08T21:11:00.003-06:00

The first night we arrived home left both of our girls in tears over the same thing- Toby. Toby is the 12 lb. white fluff ball that joined our family about a year and a half ago. Claire was crying because he was here and Emily was crying because she didn't think Claire would ever love him and/or we'd get rid of him. Emily is a huge dog lover so the first few days of Claire rejecting Toby was hard on her.

We had some indication while in China that Claire might be too keen on the idea of having a dog in the house; something about "I don't like dogs" being spouted off in mandarin with a nasty sounding tone gave us that clue. But upon coming home that first night we were met with screams and tears when Toby was released from his crate. The howls continued whenever Toby would come within a few feet of her for the next few days.

Little by little Claire grew to accept that Toby was A. not leaving our house and B. not spending 24 hours a day in his 2x2 foot crate. She will now run up and pet him, give him kisses and let him lay on her; such a change in the short three weeks that she's been home. She loves to give him commands like sit, lay down, or get on your bed. She tells him to go potty when she opens the back door and greets him with a good boy when he comes in. Today she ran to find me and then said "Toby, outside, cat!" and then made the motion of zooming around with her hand. It was easy to figure out that Toby just chased the cat outside!

She is still very afraid of big dogs and I'd guess of any other dog besides Toby but it has been a huge relief and joy to see her accept Toby and learn to love him.

Outside

2010-03-04T16:32:00.002-06:00

Finally the weather was nice enough for the kids to go outside and play for awhile. Claire was right out there with the boys as soon as I gave her the OK.

2010-03-03T20:38:00.002-06:00

Once again, I got bit by the blogger bug and posted a bunch in one day. Keep scrolling down until things start looking familiar.

Claire, hard at work figuring up how much my groceries are going to cost.

It's going to cost you an arm, leg and everything between, but no worries; I have a credit card!

This is the look I get many times when I point a camera in her direction. She is quick too, I'll try to act like I'm not taking her picture and she'll smile and then bam, I push the button and get this.

Princess YaYa

2010-03-03T20:33:00.002-06:00

All the little girly things that we saved from Emily's younger days are being put to great use. Here is Princess YaYa taking a break from her princess work to play a little Dora on the Leapster.

Dora

2010-03-03T20:23:00.003-06:00

Claire loves Dora the Explorer. We ordered Dora in Chinese off of eBay before our travels but unfortunately they did not arrive before we left due to a lost shipment. We made it through China fine without them but I would recommend getting them and taking them with you because Dora is a big deal in China. Claire knew the theme song and every thing so having Dora in Chinese was very familiar to her at home. The words that would be in Spanish are in English in the Chinese version. In fact, we've figured out that the phrases that Claire could say when we arrived weren't from any tutoring but rather from Dora. We aren't even sure if she had any tutoring at all and they probably had fun with our $150 and just made up the spreadsheet of "lessons" to make us feel better.

We had saved this Dora dollhouse for many years, in fact probably 5 or 6 years. Nobody has played with it and J has urged me many times to sell it in a yard sale but I held onto it for some reason. Maybe it was God working long ago to keep that Dora dollhouse in our house because Claire absolutely loves it. It has been great watching her play "house" and seeing that she knows how houses are set up and how family members interact.
Ignore that laundry basket in the first photo; I was trying to accomplish chores while she played!

Bits of randomness

2010-03-03T14:19:00.006-06:00

Yesterday I took Claire to a doctor who specializes in foreign adoption medicine. She will do a very thorough post-placement exam and then pass the recommendations onto your regular pediatrician who usually isn't up to par on issues seen in children adopted internationally. The doctor was wonderful and spent nearly two hours with us going over every.little.thing. The end of the visit brought tears though because Claire needed to have blood drawn to check her immunity levels for vaccinations given to her in China and many other tests to check her overall health. Thankfully the phlebotomist was very quick and accurate and it only took one stick. Still though, she was public enemy #1 and I was #2.

One concern from the visit was Claire has lost 3 lbs since coming home. On a child who only started out at 42 lbs that is nearly 10% of her body weight. She is constantly hungry and I am constantly feeding her so I was very surprised to see that she not only didn't gain any weight but actually lost so much. We will continue to feed her every time she says she is hungry and monitor her weight. The doctor said she sounded like a child with a high metabolism (she never stops moving!) so that combined with the stress of this transition probably has her body in overdrive. With time it should get better and until then we will shovel as much high calorie, healthy food as we can into this tiny girl.

Claire is pretty used to Toby now; I've even heard her say several times "I love you, Toby." When we leave the house she is person that locks Toby into his bed. At first I laughed because I think she enjoyed it a bit too much but now she blows him a kiss and tells him he's a "good boy." She has to be the person that runs upstairs and unlocks his crate when we get home too; although she doesn't have much competition for this job because the other three kids usually fight over who has to do it. The neighbor has a big dog who ran over here over the weekend when we were outside. She completely freaked out and started screaming so she definitely has a fear of dogs still.; J jokes that she just tolerates Toby because he doesn't go away.

She is learning so much English every day. Today I heard her say "mommy, come here!" and I followed it up with "please?" so she repeated it with a please. Now I've heard "mommy, come here please!" all day. I guess she's making sure I get the exercise I keep saying I need.
The doctor yesterday told us that most kids are age appropriate in conversational English in 6 months. That just shows how incredibly resilient and amazing children are!

After the trip to the school that upset Claire I realized that we needed to start talking about Claire going to school in the near future. She needed to know (in her limited understanding) that she wasn't going to stay home with mom forever and that she would be going to school with Emily and Matthew. So, that day after the kids were home from school we got out the calendar and wrote "Claire School!" on March 23rd. She's been counting down the days since then with excitement and when we went to the school this morning to check out the book fair she said "Claire school?" so I think she understands and she seems excited.

Homeschooling-
I have spent many hours with Claire working on ABCs, numbers, shapes, colors, phonics, etc. She is doing remarkably well. She can now say the entire alphabet and can recognize almost half of them visually. We work on the sound of the letters and with the help of catchy Leap Frog songs she's starting to catch onto phonics. We count to 30 a lot but she also knows the numbers by recognition up to 100 and I've heard her count on her own into the 60's. She knows and can recall the shapes circle, square, oval, triangle, rectangle and sometimes diamond. She can do addition up to 10 but I haven't tried subtraction. She can write her name without being told the letters and she can recognize that 'Claire' is her name and will say it out loud. She knows the seasons winter and summer and we're working on spring and fall. She knows that winter is cold and summer is hot. When we ask her what is winter she wrap her arms around herself and say "I'ma cold" and then fan herself saying "I'ma hot" when we say summer; she is such a ham!

A funny from today:
We ran to Walgreens to get more lotion for her skin. The doctor thinks the itchiness of her skin is related to allergies of some kind and recommended that we lotion her up twice a day to keep it hydrated. While there she found a cash register in the toy aisle and did her "Claire?" and point the cart. I told her no and then saw it was clearanced to $5 and thought it would help me teach her about money so I changed my mind and let her get it. We've played with it a lot today but the funniest thing was when she showed me the total and it was something like 193828192 and I responded with "Oh my goodness, I don't have that much money!" She excitedly ran back to the cash register, pulled out the credit card and smiled. One swipe of the card and the total was 0. What a great teaching...not! So I told her "oh honey, we don't use credit cards in this house, unless it involves a trip to China."

When we first got home I had intentions of posting a picture of Claire every day so we could look back and see her changes in the first year. Yea, that lasted all of about 4 days and then Meme went home and real life took hold. I do have pictures from most days so I'm really going to try and get them uploaded.

Grief

2010-02-26T12:36:00.003-06:00

Imagine having the same caregiver for over 6 years and then suddenly being taken from them, given to people who do not speak your language, being told you have a new mom and dad and then leaving your country with people who are basically strangers. I think it's safe to assume that none of us would be cool with the idea. Everything that has happened to Claire is equivalent to someone dying and that person would be like her mom; grief is sure to follow.

We only saw Claire get upset and ask for her nai nai (grandma) once, after that initial day, while we were in China. This was the afternoon of her vaccinations when she was tired and not feeling well. It didn't last long but it was a window into what we would probably see more of at home, and we have.

A few days ago Emily printed out a dot-to-dot for each of them to complete. Claire finished hers and I asked her if she wanted to color it; she told me no. I didn't push the issue and went upstairs to get ready. I came back down and the pictures were colored and I told her how great it looked. She was mad, very grumpy and pouty so I asked what was wrong. She didn't say anything and then went upstairs and sat on her bed crying. I followed her and held her on my lap. She eventually stopped crying but was still very withdrawn. Then Emily came upstairs and she was very upset as well. It seems that Claire got upset when Emily tried to show her what color the giraffe should be colored. I tried to tell Emily that it probably had nothing to do with her coloring on Claire's paper but something else. It could have been that she colored with her grandma or she saw giraffes at the zoo with her grandma and this brought back the memory, or it might have been as the oldest child in her foster family she was in charge and never had someone else show her how to do something. We will probably never know but I think it's safe to assume that it was definitely grief.

Today, Claire and I ran some errands. Our first stop was the school because Matthew forgot his lunch. On the way there I stopped rather quickly when a light changed red. I looked back at Claire and she gave me a very dirty look and was not happy with me. Then at the school I asked her if she wanted to go to school and she told me no. I stayed excited and told her she gets to go here in 20something days and again she said no.
After that we needed to run to Sams Club. Before leaving the house I fed her a banana because she told me she was hungry but after the school she told me she was hungry again. I found some goldfish in a baggy from a few days earlier and gave those to her. She didn't say anything or eat them before getting to Sams Club (she likes them because she has eaten before). When we got there and I opened the door she burst out in tears, just sobbing and uttered one word- nai nai.
I unbuckled her, held onto her and let her cry; there isn't really much you can say but I told her I loved her and "I know." She withdrew so much that she took off the crocheted hat that she had on. I gave it to her yesterday after Emily had one on and told her I made it. Yesterday her eyes lit up when she realized I made it for her but today she didn't want it on, at all. That was her way of putting up a wall, I think.

We perused around Sams Club; I got her a pretzel because she was hungry and she perked up a bit. Then, when almost home she started singing songs in Chinese. If she's happy when she's singing she enjoys entertaining people but if she starts singing when she's quiet and withdrawing it means she's about to start crying. I'm not sure if singing when she's sad brings China back to her or if she is trying to win our love or approval by singing because maybe she was told to? I don't know. Upon pulling into the driveway she started to get upset and I looked back to see the "I'm about to vomit" face. I hurriedly got her out of the van and she proceeded to vomit in the yard. I'm still not 100% convinced that her vomiting is motion sickness. We've given her medicine a few times since getting home but we've driven almost every day. She's only vomited twice in the car and today and both times were when she got quiet; today was worse though. I don't know if the vomiting is something she does when she's upset or if the stress brings on the motion sickness.

One thing I do know is that it will get better. This time she went 5 days in between grief episodes and from reading stories of other older adopted children the episodes should get spaced farther and farther apart the longer she is home. Right now when thinking about her grandma she gets sad and just like grieving the death of a loved one, eventually she will remember China and her grandma with a good feeling rather than a sad feeling.

shirts

2010-02-22T08:47:00.003-06:00

Emily picked to wear her jie jie (big sister) shirt to school today so the outfit I had laid out for Claire was trumped because she needed to wear her mei mei (little sister) shirt as well.

Pictures are getting increasingly hard to get; she hides whenever she sees the camera next to our face. I think we'll have to bust out the telephoto zoom and start shooting wildlife style on her.

Pizza

2010-02-20T19:16:00.003-06:00

She loves pizza and gets very excited when she sees it. She even calls it by the English name, although it sounds more like peesa when she says it.

dolls

2010-02-19T12:54:00.003-06:00

Big, long update on the post before this one.

She plays with dolls much more than Emily did. Here is she is trying to keep her baby happy with toys and then strapping them onto her back; something she probably saw often in China. It is a very good sign that she knows how to play with dolls. This means she saw babies cared for in a loving way and was hopefully she was cared for in the same manner when she was a baby.

so, how is she doing?

2010-02-19T11:49:00.009-06:00

Question of my life right now, but I understand because everyone does want to know how she is doing. So here is an update in random thought form to fill all of you in.

Sleeping-
She slept with us while we were in China which we were supportive of and really hoped she's be open to because it helps promote attachment. The first night with us she crawled up in the middle of the bed, parked herself there and stayed there for the next two weeks. But, she's a bed hog and in a king size bed she took up over half of it. Before our trip I had planned to have her sleep with us at home as well and then transition her to a bed in our room before moving her to her shared room with Emily. After two weeks with Miss Bed Hog I began to rethink that idea. The first two nights at home she slept on an elevated twin mattress next to our bed and then the third night she wanted to sleep in her room with Emily so we moved the mattress in there. She slept on the mattress next to Emily's bed (the bottom bunk) for 4 nights and then last night she wanted to sleep on the top bunk. She slept there all night without any issues so I think we'll put the air mattress away today. I was a bit worried about bedtime at home because in China she got upset if we weren't both in bed with her to fall asleep. But, having the other kids with a set bedtime routine has helped and we haven't had any problems.

Food-
She eats all.the.time. I'm trying to figure out if she is truly hungry or just likes to snack all the time. I know they eat smaller meals more frequently in China so I'm trying to keep that in mind. I'm also trying to feed her snacks that are more protein instead of carbs so I know she's getting food that should hold her for a longer period of time.
She's an adventurous eater; much more so than I would be, or was in China. She will try anything we give her but if she doesn't like it she'll wave her hands in front of her plate and say "all done." She tried goulash and didn't like it but then last night ate an entire plate of mini ravioli and sauce which is basically the same thing. We have frozen fried rice and dumplings in the freezer as a back-up but we haven't had to use them all that much. I will still make her some egg fried rice at breakfast because that is her favorite.

School-
Our school is year round so after every quarter they have a 3 week break. 9 weeks on, 3 weeks off and then a 6 week summer. The next cycle breaks starts in 2 weeks so it is silly for us to enroll her in school only to have a break right after starting. If there wasn't the cycle break coming up so soon I would rethink my 5-8 weeks of home time before enrolling in school. This would be very dependent on each child but for Claire I think school would be a very good thing. She is wearing me out with her eagerness to learn. It is wonderful and I'm really not complaining but she wants to do the home school stuff all day and I want to take it a bit slower so she actually processes what I'm teaching and doesn't get overwhelmed. I think the challenge of school and changing of activities will be good for her. If she sits too long she starts to get a grumpy attitude so I've found occasional trips to Target to be therapeutic, for me and her but probably more for me.
So far she's learned:
number recognition up to 25 (thank you dot-to-dot!) I'm also working on the word recognition of the numbers up to ten so she knows that 'one' is the number 1, etc.
counting up to 30
primary and secondary colors
ABC's- she can almost sing the whole song and we're working on letter recognition right now. She can recognize some of the letters but I want her to be able to recognize the letters before moving into phonics.
shapes- we started shapes today. She remembered a few them right away but it is something we'll continue to work on for immediate recognition. I'm working on the word for the shapes at the same time so she'll recognize 'circle' as the shape of a circle.
addition- She can add every thing in the 1's family (1+2, 1+3, etc.) and I even started on mixed numbers up to 10 (2+3. 5+2, etc.). She has to think about it but she usually gets them right.
names for the basic body parts

English-
I'm not sure if she really comprehends the words she's using but she is using more and more English every day. She is like a parrot and repeats most of what we say. Once she's heard or said the word for an object a few times she remembers it and will usually call it by its English name after that. She understand a lot of what we say and what she doesn't we will show her or motion with our hands. She still talks in mandarin to us (but not as much as in China) and it's really not too difficult to figure out what she's talking about. We can pick out mandarin words from what she's saying and can piece it together with her hand motions. She'll answer questions with yes or no now but in conversation will still say "boo sure" which is no. The Memory game has been great for language because I say, and she repeats, the name of all the cards when we flip them over. She's come up to me several times today with a memory card and told me what it is in English.
A couple of days ago she was being funny so I said "You're a silly girl" and she said "no, Mommy's a silly girl." She thinks that is funny because we laugh so she now interchanges the name for whoever she's talking to. She later said "Daddy's a silly girl" so we then had a lesson on boy and girl. We used the mandarin for boy and girl (nahn-wren and new-wren) and then the English- boy and girl. She understood very quickly and now calls everyone by the correct gender in English.
She loves Skype and asks to call people. Yesterday and today she looked at me and said "Nana, telephone?" so we had to call Nana. J's mom graciously agreed to stay with us a couple days after we got home and Claire took right to her. She's asked for Meme several times since she left.

The dog-
She has come a long way from that first night home and introduction to Toby. She doesn't like to be startled by him and she's not real cool with him being right next to her but she's a lot better and doesn't want him in his crate all day. He's been so good with her too. It's like he knows she's scared and he treats her differently than every one else. He's never jumped up on her or gotten close to her without one of us right there. He won't go up or down the steps if she's on them (one thing she really doesn't like) and has never been hyper around her. She has pet him a few times while I hold him and she loves to throw his toys for him to fetch. I think she'll eventually grow to love him as much as the other kids but it is just going to take some time.

The other kids-
Just like bringing home a newborn, this is an adjustment. They have handled it with great love and patience (for the most part) and accepted her beautifully. They love to teach her words in English. I think they might be experiencing a little bit of attention overwhelmness (is that a word? spellcheck says no) like I have. You go from doing your own thing for the most part to someone needing/wanting your attention all the time and it's a bit of an adjustment.

Really, it is very much like bringing a newborn into the house. I know she's 7 and has different needs than a newborn but it is a very constant need for caring and attention. It is an adjustment for all; not necessarily in a bad way but just an adjustment. We'll get into a groove soon and just like with a newborn, we can't imagine our life without her now that she's here.

6 Days home

2010-02-18T09:08:00.003-06:00

And she's already completing addition worksheets! I got some Fruit Loops out to use as manipulatives but she didn't need them much. She does have a hard time with 0 but J told me they don't use 0 in China so that makes sense that she seems very confused on that.

Wordless Wednesday

2010-02-17T09:11:00.002-06:00

Sisters

2010-02-15T16:14:00.003-06:00

So far they are stuck together like glue.

Finally, Home!

2010-02-13T06:18:00.002-06:00

Wow, the journey home was long. The flight from Beijing from Chicago went very well; Claire slept probably 10 hours of the 13 hour flight.

Her initial reaction to the kids was somewhat mixed. I didn't expect her to go running to them or anything but I know the kids were so excited so I was hoping they weren't too disappointed. Claire was very quiet last night, just taking everything in, I think. I can tell she is thoroughly confused and I wish I could explain to her that this is home. It is almost like the two weeks in China were the honeymoon and I know the real work starts here.

She hates the dog; she really wasn't kidding when she said she didn't like dogs. I'm torn on what to do about that. I don't want to scare her but yet the dog is part of the family and I don't want to crate him all day. We will work to keep Toby away from her when he's excited but the dog is so happy we are home that I'm not going to separate him from everyone either. It's just another thing to work through.

The next week or so is going to be a real transition. She's used to having us to herself, 24 hours a day and now we have to be mom and dad to all four kids; not just her.

Last post from China

2010-02-11T15:29:00.001-06:00

It's 5:15 am here in China and we are up and ready to start our L.O.N.G journey home. I wish I could snap my fingers and skip all the flying and sitting and waiting and flying and sitting but alas, that is the only way back to my own bed.

Only 30 more hours kids and you finally get to meet your new spunky, feisty sister. I hope you're ready for her.

Red couch photos

2010-02-11T02:09:00.001-06:00

Instead of making an album on shutterfly with several different picture topics, I made several separate posts with the pictures and explanations of them. Keep scrolling down; I added 9 posts just now so you may even have to click on "older posts" at the bottom if you missed a day or two because I think it only keeps the 10 most recent posts.

Every adoption group takes the "red couch photos" with their family, kids being adopted and then one of all the families. We had a big travel group of 7 families so our group couldn't crowd around the couch. Instead, we took our picture in front of the waterfall in the hotel lobby.

We dressed Claire up in her traditional Chinese dress she picked out in Beijing along with some white shoes we found at a store here in Guangzhou. She loved being dressed up and she is such a ham!

Today we are packing up all of our bags. We hit a major snag earlier today when we were told that the 2 checked bags at 50 lbs each was incorrect. We do get that allowance on the international flight but the flight from here to Beijing is considered domestic and the rules have changed. They used to consider it as part of the international leg since you leave for an international flight within 24 hours but they no longer do. All the goodies we've bought here in GZ and the extra suitcase to put them in became a major panic. We took the suitcase back to the store we bought it at and then rearranged the other three bags. One carry-on bag contains all the clothes from J's suitcase and weighs over 30 lbs! But, they don't weigh the carry-ons, only the checked bags so we might squeak by OK.

Our trip home starts at 6am tomorrow morning which is 4pm central time on Thursday afternoon. We finally land at home around 9pm Friday night so that is a full 29 hours of being in an airplane or airport. I wish we could just skip all that and I especially wish I could skip starting out the trip in another fish market airplane right after breakfast.

Laundry

2010-02-11T01:55:00.001-06:00

While walking around in the city (trying to get a taxi for 2 hours) we would find alley ways like this one in between the sky-rise buildings and apartments.

Drama queen

2010-02-11T01:52:00.001-06:00

Happy to the max

Tears flowing

Grumpy and grudge holding

Mad at the world

Claire is almost always happy, very happy but when she swings in any other direction she does not to it half-way. It is all or nothing on each emotion for this girl. She wasn't actually upset when this picture was taken but we still thinks it's very funny and shows a side of her that doesn't usually come out in photos.

Playground

2010-02-11T01:50:00.001-06:00

The island here in Guangzhou has a nice playground for everyone. They have one playground type structure and all the rest of it is actually exercise equipment that most of the citizens here use daily. The kids think they are all just toys though and play on them. Claire has liked this little playground and it is where we took her after the 4 shots to try and win her over again.

Illusion

2010-02-11T01:47:00.001-06:00

When we first got here and got to our room on the 17th floor we realized the nice looking buildings we had passed on the highway were actually a facade to hide what was really behind them- true China living. The nice building fronts are just an illusion to hide what the city really looks like.

Then when looking out the window today we realized it was much, much clearer than the first few days we were here so we got another picture. You can see the facade better and also realize how humid it was most of the time we were here. It's still humid today, just not as much and with the sun out now it is very hot, like 85 degrees hot.

Trees here in GZ

2010-02-11T01:42:00.001-06:00

When driving up to the island the first time I had to pinch myself; it almost felt as if we might be in Savannah, GA. The buildings are French style, the humidity was stifling and the trees had moss hanging from them. Or so I thought. Upon closer examination we realized it is so humid here that the roots grow out of the main part of the tree to soak up water from the air.

Squatty Potty

2010-02-11T01:35:00.001-06:00

Just for your viewing pleasure!

They have different toilet standards than we do in the US. They think western style toilets are gross and use what we like to call a "squatty potty." I knew this was the toilet standard when coming over and I really dreaded the first time I couldn't find a western style toilet. But, I'm happy to say that they aren't near as bad as I thought they would be and even dare to say they are easy. This picture is a clean squatty; I saw some pretty disgusting ones here as well.

New Year decorations

2010-02-11T01:30:00.001-06:00

February 14th is Chinese New Year, or what they call "Spring Festival" here. The kids are off of school for a month and everyone is off of work the week of new year. We are just getting out of here before the entire country goes on snooze. The shops here on the island are already closing up for the festival. We've watched the hotels and local areas get more and more decorated during our stay. Two decorations that are everywhere are orange trees flanking the entrance of nearly every door and the customary red lanterns hanging in the trees. The lanterns are really cool at night when they are lit up.

I thought all the orange bushes were fake at first. They look like bushes that have oranges tied all over them but then I realized they are actually real oranges. Our guide told us they eat the oranges after new year. They had some of them on the breakfast buffet today and Claire knew just what to do with them. We tried them and they taste a lot like mandarin oranges but there are some seeds in them.

Boo Boo

2010-02-11T01:24:00.001-06:00

Here is a picture of Claire after calming down and getting a little rest following the zoo accident. The band-aid does a great job at concealing her big bump. Just to avoid any more ugly stares from locals we covered it up again today. But, the bump is still swollen and turning a nice shade of purple.

The zoo

2010-02-10T07:50:00.001-06:00

We went to the zoo today with our travel group. Here is how the trip went:

*Keep Claire from throwing up on the bus.

*Check out the super loud, squawking swans.

*Check out the big cat family who are in tiny concrete cages pacing back and forth. Ugh.

*Look at the hippo and get scolded by a Chinese lady who thinks I'm telling Claire to climb through the lower opening when I was actually telling her to look through it because she was too short to see over the rail. Yea, because I'm into tossing my kids into the hippo cage and seeing who wins.

*Leave the old, mean lady and head for the peacock- Claire's favorite animal.

*Watch Claire run with excitement, trip and fall head first into the concrete.

*Run with a screaming 7 year old who's forehead is now double the size and purple to the first aid station.

*Find the first aid station which is behind a gate saying "No admittance".

*Dad goes berserk again and crosses the gate anyhow and we startle the ladies working in the office. Unable to speak much mandarin we point to Claire's head and they understand what we need, sort of.

*A guard comes in to question why were inside the gate and this freaks Claire out. I'm trying to tell him what is wrong. Me not speaking mandarin and him not understanding English didn't get us very far. They grab other people and finally I remember the mandarin word for ice- beeng. So I start saying "BEENG!" and pointing to my head and her head.

*They finally understand and took us to a shop where they banged on the side of the ice cream freezer to get chunks of ice (they don't use ice machines here.)

*Get a taxi ride back to the hotel because the group doesn't leave the zoo for another hour.

*Go to the clinic inside the hotel and get told what we already know- watch for vomiting, dizziness, etc.

*Give Claire Tylenol and have her rest for an hour and then watch her come back to life.

By the end of the day she was running around (well, with us saying no running!), jumping and laughing like her normal self. A Hello Kitty band-aid cleverly disguised the swollen bump but when we took it off tonight she still has quite a goose egg on her forehead. It will probably be sore for quite awhile.

Tomorrow we pack up and get ready to leave. We will try very hard to get some pictures uploaded as well. I thought I could do that today but feisty girl here gave us alternative plans.

Another day to rest

2010-02-09T06:47:00.001-06:00

Again, after arriving in a new place and touring for a few days we were ready to have a day with nothing to do. The only thing that was scheduled was our 'red couch pictures" with our travel group. It is customary to take pictures of all the kids and families on the red couch in the White Swan before leaving. After that we walked around the island a couple of times and this evening we hung out by the river and watched the boats covered in neon lights; they were really cool.

Our visa application and supporting documents were submitted to the consulate this morning and we didn't hear any bad news so that means everything was good. Tomorrow morning we go on another tour and then in the afternoon we go to consulate to do our oath ceremony where we swear to never abandon her and all that other important stuff. Then the consulate processes her visa and it will be ready to pick up Thursday afternoon. THEN, after that we get to LEAVE! We are so ready to go home and enjoy all the things we take for granted in America. #1 on the list- my kids followed very closely by my bed. I'm so homesick I might even put all my kids in my bed.

Today while shopping at a small shop on the island Claire wanted to play the toys while I browsed around. She was out of my line of sight so every few seconds I called her name. Claire then told the lady that owned the shop "I know she's inside, my mom worries a lot." HA! She told the lady later that she has an American mom and dad. Every one that talks to her tells us "she is so smart." At another shop the owner asked her what color her shirt was (in mandarin) and Claire responded "pink." The lady was shocked and then Claire told her "my mom taught me that." Let's hope her smarts help her transition to English easier.

Speaking of that; I think we've entered a new phase with language. When we first got her she talked to us all the time in mandarin. We had no idea what she was saying but she definitely tried and we figured things out fairly well. Now she's communicating with more grunts and points and some hand motions rather than talking in mandarin. She's figured out that we don't understand much so I think she finds it useless to try. We are trying to encourage her to talk, even if it's mandarin rather than point and grunt. We tell her the words for everything and she has picked up so much. She understand a lot of what we say to her. We supplement with quite a bit of mandarin that we know (which grows by the day) and after saying the mandarin words we say the English word/phrase.

We've been working on body part names and she has remembered most of them and we're also working on the last part of the

alphabet. She likes to say J-K-L jumbled mess- O-P. At this hotel we are on the 17th floor so that has opened up counting from 10-20 for us. She has a little trouble from 13-15 but then goes up to twenty and keeps going to 30.

For parents traveling soon-

Even though it is February, it is already warm enough on some days here in GZ to wear shorts and t-shirts. The sun was out earlier today and it was very warm and the humidity is out of control. Bring some hair gel if your hair is naturally wavy or curly but you usually like to wear it straight. It won't be straight for 10 minutes after you walk out of your hotel room; even the lobby is humid. Just pack the gel and embrace the frizz like every other woman here. Don't bring nice shoes for GZ; the sidewalks are ripped up and the construction has made a nasty mess. The rain and humidity make it even worse and it trashes your shoes. Also, if you see something you like in Beijing or in the province- buy it. Don't hold out for what you might find in GZ because I think a lot of the stuff here is much lower quality than other places. We are kicking ourselves everyday that we didn't buy more stuff at the jade and cloisonne factories in Beijing.

A couple things about the White Swan-
We stayed in a nice hotel in Beijing for 10 days so I can't compare the White Swan to hotels in the provinces. But, compared to our hotel in Beijing I am less than impressed with the White Swan. The rooms are tiny, they smell musty or kind of wet and the walls/floor are thin. I'm paying a lot of money to listen to babies above me pounding on the floor or crying or even hearing someone else urinate in the toilet. I heard a lot "the service is 5 star" and "they speak very good English". I'm not finding that so much. The housekeeping staff has been great, the front desk staff is half and half on friendliness and English and the dining room staff in that "oh so wonderful buffet"? I have found they are pretty rude. I can't compare this to the Victory because I haven't been there but I would probably choose that if we were ever to come back to China. I don't need 150 things to choose from for breakfast because I'll choose the same 5 every day. I would trade a bigger room with a soft bed any day. But, I would choose to stay at the same place as my travel group again. Being in the same place as all the other families is very nice and Claire enjoys seeing the other kids in our group each day at breakfast and throughout the day.

Supermarket.wmv

2010-02-08T20:20:00.001-06:00

Click here to view this video

Guangzhou Art Museum

2010-02-08T08:18:00.003-06:00

Click here to view these pictures larger

A day in Guangzhou

2010-02-08T08:18:00.001-06:00

Today we went on a city tour and visited a cultural art museum and a buddhist temple.

The art museum was amazing. It was quiet, beautiful and clean. We've seen beautiful things here in China but nothing that was quiet and clean so it was very refreshing. They had very old antiques from some of the dynasties here and also had artist on site that would paint scrolls or carve stamps for you. One big thing here is a stamp called a chop. I have no idea why it's called a chop but it is hard like stone and has the animals of the chinese zodiac on the top. Claire was born in the year of the horse so her chop has a horse on the top. The artist then carves the bottom with the English name and Chinese name in the characters.

Unfortunately the painter wasn't there while we were but we looked through some paintings that were all done by hand, as in fingers, palm and fingernails. They are amazing.

After the art museum we visited a buddhist temple. I thought it would just be one building but it was actually a compound of many small pagodas that they pray for certain things at each one. Then there was the 17 floor main pagoda. The monk there would do a blessing on your child if you wanted. We went back and forth on if we wanted her blessed or not and then decided to do it. It doesn't change my Christian beliefs at all or the fact that we will be raising her in Christianity. We viewed it more as a chance to have her future blessed by a culture in her home country. She recognized a lot of things around the temple so we think her grandmother might have been buddhist. The monk did a long chant on a drum then sprinkled her with water that had flowers in it and then returned to his chant and drum. It was very cool to see different cultures; even if I don't agree with their beliefs. We have the whole thing on video so I think that will be cool for her to see in the future.

After all that touring the bus dropped off anyone who wanted to go shopping at the Carre Four (like a overly chaotic Wal-Mart) and then we'd just take a taxi back to the hotel. Almost our entire group got off the bus and we had lunch together at Papa Johns and then we went shopping. This place was insane. They had candy and decorations galore for the Spring Festival (what they call Chinese New Year.) We got a few goodies to bring home and then tried to get a taxi. Two hours and a lot of frustration later I cut off about 6 Chinese men waiting for a taxi and claimed it as my own. J said they gave me quite the stare down but I didn't care; I'm taller than all of them. We had walked so far back towards the hotel that our fare never climbed above the starting fare. We were very tired when we made it back.

Claire is still doing well but I can see that our adjustment when we get home might be a bit rocky at times. She doesn't like to be told no or not get her way and is just starting to realize that mom and dad have rules. Last night the battle was she wanted dad in the bed with her and I to go to sleep. Dad was in the room but not in the bed and when we told her no she huffed and pouted and refused to look or speak to us. I think it is a glimpse into what we might face ahead.

Shopping day

2010-02-07T03:17:00.001-06:00

We went with our group today to do a shopping tour and visit the pearl market. I kept thinking our guide was saying "market for the poor" but she was actually saying market for the pearl. Ha, little bit lost in translation and accent I guess.

The pearl market was a 6 story building with over 100 stores selling all kinds of jewelry but many of them sold pearls. You could hand-pick your pearls and have them strung or pick a string of pearls and they would put the clasp on it. The store we were taken to ranged from $50 to $180 a strand (necklace size) depending on the quality. They showed us how to determine real pearls from fake ones. I lasted less than 5 minutes in the store before I told Jeramie to get me out. I don't like pearls. I know many people would love to be standing in a pearl store in China so I really tried to embrace it on behalf of everyone who can't be here but it just didn't work. I obviously did not buy any pearls.

I did find some beaded necklaces and bracelets that were much more my style but after 4 shop owners refused to acknowledge me I got pissy and walked out. Usually we are hounded to death to buy something but this time I stood there and they wouldn't even look at me. So then we went over to the clothing market building but it was more like a shopping mall than a market so we didn't stay there long either. I'm really sick of people interrogating Claire about us being her parents. One person was asking her something about "mama" and then Claire stepped behind my legs so I got rude with the lady. I asked her "what did you say to her?" and she acted like she didn't speak English. Then I purposely ran her over when backing out of the store and said "sorry, Oh- dway boo chee" (I'm sorry/ excuse me in Chinese) and the two girls looked stunned that I spoke some Chinese. I was so mad.
I'm tired of the stares.

I'm tired of people talking to her.
I'm tired of not knowing what they are saying to her.

I'm just tired and ready to come home.

We ate lunch at the market and then took a taxi back to the hotel because we stayed later than the group. This afternoon we browsed the shops in the hotel and then a few on the island as well. I finally bought a few things but we are still disappointed that we didn't buy more in Beijing. We didn't realize that some of that stuff was only available in Beijing when we passed it up. We didn't want to buy a lot of stuff the first three days because we had a lot of time left on our trip to see things we liked even better. Well, we're really kicking ourselves now. We did get Claire two more Chinese dresses in bigger sizes so that she can have one every couple of years and I also found a tea set for her that I'm going to save for her 16th or 18th birthday.

Claire's arms are very sore after her shots yesterday and she reminds us of it often. She just bumped her arm a little bit ago and really cried so they must hurt pretty bad. I've given her Tylenol around the clock and for the most part she is still her happy self but I do think she is running a low fever.

Tonight we are joining others in our group and going to a Chinese restaurant with our guide. The people here are Cantonese and our guide joked that they eat everything that flies except the airplanes and everything in water except that boat. They eat EVERYTHING. This should be interesting.

Medical exam

2010-02-06T05:34:00.001-06:00

So this morning our entire travel group (7 families) walked from the hotel to the medical examination place. All the children must undergo a medical exam prior to getting their US visa. We anticipated that the wait would be very long but it wasn't too bad; I think we were there 1 1/2 to 2 hours. In the exam room they have three stations- height, weight & temperature; ENT, and then medical surgery. We breezed through the rooms getting her weighed, eyes tested, checked out by the doctor and then the hard part came- vaccinations. Being a Hague adoption case we must get Claire's vaccinations caught up to date according to her age. That means if her orphanage did not vaccinate her on schedule she would need to get ALL those shots at one time before getting a visa. It is absolutely ridiculous and needs to be fixed but more noise needs to be made in Congress for that to happen.

We lucked out, Claire only needed 4 vaccines. Another little boy in our travel group who is just under 2 had to get seven, YES, 7 shots.
We couldn't believe it; she didn't cry at all when getting her 4 shots. Either she has a very high pain threshold or is one tough cookie. She had a TB test a couple of weeks ago but our guide said she would need to get another one. The nurses got all fishy when getting the TB test ready and were saying something about it being "different" so Daddy went all berserk on them and grabbed her arm to contaminate the cleaned area and got our guide. They got the doctor and after a bunch of back in forth in mandarin later, we won. Score one for the mom and dad team; Claire didn't have to repeat her TB test because the one from two weeks ago was negative.

After the medical exam we let her play at playground for a long time to try and make up for the shots. We grabbed some lunch at a deli shop and then came back to the room. Claire was looking very tired and after the long night/ early morning combined with the trauma of the medical exam we figured she should lay down and take a nap. Only one problem- she didn't want to. She told me no and I insisted on yes. She did do what I said but then got in bed and started crying for her grandma. We held her and then distracted her with TV but when we turned it off she went back to sniffling. I think she felt very crummy and wanted the one person she's had for the last 6 years, her nai nai. We gave her another dose of Tylenol and within half an hour she was back to her spunky self.

In the afternoon I went to our guide's room with the rest of the parents and filled out our visa paperwork for Claire; one more step done.

Later this evening we ventured off the little island into the main city and finally found "food on a stick." We've been waiting 11 days to find that. We walked around and around and finally ventured back to the hotel. We are dog tired; as in "can't get out of the chair" tired.

Tomorrow I am going on a shopping tour with our group. We're going to ask Claire if she wants to go but if she doesn't she's going to hang out at the hotel with Dad instead. I can now get to shutterfly so hopefully we'll find the energy to put some videos online tomorrow.

The picture of the bamboo scaffolding and ladder couldn't be passed up. The island is under construction because they need to make it look pretty for the Asian Games being held here in the winter. It is a nasty, nasty mess; then it rains and never dries so you walk around in soupy muddy puddles all day. Our shoes are trashed after just one day.

The airplane ride

2010-02-06T00:44:00.000-06:00

We were at the airport about 1 1/2 hours early yesterday so after getting there we found something for lunch (another meal with chopsticks, go me!) and then found a children's play area to let Claire play while we waited for our boarding time. She loved the little playground and we also watched her help a little boy was about 2 play on the playground too. She is quite the little helper and caretaker.

She was very excited for our trip and asked our guide many questions before and after we boarded. I'm glad she was excited because I was anything but that. The airplane was loud and vibrated a lot and just plain freaked me out. Then she needed to potty and wow, wow, wow. US airlines take much better care of their airplane lavatories! I nearly lost my lunch in there but held it together and got back to my seat only to start smelling something really gross. Domestic flights here still serve a hot meal; would you like fish or pork? Most of the plane chose fish which also had cabbage in it. I thought I was stuck inside a porta-john at an overly ripe fish market. I ate my roll just to try and calm my stomach and was so thankful when we landed.

Mid-way through our flight Claire wanted to quiz Catherine (our guide) so she asked her-

"What is colorful and looks like a bridge in the sky?" A rainbow!

Then she said "Who snores when they sleep?"

Catherine guessed Claire- no, then she guessed mama and Claire replied "No, my OLD daddy!" Our guide cracked up laughing for so long.

She is such a funny and smart girl.

Shutterfly isn't working from Guangzhou; they must block different sites down here so I'll email the pictures with each post instead. I'm also including a picture our hotel in Beijing and our view out the window. It was never quiet there, the cars and busses were always honking at each other.

We in the fish bowl

2010-02-05T07:47:00.001-06:00

After a trip that started 9 hours ago we are finally in our hotel room, and almost ready for bed, in Guangzhou. The weather here is comparable to the Florida Keys or Puerto Rico. It is so humid outside it is hazy and looks like a bathroom that someone forgot to turn off the hot shower. The temperatures are in the 70's in January so I can't even imagine being here the summer time.

I didn't think it was possible to have a harder bed than we did in Beijing but now I do. About 10 minutes after arriving in the room we called and asked for a quilted bed topper; hopefully that will make it better.

Oh, and the million dollar question- did Claire cover us in vomit on the airplane ride?

NO! She was very excited about the airplane ride and told our guide that she wasn't going to take a nap because she wanted to watch out the window. And that is exactly what she did. When seeing the other planes landing while waiting for take-off she said she wanted to be a pilot. She said many other funny things today that I'm going to try and remember to put on here tomorrow.

Until then- goodnight from the fish bowl.

Last full day

2010-02-04T07:28:00.001-06:00

Our last full day in Beijing, finally.

We have 5 English speaking channels on TV here. They are CNN, Bloomberg, HBO, Cinemax and National Geographic. How do you know when you've been in one place too long? You know what channel HBO is without going through the entire channel line-up. Yes, it is definitely time to go.

In a way we are sad to leave Beijing; but that would be a very small way. We had big ambitions of seeing many things in the city and our time has now come to a close and we didn't get to see as many things as we would've liked. Some of that was due to exhaustion, some was due to not wanting to overwhelm Claire and a lot of it was due to needing a barf bag everywhere we went.

We walked to a nearby clothing market today and bought more than we did the other day. I know all of it is most likely knock-offs of real brand names but the kids in middle school don't know that. J took a $60 risk and bought an I-phone. Turns out it isn't an I-phone at all but rather a sciphone that looks exactly (and I mean exactly) like an I-phone. One key giveaway that he didn't notice before buying it; it was "Dasigned in the US." Yea, that would have been nice to see before buying it. He's laughing it off and has let Claire enjoy the games on it. I told him to clearly establish that she can play with Daddy's phone because Mommy's I-phone (if I ever join the ranks and get one) will be real and completely off limits to those under 13.

Claire has a couple of new nicknames:
Drama Queen Extreme and Miss Sassy Pants.

We had our first real confrontation today and it is has given us a glimpse into the battles we face ahead. She and Dad were laying on the bed watching TV and she wanted the remote; he told her no but she took it from him anyway. He took it away from her and said no. Oh my, she huffed, spewed some nasty sounding mandarin his way and stomped off to the living room. She pouted for about 5 minutes and then got the remote and watched her own TV in that room. She held a grudge for a good 1 ½ hours. I really don't think she's ever been told no or needed to behave within a set of rules. She was the oldest of her foster siblings and we can tell she is quite bossy; even trying to boss us around sometimes. This whole being the oldest to being the youngest thing isn't going to be too pretty; I don't think.

Tonight she entered her "I'm wired and deliriously-stupid-tired" phase and was bouncing around while walking home. She loves to be carried but we needed her to walk and burn off some energy and Dad is just plain worn out from packing around her heavy self. She kept running in front of him and stopping so finally I had to whip out the mom voice. I told her "Claire, NO, zow lu" (zow lu means walk). She stepped right beside me and held my hand.

She goes from being happy and giggly to mad or crying in the blink of an eye. She has no problem showing her emotions! But, she is also very caring and will always kiss your owies and say "Ima sorry" if she accidentally hurts you. She finished off the day with "Ba ba, I wove you." And how can you focus on the sassy attitude after that?

Tonight we walked and walked and finally decided to have dinner at the Korean BBQ a few blocks away. This was a challenge because they did not know any English. J told me to just pick something that looked like beef on the menu and actually, most of the pictures did look like sliced beef. I tried to say "English menu" any way I knew how and boy, I am SO glad I did! Did you know that many different, nasty things look just like sliced beef? We almost ordered things like stomach, ox tongue and many other things I'm still trying to block out. In the end, it was OK but nothing like the wonderful food we ate in Korea.

Tomorrow we have to get our bags ready by 12 noon and we leave the hotel at 12:30. Who are they kidding? We're so ready to leave we nearly have every thing packed tonight! We pick up Claire's passport first and then head to the airport and fly to Guangzhou. We'll be leaving the hotel around 10:30pm central time and arriving in Guangzhou around 4am Friday morning, central time. We'll be checking in to the White Swan hotel; the hotel famous for adoptive families. We'll also be meeting up with our travel group that we toured here in Beijing with and we are excited to meet all of their new children.

Trip to the aquarium

2010-02-03T05:52:00.000-06:00

We started out with a good breakfast and a dose of Dramamine so we could go to the Beijing Aquarium today. Before visiting the aquarium we stopped at the place Claire was found as a baby and the police station she was taken to. Recently parents have been able to get pictures that were taken when the children arrived at the police station but in 2002 they didn't take pictures of the children; that started only a couple of years ago. That was a disappointment but we did get a picture of the station to add to Claire's life book.

After that we went to her finding location and I was overwhelmed with emotion. I was emotional about the fact that our daughter was left in this spot when she was a baby and the mere thought of her being there alone was a lot to think about. Then to think of a woman carrying her child for 9 months and then spending a few days with her before making the decision to leave her simply overwhelmed me. I have carried 3 children and the thought of feeling forced to leave them behind is unthinkable to me. I don't feel anger towards her but rather compassion and sympathy. I know that must have been such an awful day for her and I know she probably thinks about her child every day and looks into the face of every girl around 7 years old wondering if that might be her child; hoping she has been given a better life. I know many of you probably think her birth mother couldn't have loved her at all or she wouldn't have abandoned her. But, this country is different than our own and has placed many pressures on women to produce a son. Even though many (if not all) these women who have abandoned children would love to raise a little girl, they face punishment from their husband and family if they do just that.

Abandoning a child here in China is illegal with the punishment being jail time but yet women go to great lengths to leave their children in very public places to ensure they are found quickly. They usually wait away from the area but within sight to make sure their children are found quickly. The area Claire was found was probably the busiest place we've been to, second to the subway so this tells us that her mother risked a lot, really her life to make sure she was found quickly. This tells us that she most definitely loved her little girl so much that she risked her own life to give her daughter a better one.

Other things we learned today-
Our guide also said she thinks Claire is from a different area than Beijing. She named the same place that the lady in the shop did. She told us that people in Beijing rarely, if ever, abandon their children because they know they will have a good life in the city. This tells us that her birth mother either traveled from far away to leave her in the city for a better life or she was a migrant worker who did not get the same benefits as permanent residents of the city.

The government has been trying to reduce the amount of children abandoned by extending health insurance to farmers in 2004 and life insurance in 2007. This has made it so a farming family does not have to rely on their son to support them when they are older because they know the government will so they are now less likely to abandon girls. Our guide also confirmed that this is around the time that the slow down in international adoption started so the two things are probably related.

Now the government has a new problem- children who have special needs being abandoned. Of all the special needs children abandoned, only about 10% will qualify for adoption. The other children are deemed as having "mental" problems making them less desirable by adoptive families (what they think) and the government takes care of them for life; they will most likely spend their entire life in the orphanage. The reason for many of these special needs children are the result of women not obtaining care during pregnancy and not learning of any problems with the child during the pregnancy. The government has now made it free to obtain care during pregnancy to try and reduce the amount of special needs children being abandoned.

After a heavy morning we arrived at the aquarium and had a nice time. Claire liked looking at all the fish and they had a good dolphin and seal show as well.

We've finally reached the half-way point of our trip. I'm missing the kids at home tremendously and I can't wait to get back home to them. Only 2 more breakfasts here in Beijing and then we fly to Guangzhou. We've become such a regular at the hotel now we don't even have to give them our room number to get the breakfast for free; today she just looked at us and said "yes, come in." We had a good laugh at that and said that was definitely a sign that it was time to go.

Claire is a pro at hair styling. She spends a lot of her time in the room putting many ponytails into her hair and today I ended up with 7 ponytails and dad even had a headband.

In a way it feels like we are completely spoiling her because we do things for her that we don't do for the kids back home. Things such as rubbing her down with lotion after her bath. It is great skin to skin contact and we had to think of it as we did the same thing when the other kids were babies. We are kind of going back to the baby stage with her and doing those things we didn't get to do back then. We also sit and rock her in our arms and sing rock a bye baby and she just loves it.

We are trying to find the fine line between making her happy because just one week ago we ripped her out of every thing she's every known but also not giving her every thing she asks for because that can't continue when we get home. I think we've done fairly well so far but I think getting home and setting a routine with rules is going to be a very good thing.

We have established that she has to ask "please" before taking food when she wants to. When she wants a snack she just holds her hand out and motions and I don't think that is a very good practice to start so our guide reinforced to her that she needs to ask please to get food. She's done really well the rest of the day and asked please when she wanted a snack. I think this is good because the pantry at home is fairly open territory because the kids know they need to ask before getting snacks so this will help establish that she can't graze all day without permission.

We've learned (the hard way) that she absolutely hates being scared or startled. I did it to her when we were playing a couple of nights ago and she went from happy to crying and very mad at me in .2 seconds. I had to rock her and tell her I was sorry many times and then she still had a grudge for awhile.

I think we are going to walk to another silk market that isn't far from our hotel tomorrow. We might go swimming one more time and then we get to pack up! It is probably going to take awhile; it feels like we've completely moved in here. I'm so ready to go though; one step closer to my kiddos back home. We're still blocking out that 14 hour plane ride with a motion sick child. We'll just pretend that isn't going to happen.

Hot Pot Restaurant

2010-02-03T04:29:00.001-06:00

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Beijing Aquarium

2010-02-03T04:06:00.001-06:00

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Finding Place and Aquarium

2010-02-03T03:28:00.001-06:00

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Trip to Silk Street

2010-02-02T05:57:00.001-06:00

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Trip to Silk Street

2010-02-02T05:43:00.001-06:00

Today we grabbed our guide books and ventured out into Beijing alone. We really weren't too nervous about getting around but more nervous about Claire's reaction to the subway and if her motion sickness reappeared. We gave her the Dramamine just before leaving, which we have learned is not enough time, and she didn't handle the first ride very well. She did the same thing she does in the car- gets very quiet, eyes closing and the overall "I'm about to barf on your shoes" look.

We had to change subway lines one time and in during that transfer something made her start crying. We're not sure if it was something that triggered her memories of her foster family or just the fact that she wanted to get out and we passed by what she thought was the elevator. It's hard to pick out any mandarin words when she's crying but I think I may have heard 'nai nai' which is grandmother so we just stopped right there in the pedestrian tunnels, held onto her and told her we loved her. Thankfully it only lasted a couple of minutes and then we were on our way.

We walked quite a distance after getting off the subway to visit a famous silk market here in Beijing. It was completely overwhelming; every 5-10 feet we had people yelling "do you want to buy (insert object here), I give you good price." We did buy a few things and I must proudly say I love to haggle. The cards we brought say to offer 30% less than their first price. In every case, I paid 50% less than their original price and one even less than the original price for 2 of them. I still may have paid too much but I guess we'll only be here once. It was 6 floors of tiny little flea market type booths selling every thing from Polo shirts to jade bracelets. I'm fairly certain this jade was fake and mixed with glass so we didn't buy any there.

We've only bought a few things, none of which have been for us. While we want to bring home souvenirs for all, we most likely won't. It isn't because your're not thought about or loved but simply because we have 5 pounds left on our luggage allowance and most things here that we could bring home are breakable. We're even avoiding the things we'd like to get for our family because of those two reasons. Our biggest commitment right now is to bring home things that will help Claire understand and appreciate her Chinese culture as she grows up. This will be very important as she gets older and really questions her identity growing up in the US.

Other things about the day:
*We're working on the English words for colors and she's already got pink, white and yellow. She gets those right every time now.

*She can count from 1-10 in English but skips 7 a lot of times; we think it's hard for her to say.

*She sings ALL the time and really has a beautiful voice.

*She told a lady at the market today "My mom speaks English" and "my dad speaks English" when we went into a shop. She didn't even give us a chance to say ni hao (hello) before she told the lady. The girl cracked up and then told us what she said.

*Two people today asked where Claire was from (as in where in China) and were surprised when we told them Beijing. J has thought she looks more like western Chinese people and one girl said she looked and sounded like she was from somewhere else. We've been trying to remember the place all day so we can look it up.

*When walking away from a booth today someone yelled "why do you have a Chinese daughter?" We just kept walking but it really made us wonder how much of the general population here knows about international adoption.
*We're fairly certain Claire thinks we live in this hotel. We think she believes this is our home, or our apartment. She knows which floor we're staying on and which room is ours. We pack up and make the trip to Guangzhou this Friday and I think we'll probably encounter a break down when she realizes she really is leaving and we're not staying here.

We've looked up the dosage recommendation for children taking Dramamine and found we can give her more than we have been. We're quite worried about the plane rides coming up and plan to ask for an abundant amount of barf bags. I thought I'd read all I could to prepare on what we might face with older child adoption and I can honestly tell you that motion sickness was no where on the radar prior to getting here. But, after being here it makes perfect sense. For seven years she probably traveled by car very infrequently so she is simply not used to the motion of cars, or subways and definitely planes. We plan on a trip to the doctor to get some prescription relief for her once we get home because we drive somewhere every day.

Tomorrow we're leaving the hotel fairly early and heading to the Beijing aquarium. It's gotten a lot colder than the first few days we were here so the zoo would be fairly miserable after a short while. We're also going to visit the place she was found so we can take pictures of that for her later.

The weather forecast is calling for snow flurries on Friday and we need to pray hard that the snow doesn't come. This city shuts down with any amount of snow and we are due to fly out that day. Our schedule in Guangzhou hinges on our arrival on Friday. Every thing for her US visa starts on Saturday so we can't be late.

Day 5, more paperwork

2010-02-01T02:53:00.001-06:00

We're official!

Our agency was finally able to get through to the civil affairs after calling for over an hour this morning. Our worry that the adoption decree wouldn't be ready today was relieved; they were told we could come pick it up.

We went to the civil affairs office and got the same gentleman that wasn't very nice to our guide last week. I was a bit nervous but he seemed friendly. Either he was having a better day or we just won him over with our good looks and charming personalities. HA! So the first thing he asked us was how it the bonding was going and we said great and then he asked Claire if she was having fun. Thankfully, she said yes!

So he typed up the decree, printed it and then stamped it. It wasn't a matter of the decree being ready, because it wasn't, it was a matter of them wanting to wait a certain amount of time for the bonding period. While finishing the decree he told us that her family name (in Chinese) is the same as his family name. Claire knew what he was saying and said some stuff about them being the same. His signature on our paperwork was very cool and we said it looked very hard. Our guide translated that for us and then he got up and went to a cabinet. He brought back a brochure type thing that had all of his writings with some pictures of him painting and a picture of him on the front. We told him see-ah see-ah (thank you) and then he took it back, signed the front and dated it. Wow, what a wonderful keepsake for Claire. See, I told you we charmed him!

Upon leaving the civil affairs office Claire got very quiet when it was time to get in the van. Before we made it out of the parking lot we were christened as new parents.
You know, usually you are christened as new parents shortly after the baby's first feeding. We like to be nice and call it spit-up but truly? Your child just emptied the content of his/her stomach all down your back. You are now christened and officially new parents.
Our christening took 5 days but believe me, we are officially her parents now. We have the decree and dirty clothes to prove it.

She absolutely hates the car. We were able to distract her on the other trips today but she tells us (through our guide) that she just wants to walk to food; she doesn't care if it takes hours. I'm not sure how the first few weeks at home are going to go. I'm thinking some of it is simply anxiety and it doesn't help that we were in the same van today as the day we picked her up and the same office we went to shortly after receiving her.

We learned from Catherine (our guide) that 'mama yo baba' and 'baba yo mama' is Claire's way of saying my mom and dad are a good couple and mom loves dad and dad loves mom. J She also said she keeps saying it because it makes us laugh.

We learned today that she had two younger brothers in her foster home; she said they were 6. While having lunch we had our guide ask her if she wasn't allowed to waste food at the foster home. We have noticed she will eat all food. At first we thought she just ate a ton but then we wondered if she was actually cleaning her plate so it wasn't wasted. She confirmed that the foster family told her not to waste food so 7 years of that teaching is going to be hard to break. We put the snacks away in the room because we noticed she will help herself to them whenever she wants. She still eats quite a bit for her size, especially at breakfast.

We were planning on going to the zoo but Claire told our guide that she'd already been there. It feels quite a bit cooler here today than past days so I think we're going to go to the aquarium instead. It is close to the place she was found as a baby so we are going to go there as well so we can get a picture of that for her later.

We finished the day by going to the notary after lunch followed by the passport office. The rule is passports applied for Monday morning will be ready on Friday morning but we didn't get there until Monday afternoon. The orphanage worker came to the passport office with more paperwork from them and sweet talked the director into having it ready on Friday morning. We will pick that up and then fly to Guangzhou that afternoon. And guess what? Our guide is flying with us! It isn't standard that the guide flies with you but she will be the guide for our entire group in Guangzhou so she has to fly there just like we do so she's going at the same time as us. I laughed and said, good another hand to help with the motion sickness.

One cute thing from today-
Claire is very funny; quite the little jokester. She told our guide today that she loves to smile and be funny and when the younger kids or babies were upset she would do something funny to make them laugh because if you are always smiling there is love in the sky. Wow, it's hard to imagine her any older than 4 or 5 based on her size but she definitely has the smarts and wit of a child much older than that. That just melted my heart.

Keep reading, I took advantage of nap time today and posted several smaller posts with pictures.

Street vendors

2010-02-01T02:45:00.001-06:00

Boo-yaw: I do not want.

And when they are really up in your face you use your hands to shoo them away saying boo-yaw very meanly. And then? They will lower their price and come at you again. That is when you give up and put the camera right up to their face and take their picture.

These crazy fools were all over the Summer Palace and drove us absolutely bonkers.

Smog

2010-02-01T02:41:00.001-06:00

The smog here in Beijing is incredible. When flying into the city it almost looked like a pretty orange sunset but we quickly realized we were actually looking at a huge layer of smog. This view is looking out our hotel window; notice how the buildings fade away into a cloud of smog fairly quickly. Beijing is ringed by mountains and you used to be able to see them all but once the city grew so large with no pollution restrictions in place it has turned into this. All the cars look dirty; as if they have just been traveling on gravel or dirt country roads but it is actually the smog fall out that has coated them in a yellow layer of dust. The yellow dust is on everything.

Our guide

2010-02-01T02:38:00.001-06:00

I can't say enough good things about our guide; she is amazing. Even though we have nothing officially scheduled for the next three days she told us to call her anytime and she will take us out to eat. She is also going to get us some different medicine for Claire's motion sickness from a pharmacy close to her apartment. She even told us if we are at a restaurant and don't know how to order just call her and she'll tell the wait staff for us.

Our driver, Tim, scared the death out of us the first few times we rode with him. But, after Claire really got sick all over his van today he turned into a softy and drove slow with his hazards on. He always helps us in and out of the van and been great as well.

This picture is from our lunch today. We had time to get lunch between the notary and passport office so we all ate together.

Laundry

2010-02-01T02:35:00.000-06:00

This how we do our laundry

do our laundry

This is how we do our laundry,

in the hotel.

The hotel's laundry service is outrageously expensive- over $8 per pair of pants. Catherine found us a laundry shop within walking distance so we dropped off 4 pairs of pants and one shirt at that place for the same price but it will take 4 days. So, to cut down on expense and not being able to send everything out or we'd have nothing to wear we did a bathtub load of laundry.

Eating

2010-01-31T07:17:00.001-06:00

Here is how you do adventurous eating here if you don't speak mandarin.

Learn a few phrases in mandarin, none of which include the name of foods.

After a very long nap, bundle up and head out the door. We passed a Korean BBQ a couple days ago and we wanted to eat there.
Walk and walk and then realize you must not be on the right street.

Give up and head into a noodle house.

Get overwhelmed by the rude citizens and lack of any knowledge, give up and leave.

Decide to keep looking for the Korean BBQ.

Start walking back towards the hotel and realize you have walked a long way.

Head down embassy road because there it is bright with lights and looks very active.

Find bar after bar after bar and realize it's not exactly the best place for food- and a 7 year old.

See a Subway restaurant and squeal with glee.

Sit among many other westerners enjoying a roast beef sandwich and Lay's potato chips.

Yep, that's how we do it.

But, we did head down into the subway station with the map and figure out how to get to places we want to visit over the next few days. We are having Peking duck, the specialty here and also going to the zoo.

Here is a few more mandarin words and phrases we've learned.

boo-how: not nice
boo-sure: no

sure: yes

zigh-gee-en: good-bye

chung-jur: orange juice

wah-wah: baby

many colors

how hightz za: good girl

mama: mom

baba: dad

choc a lee: chocolate

There are quite a few others; we're learning fast. Claire is learning several English words as well. We kind of teach each other. She loves to tell daddy to "open the door" when he locks the bathroom door.

She does not like us drinking Coke. When we bought a couple more cokes at the store today she gave us quite the scolding in mandarin. It's very hard not to laugh.

Her phrase for today is "mama yo baba, baba yo mama" I can't wait to find out what she's saying when we see our guide tomorrow. We're fairly certain she told the lady at Subway tonight "this is my mama and baba." The lady looked at us and then gave her a weird look. Who knows, she could have said these people are crazy and think they are my mom and dad.

We start trying to get the adoption decree tomorrow at 10. I'm not real thrilled with the international news right now dealing our country and this one. We are seriously at their mercy right now. I will let you all know tomorrow.

Sunday

2010-01-31T03:54:00.001-06:00

Finally, a day to rest.

We all needed this day to just hang out and do nothing. We were exhausted after the last 3 days so I can't imagine how tired Claire was. We slept in and talked with the kids at home over webcam for a long time before having a late breakfast.

We went to the shopping mall next door and bought Claire new shoes. They cost WAY too much being that we're in the country that most things are made in. But, the shoes that Claire came to us were worn out and I feel bad that we didn't get her new shoes before the last two days of touring. We didn't realize how little padding her shoes had in the bottom. She told our guide over the phone later today that she likes her new shoes. She said her old ones were too small and that is why her feet hurt but the new ones are bigger and feel better. That makes the price totally worth it.

Today is the first day Claire has actually gotten a nap. It is normal in this culture to take a nap every day after lunch; they even base their business schedules around nap time. We noticed her getting tired around 12 so we grabbed some lunch from next door and then laid down. She has now been asleep for 2.5 hours. Part of me says she needs it so we need to let her sleep but the mom in me says her little feisty self is going to be up all night now.

Tid-bits from family day that I was too tired to write out.

I was surprised to hear we would be going to the orphanage to receive Claire because they have not allowed visitors for almost a year. I really thought we'd get here and learn that we weren't' actually able to go to the orphanage and receive her in our hotel instead but that didn't happen.

The ride to her orphanage was very eye-opening. We saw parts of the city that I wasn't expecting. I've seen pictures of the orphanage before our trip and it looked very nice so I guess I expected the area around it to be nice or OK but it wasn't. There was trash piled everywhere and the make-shift buildings that the people lived in was very humbling.

When we got to the orphanage the guard did not want to let us in. Our guide had to call the person inside the orphanage and then transfer the phone to the guard who then let us in. But before opening the gate he had to scan all of us for our temperature; thank goodness none of us were running a fever!

We only saw the lobby of the orphanage but it was huge, beautiful and spotless. We did not see or hear any other children. We gave the worker the big bag of mittens and hats and our guide explained what it was. The orphanage worker was very confused but I think she understood after a little bit.

Later that afternoon we went to the civil affairs office to formally adopt Claire and register the adoption. In most other provinces you get the adoption decree about 30 minutes but here they make you wait and won't tell you when it will be ready. We found out yesterday that the worker was quite rude with out guide and said he would call when it was ready. The passport needs to be applied for on Monday to be ready on Friday so the passport isn't what holds up the adoption in this city- it is the adoption decree being ready.

A few things we've learned about here:

Back in the 1940's the leaders thought the bigger the population, the more power a country had so they encouraged couples to have more children. The more children you had the more privileges you were given. But then the population exploded and in the late 70's they instituted the one child policy. It's been changed a bit since then but right now it is:
Live in the city you get 1 child.
Live in the rural area and your first child is a girl you can try again in 8 years. Even if the second child is a girl, you are done.
Farmers who have a girl first may try again in 5 years but still, two is all you get.
Minority group are allowed to have more children, I think it was up to 3 without any penalty.

Tomorrow (Monday) we are going back to the civil affairs office with our guide to pick up the adoption decree. We don't know if it is ready but our guide said we just need to go there in person and basically tell them we need it. Yea, I'm real comfortable with that. Hopefully it will be done and we can then go to the notary and apply for Claire's passport. I think we're going to ask our guide to take us to the zoo a day before we leave. We had a one guide the first two days we were here and then our newer guide took over. They have both been great but our newer guide is willing to do anything for us; even offered to take us to find cheaper shoes and drop off our laundry by her apartment. She will be with our group in Guangzhou as well so we really lucked out!

Summer Palace.jpg

2010-01-30T06:47:00.001-06:00

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Day 4, Great Wall

2010-01-30T06:38:00.001-06:00

I promise to write more tomorrow. We were gone touring from 9am to 6:30pm. To say we are exhausted is an understatement. But tomorrow is a free day and we are planning on staying here at the hotel and basically doing nothing. Claire held up the entire day but then got sick on the last bus ride. She told our guide"I didn't take my medicine. I don't like the medicine but I need it." We won't skip the Dramamine again.

So, here was the abbreviated version of our day.

Leave hotel and visit:

1. A jade factory. It was awesome and I wish I had tons of money because I would have bought everyone a jade bangle bracelet. I'm not a huge bangle bracelet fan but these were really nice. Did you know jade came in many different colors including purple?

2. Visit the Great Wall. (chung chum)
I am a wuss and crapped out only part way up to the first watch tower. J continued up the wall to 3rd watch tower and took videos and pictures for all of you. He's going to be so sore tomorrow that we'll have no option but to stay here at the hotel.

3. Eat at a traditional Chinese restaurant with our group (4 families). This was actually a lot of fun. We were at a big round table with a lazy susan in the middle. They just kept bringing Chinese food and nobody knew what it was. I'm fairly certain I ate octopus tentacles today; the flavor was great but none of us knew exactly what it was. We did not ask; some things are better left unsaid.
4. Visit a cloisonne factory. These are the very bright, porcelain looking vases, plates, etc. We learned these are actually copper. Again, beautiful pieces but somewhat expensive and we don't know how to get them back without breaking.

5. Visit the Summer Palace.

Another amazing, huge place for the emperors of China. This is where they spent their time in the summer when they left the Forbidden City. The empress and the emperor's mother stayed here more during the summer.

6. McDonalds. Adventurous lunch, not so much for dinner and, we were exhausted.

Claire is starting to really test some limits. It's very hard to establish discipline when she doesn't understand us. She is particularly feisty and downright not nice to daddy. She thinks it's funny and we played along for the first day but we see trouble ahead so we learned the phrase today for "not nice"- boo how. No is "boo shur" so we got in some good practice today with that. She responds well to no but I know we will have our first confrontation soon.

Row Your Boat

2010-01-30T04:56:00.001-06:00

This is Claire's version of Row, Row Your Boat in Chinese

Forbidden City

2010-01-29T06:37:00.001-06:00

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Day 3, Forbidden City

2010-01-29T06:27:00.001-06:00

Wow, one bit of advice for people coming to visit this country.
Actually start your diet and exercise your leg muscles- a lot.

Oh my goodness, one walk through the Forbidden City and one near face-plant saved by ringing myself around a tree and my legs feel like jello and I know they will feel 100 times worse tomorrow morning. We are starting at 9 am tomorrow with a visit to the Great Wall and we joked on our way back that we'll step on the Great Wall, take lots of pictures and then get back in the bus. We're definitely out of shape and feeling the effects of "fat America" syndrome.

The Forbidden City was impossible to imagine without actually visiting. We looked at the satellite image on Google and commented on how big it looked but wow, it is amazingly huge. And we were told that they did not use one nail in the entire thing because they were worried the nails would break in an earthquake. YaYa knew exactly where we were when we drove in front of the gate. She jumped up to the window and let out a long spiel in mandarin. Our guide told us she knew what it was and read the mandarin on the front- Long live and prosper China.

We walked around Tiananmen Square and took Claire's picture with the national flag. It is raised every day at sunrise and lowered at sunset. It was her first time on daddy's shoulders and she did not like it--- at all.

We learned that there were 24 emperors who lived in the Forbidden City, the last one in the very early 1900's, maybe 1904? It was a lot of info in one day and exhaustion is making me lose some details.

After the Forbidden City we toured the Olympic village. Claire loved looking at the stadiums and said she saw them on TV. She particularly liked the Water Cube.

After all that we went to an acrobat show. While it was amazing what the performers were able to do, I think we had mentally shut down and just wanted to go. But, Claire loved it and watched very intently.

Other tid-bits from our day-
This little girl can eat. I'm not sure where she puts it all but she eats more than I thought she would.

She may be tiny but she is deceptively heavy. She wants to be carried often but she doesn't know to be carried. Other children will straddle your hip, distributing their weight and making it easier to carry them. She doesn't know how to do that; almost like she's never been carried. So when you pick her up it is like carrying dead weight.

We took her swimming today before going on the tour. She liked swimming and we were in awe with the amount of trust she placed in us. She wanted to be carried around the pool and would just lay back in our arms and let us support her.

Learning mandarin at home was next to impossible but in two short days I have learned quite a few words and

phrases.
wah I nee: I love you
lay: tired
now now ma: do you need to use the bathroom?
ty how la: wonderful
jum pow: wonderful/great
dway boo chee: I'm sorry/ excuse me
shay-a shay-a: thank you
boo yaw: I do not want (we used this a lot today with the street peddlers)

shway: water
Several others but that mental exhaustion thing is setting in again.

When I said wah I nee to her this morning she looked right at me, paused and said I love you. Wow, just wow.

I'm uploading a sneak peak of the photos from today. We took a ton; I think enough to fill the card.

Family Day

2010-01-28T06:16:00.001-06:00

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The rest of family day

2010-01-28T06:14:00.000-06:00

I was really questioning our decision earlier today when YaYa was so very upset. She wanted nothing more than to go back to her foster grandmother and stay there. I had to keep reminding myself that she would face this situation with some family; she couldn't stay with her foster grandmother forever. Her status as an orphan in this country would not allow her the chance to prosper as an adult so in the big picture we were doing a good thing. But, at the time? I felt absolutely awful and helpless.

We came back to the hotel and ordered room service for lunch; I was simply not taking her somewhere for lunch when she was so upset. We ordered her some egg fried rice and she ate very well. But we learned she does not like water. We had no idea at the time what she was asking for but later learned her favorite drink is orange juice.

After an hour or so she really started opening up. She was still very quiet and reserved but had a wonderful time rummaging through her suitcase that was filled with goodies. The favorite toys thus far are the baby doll (who has tried on every bit of doll clothing I brought) and the Leapster. She told our guide later that the Leapster, "was fun."

We had to go the civil affairs office to officially register the adoption and swear that we would not abandon her. After asking about why we wanted to adopted from here and how many other children we had we got an unexpected response. He told us (well, translated through our guide) that he thinks families with lots of children are great and he was happy that our children were close in age because she will have someone to grow up with. He particularly spoke about that Emily was only 2 years older than Claire.

We call her YaYa for now. The orphanage director and our guide were telling her that we're naming her Claire while she was upset and we said "no, we'll call her YaYa for as long as she wants." She told the guide that she'd picked her own name- it was Trace. The guide had a good laugh about that. Honestly, it's a bit weird to look at her and say Claire even though we've done just that for the last 6 months. Maybe soon we'll start to combine the YaYa and Claire but for now we need to make sure she understands that she is safe with us.

After the civil affairs office we came back to the room and had the best time. She started talking to us in Mandarin and even though we haven't a clue what she was saying we knew she was having a good time. She loves to conspire and do funny things when Dad is sleeping. She put bows in his hair and her necklace on him. She laughs and laughs when we do funny things. The deep belly giggle was so refreshing to hear, especially since just a few hours before that she cried herself to sleep in the van.

We got bundled up (which, by the way, it isn't all THAT cold here) and took a walk. YaYa loved running across the road dodging the cars while we were actually freaking out. We took her to the place that speaks universal kid language- McDonalds. We got the picture menu and asked what she wanted. She immediately pointed to the french fries and then the ice cream. We got chicken nuggets, french fries and of course, orange juice and the little peanut ate all of it. We found a very small playground upstairs and let her play on it. While crying earlier she kept asking to play at the playground so we knew we needed to let her play. She was scared of the slide at first but then thought it was a lot of fun. She tried to get me to go down the slide.

When walking back and crossing 6 lanes of insane drivers, Daddy picked her up and started running. She giggled and giggled and then kissed him on the cheek. Oh my word, how did we get so lucky? We got back and she willingly took a bath, with bubbles of course. We washed her hair and played with a few toys and then got into some warm pajamas. After we were all done she got quiet and the crying started again. She says she wants her foster nai nai (grandmother) and it just breaks my heart. I held her on my lap on the floor and rocked her back and forth and let her cry for as long as she wanted to. After 10-15 minutes she stopped, promptly stood up and got the Leapster. She's now lying in bed playing the Leapster next to sleeping Daddy while I finish updating you all.

Oh yea- She's tiny. We will see tomorrow if the clothes I brought fit her. The pajamas she chose to wear tonight fit but they are much more snug than the clothes. The shoes I bought are WAY too big. I think they really did measure her foot with the shoe on. I brought a size 13 and they are about 2 inches longer than the shoes she has. I'm guessing she might wear a size 9. She doesn't want the coat I bought her, only the one she came with which is fine, I totally understand. She doesn't want a hat or gloves and stubbornness? Emily, you have met your match. Our guide said "she's stubborn and strong willed" after being with her for only an hour. HA! I told her not to worry; I have one at home whose just the same.

Tomorrow we might try and take her swimming in the morning. We showed her the pool tonight and her entire face lit up. Our travel group arrived this evening and we are planned to tour the Forbidden City and then watch an acrobat show after that. I think she would really like the acrobat show but we are waiting until tomorrow to decide if we're going to attempt the tour.

Good night from China!

We have her!

2010-01-27T23:11:00.000-06:00

We woke up early,had breakfast and then went to the orphanage to pick up Claire. My mind bounced between excitement and worry about how she might react. They had her waiting in the lobby area when we arrived so we didn't get the initial meeting on camera but we were completely in love with her the moment we saw her. She was eager to use her English words that she's learned and loved everything we put in the backpack for her. She really liked the doll and teddy grahams.

But, while sitting on my lap she finished her teddy grahams and then got quiet, got down from my lap and sat by herself. She then started crying and didn't stop for the next hour. She was absolutely mad. She repeated "I want my grandma" over and over. She has lived with her foster grandma for years and she just wanted to see her. She said she doesn't want to leave China. When told she had new pink boots waiting for her she said she likes blue. When looking at the pictures of her new bedroom she told the guide she doesn't like dogs. I could not touch her or hold her hand; she only wanted our guide.

We had to go get our photo taken for the registration and she is mad as heck in the photo. Every person we encountered just stared at us and it was an awful feeling. I felt like we had just kidnapped her and I'm sure to other people it appeared that way as well. We're holding a crying child in the back of a van who is speeding in and out of traffic; not exactly the idea of a happy moment.

She eventually fell asleep on daddy's lap and we ended up coming back to the hotel to get some lunch. We ordered her favorite- egg fried rice and opened her suitcase to explore all the goodies. We saw her smile reappear with bubbles and the beach ball. I have a much better feeling now but I know the journey has just begun.

Arrival Day

2010-01-27T07:10:00.001-06:00

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Ni Hao!

2010-01-27T06:13:00.001-06:00

Greetings from Beijing!

We left the house 24 hours ago and have finally arrived at our hotel in Beijing. Thanks to wonderfully smooth skies we had calm flights but to be completely honest; it sucked.

It sucked bad. We both catnapped a few times but total we slept maybe 3 hours of the 14 hour flight. Ten hours in I thought we should be here and then realized we had 4 more to go.

For someone who doesn't care for movies, can only watch a show on TV once and can't read while moving (car or air) being in an airplane while in a seated, upright position was about the closest thing to cruel and unusual treatment I hope to ever encounter. 40 channels on video entertainment and nothing on; you can only put the same Discovery show on 5 channels before I figure out that I'm not actually watching 5 different Discovery Shows. Worried you might miss the movie on channel 1 if you flip through looking for anything interesting to watch? Don't worry, you'll pass the same movie about 4 more times.

My brain has mentally blocked out the part that looks ahead to the future. We aren't even thinking about the fact that we have to it all over again in 17 days and this time with a child whose never flown before.
Future PAPs flying on United-
Economy Plus is completely worth the money and the food was actually decent. It's been 15 hours since I ate the first meal they served and my digestive tract is still in tact so in addition to tasting decent I guess it was actually OK for me as well.
Also, I am usually cold but today I was hot everywhere. The planes were hot, the airports were roasting and our hotel room? Well, let's just say I am firm in my belief the Man upstairs. Why, you ask? Because we were put into a room that has opening windows. We just have to deal with the traffic.

Only 12 more hours until we leave to meet our newest daughter! The excitement, anxiety, nervousness and anticipation are just about enough to make me sick each time I think about it.

The plans have changed a bit- instead of going to the orphanage and getting her tomorrow and then finalizing the adoption Friday morning we will now do it all in one day. Our formal adoption date is 1/28/10.

Her nickname is pronounced yah-yah, somewhere between YaYa sisterhood and wha like whammy. She said if we say yaya like the sisterhood she will understand. She also told us the literal translation for ya-ya is "doll".

Oh- and her favorite food is egg fried rice; she will make friends with Matthew quickly. J

Hopefully we'll be able to hop on skype tomorrow morning, we have to leave the hotel at 8:30.

The tunnel

2010-01-26T11:17:00.002-06:00

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Trivia for the kids

2010-01-26T11:10:00.002-06:00

From the airport in Chicago

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Packed and ready

2010-01-25T22:38:00.004-06:00

The bags are packed and sitting for the very early wake-up call tomorrow morning. I've kissed the kids over and over and reassured them that they are going to have a good time. I already miss them and we've not even left; such a bittersweet trip. I hate leaving them for 18 days but yet I am so excited to meet our newest little girl.

The duffle bag is absolutely stuff FULL of donated winter clothing items that we will be delivering to the orphanage when we pick up Claire. In the bag is 68 pairs of gloves, 56 hats, 13 scarves, a few snow pants, infant shirts and snow suit. What a load to deliver!

Look at the perfect luggage tag my mom found for us.

New Pictures!

2010-01-21T17:48:00.002-06:00

We received a wonderful email today containing new pictures of Claire! She has lost her two front teeth and in the one picture she is pointing to to North America on the globe! Hopefully that means she has been told what is about to happen. Only 5 days left until we leave and 7 days until I see her cute little face in person.

7 days and counting

2010-01-18T18:20:00.004-06:00

Just thinking that this time next week our bags will be sitting by the door to leave very early the next morning gives me goosebumps! I've packed and re-packed Claire's suitcase about 8 times already and it is currently scattered all over the living room for another repacking.

I just heard about this documentary and I so wish we would have been able to see it before going to China. It looks amazing and I'm sure we are about to experience much of what is shown in the film. Go to this website and watch the trailer. Just the trailer was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

http://www.woainimommy.com/

wo ai ni mommy
wah I nee (I love you) mommy

Another early delivery

2010-01-14T09:50:00.004-06:00

I have been incredibly blessed to have carried and delivered 3 healthy children.
My first baby, Jacob, was born early at 36 weeks.
My second baby, Emily, was stubborn and had to be coaxed out of her comfy resting place at 41 weeks.
My third baby, Matthew, was the only one to arrive on his own timing and was born at 39 weeks.

This baby, my 4th child, will be delivered to me at 37 weeks. From the day we saw her face for the very first time, May 14th, to the day we get to see her face in person, January 28th, will be exactly 37 weeks. I'm so relieved I don't have to go overdue again this time!

Travel is booked!

2010-01-11T09:01:00.003-06:00

Airline tickets have been purchased.
Airplane seats have been upgraded. (5 more inches of leg room, oh yay)
Beijing hotel has been decided.
Hotel room has been upgraded. (Being in cold Beijing for 10 days made me think that a suite might be a good decision; we may spend a lot of time in our room.)

And now we wait.

Only 15 days until we leave and my list contains 13 things yet to do, and it is still growing. I taped a piece of paper above my desk and add the items as I think of them.

I have a whole house to clean; oh my, why did we buy a big house? Jeramie said "just hire Merry Maids to help you" and I told him no; that would be a waste of money that we need right now.

I'm putting together a list of things for the kids to do each day we are gone. If I'm really on my A-game, I'll take pictures and post on the blog what I've left for them each day. Let me add that to my list.

A note to other PAPs (that's potential adoptive parents for all you outside the loop). Our travel agency booked our tickets in the regular economy cabin; I think they have to. We took advantage of a "club" through the airlines that allows you to purchase an economy plus option good for an entire year for $425. After you purchase that, you and a companion fly free in economy plus for an entire year. I don't know if this is available on every airline but it was the airline we are flying. The individual price to upgrade would have been $600 for the both of us so that saved us $175. I purchased Claire's upgrade separately so she's sitting with us and not hanging out in economy by herself.

We aren't clear where Claire is living right now. According to every other child from her orphanage, children in foster care are moved back to the orphanage and then processed for adoption. We were told Claire was still in foster care in August. We're waiting on updated pictures right now and the delay is supposedly caused by the snow inhibiting the staff from getting the "countryside" to take a new picture. Hmmmm...
I actually really hope she is at the orphanage. My heart breaks at the reality that it was probably a traumatic move for her but if she stays with her foster family up until we arrive, it will be extremely difficult for her to accept us. We will be taking her away from her family, the only one she's ever known so it will make an already tough start, even tougher.

We did get new measurements. She is the same height but gained 4 lbs. Woo hoo! She is about the size of an average 5 year old here in the US but smaller than any of my children at age 5. So even though she and Matthew are only 8 months apart in age she will appear to be about 2 years younger than him. The update told us that she can count to 100, do simple calculation and tell a complete story. They have found her an English teacher, at our request, and said she knows a few basic words. I'm still very concerned with the cost of the tutor. We have not been informed of the cost and since the teacher is already performing services we are stuck paying whatever they request.

OK, after 2 snow days the kids are back in school so I really must scurry around to get all of this done.

Winter warm-up donation

2010-01-05T13:51:00.004-06:00

Do you have gloves from 3 years ago that won't squeeze on your growing child's hands anymore? Hats that you don't even remember where they came from, some even have the tags on them still? Here is an opportunity to clean out!

To help the orphanage keep the many fingers and ears warm this winter, we will be carrying a bag to Beijing with us full of donated warm winter items. Will you help us fill the bag? If you would like to send along your gently used or newly purchased winter items, we would love to carry them to Beijing with us.

Email me at winterdonation (at) gmail (dot) com for the address to send them to.

Thank you!

I can't sit down,

2010-01-04T11:58:00.002-06:00

I can't stop spinning in circles, I can't stop squealing, I can't stop jumping up and down, I simply can't calm down.

We are going to China!!

Our agency called a little while ago to let us know that our TA has arrived! Tentative travel dates right now are Jan. 26th through Feb. 12th. Once our consulate appointment is finalized we will be able to buy our plane tickets and finalize all our travel plans. Hopefully the consulate will get back to our agency quickly and we'll know tomorrow or Wednesday.

Three weeks until I hold my littlest girl!

Soon, soon, soon!

2009-12-31T21:07:00.004-06:00

Today 2009 comes to an end and way back in May I thought we'd be spending it with family and introducing our newest daughter to people who have long awaited to meet her. We all know that is not how it has gone. Despite this disappointment I am truly at peace with sitting on the couch catching up on my blogs while I listen to Back to the Future blast from the TV downstairs and smile at the occasional giggles I hear from my three children and husband.

We have waited a full three weeks since our Article 5 was signed at the US consulate in Guangzhou. And while I really hoped to get a phone call this week from our agency announcing that our travel approval (TA) had arrived I really braced myself that the phone call would most likely not come until next week.

I have heard through the grapevine that our agency is hoping they receive a big batch of TAs next week. Another agency has been informed that a package is on its way to them containing a good number of TAs so I've got my fingers crossed that the same is true for our agency.

The last travel group to leave before Chinese New Year will be on Jan. 27th. That means we must receive our TA by the 2nd week of January to travel with this group. If that doesn't happen we will have to wait until mid-February to travel.

In the meantime, we have done a trial pack with our suitcases to check the weight. We are only allowed 44 lbs of checked baggage for each of us while in China. I thought that would be a hard requirement to meet but it might not be so difficult after all. Claire's suitcase is completely packed and sitting in our bedroom, just waiting for the call.

Last rung on the ladder

2009-12-14T14:12:00.005-06:00

I should be happy, really, I should. We have finally reached the last rung of the TA ladder.
Rung 1: I800 approval
Rung 2: NVC cable of that approval to Guangzhou
Rung 3: Cable and agency paperwork marry and the consulate issues the Article 5 and it is then delivered to the CCAA.
Rung 4: Travel approval

So, we've gotten all the way up to the travel approval, one last step until we book plane tickets to China.
So, why am I not happy like I should be?

Because the process that was moving quite fast has slowed down and of course, I have no control over it. One family with identical stats gets their Article 5 in five days, we waited 19. When our Article 5 should have been at the CCAA last week it was instead delivered today. My hopes of getting our travel approval before Christmas and traveling right after the new year looks just about hopeless. If current trends hold true we will be receiving our travel approval the first or second week of January and our agency told me today that they like to have families travel three weeks later. That puts us into the first week of February.
Chinese New Year is on February 14th this year. Travel is basically non-existent at that time due to skyrocketed airline tickets and everything being closed for 5 days. You can't start or end a trip during those 5 days. You see where this is leading? We couldn't have the end of our trip fall during Chinese New Year, so an early February travel date is just about hopeless as well.

Just another day of deflated hope around here. This too shall pass.

Today she turned 7

2009-12-08T22:28:00.006-06:00

Back in May when we submitted a letter of intent to adopt Claire we never intended that she would still be in China on her birthday, never imagined that she'd still be there by Christmas or even fathomed we'd begin 2010 without our sweet girl snuggled safely in our bed. But, as the paperwork process had proven yet again, this process is cruelly unfair, simply because there aren't any rules or timelines.

But, as life would have it, Claire celebrated her 7th birthday in China this year. Her orphanage will not allow a cake delivery so we can only hope the staff made an effort to make her day a bit more special. Here at home we ordered Chinese food and enjoyed 7 cupcakes in her honor. We made a video singing her happy birthday and making our birthday wishes for her.

And we know that the next birthday Claire celebrates she will be surrounded by a forever family that will be there for every birthday thereafter.

quilt progress and other stuff

2009-11-30T21:42:00.006-06:00

First, I have been working on Claire's quilt a lot. I mean a lot; so much so that I started getting blisters on my fingers from cutting and cramps in my shoulders from sewing. So here is what I have so far.

Do you see your fabric?
Don't worry if you don't, that is only 30 quilt blocks laid out. So far I have 79 blocks done and I still have fabric that can be used. Here is a tip for all future good-wish-quilt makers; use only one square or one fat quarter of fabric for each contribution. File the extra away in fabric file 51 and save it. Seriously. I received several contributions (including our own) of 1/2 yard of fabric or more. I thought the more the better so I cut all of it to be put into the quilt. I now have enough quilt squares for a queen sized quilt and it is still growing. This quilt has turned out much bigger than I anticipated but I don't feel like I can stop now; it is certainly a labor of love!

Update on paperwork shuffle-
Our I-800 approval was sent to the National Visa Center on 11/19 and cabled to Guanghzou the next day- 11/20. I read today that another family who was cabled the same day received their Article 5 yesterday. I haven't heard any word from our agency on our Article 5, but leave it to inpatient me to email them last night to check. It would truly be awesome to get our Article 5 so quickly and move onto the last step- our travel approval.

After taking Matthew to the eye doctor today to check the healing of his eye mishap I stepped in and talked with the principal about enrolling Claire in school. I was extremely relieved to hear that she felt the same as I do which is that Claire would be better served in the same school as her siblings instead of a different school receiving English learning classes. She will be required to take an assessment exam before enrolling in which the committee will most likely recommend that she be enrolled at a different school but the principal informed me today that it is ultimately our decision. I had put off meeting with her because I was worried about resistance to what we'd like for Claire so this is a huge relief. She was certain that immersing Claire straight into the classroom would be beneficial and that any kindergarten teacher would be very accepting of the challenge.

I-800!

2009-11-17T09:11:00.004-06:00

Wow, we got our I-800 approval quick! I've paid attention to other adoptive parent's timelines and it is usually about a month from LOA to I-800 approval. We got our approval on the 13th, so we were approved only 2 1/2 weeks after I sent the application. We have a wonderful immigration officer who emailed me the scanned copy of our approval so I could FedEx it to the agency that day instead of waiting for the hard copy to come in the mail and making a copy.

I sent our LOA package to the agency last week and they will be receiving it today. The package contains our original, signed LOA, Claire's US visa paperwork and fee, our travel requests and the copy of our I-800 approval. I also gathered some items to send to Claire and sent the care package with the paperwork for our agency to forward onto the orphanage.

Claire's care package included a letter to the director and nannies (in English and Mandarin), a photo album for Claire with pictures of all of us and a little story book I made for her to explain what is about to happen. I made it very simple with pictures and translated the words to Mandarin. Claire will be celebrating her 7th birthday before we are able to bring her home so we sent a birthday card that I also translated into Mandarin for her. We found the perfect card for her- a Hello Kitty 7th birthday card! We also included two bags of Jelly Bellies and I picked up a disposable camera as well. Hopefully they will take pictures with it so we have some pictures to save for Claire.

It is almost becoming surreal that in about two months this journey to Claire will end and our new journey as a family with Claire will begin. To say I'm nervous is an understatement. What if she hates us? What if she was truly happy in China with her foster family and resents us for bringing her here? While we are over the moon about having a new daughter we will most likely not be met with the same enthusiasm. We've talked about this for years and now we are almost to the end but we are in need of your prayers now more than ever. I often return to Psalm 46:10, Be still and know that I am God. This journey is bigger than us and is orchestrated by way more than the paperwork I fill out and file. This is God's journey and I try to remember to be still and let him lead the way.

Update since LOA

2009-11-03T09:22:00.002-06:00

What does one do after receiving LOA? Well, I'm so glad you asked!
First, you freak out, squeal with delight, call everyone you know and squeal in their ear and that signals to them that you must have received your LOA, you go our for a celebratory dinner and then...
You start the paperwork all over again.

We received our LOA package from our agency this next day and wow, what a beautiful piece of paper! It is so cool to look at a document that came straight from China- with our names on it!
Thankfully, I had started the next round of paperwork a couple weeks prior because I knew we were going to be busy starting orthodontics on the boys, field trips and of course the obligatory swine flu that showed up.

We sent out our I-800 to USCIS on Wednesday. The I-800A we applied for earlier was to approve us to adopt an orphan from China. Now we file the I-800 which we will approve us to specifically adopt Claire. USCIS received it the next morning so now we just wait for the approval.

We also sent out visa applications to a courier in Chicago who will walk our application and passports into the Chinese Consulate. We will get those back next week.

We filled out the US visa application for Claire and will send that to our agency with the signed LOA and a copy of I-800 approval when it arrives.

And, we have sat down and figured out the finances; something about traveling in 2 months sets off panic about financing the rest of the journey. I will be listing several crocheted hats for sale on my other blog to help us with this. We sold about 15 hats at our yard sale and everyone just loved them. I will put a link to my other blog here once I post them but for now, here is a preview.