Another Update

(originally posted to our family blog on 5/15/13)

Guess what the FedEx man dropped off on my porch today?  Our LSCA's (Letters Seeking Confirmation of Adoption)!!  This is the official form from China saying that they have reviewed all our paperwork and our requests to adopt E and G and we are approved to adopt these specific children.  We've been waiting 72 days for these!!!  The wait was seriously awful.  We had no idea where our papers were in the process.  There was no one to ask or call to find out.  I was positive that our file had fallen off a desk somewhere in the deep dark recesses of a Chinese government office and had been lost, never to be found again.  Seriously - these are the crazy places your mind goes to when you're waiting.  For 72 days.  Without any update.

 

But they're here now!  YAY!!  

 

So what's next?

 

Next we have to sign these precious papers we've been waiting for and send them right back.  I'm a little sad to see them go so quickly.  They're all official and half in Chinese and they are tangible proof that these girls will be ours - soon.  Then we get to wait on the American government.  After we moved our situation changed so we had to have a home study update and re-apply for the I-800A from the US. That is a form that basically pre-approves you to adopt internationally.  Once we get that pre-approval (again!) we can turn right around and apply for our I-800 which is applying for approval to adopt specific children.  And remember we get to do everything twice since there are two of them.  ;)  Then we wait for that approval and once we get that we send it over to China to show them the US says it's OK for us to bring home these girls and then we wait for our TA (Travel Approval).  This will tell us exactly when we will go to China and we can start booking flights, getting Visas, and gathering everything we'll need for the long trip.  We are in the homestretch people!!!

 

 

 

 

(I promise I'm not drunk in the above photo.  That's just my picture-taking face.  Always.  Ugh!)

 

Here's a list to make things a little easier to understand:

1.  Sign LSCA and send to adoption agency

2.  Wait for I-800A approval from US

3.  Send I-800A approval with I-800 forms to US; wait approx. 4-5 weeks

4.  Receive I-800 approval, send to IFS; wait for TA (approx. 4-6 weeks)

5.  Assemble Provincial, Consulate and IFS paperwork while waiting for TA (to take with us to China)

6.  Receive TA

7.  Order Chinese Visas

8.  Buy plane tickets

9.  GO TO CHINA

 

Our adoption coordinator, Kim, called to tell me the LSCA was on its way yesterday and mentioned that most people receive their TA 8-10 weeks after the LSCA.  And most people travel about 2 weeks after the TA is received.  That means we'll more than likely be traveling in mid to late August.  Almost exactly a year from when we started this whole process.

 

So today was spent making copies and filling out government forms in preparation for receiving our I-800A approval which should be here any day now.  Now I will be stalking the mailman.  The FedEx guy deserves a break.  

Roller Coaster Ride

(Originally posted on our family blog on 01/30/13)

 

Today has been a serious roller coaster ride.  Actually, this entire month has been a monster roller coaster ride.  Get comfortable.  It's a LOOOONG ride.

 

I guess I should update just a little bit before I get into the "ride." This actually happened right before Christmas but it's all been part of the same roller coaster - we all got the flu.  I got it first with S a close second.  He and I were both sick for quite a while.  He ended up getting pneumonia as well.  NOT fun.  I ended up with a major ear infection.  I still can't hear fully out of my right ear.  I'm hoping it will come back soon and it does seem to be getting a tiny bit better but man, it's annoying!  R and M came down with it next followed closely by Josh.  C managed to avoid the plague, although I'm not sure how.  It seemed to pass really quickly for Ryley but Maddie ended up with double ear infection.  It hit Josh pretty hard too but luckily he had already planned to take time off for Christmas and New Year's so he didn't have to miss a bunch of work.  Altogether I think we were sick over here for about 5 weeks.  And we all got flu shots this year - not a guarantee, apparently!

 

Meanwhile, while all of this sickness is going on we get a referral.  Two, actually!  These two referrals were from the Special Focus list which means they've been on the Special Needs list for longer than 3 months, they are older children, they have more significant special needs, or any or all of the above.  Because they are the "Special Focus" children the rules are a little more lax and we can get the referrals before we have all of our dossier documents in China.  We considered both of them very carefully and prayerfully and finally decided that we should accept one of the referrals.  It was very hard to say no to the other one but it was the right decision.  

 

So, the one we did accept:

 

Her estimated birthdate is October 23, 2010.  Her name is Su Yin Xiao. Su is for the city she was found in, Suzhou (Jiangsu Province).  Yin is for the year she was found 2010.  Xiao is for "hoping she laugh all the time."  We will name her "E" Yin Xiao.  She is about one month older than S but is very developmentally delayed (all institutionalized children usually are) so she will seem much younger than him.  She is very small, about 18 pounds, and has a cleft palate and microtia of the right ear.  Microtia literally means little ear.  She was born without a full auricle.  She has two little nubs of skin and/or cartilage where the ear would be.  She most likely has atresia of that same side as well, which means that there is no ear canal.  We don't know for sure that she has atresia although it seems very likely given the level of microtia she has.  We do know for sure that she has significant hearing loss on the right side so that also makes the diagnosis of atresia likely.  We have 3-4 pictures of her and we got some videos a couple of weeks ago that are so precious.  In the paperwork that we got with her referral it said that she was close to walking but was still holding onto something, but in the videos she is walking all on her own so that was great news. She is in a big city in a very large orphanage that is known for being a good orphanage so that is a comfort.  We are so excited and can't wait to go get her!

 

Meanwhile, shortly after Josh started feeling better he started feeling worse.  He had 3-4 nights of a lot of back pain and we suspected kidney stones.  I made him go to the doctor and sure enough, big ol' kidney stones, three to be exact (6mm, 2mm and 2mm).  The next two weeks were filled with a lot of pain for Josh, doctor's visits and a couple of CT scans and x-rays.  He was scheduled for lithotripsy (procedure for blasting the blasted stones with sonic waves and lasers) and stent placement on January 21.  He had that done and spent the next two days in bed.  He had the stent removed two days after the surgery ----> stents are AWFUL and removal of them isn't much fun either.  He felt pretty good the rest of that day and into the next and even went to work.  On the evening of the 24th he started to have a lot of pain.  He came home from home teaching around 8 and took his pain medicine (Naproxen) hoping that he'd just waited to long to take it.  After an hour it hadn't done anything.  He called the Dr. at 11:30 and he told Josh he could double up on the dosage of Vicodin so he took two of those.  I wanted to take him to the ER at this point but he didn't want to go.  I called his mom to come over and stay with the kids anyway.  She was on her way home from picking up our brother-in-law and niece from the airport and just happened to be already in the car and 5 minutes away.  ;) Our brother-in-law was able to give Josh a blessing.  We hoped that would help Josh and let him sleep a little but his body had different plans.  He suffered for 2-3 more hours until about 2:30 am when he finally gave in and let me take him to the ER.  Roxi was already in the loop about things so I called her and she came right over.  Sawyer, of course, decided it was time to wake up and party right at this time too.  I put him back in bed and told Roxi I didn't know how Sawyer would react to her coming in his room if he woke up again so she could try to wake up M if he freaked out.  She ended up having to wake up Maddie so I don't think Roxi ever got back to sleep because I'm pretty sure neither S nor M went back to sleep.  S ended up falling asleep on the floor about 10 am the next morning so I know he was up waaaay too early.  But, I digress. . . I took Josh to the ER and after what seemed like an eternity they finally hooked him up with some morphine.  That did nothing.  He got another dose about 15 minutes later along with some other kind of pain killer.  That did nothing.  They finally brought in some Dilaudid.  That finally worked!  Hallelujah.  He was finally able to relax and get the x-rays done and sleep a little.  I still can't believe how much medicine he had taken in a 12-hour timespan and nothing had worked.  The ER Dr. said he thought it was from the ureter spasming after the stent removal.  (Stent = Stupid Torturous Evil Nothing-good-will-come-from-this Tool-from-hell.)  But Josh passed several large fragments right before we left the ER so it could have been the spasm or passing the large fragments or both.  Either way he's just glad it's over.  We got home around 7 am and relieved Roxi.  I am so thankful to live near our parents!!!  I don't know what I would have done otherwise. Josh went to bed and I got ready for the day.  I finally had to crash for a couple of hours after I got the baby down for his nap.  Josh is doing really well now and hopefully it will stay that way!

 

Meanwhile, as all of this kidney stone junk is happening, we decide we should move.  Yes, we're crazy.  We knew this was probably in our future but we planned on it happening in a year or two after the babies are home.  But after thinking about it quite a bit more and lots of prayer we decided that before they come home might actually be better - less stress on them and me (who wants to show a house with 6 kids jammed in it along with all their stuff? Not me!) So we get the ball rolling on selling our house and start looking for another one.  We found one and put an offer on it, had it accepted and then after the inspection we just started feeling like it was NOT the right choice, so we backed out of it this morning.  We're still selling our house though.  Should go on the market tomorrow!  I have no idea where we're going to go though so that's just adding to the stress.  I've been packing and purging like a crazy woman for the past two weeks.  We did the staging and touch up paint yesterday and today so it's as ready as it will ever be.  Anyone want to buy a house?

 

Meanwhile, as all of this dossier-prep/kidney stone/moving/looking for a house is going on we finally get our approval letter from USCIS (Homeland Security).  We were anticipating this arriving soon so I got all our other dossier documents together in between dealing with all this other stuff.  We were able to send off our dossier to our adoption agency last Friday, January 25th.  We had been told that as soon as Lily (the lady on the Chinese end looking for possible referrals for our agency) had our dossier in her lap she could start searching for us.  Imagine our surprise when we get another referral on Monday afternoon!  We had just FedEx'ed the package to Houston on Friday so IFS didn't even get it until Monday morning and we had a referral by 2:30 on Monday!  Crazy.  Lily had been informed that we had all our dossier documents to our agency and that must have been enough for her - yay!  

 

Here's the info on our second girl:  Her name is Zhao Cheng Nan.  We will name her "G" Cheng Nan.  We weren't given any information on her name but we do know a little about her background.  Her estimated birthdate is March, 20, 2012, so she is only about 9 months old.  She was abandoned at the gate of the orphanage in Yulin, Shaanxi Province, on May 3, 2012.  So her parents (or someone) had her for about six weeks.  I can only guess about this but I think they realized her special need would need a major surgery that they probably couldn't afford and so they had to give her up. After six weeks for having her - how devastating would that be?!  I cannot imagine.  She was born with meningocele which is a form of spina bifida.  It would have been very visible from birth and her parents would have known something was wrong right away.  We don't know much but it seems like a very mild case of meningocele because the severe ones need an operation right away and she didn't have that.  She did have a surgical repair this past October and she is doing very well.  The nannies at her orphanage report that she is moving her legs and they can't tell a difference between her and the other children. We don't know anything else about her condition right now but we feel very blessed to have gotten a referral that is so young.  I was getting really worried that I would have three 3-year-olds running around and I'm not sure I'm ready for triplets!  At least they will all be at somewhat different stages.

 

The pinnacle of highs and lows of this crazy month-long roller coaster ride was today.  We accepted the referral for G yesterday morning and knew that we had to write a letter called a Care and Rehabilitation Plan to send to China.  It's basically all about who we are and who we want to adopt and how we will care for her with specifics like Dr.'s that we will take her to and specific treatments, etc.  I had most of the letter done and I just needed to find some specific information on Dr.'s specializing in this in our area before I could turn it in.  I was waiting to talk to a good friend that had spina bifida for her recommendations before I wrote the letter.  As I was making dinner tonight we got a call from Kim at the adoption agency.  She said she needed that letter.  Like NOW, as in YESTERDAY. I told Josh how to finish making dinner (haha - see below for how that turned out) and ran upstairs to finish off the letter and send it.  I had it done within about 5 minutes and Kim emails me back saying she'd sent it off to China and that she didn't know if we'd make it in time but she was praying the timing would work out.  I was SO scared that I had messed up this referral and that G be given to someone else.  (When you get a referral the child is locked out of the Special Needs List for 48 hours so that you can have time to review the file and either choose or decline, but when that time is up the child goes back on the list for anyone else to pick.)  

 

I managed to finish dinner and eat but I felt so sick and terrified that I had messed this up.  I was seriously a mess.  Josh tried to distract me by offering to take us all to Dairy Queen but not even ice cream could distract me (it was that bad!)  As he's packing up the kids to take them out for ice cream he comes in to say goodbye to me and I open my email to see that Kim has emailed - we were just in time and she's definitely ours.  I start crying hysterically out of relief and Josh is so confused thinking we'd for sure lost her.  He's frantically trying to hold onto me while searching my email for Kim's reply and he finally sees that she's ours and he starts crying too.  I can only liken the amount of relief I felt at that point to one thing - the relief of giving birth.  A laughing, crying, exhausted relief.  Seriously.  Some crazy highs and lows today!

 

And all of this, except for the start of the flu, happened in January.  I cannot wait until January is over.  I'm not sure I can take much more!

 

Oh, and if you want to know about dinner. . . I was making a cheese sauce when we got the call.  I was whisking the roux and it was done so I quickly added the milk and told Josh to whisk it until it thickened and started to boil.  Then he was to add ONE handful of cheese and stir that it after taking it off the heat.  I run upstairs, do my thing and come back down to see a mess.  He managed to get the sauce thickened and to a boil.  Instead of one handful (approx 1 cup) of cheese he added the whole container which was probably closer to 3 cups of cheese.  This makes for a seriously thick and goopy cheese sauce.  Luckily I was adding the cheese sauce to something else so that thinned it a little but dinner was SO cheesy it was hard for me to eat much but that could also have been because the pit in my stomach.  The kids and Josh liked it though.  I do have to give Josh credit - he tried.  And he listened to most of my instructions.  I'm thankful for that.  He's a keeper but I'll probably make the cheese sauce from now on.

Adoption Update

(Originally posted on our family blog on 12/22/12)

Some of you may be wondering where we are in the adoption process.  Here's a little timeline of the process and what we've completed so far: 

 

08/21/12 - Contract and a million other things sent to IFS (International Family Services, our adoption agency)

08/24/12 - Biographies done and sent (most annoying and time consuming document ever!  Josh and I each had to complete one.)

09/17/12 - All documents needed before the Homestudy could be scheduled turned in (We would have had this done sooner except that I couldn't find my Social Security card and had to apply for a new one and wait for its arrival.  We also had to get a physical for every member of the family and a form filled out by the doctors, so we had to wait on those as well.)

09/15/12 - Training done (we had to complete 20+ hours of training regarding international adoption.  This included watching some videos online, reading a lot, writing reports, and taking several tests.)

10/06/12 & 10/13/12 - Homestudy visits done (Social worker came to our home twice and interviewed each of us, including the kids, and did a quick inspection of the home.  He used this information and our biographies and other paperwork to compile a report about us and determine whether or not we're fit for adoption.)

12/05/12 - Final Homestudy report received - FINALLY!

12/05/12  - I-800A application sent to Homeland Security

01/03/13 - Biometrics date with the FBI (fingerprints for I-800A approval)

????  I-800A approval letter (hopefully we'll receive this within 1-2 weeks of the fingerprints)

????  China Dossier sent (more paperwork - basically a snapshot of the family to send to China along with the I-800A approval and a copy of the Homestudy)

 

That's where we're at right now.  There's still a HUGE list of things to do (this is probably 1/3 of the total) and hoops to jump through but once we get these things done, which should be in the next 3-4 weeks, then they can start sending us pictures and files of babies!  We'll get any pictures or videos that might be available and a complete medical history of one baby at a time to review for 48 hours.  We can send the information to a doctor if we'd like help in making the decision.  We can say yes or no to that baby.  If we say no, then she'll go back into the system for another family to pick, or if we say yes, she'll be locked out of the system and on her way to being ours.  I am really not sure how we'd be able to say no to any child.  We'll review all of the medical documents thoroughly and of course pray about the decision, but I don't think I'll be able to look at the pictures until we've made a decision.  I'm sure if I see the picture I'll say yes, no matter what! 

 

Josh and I had the opportunity to go to Houston a couple of weekends ago for our anniversary (16 years!) and so we jumped at the chance to go visit our adoption agency as well.  It was so nice to put a face to the name of someone we've been emailing constantly.  Kim, the China Adoption Coordinator, was so nice to sit and talk with us and answer our all questions.  We both walked out of there without a doubt that we had chosen the right agency and way more comfortable with our knowledge of the whole process than before.  She estimates that we're still looking at end of August/beginning of September for our trip around the world.  It could be sooner depending on how quickly the Chinese government works but it could also be later.  All we can do is get our stuff done quickly and hope for the best!

 

After much prayer and thought we've decided to adopt two babies.  Josh has been on board with the thought of two for quite a while.  It's been a much harder decision for me.  I KNOW this is what we're supposed to do.  My answer came very quickly but this is a really big thing to wrap my head around and that's what's taken me so long.  This will basically be like having triplets!  I have no idea how I'm going to do this, but at this point all I can do is have faith that Heavenly Father knows how and that I can.  I realize I'm not alone in this but for a good portion of the day I will be the only adult here.  With 6 children.  Three of which will be under the age of 3.  It'll help that the older kids will all be home throughout the day, but at some point during that day I've got to homeschool them as well, so that just adds other worries.  Oh well, I guess we'll figure it out when that time comes! 

 

One more thing, we found another Suburban (with a bench instead of the bucket seats in the middle) so now we can fit 6 kids in our car, and we bought it back in November.  We were able to sell ours within a week or so as well.  It only cost us about $3000 to upgrade the car and we were planning on a lot more, so we are very thankful for that!  Another main concern has been the additional cost of adopting another baby.  It will definitely be cheaper than if we decided to adopt another baby two years from now but there will definitely be an increase now too.  Josh immediately started praying about how we could do this and shortly after that we got several re-roof jobs (which is NOT a common thing this time of year!) We have been saving like crazy and have had a good year with the business too.  We have much to be thankful for!  Everything has fallen into place with this adoption fairly easily and quickly so far.  We have seen so many blessings already.  That just testifies to me that we are doing the right thing.  (I'm sure I've just jinxed myself - watch everything from here on out be super difficult now!!)

Big News!

We have some exciting news!  This will probably come as a shock to everyone, so find a seat.  We normally wouldn't let all our family or friends know about something like this through the blog, but figured this was the best way to let everyone know without making a hundred phone calls.  :) 

 

We have decided to pursue an international adoption.  Most likely through China. 

 

What?  How?  When?  What?!  Are those the questions going through your mind right now?  Yeah, us too for the past week and a half. 

 

So here's the backstory: 

It's no secret that Josh and I dealt with infertility for the first four years of our marriage.  We had actually completed all the paperwork for adoption through LDS Family Services and were just waiting on a birth mother to pick us when we found out we were finally (and miraculously!) pregnant with M.  We had prayed and prayed and prayed about pursuing adoption then and had really felt that was our answer.  We were at peace with that decision.  When we found out we were pregnant we were overjoyed, to say the least, but I also remember thinking, "Why did we have such a good feeling about the adoption then?"  Then the pregnant misery took over and I really didn't think about anything else for the next several months.  R came along quickly, surprisingly quick actually, and we figured our infertility problems were over.  We never had any problems with it once we made the choice to have another baby, which is something I am VERY thankful for. 

 

We knew we would have more children after M and R and we also knew that S would be our last pregnancy.  But even as hard as that pregnancy was, I felt really sad that this would be our last baby.  I have always said that if my pregnancies weren't so crazy hard and miserable I would have had more.   I actually thought a lot about adoption throughout that pregnancy but I never mentioned it to Josh.  I really thought it was just the hormones and everything making me a little crazy.  Because, seriously, who thinks about adopting while they're super pregnant with their fourth?  After S was born I thought even more about it, but again, I didn't bring it up to Josh.  He would make comments about adoption quite often like, "There's always adoption. . ." or  "The only way you'll get a sister is if we adopt." (This is what he would say to M when she would whine about not having a sister - haha.)  So I actually thought he was thinking the same thing I was. 

 

Apparently that was not the case though. I have been thinking about this a lot more over the past few months and decided that if this is something we were going to do we needed to get started at looking into it.  Neither of us is getting any younger.  So I said to Josh about two weeks ago, "You know, if we're going to adopt we'd better get started."  He stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me like I was from another planet.  If I'd known we weren't both thinking about this in the same way I would have used a little more tact and maybe brought it up a little more on the gentle side.  Oh, well!  I laughed, seeing his face, and I realized that we were not exactly on the same page in this.  It only took him a few seconds to realize that I was serious.  We talked about it for a little bit and I told him what I had been feeling.  We immediately got on the computer and started researching, because he's pretty awesome like that. 

 

After that night of initial research I came away pretty disappointed.  China had always been the place I'd thought about in regards to adoption and to get a "healthy" baby from China could take anywhere from 3-10 years.  Seriously?  Hopes ---> dashed.  We looked at some options to adopt domestically as well as other countries and agencies and decided to call it a night. 

 

The next few days were spent with me trying to put this out of my mind while Josh, on the other hand, did pretty much nothing but research.  I tend to be a pessimist about things and knowing that we did not want to wait three or more years, I figured that this was just not going to happen.  Josh tends to be the optimist (so annoying) and figured he'd just have to work harder to find a solution.  Yeah, he's pretty awesome.  We talked it about  (in private - not in front of the children) for the next week and threw around the idea of other countries and stuff but it never felt right.  Then he found an agency here in Texas that offers international adoption and we found out about their Chinese program.  We requested more information and found out that we could probably get a child from China with special needs in approximately 12 months.  Hopes ---> welcome back!  We both prayed about it and felt really good about going with them. 

 

They have several different levels of what is considered special needs and the families can specify at what level they are willing to adopt.  It's basically a list of children  that have been deemed "unworthy" for the healthy list by the Chinese government.  This can be for something as small and insignificant as a birthmark or scar or something more serious but fixable like a cleft lip or palate or both.  Age is also a factor so there are a lot of healthy older children on the list.  There are also children with much more serious needs on the list - anything you could probably think of.  The reason it takes so long for a so-called "healthy" baby from China is that the Chinese government picks the child for you and it takes a long time to go through the bureaucratic red tape.  With the special needs program the agencies are sent a list of the kids that the Chinese government puts together of their "undesirables" (what a crock!) and the agencies are able to give the families a choice and help place the kids with families.  That takes a lot less time.  China also only requires one trip to the country, for about two weeks, which is definitely a plus since some countries require 2-3 trips of 30 days or more each!

 

So that's where we are right now.  We've told the kids and our parents.  The kids are very excited - especially M.  The likelihood of getting a girl is very high and that's definitely what she's hoping for.  Mama too.  We've applied for passports for all the kids in hopes that we'll be able to take the whole family to China to pick up the baby when we go.  We've filled out all the paperwork and pulled together the documentation.  We've done all the financial figuring and transferring of funds.  We're gearing up for the home study to be done sometime within the next two months, hopefully.  We know that nothing is definite at this point other than the fact that we are going to pursue this.  It's going to be a lot of waiting and trying to be patient.  It will definitely be a long and arduous process but we feel really good about this decision. 

 

I think the reason we felt so good about adoption the first time around is that Heavenly Father wanted us to know that it was right for our family.  We just didn't realize that He meant 12 years later.  .  . now.