HollyC392I got these yesterday through a Facebook friend who is good friends with one of Allie's caregivers!! Blessings abound. Can't even believe it.
October 14, 2016•Edit•Delete
Monday, October 31, 2016
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Care Package!
Soon after we got our PA for Allie, I talked with Lisa about sending a package to her, as that is a common thing for matched families to do. I knew we wanted to send a plastic picture album of our family that she could play with, a blanket, some clothes, and disposable cameras, so I headed to the baby store after work one day to pick things up.
I think I should not go to stores at lunchtime after work. After the loud and sometimes crazy environment of our preschool classroom, I tend to zone out, especially when hungry, so I ended up spending more than an hour wandering around the store, thoroughly confused and not making any decisions. A few times I pulled out my phone to text Lisa for advice, then put it back again, telling myself that she has important things to do and I need to be an adult and just pick something out!
For blankets, I pondered whether she would like the thin receiving blankets like my kids had, even though she is older, whether to buy multiple of the same in case she loses one, whether to pay $25 for one beautiful blanket or $16 for 4 small cute ones. I decided on the $16 pack of receiving blankets so I could send one and keep the other 3 as backups, as we've done for all our kids.
I couldn't find an outfit for her...What size will she need at 15 months old but the weight of a 9 month old? And I read no pants b/c Chinese do split pants for pottying, but couldn't find any dresses that looked comfortable. In retrospect, she's got pants on in many of the pictures so I should have done that, but eventually I settled on two pairs of pjs.
And then I searched high and low, with and without one nice but uninformed employee, and couldn't find a baby photo book till we called in reinforcements on the search. Finally I made my purchases and headed home, feeling quite in adequate for the task of parenting this child when I can't even manage a quick trip the store!
Truthfully, I am really not prepared practically at all the way I was with my other kids. I haven't gone in the attic to find the boxes of Julia's clothes to make sure we have enough. I haven't found a crib or decided where to put the crib. I haven't decided if we'll use Julia's old cloth diapers and if we do, whether or not we have enough. I haven't looked in the attic for things like toddler silverware or cleaned out Julia's closet to make room for Allie's things. I haven't figured out what we'll need to take on our big trip for us, let alone for Allie. For now, most of my time is taken with getting ready for the craft fundraisers and oh yeah- filling out even more papers: grants and immigration papers for Allie. But I don't feel panicked--yet. One thing at a time is all I can manage right now!
Tonight we're going to try to make a video to send to Allie's caregiver, who is willing to show her. We had some interesting talks this morning about what we might say. I think we will limit to saying hi in Mandarin and maybe I love you, though when I played a video of the pronunciation this morning, the kids were just having a fit saying "Yo hiney, FunFun!" (It's really more like "Woe eye knee") I'm sure we will butcher that one! But so thankful she will be able to see us in her book when it arrives and in a video. It is hard not to think of the shock and sadness she will feel when we take her from her caregivers. Yet I know that she needs a mom and dad. A group home is not enough. It will be hard, but good.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
We've settled on a name...
This week we decided for sure to call our daughter Allison Meifen.
Allison is for my younger sister Jeannie (her middle name). I had always thought that if we had another girl--a sister for Julia--I'd want to name her after one of my sisters. We decided it would be Jeannie since our girl is a little sister and her birthday is one day before Jeannie's.
Meifen has meany different meanings to us. First, you pronounce it "mayfun". Mae is my grandmother's middle name and Matt's grandmother's middle name. We wanted her to have a Chinese middle name though, so we thought we'd spell it the Chinese way.
Mei has multiple meanings in Chinese, depending on how you say it. It can mean sister or beautiful, both of which are great. Julia especially has called her sister Meimei from the beginning, so that's fitting to have that part in there.
But after hearing her caregiver call her "Fenfen" on the videos we got, I began thinking of her more and more as Fen and wanting her to still carry that name once she gets here too.
Then Lisa and google showed me that Meifen was a common Chinese girl name. It means a combination of plum and sweet fragrance. We think that's like "sugar plum" and we love that too. So Meifen it is!
Oh, and we will probably call her Allie, though I've heard Gray refer to her as Allison several times already, which is fine too. And for fun, the boys love to call her Allie-gator. :)
Sarah ZBeautiful name with so many wonderful associations... got chill bumps reading this update! Can't wait to meet your Allie!
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Above and Beyond
This past week as we celebrated (and adjusted to) getting officially matched with our girl, I was able to contact Little Flower Foster Home, where she stayed as an infant, and received access to a treasure trove of beautiful pictures they had taken.
I am really into recording memories and keeping up with family photos. Each of my kids has plenty of albums of their babyhood, a notebook with things they said or did recorded, birthday letters, etc. It has always made me sad to think of an adopted child not having those memories to look back on, so I'm just so thankful that we will be able to make her a baby album too. It's a little thing, but important in some ways.
On top of that, after connecting with moms on the Little Flower facebook page, I got put in a group for parents with heart kids and chatted with some folks with similar situations there as well. We had also found out the name of the home our little girl has lived in since February and I got put into their "secret" facebook group too, where I made more connections! What an awesome network of encouragement are all these adoptive families! One from the secret page informed me there is a blog for the home and in no time, she found this for us: Our daughter on her 1st birthday. Amazing!
Barnette CI cannot wait to meet our newest granddaughter. Do you have an exact birthdate?
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