So, here's a little something

I wrote this article for my church's women's ministry newsletter about our adoption journey. It's very abbreviated, but since I didn't want to blog while we were waiting....and waiting....and waiting for Joshua here's a teeny bit of background on how we got here. If anyone's still out there : )

My husband and I talked about wanting to adopt before we were even married. We knew that adoption wasn’t “Plan B” as in our backup plan if we weren’t able to have children. Both of our extended families have wonderful adoption stories and we knew that adoption was a privilege and an important part of God’s family design “In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves.” Eph 1:5-6. We didn’t know where that desire would take us or if we would be able to adopt, we just knew we wanted to.

We got pregnant with our first son, Jackson right away and planned to have another child so that they would be exactly two years apart. What’s the saying? If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans? We struggled with infertility and had no answers to it, so we decided to pursue adoption right away so our children would be closer in age. We prayed and researched all the options and each of us on our own felt that our next child would come from China.

We trudged through 6 months of paperwork and many fees to be approved and got our “Log in Date” June 23, 2006. At that point adoptions were being completed in around 8th months from the log in date, so we felt confident our family would be complete within that year and started getting ready for another baby. Again, we had our own plans and God had His own plans. The adoptions from China suddenly slowed down dramatically. The months of waiting turned into years. It was painful many times. I suffered a miscarriage during that wait and we saw our funding dwindle as we had to update our information with government offices over and over. It became difficult to answer everyone’s questions. I just didn’t know when or even if we would be able to bring our child home and didn’t know how to comfort others, let alone myself.

We had heard about China’s Waiting Child program for special needs kids and had applied for that program while waiting for a “healthy baby”, but the children’s files we saw were not the right fit for our family and it became difficult to turn down children. Thankfully, we saw those kids being adopted quickly by other families, so we knew God had found them their home, but it was a hard process for us.

We had finally gotten to the point of wanting to quit the process, be content as a family of three and maybe focus more of our volunteer time on orphans in general. Our social worker was visiting last summer and strongly urged us to try the waiting children program again so we prayed and opened our hearts to wherever God would lead us. Before we even had our updated application done, our family coordinator called excitedly with a referral, a possible child for us. As soon as we saw Joshua’s face, we knew he was ours. It was funny, after years of no news, no movement, suddenly we were on the fast track to get everything in order and get to China. Joshua’s “Gotcha Day” was Monday January 25th, he was with his forever family and we were forever changed.

I gained so much more than a son that I love dearly, I also gained in my walk and knowledge of the Lord more than I ever considered way back when we first started talking about adoption 10 years ago. I wouldn’t change any of it.

I guess it's been long enough since I posted - it's about time huh!

I have to start by saying THANK YOU to so many of you. You know who you are and I'm not listing names because there are so many of you to thank!! Thank you for checking our house while we were gone, for break ins or for random frozen pop cans bursting. Thank you for watering my plants even though you were scared to and for shoveling our driveway over and over. Thank you for picking our sorry selves up from the airport and not mentioning how awful we looked. Thank you for filling our refrigerator with food, decorating our house with welcome home signs, flowers, balloons and even making Josh's room more cute (special shout out thanks to my dear M.I.L. Ruth for that one!) Thanks to so many of you for bringing us meals (yum), bringing us cool clothes for Josh, praying for us and offering to help in so many ways. Thank you for planning, hosting and coming to the wonderful co-shower and for all the cool clothes and fun new toys Josh got. Jackson should also probably thank you for the cool new toys as well. : ) Especially thank you for being so warm and welcoming to Joshua and for your excitement for our family. Adoption is a wonderful choice that brings with it more blessings than you would think, including character growth and patience.

Josh was worth it though, what a happy guy. He loves his new room/house/toys etc. He's good with most of the food we eat, so he's easy to feed. He even likes folding laundry, helping me vacuum and ...drum roll please.....he likes running errands!!!! Yes, that wasn't a typo, he's so happy to roll through Target in a cart and wave hello at everyone and then repeat that through Trader Joe's, the gas station, wherever. I pray to the Lord God Almighty that this love of errands persists, at least until he's in school full time : )

We are adjusting well. It took us a solid week or more to sleep while the sun was down and three of us have nasty colds, but we're alive and well otherwise. Our only hiccup along the way has been that Josh is TERRIFIED of our westie, Winnie. I told him the other day he was going to have to adjust because Winnie's my furry baby and she's not going anywhere! He'll come around though, he's happy to throw her a ball and have her retrieve it as long as she doesn't touch him.

Jackson has been really sweet much of the time. He says that Josh is annoying because he copys everything he does, but I think he secretly likes it. Jack's always telling Josh that he loves him and he keep asking to sleep on the floor of Josh's room every night. He likes to show off his new brother to friends and likes to show off for his new brother. He tried extra hard at swimming lessons last night to impress Josh. It was so cute!

Well, we're doing really well here, with much help from our dear friends and family. We love you all! I promise to write more often, especially since Josh takes a 3 hour nap every day!!! (whoo hoo!) I forgot how much I loved nap time when Jackson was little.

I also promise to upload pictures here soon.

Love for now
Michelle

Video from Gotcha Room

Below is a brief video showing the "Gotcha Room".

• This is the room that the adoptive parents were brought to in Guangzhou to meet their adoptive children.
  
• Most of the kids had been brought to this location from other parts of the province (Joshua was from Shenzhen about 75 miles away).
  
• The kids were located in a waiting room/play area next to the big room shown in the video.
• One by one, the adoptive parents were brought up to meet their kids.
• There was one other couple from our adoption agency there that day. We might have been the only Americans there, most of the couples seemed to be from Europe (Spain, Italy).
• As you can hear, the room was extremely loud....filled with terrified kids meeting their strange new parents, anxious parents, and all different languages being spoken.
• It was a crazy, stressful, exhausting, overwhelmingly emotional day!
  

What we'll miss about China (and not so much)

Things we'll miss about China

• Our guides— On each leg of the trip we had Chinese guides with us. Maggie and Rosa (their English chosen names) took great care of us, became close friends and an invaluable bridge to the local culture and our children when we first met.
• Our travel group— There were 8 other adopting families on the trip, from all parts of the country and from all different backgrounds. We quickly bonded through the shared experience and built some great friendships.
• Friendliness of People— Nearly all of the people we encountered were incredibly friendly and sought out conversation. Their love of children was very apparent and they doted on both Jackson and Joshua.
  
• Variety of food— We enjoyed multiple styles of Chinese food, but also food from all over the world— Macau (a former Portugese colony now part of China), Turkish (bbq), Thai, Vientnamese, and others.
• Street Markets— We enjoyed exploring the street markets, both for the variety of foods sold there as well as some great deals on clothes/purses/jewelry.
  
• Hong Kong— We saw just a glimpse of Hong Kong, but it was enough for us to want to go back. The city is surrounded by beautiful mountains (big hills?), was clean, modern, and seemed to represent a unique blend of China and Brittan (from its colonization).
  

Things we won't miss about China:

• Censorship— There are so many things about being an American that we take for granted. While in China we weren't able to access our blog or Facebook (received 'timed out' error right away). We had access to about 8 channels— 3 of which were English speaking: CNN, HBO, and a mix of US shows primarily from the Discovery Channel. There was an earthquake in China while we were there (not near where we travelled), however no mention of it was made anywhere!
• Freedom of Religion (or lack thereof)— Chinese residents are not allowed to freely practice religion and are very aggressively persecuted for being Christians. We attended a really cool church service in Beijing at a church of about 5000 that had individuals attending from 70+ countries. It was so powerful to worship together with such a diverse congregation (a bit what heaven will be like!). The really sad part though was that Chinese residents were not allowed to attend this church.....to get in the door you had to show your foreign passport.
  
• Air Quality— The air quality really is horrible. Out of the 16 days were were there, I can only remember 3 that were relatively clear (not MN clear, but not having fog/smog with > 1/2 mile visibility). For the Olympics, China implemented a policy that cars could only be used every other day (depending on whether your license plate ended in odd or even). This process worked so well that they decided to keep it permanently. I'd hate to see what traffic and smog is like with double the cars! I don't think that Hong Kong is the poster child for cleanliness, but it was amazing how much cleaner/clearer things looked there. The roads generally were very good, but traffic is horrible. It took us about 3.5 hours to travel from Guangzhou to Hong Kong by bus (a distance of 84 miles).
  
• No birds!— I'm not sure if this is related to the air quality, but the whole time in China, I saw a total of 4 wild birds! We visited beautiful wooded parks and a fairly remote area in the Great Wall, but never once heard the sound of birds chirping. One speculation is that it may have something to do with the Avian flu that went through China (city birds poisoned to prevent spread?), another theory blames deceased Chairman Mao who had a phobia about birds and endorsed their eradication??
• Sqautty Potties— The traditional toilet used in china is essentially a hole in the ground (flushed by running water). Even in the restrooms of nice restaurants, squatty potties were the norm for BOTH men and women. In nicer restaurants there was likely to be one 'western' toilet, but in most public restrooms and restaurants there were no other options.
• Water quality— In the US we take for granted that we can drink from the tap in virtually any US city....not so in China. We did not drink tap water for fear of digestive issues, we used bottled water to brush our teeth. I asked our guides if they drink the tap water at home. They don't, they only drink bottled water.
• Staring— Staring in China is apparently not rude. Though we definitely stood out amongst the locals and a squirrelly 6 year-old son that shall go nameless often drew attention to himself without meaning to, we were stared at pretty much constantly from the locals. When I say 'stare', I don't mean a passing glance. Individuals would stare at us, but when I contact was made they continued to stare. I'm sure that there's a curiosity about Americans and definitely there was a curiosity about us already having a boy and adopting another, but we never got use to the blatant stares.
  

-Brad

Jetlag stinks!

Sorry for the lack of posts since our return. We've been home about 48 hours (arrived about 4 p.m. on 2/5), but the 14 hour time difference and colds (Michelle/Joshua) have made the readjustment slow. We were warned that the jetlag was much worse going East (home) versus the trip there, and that's definately been the case. It's one thing to work through it for yourself, but another to try to get the boys on schedule.

Josh is doing great but is understandably showing some confusion to the mamouth changes he's undergone in the past week. He's really bonding well to both Michelle and I, and playfully interacts with Jackson (or as Josh would say, "yack-son", hard consonants a challenge, not core to Mandarin). It was great to have the week and a half with Josh in China, so that he could have some familiarity while he bonded with us. But now that we're back home, everything else is different for Josh. He's not hearing Mandarin around him; the food is different (we're trying to accomodate his tastes, but it's not what he's used to; the smells are different; the weather is different (southern China is warm and humid); we're not going for daily walks in the street markets, and thankfully we're not all sleeping in the same (hotel) room.

I've observed Josh day-dreaming looking outside at the all white (snow covered) backyard and wondered what he's thinking! He came from a climate (Shenzhen) that has the same latitude as south Florida— he had never seen snow or temps lower than 50 degrees. He must be thinking he's in another world?? In China, even though the climate was warmer, in the hotel rooms the lowest we could set our thermometer was 72 degrees, so our house here is cooler and much less humid.

It's hard to conceptualize what adopted kids have to go through in their transition. Both Michelle and I have had such conflicting feelings— of both being estatic for having Josh in our lives, but also a sad realization that Josh is going through a natural 'mourning' of leaving all that he has known behind.

We were concerned about how we'd be able to communicate with Josh given that he knew no English and we know no Mandarin other than a few very limited phrases, though Jackson will tell you he knows some Chinese :) Our fears have been somewhat alleviated— it's amazing how much non-verbal communication is possible, and like most 3 year olds, he has little difficulty in letting you know what he really wants (e.g. his way). He seems to be understanding many phrases already.

Josh is a very outgoing, happy guy. In restaurants he waves and says "hello" and "bye-bye" to each table as he walks by. He has a great belly laugh and loves to be tickled. He loves to wrestle with Dad and Jackson and is a bit of a thrill seeker (rode the roller coaster in China with Jackson). He's demonstrated some OCD tendencies (like Dad), sorting and resorting toys like legos and cars.

We're glad to be back and looking forward to getting back on the routine!

-Brad

We're ready to come home!

We've had an unforgettable trip and are now a family of 4, but are ready to get home!  Today is Friday here in Guangzhou.  Yesterday we finalized Joshua's Visa at the US Consulate and today our travel group will travel to Hong Kong via a tour bus.  We're only 90 miles from Hong Kong, but due to crazy traffic it's estimated it will take 3.5 hours.  We won't have any time in Hong Kong for sightseeing, so we'll have to plan that for a return visit :)
On Saturday 2/5 we fly from Hong Kong to San Fran, then San Fran to MSP.  It's an odd feeling leaving on Saturday, flying 16 hours and getting to your final destination 4 clock hours ahead.  I've heard that the jet lag going East is much tougher, so staying awake for Sunday's Super Bowl could be a challenge!

We'll go through Customs in San Francisco, at that time Josh will officially become an American citizen!

The picture is from the Guangzhou Zoo, fulfilling another goal of seeing a panda.  I think we've nearly covered all of our trip "goals", the most importantly of course is coming home with a new son!!

Thanks to everyone for all of your prayers, support, and logistics with our house and pickup....we feel the love!

-Brad

Fwd: Swimming

Thankfully there's a nice pool here at our hotel that we've made good use of--- we've been swimming daily which is a great outlet for the squirrelly-ness of two energetic boys. The great news is that Josh loves the water. I doubt that he had ever been to a pool before, but immediately loved the water (he's a bit of a rough and tumble thrill seeker---- guess he'll fit right in!).

We bought both Jackson and Josh swim goggles here. They both wanted to put them on while we were shopping, walking around Guangzhou. Guess we shouldn't be suprised that we've been getting strange looks from the locals :)