Big Week for Bethany

Besides graduating from preschool Thursday night (see the last post for a very funny video), Bethany had hand surgery at Shriners on Friday. We were expecting this to happen this fall, but there was an unexpected opening and we were lucky enough to get it. She is terrified of doctors and hospitals (we think probably from her surgeries in China) but she did very well overall and we were able to come home yesterday afternoon.

The doctor separated her middle and ring fingers on her right hand, so after 4 weeks in the full arm cast, she will be able to see her 5 fingers. Pretty exciting stuff.

Right now, her big sister Annie is helping her eat dinner. Annie arranged the table with a pillow to prop up Bethany's arm and is feeding her. Bethany just said "Annie, you're my hero." Wish they were always like this :).
Here's a couple of pictures of Bethany at Shriners. Look close at the dramatic laying across the bed one and you will see a cookie in her hand!

Our Star - Bethany's Graduation

One year ago today

in a government office in Guangzhou, China, a small girl stepped out of an elevator and into our lives. Our trip to China had not gone as we expected, and we were tired and still overwhelmed by the events of the preceding week. But from the moment we saw Bethany, we knew that she was the daughter we'd been waiting for.

Bethany laughed the first time we met her and continues to be a joy to everyone who knows her. Within a few minutes she was playing with her sister and they bonded immediately in a deep and permament way that thrives despite the usual sibling rivalry and fights. Driving around town sometimes, I will hear Bethany say out of the blue "I love you, Annie," and Annie will reply "I love you too."

She is quite the performer and will dance and sing at the drop of a hat. She entertained shoppers at WalMart recently with her special, and very loud, rendition of "Jesus Loves Me."

Bethany adores her preschool and her teacher, Mrs. Rhoda. When I drop her off at school in the morning and her teacher comes to open the door, Bethany will start jumping up and down, yelling "Mrs. Rhoda, Mrs. Rhoda!!!" Sometimes it's hard to get her to leave at night. She is excited about Annie being with her this summer during the break and also about starting kindergarten at our neighborhood school next fall.
She has many good friends at school and there is usually lots of hugging when she leaves.

She has her moments, too, especially in the morning. We still have not got our sleeping arrangements working so that the girls go to sleep in their own room and on time. Bethany loves to stay up late and that makes her hard to get up in the morning. She can definitely show her tempermental side then. But she usually recovers quickly and is smiling by the time she gets to school.

Her vocabulary is quite large and although she will likely need some speech therapy once she hits kindergarten (since she has trouble with some sounds), she is a real chatterbox and loves to tell us about her day. We were very lucky to have found and kept in contact with her best friend from the orphanage, who has been adopted and is now living in Florida. They talk on the phone every few months, in an interesting mix of Chinese and English. Bethany just loves him. Today we celebrated her Forever Family day with a picnic by the lake and ice cream cones. Then the girls had a blast running in and out of their new sprinkler toy.

We have been so blessed by this little girl. She amazes us every single day and we are incredibly lucky to have her as a part of our family forever.

Mothers' Day treats

We got a new picture of Jack! Look how long his hair is! He looks so grown up --older than 4. What a treat to get this! We got Charlie's birth certificate yesterday and other than my medical exam (and the dreaded BMI issue) all our paperwork is here and once that last piece is in place, everything can go to the Chinese consulate to be authenticated and then it all goes off to China!

I had another treat yesterday at Bethany's Mothers' Day Dessert at her preschool. After the audience was seated, they brought the kids in by class - I could see Bethany looking for me in the crowd and the look on her face when she saw I was there just brought tears to my eyes. She was so happy to see her Mommy there for her.

The kids performed something called the "Three Piggies Opera," basically the 3 little pigs story in song. It was so cute. And Ms. Bethany was right out there in front, with the loudest voice, the grandest gestures and the biggest smile of anyone. People were chuckling at her the whole time. At the end, when the kids were taking a bow, she got in front of the rest of them and bowed multiple times and jumped in the air. Then she ran to me screaming, "Mommy, Mommy! Mommy's here!"

They had treats and koolaid and she presented me with a cute little plaque with her picture on in. It was just wonderful all the way around. A year ago today, Bethany did not know we existed and here she is on her first Mothers' Day with her own mother.

Annie had made me not one, but two beautiful cards. One is huge and has a story in it about going to the pet store with her Mommy and how much we love each other. It's wonderful too.

And just think, next Mothers' Day, I will have my three kids all together. I have been so blessed!

It's here!! And a sad passing

We got our official approval from the USCIS on Saturday, the coveted I-171H form. It was only 2 1/2 weeks since our fingerprint appointment, so we weren't expecting it that quickly. This is a step that could have taken a lot longer so we are grateful. We are expecting to have Charlie's birth certificate at the beginning of next week and I have my follow up medical appointment a week from Thursday - have to get the last few pounds off. So then we will be ready to get our documents authenticated by the state, then sent to the Chinese consulate and then everything goes to China and we wait. But this is a huge step!

Yesterday, a friend from childhood, Paul, passed away. Paul suffered brain damage as a child and was developmentally disabled his whole life. His family lives 3 houses down from us, so we grew up with him. I hadn't seen him much as an adult so I was glad that I had a chance to visit him yesterday.
He did so many cool things throughout his life - had a job, an apartment, travelled and a lot of people who cared for and about him. After his parents passed away a few years back, my sister, Joan, became his legal guardian and she did an amazing job of looking after his best interests and being part of his family. She and her family visited Paul quite often as did my Mom. Paul had been ill and in the hospital for a few weeks and he passed away yesterday evening. I am sure he is with his beloved parents and sister now and is at peace.

Where babies come from

Tonight Annie said "Mommy, when you were a baby, who came to get you in China?" I said I wasn't born there, that I was born in North Bend (down on the southern Oregon coast). She said "North Bend, China?" I tried to explain the whole thing about Grandma being my mommy, but she wasn't having any of that and quickly moved on to other topics. She has gotten somewhat interesed in this whole subject lately, just as she has started asking questions about her "bio-mommy." Usually she asked one or two questions, you can see the info percolate for a minute and then she goes to something else. She will put it all together one day, but we are not going to rush her for sure.

Not too much going on

Well, we had our fingerprint appointment on the 15th and haven't heard anything yet. What should happen next is that USCIS issues an I -171H form approving our petition to adopt an "overseas orphan." We now know of 3 local families that had to get their senators involved in getting their I-171H forms from USCIS. It's not even been two weeks since our fingerprints so we are being optimistic and hoping that we won't have to resort to that.

Oher than that, not too much is new. We are waiting for Charlie's birth certificates from Texas and it's been quite a while, so we are going to have to call and track it down. Texas has a different kind of process, so we've had trouble before.
Other than that, the I-171H and my updated medical form, we have all our paperwork together to send to China.

Bethany had a birthday party today and we came home after that and are taking it easy as neither Annie nor I feel good, probably some kind of bug. Hopefully a good night's rest will help.

and a few more...

Fingerprints and photographs

The good news is that we have a fingerprint appointment with USCIS! We are scheduled for the 15th. After that we wait for the I-171H approval from them and within a couple of weeks after that, we can send our paperwork to China and the big wait begins!

We were lucky to have been put in contact with a wonderful photographer here in town, Morgan Pace, who is looking to build her portfolio of adoption photos. Last Sunday we had a "photo shoot" downtown on the waterfront. IT was lots of fun and the girls ran all over while she snapped the photos. Last night she sent me thlink to the proofs of her photos and they are just wonderful. I am going to post a few here...

No news...

Well, no fingerprint appointment from USCIS yet. We did get an envelope last Friday from them but all it had was a form letter stating they'd received our application as of 3/14/08 and there was a little receipt stapled to it for the fees. Oh, and a lovely 56 page booklet about the process, circa 2003--things have changed since then.

So maybe this week we will at least get the appointment letter and can look forward to the next step in the process...

Sunday, the girls had their "photo op." A photographer in town is looking to build her portfolio of adoption-related photos to join a network of adoption photographers across the country. She met us downtown on the waterfront, in a area of beautiful flowering trees. Unfortunately the weather was being weird (it has been for the last week with snow, hail, rain and snow alternating). But she said she thinks she got some good candid shots of the girls running around. They had a great time and she was very nice. Lynn and Doug were coming back in from the coast and met us there. We took them to the airport and we all had lunch there - the girls love to watch the planes.

New pictures of Jack

Early this morning we got two new pictures of Jack. They were taken by a family who visited the SWI yesterday (this family adopted a 2 year old girl they named Annie :). I almost didn't recognize him--his hair is the longest we've ever seen! What a handsome guy! I don't know if this family was able to talk to him at all, but it's great to have pictures that are only hours old!

Sunday afternoon

Not too much to report. Our stuff did get mailed to USCIS on the 11th - we know they got it since they already cashed the check. So the wait begins.

After several days of rain, we had a day that was merely cloudy and threatening rain, so we took off for a drive. We showed the girls some local Falls and ended up in a park with great play equipment for most of the rest of the afternoon. You would have thought the girls would be worn out but they are currently rolling around on the living room floor wrestling and pretending to be dogs. Above are pictures of the day....

A hidden treasure and hopefully a milestone tomorrow

The Yahoo group for Jack's orphanage has a separate site for pictures that visiting parents have taken of the SWI. His SWI is really good about having visitors and allowing parents to take pictures of children already matched with families. I thought I had gone through every folder and every picture on the site (and there are dozens of folders and hundreds of pictures) looking for any that included Jack. As a result I have a quite a few pictures of him. But tonight I found a few more in a folder that was supposed to be of the 5 and 6 year old class. They were taken in August 2007, when he just turned 4 but there he is! How cool.

And this morning we finally had our physicals (originally scheduled for several weeks ago, but our doctor had a family emergency and was out of town). As soon as we were done, I drove the forms and a couple of other pieces of info directly to our agency. All these forms, our homestudy report (and of course, more fees) will be mailed to the USCIS (Immigration) tomorrow so we can (hopefully) be approved by the US government to adopt an overseas orphan. In past years this whole process took 4-6 weeks, but we have friends that had to wait 4 months due to some problems in the USCIS office. So we are praying that ours goes faster. We included a little picture of Jack - how could anyone look at that face and not approve us immediately to bring him home!

Sometimes they bring tears to your eyes....

Although sometimes it seems like the girls fight all the time, every so often they will say something that makes me realize how close they are (and hopefully will be for life).

The other day in the car, out of the blue, Annie said "I wished I had a sister and my wish came true!"

And then in the same trip, Bethany suddenly said "Thank you Mama and Baba!" When I asked her why she was thanking us she said "For coming to get me in China."

Wow.

Two things I swore I would never do.

The two things I said I would never do:

(1) Live in the suburbs

(2) Own a mini-van

It's down to one thing - we now own an actual mini-van. We've known we were going to get one since we decided to adopt Jack, since my beloved Honda CRV will not hold 3 carseats. We'd pretty much decided on the kind - a Kia Sedona, which has excellent safety and other ratings. So we were just going to stop at the dealership and look at one and pick up a brochure - I should have known better as the last time we did that we came home with the Honda. So approximately 5 hours, one cranky and one sick and sleeping girl later, we drove home in a lovely dark blue Sedona with way more features than I would have picked (but no DVD player, thank goodness). It was grueling, but I am glad it's over and it's one more thing to not worry about, it has lots of room for 3 kids, 2 dogs and the 2 of us. Poor Annie cried for about an hour when she realized that the Honda wasn't coming home with us. She was consoled somewhat by the remote control with the buttons that open and close the sliding doors - this was her sole requirement for a new car.

Bethany has been sick for the last few days. She had to come home early on Thursday from daycare when she woke up from her nap with a fever. I stayed home with both girls on Friday. Annie is fine now but Bethany has had a fever on and off since then and currently has one of almost 101 degrees, so Charlie is going to take her to the doctor tomorrow. Poor little girl, she is all congested and just miserable.

Hopefully I can control any urges to move to the suburbs...but having kids really does change everything. :)

Half the Sky

Holding up Half the Sky

One day an elephant saw a hummingbird lying on its back with its tiny feet up in the air.

"What are you doing?" asked the elephant.

The hummingbird replied, "I heard that the sky might fall today, and so I am ready to help hold it up, should it fall."

The elephant laughed cruelly. "Do you really think," he said, "that those tiny feet could help hold up the sky?"

The hummingbird kept his feet up in the air, intent on his purpose, as he replied, "Not alone. But each must do what he can. And this is what I can do."


— A Chinese Folktale