Here, But Not Here.

Yesterday was Christmas.  On the whole, it was a very happy day for our family, and especially our daughter, who shredded the paper off presents for two hours straight, who tinkered around her fairy garden out in the cold, carefully placing each new piece Grandma sent in it's rightful place.  I felt so grateful for all of our blessings....but I couldn't help from feeling pangs of sadness and missing each time I thought about our little boy who is not yet here with us this year.  He will be here every Christmas after this, but for today, he is in his crib in an orphanage, likely receiving the minimum amount of rice formula in his bottle to stay alive.  Not tearing open any presents, not being cuddled for more than a couple of minutes by busy nannies watching 40 other children, not tasting chocolate or sausage balls for breakfast, and not gazing into the lights on the tree.  But next year, very soon I hope, we are going to be able to give him the love and attention he needs.

His little picture sits next to my computer, crumpled by big sister's hugs and kisses.  He's here in our hearts, but still not really ours, not here, until we get over to the other side of the world to scoop him up and carry him to the government building where we sign off for good.  He doesn't know we're coming, but boy I wish he did!  I wish he somehow felt peace in his young heart knowing that this family was yearning for him.   That we wish we could have been the ones to find him the day he was left in that box, the ones to pick him up and bring him straight home so that he could avoid the last 15 months of multiple-caregivers, bland rice formula, and too few hugs.

I'm still not sure we can 'make up for what he lost', as many people suggest.  But we're going to try, or at least we know we'll be here for him all the rest of his days.  And that feels good.

Now we're just praying for some documents to move very quickly so we can get to little Yu Wang.  Who now has an English name, by the way.  We'll save that for later!


BTW...read this interesting blog for another Christmas-related adoption story.
http://www.myoverthinking.com/2014/12/25/where-he-was/

Introducing...Our Boy!!!!

This Halloween started like most other days during the past couple of months.  I made Mira's lunch, packed her costume (ok, that part was slightly different than usual), brought her to school, then drove back home to shower and run some errands for Matt's office.  Throughout the morning, I kept wondering, as I so often do, if today would be the day we get the phone call saying that we have been matched with our little boy.  I thought to myself, 'Halloween would be an awesome day to be matched.  I always loved Halloween as a child.'  My impatience had been growing.  I spoke with my sister by phone, and she reminded me that 8 years ago today, she had the ultrasound showing that she would be having twin boys.  I couldn't help but get my hopes up.

I headed back to Mira's school to help out with the Halloween party in the afternoon.  While I was checking on the 'breadstick witch brooms' in the kitchen near Mira's classroom, my phone rang.  I casually glanced at the screen and it said "CCAI".   Aghhhh!  Oh my God.  This is it.  Shut the door.  Breathe.  I paced around the room, answered the phone and it was a woman from our agency.  I'm pretty sure I screamed.  She said she was calling to let me know that they have a match for us.  I screamed again.  He is a 13 month old little boy.  His name is Qian Yu Wang, Yu meaning Jade.  I was scribbling her words on a scrap of paper.  Very small for his age.  He was born with cleft lip and palate, and his lip has already been repaired.  She asked if I would like to review his file.  Would I?!?  Yes!!!  I definitely would, I told her.  That was that.  They would send me the electronic files within half an hour.  

I ran out of the kitchen attempting to nonchalantly check in with Mira and on the classroom party I was supposed to be helping with.  All good there.  I proceeded to call Matt and basically held my breath for about 20 minutes until the email came through from CCAI.  There were a number of medical documents and photos attached.  I scrolled through the five or six pictures they sent and by the time I got to the third, I couldn't hold in my emotions any longer.  I cried.  Sitting there in a chair in the front office of Mira's school, huddled over my phone,  I cried. Very. Happy. Tears.  When I saw the pictures of this sweet, big eyed, beautiful little boy looking at the camera, I was so overwhelmed and so thankful.  For being matched with this little person today.  For believing that this boy is the cutest little boy ever.  And that he was going to be ours!!!  Here's what I saw.  Lucky us.

Little Yu Wang is living on the other side of the world in an orphanage with lots of other boys and girls who were similarly, heartbreakingly, left behind by their parents as newborns for very complex social and financial reasons.  But now he is going to become a part of our family.  He is going to be OUR son.  Maybe he was always going to be our son.  He will be treasured and held and spoiled and loved like Mira is.  Forever.  We thank God he was born.  And that somehow, miraculously, his young path has already led him all the way around the world to our family in the foothills of Colorado.  This is the red thread that connects us.

Waiting and More Waiting...Distraction Needed!

Well, it's now been about 2 months since we received our log-in date (LID), and we are on pins and needles every day just waiting for that phone call from our agency.  "Sarah, I think we have a little boy you will want to take a look at!  He meets your criteria and is such a cutie pie!"  Well, that's how I imagine the phone call going.

I know that 2 months doesn't sound like such a long time to wait, however, because our medical conditions checklist does include some commonly seen conditions, we were told in March that we could expect a 1-2 month wait for a match (from the time we were logged in).  This is a classic example of 'hurry up and wait'.  We rushed around for months getting our paperwork gathered and signed as quickly as possible, attempting to shorten the time frame until we can bring our son home, and now there is nothing we can do to hurry the process along.  Just sit here and wait...and try to distract ourselves with the things we should be doing anyway.  And try not to look at the waiting child profiles on the agency website five times a day.  Those kids don't even meet the criteria we deliberated over and agreed upon (age-wise or medically speaking).

About two weeks ago, I couldn't stand the wait, so when I saw an adorable little boy on the CCAI website, I called our agency and asked to see his file.  We spent last week considering this sweet little boy who had not been matched with anybody.  He was slightly above our specified age range and had a little more medical need than we had been considering.  We spoke with doctors, specialists, and analyzed his pictures and 1 minute video.  It was agonizing to see this little boy in need of a home toddling around a room full of babies propped up in Bumbos, knowing he has almost reached age two and has still not met his forever family.  He hasn't had a Mommy that picks him up every time he falls down or cries at night.  Nobody to tell him they will always be there for him.  He was a handsome little guy with rosy cheeks and a thoughtful face.  Yet there was something unsettling I felt when I watched the video.  Something missing in his expression.  I must have watched it 30 times.  Ultimately, we realized that our indecision was so strong that he may not be a good fit for us.  Not meant to be, if you believe in 'meant to be'.  I hope and pray that another family like ours will see him and feel that he is perfect for them.  I hope his fate wasn't left only to us, to our whims and ideas of what is 'right' for our family.  How does one know for sure?

What I also hope for is that when we do finally get that phone call from our agency saying they have a match for us, when we see that picture for the first time, we will know in our hearts that the boy in front of us is ours.  That God's plan for him was to be a part of our family.

I know this may seem slightly odd, but here is a clip from Peter Pan (2003), which I've seen a hundred times, thanks to Mira.  This gets me choked up every time I watch the movie, and in context, it's even better than in this clip.  My reaction to it is one of the many reasons I know I want to adopt.  Yes, I know the excitement on the child's part is the opposite of what most find on Gotcha Day and the whole thing is a little 'magical', but I love it anyway...

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-y2nsuYnm7h2uY/peter_pan_2003_slightly_finds_a_mother/

Beautiful Elk Rutting Season

I caught this video after school drop off in Evergreen.  What a lucky day to drive down to the lake!

DTC!

We began our 'official' adoption journey in March of 2014.  Today, which is five months and many FedEx'd documents later, we received news that our dossier has been sent to China and should be in the hands of the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) by next week!  This is one of those big milestones in the adoption process, and now it's here for us.

Here's hoping for a quick match with our boy!  Happy Friday!

Chickens, Boats and Waterfalls, Oh My!

This is after all, a blog about our family's adventures, so I thought I'd post some pictures of our recent trip to Keuka Lake, NY earlier this month to visit Matt's family.  It's been 9 years since our last visit and after so much fun and relaxation on this trip, we swore we would make it back sooner next time.

Raspberry picking with Cousins Anita and Carlton

Mira in her element on the farm with the chickens.

A little excited to be on Uncle Stan's boat!

Our ride to Matt's old summer job at Lakeside...

The Alpaca Pack

Anita and Carlton's rainbow eggs

Chilling with garlic ice cream at the Garlic Fest near Seneca Lake.

Pinocchios

Mandatory visit to Mac's for ice cream

This was a terrific hike up the glenn - with a few cool salamanders!

A very appropriate photo after Mira took over two hours to get to sleep!

Light at the End of the Paperwork Tunnel

This week I was going through our Dossier guide, which is intended to help lead us through the complex process of paperwork gathering, notarizing, certifying and authenticating, and realized that I was reading the last page of the packet, meaning we are VERY close to completing our dossier!  The only thing we are now waiting on is to be fingerprinted for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Aurora next Monday, then our I-800A approval should arrive within 2-3 weeks, at which point our dossier will be translated and sent on to China.  Once it's in China and approved, we can finally be matched with our sweet little boy.

Here is a snapshot of the most recent dossier documents we received back from the Department of State and Chinese Consulate in D.C.   I'm just glad these weren't lost in the mail after we spent the past 3 months obtaining them!  Whew!

...and our first official documents containing Chinese characters ("hanzi").  Who knows what it says.

Things are seeming a little more exciting and we are really looking forward to this feeling more real - like there is an actual child who we will be blessed with at the end of this whole crazy process.  A little boy who will someday become part of our family, run around our living room with his big sister and stand on our front porch, squirting the hose on the garden and getting messy with popsicles in the summer.  We hope we can give him a life that many other children from his orphanage will sadly never know.  They all deserve a loving family, and we cannot wait to be that family for one little child.  

"Adopting one child will not change the world,

   But for that one child, the world will change."  

- unknown

Yes, we are really doing it!

I'm pregnant.  Well, not really pregnant.  Adoption-pregnant.  To add validity, our home study social worker told me that I can now consider myself "pregnant", for all intents and purposes.  Hearing that was like reading a positive pregnancy test.  Holy cow!

Family and close friends have had a tad bit of difficulty believing that we have decided to go down this path.  I'll admit, adoption is a little out of the norm in our families, considering our relatively homogeneous family history (aside from seeing the name "Sing" five generations back on my family tree, which has a decidedly Asian sound). And up until now, we have been a happy family of three.  We finally had everyone, including ourselves, believing that we were 'one and done'...and then we changed our minds. The reasons for that will have to be another post.  So to anyone who isn't sure this is actually going to happen...Yes, we're really doing it!

I am going through stages of 'pregnancy emotions'.  Excitement- I can't believe we're going to have another child running around our house and in our backyard!  How will we decorate the new bedroom?  What will we name him?  Yearning- I wonder what his eyes, ears, hair and nose will look like?  I can't wait to have him here in our arms.  Ambivalence - I know that yesterday I couldn't wait to meet our child, but last night I woke up in utter disbelief that we have allowed ourselves to get this far into the adoption process.  How am I going to handle midnight and early morning wake ups again, not to mention 2 year old tantrums, and the hundreds of future questions about identity and origins?  What have we gotten ourselves into?!

I am pretty sure that these are all things I went through in some form when I was 'belly pregnant' (for lack of a better term) with our sweet daughter.  Only when I was 'belly pregnant', there wasn't any going back.  With adoption, there is always an out, up until you sign the papers.  So I walked into the kitchen and read the fortune cookie paper taped to our refrigerator door - "One always regrets what could have done.  Remember for next time."  This is one of the 'signs' Matt and I were presented with while we were contemplating adoption.  We are big on signs.  And these words help me remember why we are doing what we're doing.  I don't want there to be a 'next time' - when would that be, in my next life?  Matt and I are not getting any younger and there are millions of kids out there waiting for families.  What are we waiting for???  Let's do it!