Still Here!

I don't know if anyone bothers to check in, but there has been very little to report on the homefront these days!  We have been waiting for over 3 weeks now for our homestudy agency to review the document that Allie did for us.  Hopefully not too much longer.  There was a mix-up this week about some of our clearances coming in, but turns out they just weren't properly recorded, so after some run-around we found out all went through just fine. So now we wait on the review and our FBI prints to come back.  Then we can finally turn in our dossier to China!!

Getting to know our new community!

Years ago I had this thought--what if one day we were neighbors with my friend Robyn, whom I also knew wanted to adopt, and we ended up adopting together?  The picture was always Chinese kids because of Lisa, though then I was far from sure that's the way we would go if we ever did really go through with adoption...and at that point it wasn't looking like we would.  And then, all of sudden, here we are.  We are neighbors with Robyn AND both of our families are adopting from China AND two other families in our neighborhood are adopting AND our friends from the Army are adopting AND several more families in Durham, one of which includes a little girl that will be in my preschool class next year.  Sometimes I just can't believe the way all these things have fallen into place.  More than I could have asked for or imagined, for sure!

Mother's Day, our new community of families who have started adopting via Lisa in the last couple of months all gathered for dinner and it was really cool.  I didn't know a couple of the families, so it was fun to meet new people.  Loved catching up with those I do know.  Great to talk through our experiences and hilarious to see us all halt our conversations and lean in a little closer every time Lisa started talking with her answers to our questions and words of wisdom.  She is our common link and was the lady of the hour, so to speak.  So neat to see all of our 26 kids running around and playing together.  Looking forward to getting to know everyone more as we continue the process, some of us travel together, and as we gather again when our new children are home, giving them time to hang out with families just like theirs.  By then we may have upwards of 36 kids to wrangle!  Just very thankful to have this group.

Ready for Sister!

Hooray for bunk beds!  We got these from a family in our neighborhood who was moving.  It took a little rearranging, getting a smaller fan, finding more bolts, but we got them together and Julia is officially sleeping on the top bunk.  It took one or two nights for her to feel completely comfortable up there, but now she's excited and planning to pass notes to her sister through the slots in her bed:)  Her little room looks a lot neater and bigger too after rearranging.  One more step closer to being ready for her mei mei!

Homestudy DOWN

We had our last homestudy visit tonight!  So we are finished with all of that paperwork and just have to wait for all the appropriate parties to finish putting it together and reviewing it.  The finished product will be kind of like a story of us, with the details of why we're adopting, who we are, what we've done to prepare, etc.  It should be about a 12-15 page document and we'll get to review it as well before it's final.

Then we'll begin putting some other documents with the finished homestudy for our dossier to China.  Once that's taken care of and sent in, we will be "logged in" to China and begin reviewing files of children that could be our girl!

This is our social worker Allie that's been doing our visits.  Today she went over lots of things we'll need to know from the time we are given our daughter until she settles into our home.  Some things I found interesting were her ideas for helping our daughter identify with the culture.  Beside the things we've thought of or read about already, she said some parents buy a small gift in China for each of their new child's subsequent birthdays so each year, she gets a little something from her birth country.  Also, in addition to the nice baby book we have that will be a great keepsake, we can make a book for her that she can play with at any time.  Kind of reminds me of the book I made of Joshua and Matt for him to read while Matt was deployed.

We also talked about things such as the need for me and Matt to be the ONLY ones to do any care-taking of our girl until she begins to adjust and attach to us, which could be months.  And we'll need to relax our rules around the house for her at first, especially about food, giving her time to become secure with the idea that there will always be plenty to eat.  We might want to have a box of healthy snack food she can carry around so she doesn't feel like she needs to hide food for herself just in case.  Matt would also like one of these snack baskets.  :)

Allie has been great and the kids have liked talking to her too, particularly Julia.  She talked to them individually today and Joshua was a man of few words.  Gray expressed that he feels excited and nervous but couldn't much identify why.  Julia liked talking about being a big sister.  We still have a lot we will need to discuss with the kids since they haven't had as much education as we have (though Gray has enjoyed sitting in on several of our online courses) and still feel unsure about what to expect.

Happy about getting this step done and it definitely feels just a little more real talking about having our girl home, rather than talking about our own childhoods and filling out financial forms!

Another One Down

We had our second (of three) home visits last night that went just as smoothly as the first.  This time, Matt and I were interviewed individually about all kinds of things--our childhood, our family, strengths and weaknesses, story of how we got together and traits of our marriage, etc.  I teased Matt because I went first and took about an hour, but he took more like 1 1/2 hours...and he's supposedly not a talker;)

Kids were a little more "normal" this time.  Had to speak to them a couple times, like when the boys decided to wrestle on the couch instead of do homework:), but for the most part they were calm and all went well.  They particularly enjoyed getting individual time with me while Matt was talking Allie's ear off! :)

Next up, we have our final visit in two weeks and then the agency will put everything together and send the homestudy to Small World's office and to us to review and make sure it all looks accurate.  Then we are on to dossier!!

Today we got to go get the bunk bed for the girls' room.  Julia was thrilled and wanted me and her to put them together immediately...well, after she cleaned her room.  I told her we'd probably wait for Matt, as some of the pieces needed fixing first, but she went ahead and cleaned and showed me her room.  She had displayed a few books on the floor so that when her sister comes home "she can come in and choose one" and put out some more babyish toys for her too.  I gently explained that we've still got many months to go and we could get things just right when it's closer to time to get her!  She is so ready.

Quick update on the fundraiser...amazingly to me, we have raised $7,020 so far!!  We are so thankful.

First Home Visit!!

Thursday I made a half-hearted effort to clean the house a little in anticipation of our first home visit by the social worker.  I knew your house didn't need be spotless and we had some other things going on that day so I vacuumed the dog hair, straightened a little and called that good enough.  We ate a quick dinner and she arrived right on time at 5:30.

I knew a little of what to expect from talking with another friend who is a month or so ahead of us in the process, so I wasn't too nervous.  The kids knew a little of what to expect because we had just read another story of a family adopting from China that they enjoyed called "Waiting for May".  When the boy said they would have a social worker come visit, Gray's face lit up and he said, "That's what we're doing this week!"  These books and documentaries seem so helpful in them processing what is happening and what is to come.

Allie came in and we sat down to talk.  Really, it felt like we were talking to a counselor.  She just asked us all about our kids, how things are going with the adoption, why we wanted to adopt, etc. and took notes on what we said.  I felt like we must be boring her to just talk about ourselves all the time, but I know that's her job!  She's so nice and it was pleasant to visit with her.  She talked to the kids a little bit and asked them about some of their favorite things.  They were completely silent otherwise, doing homework, reading, coloring.  Not an accurate picture of our typical family life, but hey- it made everything nice and calm!

Next Allie said she could do the official tour of our house, so we did that.  She just had to write down a few notes about the rooms that we have, smoke detectors, fire extinguisher.  Super easy.  My favorite part was when we asked Julia if she wanted to show Allie her room.  She did.  She said, "And this is my closet.  And this is where I put my stuffed animals sometimes."  Then she looked around her small room, like she wanted to say more but there wasn't much more to it!  But I think she enjoyed contributing to the tour.

We scheduled the last two visits for next week and two weeks after that and then we'll be done!  Next week we will be interviewed individually to talk more about each of our perspectives on our childhood, our marriage, etc.  Again, seems kind of like counseling.  And the last visit she will teach us things like what to expect when our girl comes home.

We will most likely have a hang up with receiving back criminal clearances from the FBI, which is running super slow and make not get to us till June.  Otherwise our homestudy will probably be finished next month.  All going really well!

Find Me

We had a pretty relaxing week of Spring Break, with mostly a lot of family time.  As it was wrapping up today, a friend reminded me of a documentary I had been meaning to check out called "Find Me", so we decided to have a pizza and movie night and give it a try.

It tells several stories of Americans adopting from China, many of which are interwoven.  All of them include very touching moments and show the hard parts of adoption--the fact that parents and their child have been separated and then that the child must again separate from caregivers he/she has become attached to.  We all found it very interesting and the kids asked throughout the movie if we could watch it a 2nd time.  I found it hard not cry...boy are there so many emotions wrapped up in this thing that sometimes feels too big for us to take on.  Julia felt it too.  At one point she looked over, her mouth making the biggest upside down 'U', and tried to hold back tears as she asked, "Will she ever see her parents again?"  

I can only imagine how it's going to feel when we are considering what has happened to this little person that we've made a part of our own family--not just someone on a screen, which is emotional enough!  Of course we know other children who have been adopted, but I don't think they have connected the dots yet between what we saw on the movie and their friends.

Adoption always has a sad part because a family has been broken.  But that is what Jesus came to do--bring good things from the broken.  I think it's going to be such a blessing to our family to be able to participate in that work of his and though at times it feels very scary, it also seems so right to be able to say to our kids that we are following him in this, not just reading about what he says to do.  Come what may, we are jumping into it.  

Anyway, I'd definitely recommend watching this documentary, if only to get a glimpse of what adopting from China is like.  It's on Amazon Prime, if you have that.

Next up for us--first visit from our social worker on Thursday!