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?
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
The name...Still Deciding!
So after a certain sister informed me their family affectionately refers to our little girl as "Little Dong", thought I might tell you about her name. We haven't settled on what her new name will be, so no news there. Still thinking an American first name, to help her feel a sense of belonging in our American family, and a Chinese middle name. In the meantime, just FYI, her Chinese name is Wu Dong Fen.
This is not the name her birth parents gave her...we will probably never know that. But it's been her name for most of her life. The Wu Dong is what all the children from her orphanage are called. Chinese last names come first and Wu is probably her orphanage director's last name. The Dong is another sort of family name and I'm wondering if it is for her province of Guangdong. And then Fen would be like her first name and it's the only name her foster home uses to identify her on the pictures I found online. It's pronounced "fun". :) Of course we don't know her at all, but from the sparse info I have and the videos, I think she may have a pretty "fun" personality (though Fen means fragrance, not fun of course). Some of her forms mention she is active and loves playing with her nanny and other kids. There are boxes for checking that she has a quiet personality or that she is fond of quiet. Neither of those are checked. :) One update did say that she loves books. I hope that is true, as that is one of my favorite things too!
Videos
I think you should be able to view these. I tried to set them so they aren't listed publicly but those with a link can view.
Monday, September 26, 2016
The Match Story
Some birthdays are just memorable. Like my 8th birthday when my sleepover party had to be postponed as Hurricane Hugo ripped through SC. Or the time my friends, sisters, and I recorded an Oscar winning performance of Cinderella on my grandparents' huge camcorder for my 10th birthday. I will always remember all the butterflies on my 21st, when I'd just started dating Matt and he took me to a George Strait concert. And then my next birthday was memorable in a bad way, as we had just gotten married, moved to a new town. I couldn't find a job and was really lonely sitting at home while trying to adjust to being a new army wife. Oh the memories! Anyway, this year's birthday will always go down as one special day.
I took the kids to school and went for a run with Raven. I was just praying and thanking God for all the ways he has worked in my life and how in all the big moments, he has been there showing me that he is real by giving me a sense of his presence as things line up in unexpected ways. I also prayed again about my concern that we would have trouble finding a little girl to match with whose special needs we felt comfortable about taking on. What if Matt and I couldn't agree? What if we felt too afraid and had to keep bypassing the children whose files were sent our way? I felt a reminder again that God's got this and I went on with my day, which thankfully included a fun shopping outing with birthday money and a wonderful friend. :)
While browsing at the outlets, I got a text from my friend Lisa, as in the one who is directing our adoption. I knew it was her without looking because I give everyone that usually texts me a distinct ring tone so when I'm driving or busy I can know who's on there. Lisa's text tone is one that sounds like someone's about to make an exciting announcement because hey- she might have super important news! (Or she might be texting about a movie we want to see, but that's fun too.) This time it was a request to call her so I was very curious as to what it might be about. Sometimes I've gotten bad news calls from our agency about something with our papers, so that crossed my mind. We weren't logged in yet so did not think it was about a match.
Lisa shared with me that she had a file she wanted to send if we were interested, but that she would explain the special need and we could say whether we wanted to see. The little girl was 14 months old with a heart condition called tetralogy of fallot and was actually on the special focus list that we could be matched with at any time (as opposed to waiting to be logged in for the most minor needs children). But Lisa thought that her situation didn't seem to scary and we might want to consider. I told her yes and she sent her info and pictures and a video right away, which I looked at right away in the store with my friend and pretty much fell in love with this sweet girl right then, though tried to be cautious, as I had the feeling Matt might not feel comfortable, since she will need another surgery later on and we are nervous about affording extensive healthcare costs.
I sent everything to Matt, who was at work, and had to wait until later that afternoon to hear his opinion. I was just kind of shocked to get a possible match so soon. I didn't think we'd get any files for another month or so. Finally Matt got home and looked at the info while I held my breath in the other room. He then came and found me and announced that he thought "this little girl looks pretty good." What?! I was pretty surprised at his reaction, as this whole adopting thing itself took a lot for him to get on board with. We looked at the files again together and decided we should talk to any doctors we could find to try to make sure we understood her condition. We also submitted some questions to be sent to her caregivers. We were able to talk to two doctors the next day, both of which echoed Matt's feeling that she'd have a good quality of life and just need one or two procedures that would not be a huge deal.
I talked to Lisa again, who told me that 1) She could not believe she unknowingly sent me a referral on my birthday (she knew it was coming up but we were celebrating weeks later and wasn't paying attention to the date) and 2) She had responsibly shown this little girl's file to families waiting in front of us, though she really had felt compelled to show us the whole time and just had to wait for the other families to say no. This info made Matt and I both feel even more convinced that God was at work in bringing this little girl to us.
We waited a week to hear back from the foster home...a week in which I looked at the pictures in the file often, sometimes multiple times an hour, and some nights couldn't sleep because I just wanted to think about her. I knew she was in a very nice foster home, where orphans who need surgery are sometimes sent to be cared for, so I looked up their page on facebook and found what I was almost positive were pictures of the little girl when she had her surgery. I checked my emailed a thousand times, hoping for news.
Finally we heard back with some videos and answers to questions. I poured over every frame of the video, trying to get to know this little girl, and we pondered whether we could say "Let her be ours, come what may", considering that one number we were asking for (to indicate the success of her first surgery as an infant) was not a very healthy one. We decided that yes, we want her to be ours, though having another child to care for is overwhelming and having a child with a heart condition is scary...she needs a family and we were already becoming attached. It's not the first time I've made a big and scary step forward based on looking back and remembering God's reassurance to me in times of prayer about the situation.
We are anxious to get our girl home and to figure out her health status, to really get to know her and love her and to settled into life with her. In the meantime, I will definitely be doing a lot of praying and turning over my worries over and over again to the only one that is over all things. I am so thankful to him for the gift of this child.
And now, if you're still with me, you know the long and the short (or maybe just the long) of our matching story.
PICS FROM FILE
PIC FROM UPDATE WE ASKED FOR
PIC FROM SCREEN SHOTS OF VIDEO UPDATE
Stephanie RLove the matching story and the whole LONG of this story! I think God's faithfulness and sovereignity are best seen looking back over big chunks of time. He's had this little one on his mind forever!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)