One Month Today

It is hard to believe it, but it has already been one month since Grace was placed in my arms. It makes my head spin to think that time has passed so quickly. She is adjusting beautifully to life with us. She seems to enjoy the chaos of a household with two three rowdy boys.



Here are some of the milestones that we have passed this month:
1-Daddy is no longer the Yeti :)
(If you don't understand this, read THIS POST)
2-Two new teeth
3-Learning to sit up from a lying-down position
4-Learning to push up and support weight with her arms when lying on her belly
5-Learning to crawl
6-Learning to take some unassisted steps (I've counted 12 in a row so far.)
7-Learning to Clap when we say "yay"
8-Learning to give kisses
9-Learning to wave goodbye
10-Saying "uh oh"
11-Learning what "no" means :)
12-Learning to respond to her new name
13-Learning what it means to feel full, and pushing food away when that happens
14-Becoming secure enough in her food supply that she will refuse food that she dislikes.
15-Learning that Pasta is her favorite food

There have been so many things. These really are just the tip of the iceberg. I could not have imagined that she would do so well.

She's done all of this, by the way, with a chronic double ear infection which our doctor suspects that she has had for a very long time. She has been on some form of antibiotic for nearly 3 weeks. (This would explain the miserable 15-hour plane ride home.) We hope that this third antibiotic has done the trick.



We will be taking her to Washington DC on Tuesday to meet with all of the specialists on her cleft team. The appointments will last from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM. We will meet with an ENT, a Plastic Surgeon, and 5 or 6 other specialists. We hope to come away with a good idea about her future medical needs and treatment. We also hope to have her first surgery scheduled. We were expecting, before finding out that her lip had been repaired, to have 2 surgeries in the first 6 months. It appears that she will only need one. There will be more surgeries when she is older as well.

Our current focus is learning how to live life in a house where we are outnumbered (a friend told me that we'd gone from "man to man defense" to "zone defense"), and learning all about this new little person that God has blessed us with. What a personality she has! She is a strong little girl, what plans must God have for her life? We sure are glad that she has two incredible big brothers to help watch after her.


Here's our crew: The Cowboy, The Jedi Knight, and The Ballerina

We're Back!

We had a wonderful trip. Grace is amazing! We will be posting continued updates on this original blog, including some Halloween photos in the next few days. Thanks for all of the prayers and support over the past months!

A Visit to the US Consulate

Today was a big day. All of our paperwork was processed at the US Consulate today....that infamous Consulate Appointment that we waited for with bated breath a couple of months ago. I am pleased to announce that, contrary to my greatest fear, I did not forget any important documents at home. We had more than we needed in fact, imagine that! :)

Our paperwork breezed through the consular offices today, and we went a few hours ago to swear an oath that all of the information that we had provided was accurate. (I thought is was the citizenship oath...it turns out that they skip that step in adoption.) So, on Wednesday we will recieve Grace's US Visa, which will allow her onto US soil. We also receive an immigration packet that we are not allowed to open. When we land in Newark on Thursday, we will hand that packet to an immigration official who will check it, stamp it, and allow us access to the US. When those documents are stamped, and we pass beyond that desk, Grace will be a US citizen~Yippee!

I actually got a little choked up at the swearing ceremony today...it was a really neat experience.

We then came back to the island and celebrated with a meal at Lucy's...a legendary place for adoptive families. Then we did a little shopping :) There are a couple of shops here that donate some or all of their proceeds to orphan care in China, which is really cool. I have purchased one special piece. It is an embroidered silk that was once part of a garment, probably belonging to a peasant's wife. It is between 150 and 200 years old. It is a portion of the "100 Birds" design which represents happiness. At the center is a Pheonix which is very popular in Chinese art, it is the symbol for "princess". Among the birds are embroidered peaches, which both Grace's and our hometowns are known for. The coolest part? The silk was collected from the region of China that Grace is from. I will get it framed when we get home.

While shopping, I also asked one of the ladies in a shop about the meaning of Grace's Chinese name. I'd seen a couple of different possibilities. Upon looking at the Chinese Characters, the shopowner informed me that Ruo Yun means, "Pure as a Beautiful Cloud". How cool is that?

Tomorrow is a play day for us as we wait for the visa to be processed. We will be taking a dinner cruise on the Pearl River, which we can see from our room, tomorrow evening.

A new friend told me about the most amazing thing today. On these long intercontinental flights, there are a limited number of seats that have a space for a baby basinette...so the baby can lay down to sleep! We called continental and they have reserved these seats for us for our 16.5 hour flight from Hong Kong to New Jersey. This means that Grace can actually get some rest! And, I might be able to as well :) Even better, the seats are at the front of the section (just behind first class) so there will be no seats directly in front of us, but a wall...more leg room! Some times it is the little things in life :) I'm gonna go find that lady tomorrow and hug her neck!

Love y'all, Be home soon!

Worship

We had a unique opportunity to worship in a Christian church this morning with a dual language service. The building was filled, and the courtyard held people standing and sitting. Loudspeakers broadcast the service to those who could not get inside. I ended up walking Grace for the entire sermon, as she continued "singing" well after the music had ended. We so enjoyed visiting this little church and seeing worship take place in Grace's native tounge. I think it is very cool that her first church experience was in her homeland. Though she will not remember it, this too has become a part of her story.

Before going to church, I decided to take the opportunity to take her "red couch photo" while she was dressed up. The White Swan hotel has a lobby area with these red velvet couches that have become a traditional spot for photos for adoptive families. In fact, later this week we will gather with our entire group for a photo of all of the kiddos adopted this week on the same red couches. I'll post those when the time comes, but the ones I took today are just so sweet that I had to share them. This was a rare moment that Grace allowed me to put her down without making a big fuss.

Tonight we hope to meet up with a group of friends that I've made online who are all here this week. I don't know if we will make it, because we also have an appointment to put our paperwork in order for the consulate appointment tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon we will travel to the US Consulate (which used to be right next door, but has been moved across town, ugh!) There we will take the oath of citizenship on Grace's behalf.

That's about it for now, Joel still feels crummy, please pray that he will whip this thing so that he can feel good for the remainder of our trip.

Blessings~Amy

Survival Mode

I apologize for not updating you in several days. Mommy had to go into survival mode as Grace decided that sleep at night was optional. I napped when she did. We seem to have found a good routine for getting to sleep now, it still involves crying. But, we have had 10 hours of sleep for the last two nights...yay!

We are now in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. More about that in a minute.

We traveled yesterday morning to the airport, and stopped to do a little sightseeing on the way at a park on the Yellow River. When you look at the photos, notice the rafts that you could ride made of dried, inflated sheep skins and bamboo. Joel was disappointed that we didn't have time to try it out. These rafts are one of many Muslim influences in Grace's home province. There is a large Muslim population, and that is reflected in many things including the local cuisine. There is a distinct flavor and smell to Lanzhou food. It often includes cinnamon, which surprised me. But, where we use it in baking, they use it in beef broths, very tasty. There is also a nice tea that I tried called San PaoTi. It is unique to the area, and looks almost like soup, with many dried things floating in it.

We knew that Lanzhou was the most polluted city in the world. Because of the many refineries surrounding the city, and the high mountains that are beyond them, all of the smog that is produced is trapped over the city. But, we arrived at the end of a week-long hiatus for most businesses, due to the national holiday. So, the air had time to clear. We enjoyed blue skies for our entire visit. As we were leaving town, we experienced a bit of the norm, as we drove through the refineries, the smog was beginning to build again. At times it looked like we were driving through fog. Locals had cloths tied over their mouths and noses as they worked. My eyes and sinuses burned. We are thankful to have had the opportunity to visit when we did, and to avoid most of this.

We arrived at the famous White Swan Hotel around 5PM. It sits on Shamian Island in Guangzhou which I've decided to call "adoption land". This city is a necessary stop for any American adopting from China. Many adoptive families stay at the White Swan. And, the Island is certainly set up to cater to us. There are restaurants with american fare and 80's music, little shops selling baby clothes, diapers, and squeaky shoes. The shops also lend strollers to the families for free (hoping to build a relationship and earn your business.) This island was once the home to several foriegn consulates (including ours), and I believe it was once called the French Concession area. You can certainly see the French influence in architecture. It has the feel of a beach town, with palm trees and other trees that have something like spanish moss hanging from them. As we walked through town last night, Joel mentioned that it reminded him of New Orleans, and it certainly does. We enjoyed Lanzhou very much, but in one day we went from a cold desert to a balmy beach resort. It is very pleasant here. It is also much easier to order food :)

This morning Grace had her medical exam, which was our most unpleasant part of the trip. The actual exam was really no big deal. We had a height/weight check, ear/nose/throat, and then a doctor looked her over to make sure that her health matched the medical report from the orphanage. Then they checked her immunization records and determined that she needed 6 shots to enter the US. Bless her heart. Since I didn't want her to connect anything unpleasant with Joel, I took her and held her for the shots. It was terrible. She was a sweaty mess when it was over. Wanna know why she needed them?

Well, back when the Hague treaty was signed, someone forgot to include the part that existed before the treaty that said that adoptive children could wait to be immunized in the US. It was essentially a clerical error. So, ever since the treaty was signed a few years ago, all kids have to have all of these awful shots at once. Thanks to the hard work of petitioning adoptive parents, last month a bill passed the Senate to do away with this. But, it still has to come to vote in the House, which happens in the next few weeks. Hopefully, by the end of the year, this traumatic start to a new life will have been done away with.

~She steps down from her soapbox~

So, now she is sleeping it off. We started her on Motrin this morning to help with the discomfort. She did okay, and even ate a hearty lunch after it was over. Joel is feeling a bit under the weather, and is sleeping now too. We brought antibiotics with us, and he's started taking them, just in case. Hopefully he will wake up feeling better. So, there is a quick recap of many thing that have happened. We love y'all! Blessings!

Two Girls and a Yeti - Another Post From Joel

One of the things our agency and other wise people warned us about was the issue of attachment. Sometimes, the child will not adapt well early on to either parent, which creates a high-stress situation for parents and adoptive children that can last for several weeks. The most common scenario however, is that the child attaches to one parent (usually Mom, since many of these children have not had much exposure at all to men in the orphanage) while keeping their distance from the other.

Where our Grace is concerned, it looks like dear ol' Dad drew the short straw. :) She has quickly attached herself to Mom, but continues to be highly suspicious of me.



A couple of days ago Amy jokingly said to Grace "he looks like the abominable, I know." I quickly corrected my wife, reminding her that we are, in fact, on the Asian continent and therefore I cannot be the abominable snow monster. I must be a Yeti.

It stuck.

Now I'm "the Yeti."

Currently, she occassionally lets me play with her; "play" of course being tightly defined as her throwing toys on the floor and me picking them up to hand back to her. Come to think of it maybe I'm not a Yeti after all. Maybe I'm the golden retriever!

For the past several days its been "two steps forward, one step back" where my new relationship with this little girl is concerned. I'm totally OK with it, and thankful that I was warned in advance of this possibility. Plus, it makes the "connective" moments with her all the more rewarding. But I sense that the best reward through this process is what I'm learning from this little one; a highly spiritual lesson she doesn't even realize she is teaching!

Think about it this way. 18 months ago I began, with my wife, planning to adopt this little one whom I had never met, and who had never met me, into my family. Enormous sums of time and money have been invested in this effort. Now that she is legally ours, she bears my name, my provision, my protection (brief warning to emerging young men, I WILL kill for her!), and all the blessings that come with being a part of a nuclear family. God willing, she will never again know what it means to be hungry. She will never legitimately fear for her future. She will never lack anything she needs, and all of this will be due to her father's provision.

Yet as an adopted child, she doesn't yet fully understand all of this, and so her response to me is one of high suspicion and fear. To her, I'm just a strange, scary-looking Yeti who simply doesn't belong in this new picture she has now become a part of.

At the same time, she doesn't mind sleeping in this lush hotel room I'm providing, nor does she object to all the wonderful new food she has at her disposal because of her new Daddy. Additionally, she also doesn't mind using the Yeti if it suits her purposes. This morning at the breakfast table Mom told her "no," to which she responded by looking up at me, hoping she could "divide the house" and get her way. It would seem that Daddy isn't so scary after all if he can be used to accomplish her agenda.

In short, she now enjoys the full range of blessing that is available to her as an adopted child. But currently, she has no real desire to develop a relationship with the one who has provided these blessings to her.

In other words, she is very much like all the rest of us.

Scripture tells us that before the world was created, God chose us to be His own. Before we were even born He developed a master plan that included us belonging in His family. At the right time, He sent Jesus Christ into time and space to die as our substitute, bearing the wrath of God against sin in our place. Furthermore, He drew us to Himself, and literally "adopted" us into His family, making us co-heirs with His only begotten, blessing us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies, and providing for us what Paul says in an inheritance so great that our natural eyes, ears and brains can't even fathom what is in store for us.

And how do we respond to such great news? From birth, we seek our own way. We treat the Father with disdain. We don't mind enjoying His blessings, its just the relationship with Him that we aren't that interested in. We are sometimes afraid of Him, sometimes using Him, sometimes caustic toward Him, many times abusive of His gifts.

And what does the Father do in response? He continues to love and pursue until we are truly His. He doesn't give up, and He ALWAYS succeeds!

Yep, this darling little girl is teaching me more than she knows. It is truly an honor to be her Daddy, and such a joy to emulate, as much as any rotten-to-the-core, fallen man can, the actions of my heavenly Father toward my own daughter.

More pics are coming soon, by the way. :) Thanks for the continued thoughts and prayers.



-Joel

A Bath, A Park, A Zoo, and Famous Noodles

Grace had her first bath. I'm not sure that she enjoyed it, but she accepted it without complaint. She did enjoyed being rubbed down with lotion, though.

We all slept pretty well last night. I am so very thankful for the foam mattress topper that I managed to get into my suitcase. In China, the nicer your hotel~the harder your bed. We are in the nicest hotel in Lanzhou, quite a bit out of our league, frankly. So, we have hard beds and stiff backs.

We visited the city zoo today. They have a Panda, which they are very proud of. We saw several animals we had never heard of before. There was a common housecat in the pen with the pheasants. We couldn't figure out how he got in, but he sure looked like he wanted out. We were the main attraction for much of our time there. Many people, particularly older men and women, want to come and see Grace, ask where we are from, and find out about our other children. They are very sweet and all say kind things to Grace about all of the love that she will have with our family. They have all been very happy to see one of their orphan children find a home. Once when we stopped in the park outside the zoo to listen to a pick-up musical preformance by locals, we drew most of the crowd away from the musicians. I pulled out a photo album with the boys' and our extended family. The people looked through all of the photos and talked about how the boys look like us, and how my mom and I look alike, and how Joel and his brother look alike.

We were at the foot of a rather tall mountain, and kept hearing people calling out to one another. Our guide told us that some of the old people climb the mountain every day for excercise and that the ones at the top were calling out to the ones who were farther down the mountain. I do not know if they were calling out words of encouragement or teasing them for not making it to the top yet :) Excercise is very important to the older people here (60s and above) and they spend a lot of time at it.

We walked through part of the oldest section of this 2,000 year-old city while looking for a taxi. Our guide told us that much of it would soon be demolished for the government to put in new apartment buildings. The people whose homes are demolished will be given a new apartment. She said they were very happy about this.

Our next stop was at one of the more than 300 Lanzhou Noodle restaurants. This city is famous for it's hand-pulled noodles cooked in a special beef broth. *Trisha~I understand why you loved coming home to that smell when you made the recipe. It is wonderful! We thoroughly enjoyed that meal. And, I learned how to eat foot-long noodles with chopsticks!

Grace continues to come out of her shell a little at a time. We are seeing more and more of her true personality. She sings often, and loves to play imitating games. She also let Joel get very close to her while making similar sounds back and forth at the zoo. She even reached out and touched his beard. When we got back to the room, he sat down on the end of the bed next to her. He was able to touch her hair for the first time and rub her back a little. This is huge progress. She was still nervous about it, but didn't start crying this time.

Another huge milestone in this process is poop. Really! Every morning the guides ask if the baby has pooped. Some children stress so much that they won't even do that, and they can get sick if that goes on for too long. The saying is that the first poop belongs to the orphanage, and the second one is the family's. In other words, the first one doesn't count after you get the baby. Well...not only is Grace a champion eater, she's a champ in this arena as well. She truly is a Rainey :) (Sorry to those of you who think that is TMI..)

She is sleeping now, I have taken a nap, and Joel is working on one too. When she wakes up we will go out with another family that we ran into from Indiana who just adopted a 2-year old boy, Joshua. We've been hanging out together some and sharing experiences.

We love you all, and enjoy so much getting up in the morning to read your comments. Thank you so much for your prayers. We have certainly felt them. Tomorrow is another day of touring, including the provincial museum. Grace's paperwork will be finished by Thursday and we leave this wonderful city on Friday.

By the way, Trisha, our guide is your guide's wife :) I've heard some great stories about your family, I think you made your mark on Lanzhou!