THANK YOU!

Thank you to anyone and everyone who has been praying for my fingerprints to clear!  I just got off the phone with CJIS--didn't know if I was even allowed to ask about the status of my prints yet, but thought the fact that this is a re-submission was a good enough excuse to try--and I was told that they have just been processed and the results will be in the mail tomorrow!  This is my second try and I sent in two fingerprint cards instead of one, so I don't think they will ask for another re-do.  At least, three sets of fingerprint cards is the number I went through with Esther's adoption (I think they finally gave up and did a name check).  I have been praying hard that this would be the week our last two clearances came in so we could get our home study approved and start on the next step of this adoption process.  The other clearance we're waiting on should arrive at the end of this week, thanks to a very kind and efficient woman at Ohio's department of Child and Family Services who, when she found out why I needed the clearance, offered to pull it out of the queue and have it processed right away.  So with these fingerprints done too, we might actually be able to meet our "drop-dead date" for the home study!!

I'll try to write another entry soon to explain what the above means, as some of it won't make sense if you've never done an international adoption.  But trust me, this is very, very good news and I wanted to share my happiness!

telling Esther

When we first found out about our son, we did a lot of talking over Esther's head as we tried to figure out at each step whether we should keep moving forward and what questions we needed to ask next.  But as we got closer to the end of the second week and started thinking we were likely to say yes, we broached the topic with Esther.  We told her that we had heard about a boy in China who lived in an orphanage with ayis (nannies) and lots of other kids, just like she did when she was a baby.  Only he hadn't gotten adopted when he was a baby, so he still lived there, but he really wanted a family.  We asked Esther to pray with us that a family would adopt him.  We could tell from the way she listened and responded that she sympathized with his situation, and she wanted him to have a family.

So when we decided for sure that we were going to adopt FH, our conversation with Esther went something like this:

Mommy:  Hey Esther, you know FH, who we were praying about yesterday?  Well, we think that maybe we would be the right family to adopt him.
Esther:  You can't adopt FH, you already adopted me!
Mommy:  Yes, we already adopted you, and you are part of our family forever.  But we think we could adopt two children into the family.
Esther (her face lighting up):  If we adopt two children, then we could go to...what it called?
Mommy:  China?
Esther:  No...Lowe's!  And we could both ride in the up shopping car cart!  (Lowe's has some special shopping carts with seats for two children.  Esther thinks it's a real treat to ride in one.)
Mommy:  I'm afraid FH is too tall to ride in a shopping cart.  He would look pretty funny!
Esther:  Maybe we can adopt a small child, and then we can both ride in a shopping car cart!

Later she said, "Mommy,  I don't like FH very much."  (I don't remember exactly how I responded to that, but I told her something along the lines of that was okay, it would take us some time to all get used to each other and we didn't know whether or not we would like each other at first.)

I think Esther felt (and reasonably so!) a little unsettled at first about the prospect of another child joining our family.  But gradually as the idea became less new and as she realized that it wasn't going to happen anytime soon, she got more comfortable.  Here is a conversation we had on December 16:

Esther (very seriously):  FH needs a family.
Mommy:  Yes, he lives in an orphanage like you did when you were a baby, but he didn't get a family when...
Esther (joyfully):  We're FH's family!
Mommy:  That's right!  But he doesn't know that yet.  Later he'll find out about us, and then we'll go to China to meet him!
Esther:  And I'll say, "FH!"
Mommy:  What will you say to him?
Esther (after some thought):  I don't know.

When we visited some friends in the DC area at the beginning of January, Esther was quite happy to show off our video of him and to tell everyone, "That's my brother.  He sings in Chinese."  (I've tried to explain to her that he speaks Chinese too, but I don't think she quite gets that they won't be able to understand each other's words when they first meet.  Nor, for that matter, have I succeeded in convincing her that he can't fit in a shopping cart.)

Esther's life has already been somewhat impacted by this adoption.  She spent a lot of hours with babysitters while we took classes required by our home study agency, and watched extra videos while Mommy was busy with "paperwork."  One whole day she went around the house murmuring "Dossy-A" to herself at random intervals (dossier being the set of information about our family that we have to send to China before they can give final approval to our adoption).  We consulted her about turning her playroom into her new brother's bedroom, giving him the tall bed in there (which we had originally bought for her), and moving her toys elsewhere, and she decided that would be okay.  She also decided she does NOT want her own "big bed" yet, so since we don't want to move her anywhere close in time to the adoption, she is going to stay in her crib in our room at least till next Christmas.  I think she has enough inches left that she won't run out of room before then!

Recently she has been talking about FH almost every day.  When she had to fill out a little booklet about her thoughts and feelings as part of our home study process, she included FH as a family member on the family page, and put "I want to adopt FH" as one of the two things that she would want a new family member to know.  (I would tell you the other, but I can't find our photocopy right now...it might have been that she can draw squiggly lines.  I know that made it in there somewhere.)  So at least the idea of him has been accepted.  It remains to be seen what she thinks of the real thing!

The Plan. Revised. Part V.

[So, we had learned of a boy in China who was in need of a family, and would soon be too old to be legally adopted.  We had discovered that, contrary to our expectations about time frame, China's requirements, and our finances, we could realistically adopt him.  We had thought, and prayed, and been encouraged by an unexpected encounter with the adoptive parents of a little girl from China with the same special need as the boy we were considering.  And we had watched video footage of him that gave us more of a mental picture of him, but also raised some new questions.]

By now it was a week after we had gotten the initial e-mail from this boy's U.S. adoption agency saying that it would probably be possible for us to adopt the child we had inquired about.  On Monday, we got busy with our second round of questions.  I joined yahoo groups, hoping to learn from their members, and sent off e-mails to various people asking various questions.  One of the e-mails went to our Family Finder at the agency to ask if we could find out more about this child's foster family.  I was told that China does not encourage contact between adoptive and foster families, and that it was unlikely that we could find out any more about them unless he told us himself after being adopted by us.  So, no help there.  I also sent an e-mail to the woman who had originally written the e-mail we had first seen about this boy, asking if I could talk to her about him, and if anyone else had contacted her to find out more about him.  We were the only ones who had contacted her, and she was happy to talk to me over the phone between such-and-such hours.

So Monday night I called and talked to this boy's advocate.  I was a little disappointed to find out that her child had been adopted at age two, and so she couldn't answer many of my questions as to what life in the SWI was like for older children.  But she was able to tell me a little bit more about her meeting with the director of the SWI, and how the director had seemed to care so much for this boy, and wanted so badly for him to have a family.  She also agreed to post my questions to the yahoo group for this SWI, so that any parents who had adopted older children from there could answer my questions if they were willing.

A couple of people e-mailed me detailed responses, and one woman sent me an invitation to call her.  Some of what was shared I won't go into here because it was personal.  But I learned some things that helped me get a feel for what it might be like to grow up in that environment:

--The staff generally do care about the children and try to do right by them.  But of course, there is only so much adult attention to go around, and sometimes bigger kids are mean to smaller ones.  Several parents shared the types of discipline (punishment) their children had experienced, although they weren't sure if it was an orphanage-wide policy or if discipline is nanny-specific.
--Some (but not all) of the older children attend school in the community.  The boy we were considering appears to be one of them.  They walk back and forth each day.  At least one child experienced severe bullying at the community school.
--The orphanage encourages families from the community to take children home for weekends or holidays.  At the designated time, children are brought into the lobby and pre-screened families are invited to pick out which child they will take home for a visit.  The mother who told me this said that on the one hand, it gives kids good manners and experience with family life.  On the other hand, it can lead them to be over-pleasers in order to be chosen.
--The kids in the traveling choir (which our boy was in) have had lots of experiences in the wider world, so are not as sheltered as is typical of orphans.
--Of all the families that one mother was aware of that have adopted older children from this orphanage, only one has experienced significant behavioral problems.  That's not to say their kids don't have issues relating to having spent their growing-up years in an institution, but they have tended to settle into their families well.
--In this orphanage, kids who don't get adopted go to work in a factory or go to trade school at about age 16.
--Kids who do get adopted are allowed to continue contact with their friends at the orphanage.

The things I learned about the SWI were not 100% as I had hoped, but by and large painted a picture of a stable environment where children could give some attention to growing up and not just survival.  In any case, there were no serious red flags.  One of the parents ended her e-mail with: "I will leave you with this....from my experience there are more good reasons to say yes than reasons to say no."

The last big, unsettled question in our minds was what would be the costs for this boy of leaving the relationships and competencies he has in China in order to be adopted, vs. the costs of staying there and living with discrimination and without permanent legal connections to anyone.  That question was the one we couldn't answer.  We knew he would face significant discrimination and lack of opportunities if he stayed in China...but he seemed to have a talent for acquiring advocates, and if his director was willing to go to bat for him in adulthood as strongly as she had in trying to get him adopted, he might well do better than many young men in his position.  It sounded like he had a significant relationship with his foster family...but they presumably were unable or unwilling to adopt him, since they had not done so, and there was no way of knowing whether the relationship would be permanent, like the one we would have with him if we adopted him.  There are some very vocal (and eloquent) adult international adoptees who feel that taking a child away from their language and culture and birth country relationships is just too damaging...but this child was old enough that, while he would never again feel at home in China in the same way that he does now, he would certainly maintain language, relationships, and cultural competency even if he spent the next ten years as part of our family in the U.S.

In the end (I think on Thursday night) we discussed everything that we had learned and reached a few conclusions.

1.  There were way more unknowns than we liked about this boy's situation in China, and the likely outcomes if we didn't adopt him, but his SWI director did know his situation and how his life might turn out, and she clearly felt very strongly that being adopted was in his best interest.  Furthermore, it sounded like he himself had wanted very badly to be adopted, even by a foreign family, at the time he was first listed, and we guessed that he had been asked again and said yes again before he participated in the Journey of Hope event (where the video footage was taken), after he was already living in his foster family.
2.  While we still hadn't heard any voice speaking from heaven, the information we needed and the answers to our questions had been falling into place in ways that felt more than accidental.  We had done our best to consider every angle and to track down every piece of data that might help us make a responsible decision, and after all that process, we were not left with any reason to say no.  Lots of unknowns, yes, but we knew more things than many parents in our position were able to find out, and all of what we knew was pointing in the same direction.

Meanwhile, time was moving on, and the deadline for this boy's adoption (his 14th birthday) was not negotiable.  So we took a deep breath and decided to move forward, on the theory that the way things were coming together was the answer to our prayers for guidance.  By Friday of that week I was filling out the application form for this boy's U.S. agency, and making arrangements with an agency in our state to do our homestudy.


A few days later, I wrote to a friend:  "We are moving forward with [the adoption] process--with some trepidation!--but we have been praying and paying attention, and it seems that all of our concerns are being answered one by one.  At least, those for which an answer is possible."

The Plan. Revised. Part IV.

I'm finally getting back to this series!  This time I had to go back and re-read my previous entries myself in order to remember where in the story I was!  To recap: We had been thinking of adding to our family again when we learned about an aging-out boy in China whom we could realistically adopt.  It was a scary step to contemplate actually taking, but as we sought more information during a week of thinking about it, we were generally encouraged.

On Saturday of that week, we had an event that I had been really looking forward to: a gathering of families with children from China!  This was an answer to prayer in and of itself, because when we moved here we really hadn't known whether there were other families in the area with children adopted from China, and if so, how to connect with them.  But one day Tim got a message on his work phone from a fellow adoptive mother of a Chinese child.  She had heard through the grapevine that there was a new professor at Tim's college who had a child from China, and she wanted so much to connect with us that she started calling through the list of departments trying to track him down!  Her family knew or knew of several other families with children from China, and she was planning a lunch for us to all meet and get to know each other.  Of course, we were thrilled at the prospect.  So that Saturday we duly set out to gather with five other families with children from China (and one Chinese woman who works at Tim's university, whom the organizer had connected with while trying to track down Tim).  We walked into the room, we said hi to people, another family walked in behind us...and wouldn't you know it, their little girl has the exact same special need as the boy whose file we were looking at.  Mind you, this is not a common special need.  So as soon as I got a minute to whisper to Tim without anyone else hearing me, I asked, "Do we tell them??"  (We hadn't planning on telling anyone at this gathering that we were thinking of adopting again, seeing as it was by no means a sure thing.)  Tim agreed with me that we should tell them, so we managed to sit with them at lunch and talked about this disability.  One of the first things they said was, "This is one of the best places in the country to live if your child has this condition!  There is a nationally-known specialist, and lots of resources, and they're free to state residents!"  I mean, really?  This is not a part of the country that is known for being cutting-edge.  But apparently, it "just so happens" to have all the resources we could want for this particular child's medical needs.  AND the resources are affordable to us.  Another of our major questions had been whether we had the financial ability to adequately manage this child's condition after we adopted him.  Well, one more question checked off the list.  Later in the afternoon, as all the little girls except Esther were coloring quietly on the floor, I watched Esther playing chase with Tim's Chinese colleague's ten-year-old son and shrieking with laughter, and I allowed myself to imagine her doing the same with her big brother.

When we got home, we had more excitement: in our mailbox was an envelope with a CD from the adoption agency, which had lots more pictures of this child, and even a video!  After putting Esther down for her nap, Tim and I watched raptly.  We had already read in his file many of the things that we saw on the video, but we got to see for ourselves how he functions with his disability, and heard with our own ears that he does, indeed, have a beautiful singing voice (one of the things we had read about him).  There was one surprise: a nanny said that he had been living with a foster family for the previous six months, and was still with them!  This orphanage does not, as far as I know, have any organized foster care program, so we took it to mean that someone who had met him had been so impressed with him that they had gotten permission for him to live with them.  On the one hand, that suggested that he was the kind of kid who could adjust well to a family.  On the other hand, it raised all kinds of questions.  What was his relationship with this family?  How traumatic would it be for him to be separated from them?  Was it possible that they would be able to adopt him, or willing to be permanently "in his corner," if he was not listed for international adoption?

So we continued thinking...and praying...and widening the circle of people that we were asking to pray for us.  We talked about our situation with a few people at church on Sunday.  Ironically, someone that we had not yet told remarked to someone else in my presence that her cousin had just gotten home from China after adopting a five-year-old with...yep, that same medical condition that the child we were considering had.  Interesting.

Chunjie Kuaile!

Or, Happy Spring Festival!  Today ushered in the Year of the Rabbit, and we celebrated with gusto.  When I realized that Spring Festival was going to be a daycare day for Esther, I briefly thought about keeping her home. It just didn't seem in keeping with the spirit of the festival, which is very much about family togetherness, to send her away from me for the morning.  Then I thought about how she is always asking me to come in to daycare with her, and I had the bright idea of asking if I could come in and do a lesson on Chinese New Year with Esther's class.  Her teachers were enthused about the idea, so I duly prepared a lesson and all three of us went in to the university together this morning.  Esther was disappointed when I left her eating breakfast and went downstairs to get my craft materials prepped, but when her class came down later she was thrilled to have me as her teacher.  I talked a little bit about what the children would be doing to celebrate if they were in China, showed the Nihao Kailan Chinese New Year episode, helped them make a dragon craft which turned out really cool, let them dance their dragons around to Chinese music, and then figured out what zodiac animal each child is (they were all dogs or pigs).  The kids didn't seem particularly interested in the animal part, but Esther really latched onto that this year and informed several people proudly this afternoon that she is a pig.  Oh, she also wore a rabbit shirt (conveniently given to her for Christmas by her Aunt Susie) in honor of the year of the rabbit, as well as a festive New Year jacket that she took off after about a minute and a half because "it's making me sweaty."  I brought a camera to the daycare, but was too occupied to take any pictures.

In the afternoon we made rabbit cookies, decorated them, and took plates of them over to our nearest neighbors to wish them a happy Chinese New Year.  I did get pictures of this part of the day!

My initial idea was to ice the rabbits with white icing and put on Smarties for eyes, nose, and mouth.  It was something Esther could do and have fun doing, and it was very cute.  But smarties and Indian spices, I discovered, taste nasty together.  (Good thing we taste-tested!)  

So I ended up parking Esther in front of a video while I carefully drew features on each bunny with icing.  Not exactly the family bonding activity I had in mind, but they did look darling.  Then we took them around to our neighbors, staying and chatting with several of them.  Cookies are not a traditional Spring Festival item, but actually, going round to give our neighbors good wishes and special food felt very appropriate, and was certainly fun.  We haven't been seeing as much of our neighbors since it's been cold and snowy, and it was nice to catch up.

We finished up our special day with a feast!  Well, it wasn't a real feast.  There were only three dishes (not counting the cookies), and two of them came to the table in their frying pans.  But we had jiaozi (dumplings), which are always a treat for us, especially since we rarely have them now that Tim is avoiding wheat.  Esther, in fact, got so excited about the fact that we were going to have dumplings that I'm thinking I should buy some to make when it's just her and me at home.  Here is a picture of our inelegant "feast," with Tim and Esther giving each other rabbit ears.

I hope you all have a happy and meaningful Year of the Rabbit!

Let it Snow!

We woke up this morning to rain.  It was supposed to keep raining (with maybe a few snowflakes mixed in) until afternoon, when it would transition to snow and we would get a few inches.  Wouldn't you know it, the clouds missed the weather report.  (That's been happening a lot lately!)  Ten minutes after Tim left for work to do some photocopying for tomorrow's 8 AM class, snow started pouring down out of the sky.  And it kept pouring down for the next hour or so, at which point I got a call from Tim saying he was almost home, but couldn't get up the hill at the end of our street.  After waiting for a while to see if a snowplow would come through, he parked his car where it was and walked the rest of the way home.  He is very thankful for his new snow boots!

Just before Esther's nap a snowplow left the road looking pretty good, so while I put her down, Tim suited up and headed back down the street to see if he could move the car.  He tells me that the wheels were spinning like mad on his way up the hill and he didn't know if he was going to make it, but in the end he did.  Then he got stuck coming in our driveway, just in time to provide an obstacle for the garbage truck that was coming along behind him.  And once that was taken care of, he still had to shovel the driveway in order to get the car into the garage.  But it is now safely parked under cover, and we don't have to worry about getting up at some frigid hour of the morning to walk down the street and shovel the car out from behind a ridge of piled-up snow just so that Tim can get to work.  (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if he has late start tomorrow, but we won't know that until later tonight.)

I think we've already gotten the high end of the range of accumulation that was forecast, and it's still coming down.  But, with the car safely put away and nowhere that we have to go...let it snow!

silly Esther

I will eventually get back to my Revised Plan series, but we recently got back from a week in the DC area and are now getting caught up on stuff here.  Meanwhile, I've been adding funny happenings to a draft of this post for a while now, and it's gotten long enough that I think it's time to publish!

We've been trying to model apologies and acceptances for Esther.  She gets the idea, but not all the fine points of wording; hence, after apologizing for something she herself has done to hurt or aggravate one of us, she will frequently add, "I forgive you!"  So, one day around Halloween when  Esther spontaneously called to me through the bathroom door, "I forgive you, Mommy!  Mommy!  I forgive you!!" I had my suspicions that she might be feeling guilty about something.  Sure enough, when I came out she showed me how she had accidentally pushed the lid of her jack 'o lantern down inside.  I was just glad it was nothing major!

Esther, like her Mommy, enjoys learning new words and using them correctly.  So when she hears me say something wrong, of course she has to set me straight.  As in the following conversation:
Mommy:  Look at that snow blowing around out there!
Esther:  It's called wind.

Speaking of words, Esther still sometimes transposes sounds within words.  The funniest is that she consistently calls "energy," "injury."  As in, "I have lots of injury! [jumping up and down]"

Esther has now watched certain DVDs enough times that she goes around randomly quoting from them.  This makes for some...err...really out-of-context comments, like the following.
Esther (inspecting freshly baked brownies, quoting from a Little Tykes episode):  Ewww, stinky!  Oh well, let's keep looking for octopi.

And speaking of stinky, the other day I took some old leftovers out of the refrigerator.  I expected them to be bad, but they looked fine, so I took off the lid and smelled them.  DEFINITELY bad.  Esther heard my "Oh, yuuuuuuck!" and hurried over to ask what was going on.  I explained that the food had gone bad and it was disgusting now.  Her response:  "Can I try it, Mommy?"

Tim was frustrated because he had spent a long time writing an e-mail and then lost it just as he was about to send it.  Esther asked him, "What's wrong?  Talk about it!"  So he explained why he was feeling upset.  She reassured him, "It's okay, Daddy.  You can play doggy!"  How can you stay mad when you can play doggy?  :-)

Esther still like to do "cheers" with with things that are alike.  The other day she noticed that all three of us were wearing black pants.  So the next thing I know, I feel a little hip bumping into my leg as she gleefully exclaims, "cheers!"

While we were in DC, we made it to the zoo.  Earlier in the day, Esther was discussing with an adult friend what she might see at the zoo, and panda bears were mentioned.  Esther informed us that pandas eat bamboo, and then said wistfully, "If only we had bamboo growing in our yard!  Then we could pick some and bring it for the baby panda to eat."

Today I said something to Tim about somebody raising their eyebrows.  We heard  a surprised giggle from inside the closet (where Esther was entertaining herself doing who-knows-what), and Esther popped her head out to say, "She can't do that!"  "She can't raise her eyebrows?" I asked.  "No," confirmed Esther, "they're kind of sticky."  And Esther demonstrated by pulling on her own eyebrows that they cannot, in fact, be removed.

I LOVE it that Esther can talk as well as she does.  It makes life so interesting!  But it  can also have its downside--namely, she has learned to argue.  One day Tim told her to get off the "sill" of our bay window, which she has been told not to climb on before.  She informed him in a placating tone of voice (and without any move to do as she had been told) that she didn't have socks on, so she wouldn't slip.  In some exasperation, Tim told her that she's not supposed to argue until she's a teenager.  "Not argue till I'm a teenager?"  Esther replied.  "That's silly!"