To China, With Love

We have made it to China! After a whirlwind of receiving the news of our impending departure, the fast track of booking tickets and packing, and then gathering everything and everyone together, we flew out on September 9th. We had our first flight to Chicago but then met a 6-hour delay just after we arrived...so...that slowed things down at first. But by late afternoon, we were on our way. Thirty or so hours later, we arrived in Beijing.

I love this country. It's so strange and odd but also wonderful, all wrapped up into one. This is the 5th time that I have been to China and I still love it every time. It's very different from the world I'm used to, that's for sure, but I'm still happy and grateful to be here. And, the kids are here with us this time, which makes me so happy.

Although we got in very late, we weren't exactly tired or ready for bed when we got to the hotel. It was a short night of sleeping before getting up to tour today. It will take a couple of days to get used to the jet lag and it's hard not to sleep during the day. Even now, I feel so tired...it reminds me of those years working nights at the hospital.

Today, we did some touring to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. We have met several families who are adopting through our agency but we traveled with only one other family for the tours today. They are adopting a little boy who is four and who is from a different province than Jia, but we will see them again later, I'm sure. Today was lovely..we had such beautiful weather and very little smog and pollution, it seemed. The skies were blue! We walked a lot and looked at all of the historical monuments of the area. Russ and I have seen this before, but it is still so neat. Caleb was three years old the last time he was here and he doesn't remember it. Asher and Ellie have never been here. There is so much to see.

This evening, we rested in the hotel and then went out to a local place for supper. We had been warned not to order too much food because there is so much that is brought to the table. We tried to cut back but there was still so much. As good as it was...we had to leave a lot because we couldn't eat any more noodles. It was so delicious! Homemade noodles, kale, meatballs, shrimp, and some other vegetables. Unfortunately, we had three very tired children, two of whom were falling asleep at the table. We finished quickly and moved on.

We have a couple more days and then we will be flying to JQ's province. The guide from our agency sent us a message a couple of days ago and said that he visited the orphanage again and took a couple more pictures of Jia for us, so he sent them. Just look at this cutie:

I can't believe we will meet him Monday! I'm so excited...this guy just makes me smile. This is all very surreal. It is one of those situations where you sort of stop every once in a while and say, "what a minute. What are we doing, again?"

For now, we are hanging out and seeing the sights in Beijing. The kids are watching a Chinese cartoon, although they can't understand a word. I don't think it matters. There is some sort of fashion show with a runway going on in the plaza of our hotel, right outside our balcony. We are here together on the other side of the world, the homeland of our children. With all of its quirks and weirdness, we are so thrilled to be back in China once again.

Nine and Seven

A busy week yet again. This time of year is always very busy because of school starting and we have two birthdays in the house. It’s hectic even if we weren’t leaving for China in three days.

Last week, Caleb had a birthday and he turned nine. How did that happen?! Wasn’t he just looking like this?

And now, he’s like this:

Okay, not really. But he has grown so much. Sometimes, I look at him, pouring over a book or working on a project, or even just standing somewhere, dressed like a college student with his flip-flops, slouchy jeans, and t-shirt, and it feels like he is growing so fast. Sometimes, too, he is so…nine years old. He loves Lego’s and Nerf and Star Wars but also animals and playing tag and digging in the dirt. It is such a fun age. As always with children, the days are sometimes long but the years are short. He is my oldest and we will always remember that crazy day when we met him in Lanzhou…when we thought we would meet him the next morning but they brought him to the hotel a few minutes later. Our lives have been a whirlwind ever since.

Asher is having a birthday soon, but we will be in China for it. Not that it’s that bad…in fact, we thought it was kind of cool. But then again, a 7 year old does not necessarily think it is quite so neat. By the time he has his birthday, we will most likely be feeling ready to come home from China, a little tired of Chinese food (as much as we really like it) and just feeling the effects of living in a hotel for a couple of weeks. So, we celebrated his birthday last night, two weeks early, so that he could have a chance to enjoy cake and ice cream and play with his gifts for a couple of days before leaving.

Asher is also all about Lego’s; he’s really good at building things, as well. Sometimes, I think he may end up becoming a mechanical engineer. Ever since he was a toddler, he could pick two or more items up and just fit them together to create something. That’s how his mind works. And since we don’t want to bring Lego’s on our trip (sorry…but no. We will most likely lose half of them somewhere along the way) we celebrated early so he could build with them for a while. He is such a dichotomy sometimes… he has sensory issues and is almost constantly on the move; he has a lot of trouble sitting still. But, he can also focus and work very hard at things that he enjoys, or he will set his mind to a project and see it to the finish. He is almost seven and still such a wonder to me sometimes. Last night, he was telling a joke at supper and laughing so hard and for a moment, I saw him as the 17-month-old little boy who was so confused and sad when we first met years ago. Those days, I wondered if he would ever smile. Today, he smiles a lot and he makes us smile, too.


These boys….they are so busy and crazy and difficult and joyful, all wrapped up together. And now there will be one more boy added to the mix! Only a few more days until we leave to meet our new son. It may be rough at first or it may be an easy transition, we don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that eventually, JQ will work himself into this crew and will fit right in, too, where he belongs.

Travel Approved

Okay. What was I doing six months ago?
We had lived in our house about one month. There were blizzards. There was influenza (me). There was the all-around adjustment of 'hey, this is our house now! No more apartment! How great!' and, 'I'll be fine to just stay settled in here...we've had a lot of change in the last year...it will be nice to just relax and enjoy living here right now.'

I can also tell you what I wasn't doing: thinking that I was going back to China again in 12 more days. But that is our reality. Of course, that was before we lost our hearts to JQ.

We received our travel approval yesterday. This is the point when we get notice from China that it is time to travel and to come and adopt our son. I had an inkling that things were going to go fast, but really, not this fast. On Monday, we received notice from the consulate in Guangzhou that they had picked up our Article 5, which is part of processing JQ's immigrant visa. We knew the next step was that we would eventually be notified of our travel approval. Our agency informed us that it takes between 10 and 21 days. I remember this. I remember getting this pre-paperwork notification about Ellie's immigrant visa at the end of November the year we adopted her. We received our travel approval a little over two weeks later.

So, I thought we had 10 to 21 days to wait it out, but we didn't. We had three days. Instead of taking 1 to 3 weeks from the Article 5, we had our paperwork picked up from the consulate on Monday and we were notified of our intent to travel on Thursday.

How's that for a fast turnaround?

As I said, I had his feeling...something was going to happen. Just that morning, I had been driving to Wal-mart at 7 am to get Asher some Tylenol and I was thinking and praying about this situation with travel. I had plans in my head...those that think about all of the things to do before leaving (maybe take on one more work project or finally finish painting the trim in the front room), those that think about what will happen while we will be gone (running a Half with two awesome friends that I signed up for this spring), and really just considering my own needs, to be honest. But I really felt this heaviness...I just needed to let some of this stuff go because the time that you wait for, the time when it is supposed to be "right," never really happens. It never seems to be the right time, you just have to go with it. I felt like I needed to let go of my plans and just wait.

And then I figured that once I did that, we would have some snag or delay and not get our travel approval until October.

But that didn't happen. Instead, we were notified about three hours later. And then we waited to find out about our consulate appointment while we are there. And then we looked into flights and booked our tickets, and now we are set to leave in 12 days, on September 9th. We will meet JQ on September 14.

Despite some of the peace, I can't say that I'm still not stressed. I am. Since yesterday morning's news, I have been doing the third thing I do the most when I feel stressed out, which is cook. (The first thing is to eat everything and the second thing is to bite my nails.) So, I have been working in the kitchen to take my mind off of things and ended up baking two loaves of bread, making some homemade mozzarella, cream cheese, breakfast rolls, a chocolate pie, and I canned some spaghetti sauce. I feel better.

This is a one-step-at-a time thing. This whole process started five short months ago, but it is going according to plan. Just not necessarily my plan. But that's okay. We are thrilled and excited and nervous and stressed out and happy and so many other things at once. And it's okay; in fact, it's really good.

But I probably need to stop cooking so much or else I won't be able to eat all of this food before we go.

These are our passports as we are getting ready to go to China (hopefully) soon. Note that there are five. That means that Asher’s finally came through and was mailed to us. Yay! Actually, it came last week right before Ellie’s surgery and I haven’t had a chance to mention it until now. One more thing to check off the list before getting ready to go. The list still seems to be very long; I feel as if I am not making a dent in it. One day, it won’t matter because we won’t have time to complete one more thing. We’ve done this three other times and it still catches me off guard every single time. I will never get it all done. However, it is a good thing that we have the passport snag taken care of.

On another note, I took Caleb to the orthodontist this morning for an appointment as a new patient about his jaw. Being the parent of a cleft-affected child, I knew that orthodontics were in our future. But that’s just it. Future. Not necessarily at 8, going on 9 years old. Yet here we are.

Caleb doesn’t need braces (yet); we actually met for a consult about his upper jaw and his two front teeth. They really had amazing technology in this office…they took a wrap-around x-ray of his head to capture his jaws and teeth from all angles and then had it on this big screen to point out different things to me while we talked. I couldn’t stop looking at it. I could see where his teeth were coming in when they hadn’t erupted yet, where he won’t have teeth (ever) and how the bone of his jaw fit together. Maybe that’s weird, but I thought it was very cool.

When a child is born with a cleft lip and palate, it generally is considered to be either unilateral, where the opening is on one side, or bilateral, where it affects two parts of the lip and palate. Of course, there are other situations, too, but that’s a generalized description. Caleb was born with a bilateral cleft and he had lip repair surgery while he was still in China before we adopted him. When his lip was repaired, it was very tight, such that you pretty much can’t see his top teeth. If you notice his smile, it is always bottom teeth only.

We have always known that his cleft is a complex case: he has a very small mouth, a lip that is very tight, a very high palate, his teeth are in various positions, and he has a fistula (hole) that developed after one of his last surgeries. Brushing his teeth is a challenge. We have met with a number of physicians and surgeons about his mouth because it is complicated. I’ve had one physician tell me that Caleb’s is the most complex mouth he has ever seen. I’ve had another tell me that he could not help us because of the structure of Caleb’s mouth and that our case should be managed through the Mayo Clinic (because, we travel to Rochester, MN all the time, so why not?) (Note: sarcasm).

Anyway, today I was very encouraged because we actually made plans for Caleb and his jaw. By looking through the x-rays, we also discovered—as the orthodontist pointed out—that Caleb doesn’t have much of a bone under his two front teeth. They’re sort of just held in place by the gums. He will most likely need to have his front teeth pulled and have prosthetic teeth placed someday. We are planning to start palate expansion—where there is an arch in the roof of the mouth that slowly pushes the upper jaw apart when you turn it with a key—so that eventually he will have bone graft surgery to fix his upper palate.

Whew! That’s a lot of information. And while I was staring at the x-rays in fascination, I also felt sad. I didn’t want my kid to feel like a specimen. I didn’t want him to feel like a weirdo for something that he cannot help. Last night we were at swimming lessons and he was playing with another kid there who he had just met. I heard the kid say, “what happened to your lip?” and Caleb just responded with, “yeah, that’s just what it looks like. Anyway…” He just brushed it off, partly because he has probably been asked about it a thousand times in his short life.

He is such a good sport. He is a great kid. I see him, almost 9 years old now, and I remember when he was three and four years old and still only speaking in vowels because he had such a hard time getting past the speech difficulties. He has worked so hard and made such great gains because he keeps on trying and doesn’t give up.

I love this kid. He’s a rock star to me.

Today, our blog post is about someone who does not always get a lot of press around here: our Ellie. Not that she would let you forget it if you saw her in person. She pretty much acts as if she is little Miss Thang most of the time, but she definitely has her sweet moments.

Today, Ellie is having surgery, which is a first for her. We've been through multiple surgeries with the boys, but for Ellie, this is new. We've had several talks about what will happen and why she is having the procedure, but it still makes her upset. The boys, who are practically professional patients, talked her through her part in the process:
     "They'll give you medicine that makes you tired!"
     "The mask smells like strawberries!"
     "You'll get to play with an iPad while you're there!"

Wait--what?
The hospital where we have had a number of surgeries does let kids borrow iPads to play games for distraction. So, the first question Ellie had when we got here was, "where is my iPad?" Then we had to explain that it was not hers to keep, it was to borrow, etc. We ended up just watching TV and pretty soon, she was tired from the medicine anyway.

Ellie was born with bilateral microtia and atresia, meaning she does not have external openings in her ears that lead to the eardrums. On the outside, she has small bumps and flaps of skin that resemble earlobes. On the inside, she does not have ear canals or eardrums, but she does have cochleas and the small bones of her middle ear. Since her adoption, she has worn a BAHA, which is a hearing aid that is anchored to her head through a headband. The hearing aid conducts sound through the bone of her skull. Today, she is having surgery to place a port in her skull to attach the BAHA. She will still use it in the same way, but without a headband. And, the sound is much closer to the central nerve in her head that sends sound messages to the brain, so what she is able to hear through the BAHA should be even better than before.

We didn't know what we were getting into when we adopted a child with hearing loss. I know a thing or two about cleft lip and palate and having worked in pediatrics, I have seen a few things. But I was unaware of the extent that hearing loss can have on communication, relationships, and cognitive function. I thought that if Ellie had a hearing aid, it mostly corrected her hearing and she could catch up. That probably makes me sound naive, but I just didn't see a lot of literature about the extent of hearing loss among kids with microtia/atresia in both ears, or many of the other issues present. For instance, Ellie was adopted at 20 months old; before her adoption, she did not have a hearing aid at all and she lived in China, so what language she did hear was Chinese. She got her BAHA 3 weeks after we brought her home, plus she was hearing and learning English, plus she was a toddler who was moved from her home in China to a new place with new sights and smells and two older brothers and a lot of other white people. It was probably confusing for her, to say the least.

So, despite being 5 years old, Ellie's language is delayed and she often doesn't get a lot of what is going on. A person who cannot hear clearly often does miss out on those little things that happen all around them--those things we often take for granted. She not only misses some parts of conversation and pertinent words, but also inflections and humor. She often doesn't understand what we are talking about or she will react in a way that seems inappropriate, but in reality, she doesn't always know because she missed some of the key information.

Today's procedure will not fix everything for Ellie. Because she does not have eardrums, it is unlikely that the doctors could ever create something that would work as well and that would conduct sound in a manner that would allow her to hear within a completely normal range. It is okay. She is a strong girl and she will adjust. She is remarkable in what she has managed to accomplish so far in the short time that she has been with us. I have great hopes for this girl.

The Steel Beam Phenomenon

We were very blessed to receive new pictures of JQ last week! A friend traveled to China to adopt her daughter, who happens to be from the same area as JQ, so they met and she sent me these pictures! Doesn’t he look so happy? She said he bounded down the steps to greet her and he was all smiles. Aw…our sweet and wonderful boy.

We are not without a certain amount of stress right now. There is so much going on and I’m doing my best to keep up, but I’m going to be honest here, this is a stressful time. I don’t really want to be edgy and irritable because I spend a lot of energy trying not to worry, but it’s happening.

As much as I want to go to China again and meet JQ and bring him home to join our family, I’m trying to stay cool about the timeline here. In the past, we have struggled with adoption timelines: they were always too slow and we experienced one snag after another that made the process drag out. This is not the case this time around; in fact, the opposite is true and this process is going very fast. Where I thought we might travel around Thanksgiving or early December, we may now be on our way in less than 8 weeks.

In less than 8 weeks, we will (Lord willing) get on a plane with our crew and make the journey to the other side of the world to meet our son. We are thrilled!

But this is where the stress part comes in: because it is so much faster this time around, we have less time to prepare, whether it’s our home, our finances, or our hearts. Sometimes, there is so much in front of us that it is overwhelming and it’s hard to know what to tackle first. We have been fundraising and I have been trying to work extra to pay for many of the expenses that go along with all of this, but again, it is hard.

I work from home. I’m a “stay at home mom” in that I don’t leave my house to do work. I teach my kids at home, too, but I have a business as a freelance writer that I have worked for several years to build. Some months, it is slow, and sometimes, it is extremely busy. For the past year and a half, I have been very busy with different contracts, sometimes working on several at once. It is nice because I like to work and to write and we have been able to pay off some things, like, you know, debt.

Since finding out that we are going to China sooner than later, I have been trying to work more to help offset some of the cost. I have prayed that the Lord would continue to provide for what we need to pay for this trip. And then, as I finished projects and turned in invoices, I reached a point that I have not been in for almost 2 years. I had no work to do.

I don’t mean I had nothing to do. I just mean that I had no income earning potential in front of me at all. Not one contract, not one word to write that was in any paying form. Every company that I work with had snags from their end that were delaying their processes, hence, they had nothing for me. It’s a shaky business sometimes. Being a freelancer means times of feast and times of famine. I just have been frustrated with the timing of the famine this time around.

Adding to the stress is Asher’s passport situation. I was half joking a few weeks ago when I made comments about calling the customer assistance line at the passport center for help. It is now a problem. We still do not have Asher’s passport and we cannot get a hold of anyone who can tell us what is going on. In this day and age, it seems weird that you shouldn’t be able to call, email, or otherwise message someone to get answers, but after several weeks, we are still in the same place. This morning, I FedEx’ed more paperwork to them, overnighting it to Virginia. We paid extra to have expedited service, which we were told they cannot guarantee anyway. We also contacted our Congressman’s office to ask if they will inquire for us as well.

It’s a problem. It’s stressful and it’s hard. We have reached the point that Russ and I refer to as The Steel Beam Phenomenon, which means that during a time of great stress, you cannot sit and focus on the problem(s), you have to just sit back and wait. There is nothing you can do. Last year, when we were building our house, we reached the point where we had a hole in the ground and a basement filled in. There were then plans for placement of a large, steel beam under the floor on the first level to act as support for the rest of the house. A good thing. But the county engineering department wouldn’t sign off on it, for whatever reason. They were in disagreement with the architect and the builder and despite calls, emails, changing plans, making modifications, more calls, and more emails, there was nothing we could do. The situation took a month to be resolved, in which there was no work done on the house at all. Our hole in the ground sat and waited while three different parties worked out the details about a steel beam.

But that’s how it goes. Three other parties (not us) worked it out. We tried (we really tried) and grew more and more frustrated with each day. There was no amount of work on our part that could change the situation at all. We just had to wait. It was painful to sit there and do nothing. It goes against the grain of life sometimes. But that is what had to happen. We couldn’t fix it and we had to rely on others to work it out and trust that it would eventually work out. And it did.


I will keep trying to reach someone about Asher’s passport but I don’t have access to their paperwork. I can’t force clients to contact me for more work. However, I can give up the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth that seems to happen under times of stress. Okay, I don’t really do that. How about giving up repeatedly checking emails? Wandering around heavily sighing in distress? I’ll think of some other things I’ll let go of as a response to stress and remember that this too, shall pass, and then one day, it will be a distant memory when we step off that plane and know that in a few short hours, our family will grow yet again and our son JQ will be with us.

Honduras 2015

I went to Honduras in June of this year. About two months ago. I haven't really mentioned it because...I don't really know why. It was an amazing experience. I learned a lot and saw things that I had never seen before, I met some amazing people, and we participated in a dental mission that met some of the needs of the people in various villages there.
So why have I not been talking about it? The answer: I don't know.
I really struggled when I was there. I mean, really struggled, so much that I cannot really define it. Back in December, I learned of a team from our church that was going to Honduras to work as part of a dental mission: several dentists and lay people from the church and community would be going as a team to visit various villages outside of San Pedro Sula in Honduras and work with some of the people to check their teeth, perform extractions, and do cleanings, as needed. Even though I do not have experience working with dental patients, I thought that there might be something I could still do as a nurse, so I emailed the trip coordinator and said that I was interested in going.

Fast forward six months. I boarded a plane with about 25 other people that I barely knew and traveled south to Honduras. I have never been to Central America before. I do not speak Spanish. It didn't matter. The people that I traveled with were, in a word, amazing. I met many wonderful people who were all there to help the people of Honduras, to meet a need for dental care. The dentists that traveled with us were so awesome...they had such compassion on the people there...and each had a very strange and interesting sense of humor, as I would find out.

The country is lovely. They grow coffee, bananas, and pineapple, among many other things. The people are hardworking and kind; they love their children and take pride in their work. I had many encounters with the local people who came when they heard that a dental team was coming to their area. In some cases, they waited all day to be seen. Sometimes, they didn't need dental care, but they learned that some medical people were in the area and would we check a blood sugar level or look at a recent finger injury? Sure.

It was humid. I had one episode of car (or rather, bus) sickness that involved some amount of vomiting on my part. But no parasites, no food poisoning, the power went out a few times and it was hard to sleep. Once, a toad crossed my path and I thought it was a small rabbit because of its size. We shared showers with frogs and scorpions and there were some incredibly large bugs.

This is as big as it looks, and it's real.

I also met people who had tremendous hearts for those who lived in Honduras. People who traveled back year after year to serve those who needed dental care. I have little to no experience with dental care, but I worked in post-op for those who had teeth pulled. They were tough. They walked away with gauze in their mouths and a free toothbrush and were fine, instead of needing iPads and games and toys and all of the other things that we in the U. S. sometimes seem to need when we have dental work done.

So why was it so hard? Maybe because it was such a different culture and a different time. Maybe because I missed my family terribly. I do believe that I was meant to go. And it meant something. And sometimes when things do not seem like they are the right time...they are actually God's correct timing, whether we realize it or not. Although I had a hard time there with almost everything that I encountered, it was still meant to be and I was supposed to be there.

Going to Honduras meant that we had good times, and we had bad times, and we had...times. It was worth being there and it made a difference. The people are amazing..both the people who live there and those who volunteered their time and energy to go and serve. And I'm quite sure that they would do it again, and I really admire that.

The Center of Home

It's hot. Well, it's July, so I can't complain that much; it's to be expected, but still, I sometimes wish for a 60-degree day thrown into this mix. I'm not a huge fan of humidity, tanning, beaches, and searing heat, which is probably why we went to Banff for our honeymoon instead of Mexico. When it's this hot, I do my time and then go inside.

This is pickle-making weather. What do you do when it is so hot outside that your kids run through the sprinkler every day and the air conditioner runs at a near-constant pace? You heat your kitchen even more by making pickles with fresh cucumbers from the garden. I don't make dill pickles. I don't really like them but when we need them for sandwiches or something, Vlasik from a jar works just fine. The pickles of our family are sweet pickles, much to the chagrin of some I know who have inadvertently bitten into one without realizing that it was not a dill pickle. I love to make these. They are tangy and they have bite; they make your eyes water a little from the vinegar and I could even drink the juice when the jar is empty. Okay, I don't do that part. 

I like canning things and we have a lot of pickles, but we also eat a lot of them. My kids have them almost every day with their lunches at home. I've seen Asher eat half a jar of bread-and-butter pickles in one sitting. We like them. It comes with the bounty of the garden, which is a blessing. We also pickle beets, which may sound even more gross to some than even sweet pickles. I have a strange set of children who live here. They like these kinds of things. When setting out a dish of pickled beets for dinner, I frequently hear, "Yes! Pickled beets again!" and that is not even being sarcastic! So, I really love making them. I think they look so good when they are all sealed and lined up on the shelves. 

This year, our garden is in sad shape. The ground that we tilled a few months ago to create a garden space has not been used for planting anything in over 10 years, so it is not well conditioned and doesn't have a lot of nutrients. It does have a lot of clay in the soil and is great at growing weeds. It is not so great at growing other things, such as peas or broccoli. Things are coming in, but it is slow. Most of my produce comes from my mom's wonderful garden and next year, I'm hoping to have more bounty from my own after a year of composting and using the soil to grow things again. 

Until then, we'll enjoy what we get. It's still fun and I love seeing these finished products of canned pickles, beets, salsa, spaghetti sauce, and tomato juice sitting on the shelves. I'm sure other people have different ideas of fun than I do. Maybe they'd rather be outside in the sun soaking up the heat! Give me my kitchen any day...I love being there cooking and canning in the center of home. 

A couple of weeks ago, we received an email from our adoption agency that they would be asking China for an update on JQ and did we have any questions we wanted to pass along?

Yes.

So, we asked a little more about his foster family and where he lives, if there is anything he doesn't like (so we could try to avoid that or at least know ahead of time) and if he knows he is being adopted. The agency said they would ask and then let us know, but keep in mind that it could take up to a month to get an answer.

A week later, they sent us an update on our sweet boy.

Current health is good. His development is normal. He can run and jump. His speech is normal and he can say some simple English words.

They call him Jia Qing. He is extroverted. He does not like when other children take his toys or things. He is excited about coming to the United States. He does not have any fears about coming to the US.

He has been in a foster family for three years. There are foster parents and three other children from the orphanage. He knows what adoption is. He knows he is being adopted. He and another younger boy share a room. He does not share a bed. He showers daily. He has a best friend. He brushes his teeth daily. In the school, he will help sweep the floors. When he is at home, he will help fold the quilts.

And, we received two new pictures:

They also sent his current measurements. He is the same height as Caleb and weighs two pounds more. Caleb, in response, has started eating more and told me that he needs to put on weight now since he is the oldest. In reality, Caleb and JQ are 10 months apart. They are both 8 years old right now, but Caleb will turn 9 in a few weeks. I have the feeling they will be mistaken for twins once they are together.

The boys are very excited about JQ. They will share a room with him they keep finding things that they want to show him or to take along to China when we go.

Speaking of China, we are going sooner than we thought. At least, that is, if everything keeps going at the same pace as it has. We are in stage 2 of immigration paperwork and may now be traveling in September! We shall see. We have really had only one snag so far, related to Asher's passport. It's more of a hiccup than a snag. We got the kids passports--Caleb's was renewed and Asher and Ellie's are new. Since they were all born in China, we had to send birth certificates and some Chinese documents for Ellie (it's a convoluted story) and then we waited. We received new passports for Caleb and Ellie, but not for Asher. Instead, we got a letter asking for more documentation about him and his citizenship.

Here's a tip: if you need to talk to someone--a person--about the status of your passport and what is needed to ensure that your 6-year-old son's passport is renewed in time for you to get a visa to take him to China, don't call the hotline provided. It gets you nowhere. Russ put his phone on speaker while he was on hold for 45 minutes. We all listened to the elevator music playing on the phone while we were sitting down to dinner. He was told there were 143 callers ahead of him. He finally got a hold of an answering service and left a message, in which they reminded him that they have 2 weeks to return his call.

So that was not productive. We mailed some more paperwork back and prayed for the best and now we are waiting and hoping that they will give us Asher's passport. This must be in time for us to apply for visas to go, which is soon. Unfortunately, Asher overheard us talking about it, so we tried to reassure him that it will work out and be fine. Still, the next night at dinner, he asked to say the prayer before the meal and it was something like,

"Dear God, thank you for this food. Thank you for JQ. Please let me get my report card [his term for his passport] on time so I can go to China, too. If not, I guess I'll stay home by myself. Amen."

Sigh. Please, no. So we talked about it some more and reassured some more. It will be fine. I wish he had not heard us in the first place, but it was hard to cover up the fact that his passport never came in the mail. So, we press on. We are going forward on faith that it will work out. This will not be the worst of our snags in this process, and this is all actually going so fast that sometimes, it makes my head spin. Six months ago, it was the middle of winter and our main focus was moving furniture and getting the house done. I never dreamed I'd be heading back to China before the end of the year. Well, that's how life works, and it keeps things interesting.

Hope and Homecoming

What a blur the past week has been. We are now (almost) mid-July and are enjoying the summer so much.
This past weekend, we celebrated Independence Day by going to a small-town, 4th of July, all-day event complete with a parade, amusement park rides, craft booths, food stands, and the like. It was beautiful weather and a very nice day to be out in the sunshine, celebrating our freedom.

I'm pretty sure the kids liked the parade the most. Has anyone noticed how parades have evolved into something of a candy fest...in other words, if the latest float isn't throwing candy to kids, there isn't a lot of interest. This kind of bugs me, since I think it should be more about recognizing those in the parade. Still, we enjoyed it and the kids were still in awe of many of the floats and specialties passing by. Caleb and I had this conversation:

           Me: "So, what was your favorite part of the parade?"
           Caleb: "I liked the veterinarians that were marching by."
           Me: [silence....crickets..] "Huh?"
           Caleb: "You know, the guys with the Army uniforms that marched                with flags and we stood up and clapped for them?"
           Me: "Ah. I liked them, too. For future reference, they are known as              veterans."

Sweet kid. :)

On a different note and a JQ update, this adoption is going fast. Faster than our last three. Fast. It doesn't seem so fast when one looks at the months it takes to complete, but when I think about how we accepted his file at the end of March and how we will probably travel this fall...that is fast. It's okay. We're good with that.

We have already received the copy of his Letter of Acceptance (LOA) and are awaiting the hard copy of the form to come in the mail for us to sign. If anyone still reads this blog from years ago, the LOA is a pretty big deal. Once you turn in all the paperwork, you wait for the LOA to come, which means that you will be traveling in a few more weeks. For Caleb and Asher's adoptions, it took about 2 1/2 months from the time we sent our paperwork to get the LOA. I think with Ellie's process, it was close to 2 months of a wait. This process: 5 days.

So things are going fast. They are faster this time because we had some paperwork done that had actually been sitting in China for the past four years...which is a long story that I won't get into. Suffice it to say that this time around, we have to be on our toes and be prepared. So we continue to prepare.

A little over a week ago, I sent JQ a package. We have done this with all of the kids...we want to send a few nice things to have during the rest of the wait and also a photo album so he knows who we are. Our agency has Chinese translation that we can add to the pictures to identify "older brother, younger sister," etc. There isn't much of a way of knowing if he receives the package or not, although with all three of our other adoptions, the kids showed up on the day of the adoption carrying the photo album and at least the stuffed animal that we sent.

I was thinking about past packages we have sent off into the realm of the postal service to hopefully reach our waiting child. Here are a couple of things that I sent Caleb, now nearly eight years ago:

He still has the stuffed puppy. He showed up on his adoption day with it and it remains in his room, along with a multitude of other stuffed animals. However, the puppy has changed a bit over time.

He lost an ear and part of his nose, not from too much love from Caleb, but rather from the work of this unruly beast:

Well, these are what memories are made of. The stuffed puppy is loved by more than one member of the family. I'm hoping JQ will get his package and will enjoy what we have sent, but more than that, I hope he is finding out that we are here and we are his family; that he is treasured, he is wanted, and he is loved.