Too tired to post much...

... but we have survived the first week home and are starting to get a little more sleep each night.  Ellie continues to do well, but there has been more grief and apprehension since we've been home and it's been very hard at times - not to mention dealing with Samuel, our two-year-old, who is a complete disaster.  (The second day Ellie was home, he told her to "go to China!".  Oy.)  So we are exhausted, but each day things get a little better - and, praise God, Samuel starts preschool in just a few weeks. 

I won't stay up late to write, but here are a few happy memories from our trip to China - Ellie and Daddy.  :)

Yes, that's Daddy's Blackberry Ellie's using in the last picture.  We promise not to buy her a cell phone anytime soon.

At last

So good to be home.  We are exhausted and a little overwhelmed, but so happy to finally have our family together.  Adjustments are being made, as we've now made the shift from man-to-man coverage to a zone defense - I'm learning to let some of the little things get by and just focus on not giving up the big yardage.  There are still things to unpack, pictures to organize, phone calls to return.  We've been up since 3:30 AM.  But everyone in the family is fed, including the dog.  Everyone has on clean clothes.  It's just before 9 PM and the children are all asleep.  Life is beautiful.

Ellie is now an American citizen.  It was a pretty complicated mix of emotions as we left China to bring Ellie home, and time alone will tell how she will feel about all of this when she grows up.  There will be many questions we cannot answer, and others we won't want to - but we will for her sake, when the time is right.  In the end, it will be Ellie's story to tell.  But I hope that she will always be proud to be Chinese and glad to be an American.

I have lots of pictures to sort through from our trip, so I will post some favorites over the next week or so.  Many thanks to Sharon Nix for being our blogger while we were traveling.  And a few people have asked what we need for Ellie, which is so sweet, but really we need nothing.  If anyone wishes to give a gift for Ellie, we would love a donation in her honor to one of the following organizations (who will know her by her Chinese name, Hu San Ping)...

The New Hope Foundation , who cared for Ellie from a very early age until we adopted her, providing her with expert medical care and lots of TLC.  Ellie is the happy, healthy child she is because of the Hope Foundation.

MedArt of Hong Kong - China Orphan Outreach, whose talented doctors performed surgery on Ellie pro bono, including a lip repair that truly is a work of art. 

Chinese Children Charity Fund, a charitable organization established by our adoption agency to improve the quality of life of the many, many abandoned children in China who will not be placed for adoption, most of whom have medical needs. 
   

Headed Home

We're in the Shanghai airport awaiting our flight to Atlanta.  Ellie is a good little traveler - she slept in my arms most of the way from Guangzhou, after only a few minutes of crying.  We're so glad to be on a non-stop flight home.  Once we pass through Customs and Immigration in Atlanta, we are home free.   

 

It was sad to part ways with our awesome travel group.  We have lots of great pictures from the famous "red couch" at the White Swan Hotel, and from Lucy's Bar and Grill where we had dinner with several families last night.  I'll post more pictures when I can.

 

With each passing leg of the journey behind us, we feel a growing sense of relief and contentment.  We've missed the boys so much, and we are eager to begin the task of establishing our "new normal".  We can't wait for everyone to meet Ellie, but for a little while after we get home we will need to concentrate on just being a family.  It's easy for children who are newly adopted to feel overwhelmed, and the three of us are going to be dealing with jet lag and probably not sleeping very well, so we are planning to take it one day at a time and see how Ellie's adjustment goes.  We'll also have quite a few doctor's visits in the coming weeks.  Hopefully we'll be ready for visitors soon. 

 

So long from China.  We can hardly wait to be home. 

Crazy Days

It’s been harder than I thought it would be to update the blog each day.  Between the traveling, the appointments we have to keep, the time difference, some technical difficulties, Ellie’s sleeping schedule, and trying to spend some time exploring our surroundings and having some fun, it’s been a challenge to find the time to sit down at the computer.  Plus there’s shopping to do.  J

It is hot and very humid here in Guangzhou, but Shamian Island is beautiful and we feel so much more relaxed here than we did in Zhengzhou.  Getting here, unfortunately, was not so easy – our flight from Zhengzhou was delayed five hours due to bad weather in Guangzhou, and we spent much of that delay sitting on the tarmac with very little air conditioning and some very grumpy babies (not to mention adults).  Fortunately we had food with us for Ellie, and she was pretty cheerful about the whole thing – until it was time to go to sleep on the plane, which remained stiflingly hot even after take-off and Ellie was having no part of lying quietly in my lap.  Eventually, though, exhaustion and the motion of the plane won out and Ellie slept peacefully the rest of the flight.  We landed in Guangzhou sweaty, hungry and tired, and finally arrived at the hotel at 1AM on Saturday.  It was an excruciatingly long day for the whole group, but everybody held it together and the kids were amazing. 

On Sunday our group went to the Shamian Island medical clinic for the kids’ medical exams.  The children were weighed and measured, given a brief ENT check, and their physical condition was compared to the information on their orphanage medical report (which we received when we were matched with our children).  The main purposes of the medical exam are to make sure the children don’t have any signs of communicable disease prior to leaving the country, and to be sure that the adoptive parents are aware of the children’s medical conditions prior to taking them home.  If there is any discrepancy between the findings during the physical exam and what the parents were told in the medical report from the orphanage, there can be some issues.  Children over age 2 are also given a skin TB test, which is checked a couple of days later for signs of exposure to TB.  Fortunately, everyone in our group made it through the medical exam without any problems (other than some rather unhappy children, Ellie being one of them), and most of the children were exempt from the TB requirement due to their age.  So one more hurdle cleared.

We finally had time today to explore the island a little, which has a great deal of European influence in its architecture and lots of lovely places to walk.  And they have a Starbucks -  heaven!  It rained twice while we were out - brief, tropical showers that were actually very refreshing.  Ellie enjoyed playing in the puddles afterward, which drew some curious looks, but she was having such fun we didn’t care in the least.  Because of our proximity to the U.S. Consulate, there are so many adoptive families here it is almost as common to see a Chinese child with a Western couple as it is to see a Chinese child with Chinese parents.  People still stare a little, but that seems like more of a cultural thing and we are starting to get used to it.  

Ellie is doing so well.  The more adoptive families we meet, the more we realize how very blessed we are that she received such excellent care from the Hope Foundation.  In almost every way, she is a typical 17-month-old – she walks, runs, smiles, waves, blows kisses, laughs, gets into everything, and hates having her diaper changed.  She sometimes fights the nap (and then sleeps for 2 or 3 hours), likes to be held (until she sees something interesting), and is curious about everything (especially the things she shouldn’t play with, like the potty).  She seems especially drawn to fish (they have a beautiful indoor water feature here at the White Swan hotel, complete with koi), so we will have to take a trip to the Georgia Aquarium sometime soon.  She likes pretty shoes and dresses.  She loves books, and enjoys songs with finger play (like “Itsy Bitsy Spider”).  So far she has learned the signs for “fish”, “candy”, “milk”, “pretty” and “more”, and most importantly she seems very comfortable with us.  Of course she doesn’t understand the full scope of what’s happening here, but at the very least she seems to have decided that we are pretty good nannies.  Hey - we’ll take it.  J 

The only delay we’ve noticed so far is her inability (or reluctance) to deal with foods that aren’t super mushy.  She’ll eat crackers broken into small pieces, and LOVES mini-M&Ms J, but other than that she prefers very soft foods and gags easily on anything else.  But with her palate repaired only six weeks ago, there really hasn’t been much time for her caregivers to introduce a lot of different foods.  Hopefully her diet will advance quickly once we’re home.  She also still takes a bottle of formula several times a day, but that is very typical for these children and it creates a nice opportunity to bond.  So we will not be taking the bottle away anytime soon – but I am trying to get her used to having her teeth brushed, because I do worry about the effects of extended bottle-feeding on her little teeth (which are often a source of problems for cleft kids to begin with).  

Tomorrow we have our consulate appointment, which will include an interview of some sort and a ceremony to take the oath for Ellie’s citizenship.  They do not allow cameras, so we probably won’t get any pictures – but it will be a big milestone, as it is the last official step in the adoption process.  I don’t think we’ll exhale completely, though, until we’ve passed through Customs and Immigration in Atlanta and it is truly finished.   

Just three more days…

(P.S. – These are a few pictures of our walk along the “Green Way” on Shamian Island.  Please pardon the appearance of my hair in these and any future pictures from Guangzhou.  Folks, there isn’t enough hair goo in all of China to get my thick, wavy mop to behave in this humidity.  Thank God my hair is short.)

Ellie's first swim

Well, we're pretty sure it was her first swim.  In any case, she really enjoyed the water and it was a fun way to pass some time this afternoon.  A far cry from yesterday, which was hard on us all.  The other pictures were taken in the hotel room, blowing bubbles with Daddy and playing with the world's greatest toddler toy - the Amazing Stainless Steel Hotel Ice Bucket.  Who knew?  I guess it's just the away-from-home version of pots and pans.

We went to the park today, forgetting to bring along the camera - which I was really bummed about at first, but once we were there I was kinda glad to give the American tourist gig a rest and just be a family at the park.  (A very unusual-looking family here, but just a family nonetheless)  Near a refreshment stand, Ellie started playing with another little girl, which attracted the attention of an older woman who spoke some English.  She asked about Ellie, obviously wondering what in the world Tom and I were doing bringing a little Chinese girl to the park - so I showed her the nametag our agency had given us, which has our name, Ellie's Chinese name, and explains in English and Chinese that we are adopting her.  (Plus the name of our hotel, which could come in handy in a pinch.)  The woman and the mother of the little girl Ellie was playing with talked with us for quite awhile, using the little English they knew and helping me with the very little Mandarin that I've learned so far.  There were some older children there, too, I think the grandkids or nieces and nephews of the older lady, and she was prodding them to show off their English skills and be our interpreters.  I tried reassuring them that it was okay, they didn't need to perform for us, but they did seem eager to communicate in spite of their initial shyness.  They were incredibly sweet, beautiful children, and they reminded me of the fifth graders I used to teach - kids are so much the same everywhere.  And their English was excellent.  The older boy finally asked me why we were in China (he'd missed the first part of the conversation, and Ellie had since wandered off with Tom to explore), so I explained what I could and then showed him our nametag.  He read it and said, "Very good!" with a big smile - leaving me to wonder, as I often have, how the Chinese people really feel about children being adopted by foreigners.  I'm sure the feelings are as mixed here as they are anywhere else.  But the warmth of the people at the park today was absolutely genuine, and I do get the feeling that people generally wish us well.  And it was a reminder to me as a traveler (especially as an American) that you have to be willing to let your guard down, because most people aren't out to steal your wallet, make off with your passport, or poke fun at you for sounding ridiculous when you try to speak the language.  Most of the time, people are just curious - and usually, they are very kind.      



"World's Greatest Toddler Toy"



 



Blowing bubbles with daddy



Tomorrow we will receive Ellie's Chinese passport and then fly to Guangzhou, where it will be even hotter than it is here.  We will have two appointments at the U.S. Consulate - the first will be Ellie's medical exam, and the second will be to complete the process of obtaining Ellie's visa to enter the United States.  And then we can go home.

Our trip to Jiaozuo

Yesterday we drove to Jiaozuo, the city where Ellie’s orphanage is located, to have our adoption certificate and other paperwork notarized. (Orphanages in Henan province have not been involved in international adoption as long as some of the other orphanages in China, and for a time every city in Henan required adoptive parents to travel from the provincial capital to have their paperwork notarized locally. A few years ago, our agency began a program to place children with special needs – like Ellie – from Henan, thus increasing the number of children from Henan being adopted by foreign parents and making the trips to each individual city a logistical nightmare. So, after some discussion, the outlying cities relented and agreed to have the Zhengzhou notary handle the adoption paperwork – every city except Jiaozuo. So off we went.)

The complete experience of our trip to Jiaozuo will have to be detailed in another post. Suffice it to say, there was a very small problem with our adoption certificate that both we and our agency had missed. This very small problem became a very big problem when it became clear that our paperwork could not be notarized. I don’t want to go into the details of how our agency representatives and the kind staff in the notary’s office set about trying to fix the problem. But we were there for hours, missing a chance to visit Ellie’s orphanage and wearing thin the patience of everyone involved – including our new daughter, the world’s most cheerful and resilient toddler.

I can, however, talk about the drive. It would come as a shock to most Chinese that I have been a mother for nearly seven years and have never once held any of my children in my arms in a moving car. Until yesterday. We took a van out to Jiaozuo, driven expertly by a driver hired by our agency – and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Seat belts and car seats aren’t widely used in China. It is common to see children seated in the front passenger seat of the family car, or on the front of their parents’ moped, not a seat belt or helmet in sight. As expected, our van had no seatbelts. I took the middle row of the van, and held Ellie in my arms as we made our way out of Zhengzhou and onto the highway. Initially, the highway consisted of a stretch of asphalt approximately six lanes wide. I say "approximately" because there were no lane lines. But about half the traffic moved one direction, and half moved the other, so in spite of the exuberant honking of horns and do-it-yourself turns lanes, it was at least somewhat orderly. Ellie bounced around, looking excitedly out the windows, blissfully ignorant of the laws of physics, while I tried desperately to maintain at least some sort of hold on her and Tom kept digging stuff out of the backpack to try and distract her and get her to sit in my lap. Finally, Ellie fell asleep in my arms as we turned onto a more carefully-marked highway, and I was able to relax a little – silently thanking God that we’d left the boys at home and therefore only had to fear for the life of one child at the moment.

I had hoped that the smog would lessen somewhat once we got further from Zhengzhou and out into the countryside. Unfortunately, it didn’t, and it made me all the sadder for the people of China. The pollution here is terrible. And to the extent that our Western desire for cheap goods has contributed to it, shame on us. The ultra-conservatives who balk at any kind of environmental regulation need to come live in China for awhile. And bring their kids. They might experience a change of heart.

Jiaozuo turned out to be a fairly large city, with several parks and monuments that looked quite beautiful – except for the thick haze hanging everywhere. We arrived at the notary’s office a little after 3 PM, planning to be done in less than half an hour and then pay a visit to Ellie’s orphanage – something we’d been hoping to have chance to do ever since we heard that it was required for us to go to Jiaozuo. Many parents consider the orphanage visit to be a highlight of the adoption trip, with a chance to take pictures of their children’s caregivers and friends, and a chance for the child to say goodbye. Which may seem like it would be distressing for the child, but I have heard so many adoptive parents’ accounts of their visits to their children’s orphanages, and even the young children seem to experience a sense of release once the orphanage nannies see them with their new parents and give their "blessing" for the child to go with them. It’s typically not the nannies who bring the children to the provincial capital to meet their adoptive parents – it’s the orphanage director or assistant director– so the children don’t have a chance to make a connection between their former caregivers and their new parents. We had decided that, given the opportunity, we would take Ellie to say goodbye to her ayis (eye-eez – in this context, "nannies"), and thank them for taking care of her.

As it turns out, we left the notary’s office a little after six, with one extra passenger – a notary who had agreed to drive back all the way back to Zhengzhou with us to notarize the new adoption certificate (I told you this was complicated) – and a very grumpy toddler. Fortunately, we had another bottle with us and plenty of snacks left, so Ellie didn’t have to endure the trip hungry – but she was fussy, bored, and tired of being cooped up. Because of traffic, the drive back to the hotel took over two hours and was equally harrowing – in fact, even more so, because there were more cars on the road and people were in more of a hurry. And Ellie didn’t sleep at all.

I’ll have to detail the experience at the notary’s office in another post, but there were some highlights – Ellie charmed everyone with her infectious smile and silly toddler antics; she learned the signs for "fish" and "candy" while we waited (there was a little goldfish in a bowl on a small table in the notary’s office, with which Ellie was quite fascinated, and at one point Tom was feeding her mini-M&Ms in desperation to help pass the time); she walked with Tom up and down the stairs of the building, leaving me out of sight without crying for the first time since we met and showing a fierce determination to master the difficult task of step-climbing; and best of all, when the notary office director – a lovely woman who spoke Chinese in a sweet voice to Ellie – tried to get Ellie to come to her, Ellie turned and ran toward us, only turning back to smile at the woman once she was safely back in my arms. It may not seem like much, but that was a huge moment for Tom and me. Even the notary director noticed, smiling and saying something to the effect of, "She wants her mommy!" A very big day for little Miss Ellie.

So that is our long post about the trip to Jiaozuo, and it isn’t even really the half of it. Throughout the afternoon, I just kept reminding myself that this would be a funny story for us someday. Not yet – but someday.

Ellie is our daughter!

At long last, the big day arrived.  On the morning of July 11, we and 13 other CCAI families met our new children.  The morning was filled with tension as we all waited together as the orphanages throughout the province brought our children to us, one by one.  Ellie was one of the first to arrive.  She is beautiful!  After a few minutes of tears, Ellie warmed up to us (especially Beth) quickly.   It was not long before we got to enjoy firsthand Ellie's warm smile.  She smiles often, and likes to smile for the camera! 

 

Ellie bonded with Beth very quickly and does not like to be more than a few feet from her at any time.  She is gradually venturing out a little farther with each passing hour.  On Monday night we went to the hotel bar for a dinner (Italian--not testing the local cuisine but it sure hit the spot), and Ellie showed us that she loves to dance.  Already starting to worry about the teenage years...

 

The next day, Tuesday, July 12, we obtained the official registration of the adoption--Ellie is now our daughter!  We felt the joy and relief of the adoption being final after all this time.  Happy and tired, we are now ready to come home.  But we have another week in China.  Tomorrow, we travel to Jiaozuo (About 60 miles from Zhengzhou) to have the adoption registration notarized.  We hope to be able to go to Ellie's orphanage.

 

The days are exhausting, but fotunately, so far Ellie sleeps well.  Off to get some rest because tomorrow is another big day.

 

 

 

 

Today's the day!

We left Beijing yesterday morning - after being there for less than 12 hours - and flew to Zhengzhou ("jeng-joe"), capital of Henan province.  We spent the afternoon checking in, exchanging currency, doing a little shopping at the local Walmart, and catching up on sleep.  (I have some interesting pictures, but we've had some computer glitches so I'm not going to try to upload any right now.  I'll include some in the next post.)

 

We have a large group - 14 families - and it's been fun getting to know everyone.  All of the couples already have children, but this is the first adoption for many of them, just like us.  One couple is adopting two little boys, one from Henan and the other from another province.  Both boys are deaf, as is the adoptive father.  They brought their three older children with them - a lovely, amazing family.        

 

Our guides are fantastic.  George, our guide in Beijing, hustled everyone through the check-in process at the Beijing airport yesterday when it became clear that our large group wasn't going to make our flight if the security staff continued to hand-search every single checked bag (after X-raying it) and confiscate every bottle of lotion, hairspray and deodorant.  On our own, we would never have made it in time.  George was awesome.  Yisha ("ee-sha"), our guide in Zhengzhou, distributed question and answer sheets yesterday that had been submitted by our agency to our children's respective orphanages.  The questions had to do with each child's diet, daily routine, sleep habits, likes and dislikes.  So now we know more about our children and how to make them feel as comfortable as possible during this huge transition.  Ellie's information sheet states that she is "active and lively"...  Hmmm... reminds me of a couple other children I know and love...  :)

 

We meet Ellie in three hours - 10 AM local time.  It almost seems impossible, but soon she will be on her way to Zhengzhou with an official from her orphanage to meet us at the Civil Affairs office here in the city.  I'm praying that things will go smoothly, that all the children will arrive safely, and that they won't be too frightened.  I hope we can find a way to make Ellie smile and know that she is safe.  I wish I could say that I've mastered a little Mandarin. (So far, I've said "hello" and "thank you", to which the reaction of the local Chinese has been cool to say the least.  But I am trying.)  I do know how to say, "I love you", though, and what could be more important than that?  I have no doubt that Ellie's comprehension of English will surpass my understanding of Chinese in about 3 days.  How comfortable she'll feel with us remains to be seen.  But we cannot wait to have her in our arms at last.

And we're off!

We're starting a slow descent as we near Seattle.  The spectacular scenery reminds me how beautiful the western part of the United States is, and how we need to travel out here with the kids someday.  So far, the traveling has been easy, Tom and I have been able to catch a few much-needed winks, and I'm trying to get used to *not* having kids tagging along - at least for the next couple of days.  (The benefits of this became delightfully clear to me at the Atlanta airport, where we breezed through security without a stitch of baby gear to collapse and cram into the X-ray machine, and when I ordered lunch in less than one minute without consulting anyone and didn't care a whit whether there was any fruit included with said lunch.)

It was hard to leave the boys, though.  Very, very hard.  A few tears were shed as our plane departed Atlanta.  Hopefully the time will pass quickly for all of us, and I know the boys will have a great time with their grandparents.

Next post will be from China!

The Plan

We had a fun, informative conference call with our agency and travel group yesterday in order to go over our travel itinerary and resolve any last-minute questions.  Here's a brief summary of our trip...

July 9th - Meet up with our group in Beijing
July 10th - Fly to Zhengzhou late Sunday morning
July 11th - Go to the registration office and RECEIVE ELLIE on Monday afternoon; sign Guardianship Agreement
July 12th - Adoption registration in Zhengzhou
July 13th - Travel by car to Jiaozuo to complete notary paperwork;  possible visit to Ellie's orphanage
July 14th - Free time/optional tours
July 15th - Receive Ellie's Chinese passport;  depart Zhengzhou for Guangzhou (by air) Friday evening
July 16th - Go to the U.S. Consulate for Ellie's medical exam and visa photo;  meet with agency representative to complete paperwork in preparation for Monday's consulate appointment
July 17th - Free time
July 18th - Consulate appointment (to take the oath for Ellie's visa/citizenship)
July 19th - Receive Ellie's visa packet
July 20th - Depart Guangzhou for Shanghai (by air) Wednesday morning;  depart Shanghai for Atlanta at 3:45 PM local time;  arrive home a mere 3 hours later, at 6:45 PM on July 20th, EDT.  Undoubtedly those will be the longest "3 hours" of our lives.  :)

Sound busy?  It does to me, too.  And I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to pronounce "Jiaozuo".  But one thing I know for sure after last night's conference call:  Our agency is going to take VERY good care of us.  It's going to be a great adventure!