Countdown

• 5 more sleeps to TingTing  (AK's way of counting down)
• 4 packed suitcases (but I think we're going to have to suck it up and pay for 5 checked bags in China.  It's HARD to pack for both snow and 75 degree temps, plus all the gear needed for a 3 year old and a 10 year old!)
• 3 excited people ( me, Mark, AK)
• 2 exhausted parents  (Who needs sleep?? )
• 1  more day until we leave for CHINA and our Olivia Ruth YuTing!!

Olivia Day should be Monday, 2/28!!  

If you want to follow our journey, please check out my new blog @ 

http://fromchinatonorthcarolina.blogspot.com  

Introducing Olivia Ruth YuTing!

We are THRILLED to announce (officially) that we are adopting again!  We are planning to adopt a nine-year-old girl from Hunan Province, China, to be called Olivia Ruth YuTing.  Yes, she's another Spicy Girl!! 


Olivia is active and restless (exactly what AK's referral said about her-- and boy was that true!), enjoys playing games and singing, and is a good student.  We cannot wait until we have our Referral Approval so we can finally begin communicating with her.  We are so excited to add another daughter to our family, and Anna Kathryn is really looking forward to having another big sister-- and traveling to China to meet her.  

It took about a year of adjustment for all three of us, but Mark and I began to seriously discuss adopting again last fall.  However, we had no idea how we could afford to adopt again, and we originally felt led to request to adopt a child younger than Anna Kathryn.  

Last January, I decided on a whim (so I thought) to look at our agency's waiting child list.  When I saw Olivia's picture I felt my heart just leap; I began to cry and told Mark that I felt very drawn to this photo of a young girl with sparkling eyes and a shy smile.  I wanted to know more about her.  We prayed and agreed to take things a step at a time, as we felt the Lord leading us.  The Lord kept opening the doors to proceed, including providing the first 1/3 of our adoption expenses so we could start gathering our documents and get our home study done.  Gathering our paperwork has taken longer than we anticipated (honestly, doesn't it always??), but even in our impatience we are confident that the Lord's timing is perfect. 

We sent our dossier to China on September 10 and were logged in on September 17, and now are waiting for all the remaining approvals.  We are hoping that we will travel by the end of the year (miracles can happen!).  

We are praying specifically that no matter when we do travel, we will be home before Olivia's 10th birthday in mid-February.  As well as being an older child, Olivia has a manageable but significant medical need, and she has been waiting a very long time for a family.  We feel a sense of urgency as we prepare to adopt her and bring her into the family.

Please join us in praying for Olivia as we prepare to bring her home, as she faces a huge number of changes and adjustments.  We are also praying for a kindred spirit between her and Anna Kathryn; that Mark and I would be wise and compassionate as we deal with the parenting challenges before us and we walk through this new territory together.   

We will keep you posted as we get closer to bringing Olivia home!

Two Years Ago...

... we rejoiced over Anna Kathryn. In our arms. At last.

And today-- two short years later--

Today, she is even more firmly embedded in our hearts. Our home is noisy with laughter, games, reading, singing (and because she is a hard-headed toddler, a good bit of wailing), filled with toys, and always time for snuggling. Life continues to be SO GOOD with our Snickerdoodle.

The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.

If you feel like a trip down memory lane, read about our first family day here.

Been a Long Time Gone...

I know it's been a ridiculously long time since I posted, and this isn't even a current photo in the screen below!  (It is one of my faves, though.)   I am testing out this super-fun tool, VoiceThread, for a project at school that I am collaborating on with another teacher, and realized that I could post VoiceThreads here really easily .  I made this in about 2 minutes, no joke, and uploaded it to Blogger in no time.  This is the busy mom's way to blog:  upload a photo, speak, and voila:  a post!   Hmmm, I may start blogging again after all!  

Anyway, M and AK and I are having a wonderful spring.   We are heading into the home stretch of another school year, I am finishing my third-to-last class for my Master's degree, and AK is potty training sloooooooowly.  Busy days, for sure!  

And, we have a few other things we are working on...   but that's another post for another day!  

Happy Forever Family Day!

It's our first anniversary of our Gotcha Day today!  That was such a whirlwind day...

... from waking up in our hotel in Nanchang and nervously waiting in the room all morning for fear of missing that knock on the door that meant that the babies were here.

The first moment I saw Anna Kathryn and our guide Sally said to me, which baby is yours?  Um, the pressure!  They had two Bo babies, and I knew which one was AK immediately, but was still afraid of picking the wrong baby!  Then, the sweetest moment:  the handover...

Mark delighting in his newest, long-awaited daughter.

The first chance to really look at her, hold her, begin to know her instead of just the idea of her.

 Mark and I got some more time to play with Anna Kathryn while we waited at the various government offices to complete the adoption and do her paperwork for her passport.

After a bottle for AK, lunch and a nap, we were whisked off for all the official paperwork.  Anna Kathryn seemed a bit curious about us, but not overly upset at suddenly being placed in the arms of total strangers.  She had traveled for nearly 4 hours and it had been a big day for her already:  her first trip out of the orphanage, new parents and an afternoon of errands, basically. She was most interested in the toys we showed her and her surroundings.  She loves to investigate and examine everything and that day was no exception!

Now I can look back and see that the look in her eyes was very detached.  She did not melt down or shut down as many babies do when introduced to their new families, but understandably was trying to make sense of this huge transition and change from the familiar to the completely unknown.  She came to us with only the clothes she was wearing.  I can't even imagine what was going through her head, although from the first she seemed to recognize that we belonged to her and she to us.    

On that day, we saw the plans we had made, and the plans the Lord had for us, come together in the most beautiful way.  Just as we come before God and are adopted by him to be his child, though we have nothing to give him but our love and trust-- it was the same for us with Anna Kathryn.  She was just herself.  And she was now our child.  While I loved her from the first day she was a hope in my heart, that was nothing compared to that moment she was placed in my arms.  And it's just grown each day of the last year.  

No surprise here-- Mark coaxed the first smile from our stoic little baby!

Unlike most families, our "harmonious period" was just a few hours instead of the usual 24 hours.  This is supposed to give the adoptive family a brief time in which to get to know your child a bit and note if there are any unexpected issues.  However, due to the holiday (we traveled during the Mid-Autumn Festival) we got AK a day later than planned, so the whole process was compressed into a few hours.  She arrived in our hotel room just after 11 am and we were done around 4 PM with all the paperwork. 

 I was so excited and emotions ran so high I remember few details of the afternoon, but we truly had no concerns and answered "yes" confidently when asked by the notary if we found our child to be "satisfactory".  The two things I remember distinctly is the feel of her gums as she chewed on my finger as we careened through the crazy Nanchang traffic in the van, and the elation and relief when Sally told us that the adoption was final and we were officially a family!

We didn't attempt a bath the first night but we did change her out of the sleeper she had worn all day and put her into clean jammies.  Before that we played a bit on the bed.  She seemed to love the freedom of no clothes-- and all the attention!  She was relaxed and reasonably content, and fell asleep in my arms soon after we took this picture. 

What a day!  Scary, exhilarating, hectic, joyful.  If you want to read more about it, my post from our travel journal is here.  

Today we had a fairly regular day.  I had a ridiculously crazy day at work, Mark had to work late, and AK and I met Allison for our weekly mochas and shopping at Target.  I spent several moment throughout the day remembering last Sept. 16 and wiping away a tear here and there. Every day I am so thankful and grateful for the gift and blessing of being Anna Kathryn's mommy.  

We plan to celebrate as a family tomorrow.  Tomorrow morning is our one-year post-placement visit and we took the day off, so we have a family outing and then dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant planned for the afternoon.  We bought gifts for future Gotcha Days in China, but AK is too young for them just yet, so this year she is getting the DVD "Big Bird in China" and the book "Moonbeams, Dumplings, and Dragon Boats.

And here is our Snickerdoodle, one year later:

Happy forever family day to all of our travel buddies today!  What an amazing year of blessings we have had!!

Happy Mother's Day

...and it was!!  My first Mother's Day was just wonderful.  Definitely a big improvement over the past few years, when I generally hid out at home with Mark.  Mother's Day was just so difficult and such a painful reminder of what I longed more more than anything through all the years of fertility treatments and the long wait to adopt.  I loved honoring our mothers and grandmothers, but with everyone living so far away the day just seemed empty, and a sad reminder of my lack of motherhood.

Three years ago today, we had just worked through the devastation of an unsuccessful year and a half on the fertility roller coaster.   We knew it was time, at last, to turn towards adoption with our whole hearts.  We spent parts of Mother's Day excitedly looking through packets and watching DVDs from various agencies which facilitate international adoption.  By the end of the afternoon we had settled on a country and an agency.  On that hopeful, optimistic, Mother's Day, in my wildest dreams, I never could have envisioned the sheer joy that this has brought to my life:

But as with all things, that which does not come easily is much sweeter once it is ours.  

This day was leisurely. We ended up not going to church, because AK was up in the night for a long time and Mark ended up staying up til all hours with her. I let them sleep in -- AK slept until 10:20! Mark fixed a big breakfast, and then we just hung out, played and did a few things around the house. Mark and Anna Kathryn had cards and gifts for me (a coupon book for all kinds of treats: everything from a massage to a week off from the dishes!)Our big outing was to the grocery store. After lunch, AK and Mark napped, and I spent a blissful few hours reading a novel and the Sunday paper.  

Mark and Anna Kathryn fixed a yummy dinner: and then we went for a walk and chatted with the neighbors after calling all of the moms and grandmothers to wish them a Happy Mother's Day.

Maybe no one will notice...

...if I munch on this raw piece of sweet potato!

My two chefs

This day was filled with ordinary things, but it was wonderful nevertheless. My husband and my daughter showered me with love all day. Truly, my best gift came when I went into Anna Kathryn's room to wake her, and she looked at me and said, "Mama!"

What I have longed to hear for so long, to be for so long. I don't forget the days of painful waiting, and the tears of Mother's Days in the past. But I rejoice in the present and our gift from God: Anna Kathryn. My dream has come true.

Spring Break part 3: Beauty Parlor

Anna Kathryn, Nana, and Pop-pop

December 2008

Anna Kathryn also had lots of time with her grandparents (my parents) during our trip.  Nana and Pop-pop are two of her very favorite people and she just reveled in all the attention and love they lavished on her.  My dad does the thing where he pops his cheek to make Anna Kathryn giggle. We call that "pop-popping," since that's also what all the grandchildren (well, the one that talks-- my niece, Emily!) call him.  Anna Kathryn very quickly picked up on this trick and will imitate him; if we talk to my dad on the phone that's what she does to indicate that she knows she's talking to him.  In fact, all we have to do is say "Pop-pop" and she pops her cheek.  She loves to read stories with her grandfather, snuggle on his lap. show him her treasures,  and look at his very cool model train layout.  

A special thing happened while we were with my folks over Easter: Anna Kathryn said "Nana" for the first time!  My mom was SO excited.  Anna Kathryn loves to play games, read stories and do puzzles on the floor with my mom.  Her very favorite thing to do with my mom is to ride on Nana's lap on her scooter.  (When she sees people on a scooter or in a wheelchair now, she always says "Nana!").  

So when Anna Kathryn decided it was time to play beauty partner, she had very willing victims, er, customers in Nana and Pop-pop.

Once Pop-pop was handsomely styled, it was time for Nana's makeover.  It is apparently necessary to chew on one's favorite towel as one does hair!  

Off topic (at least as far as spring break goes):  head over to Allison's blog to see all the fun Anna Kathryn and Maggie had yesterday!  It's beginning to feel a lot like summer!!

Spring Break part 2: A Tea Party

We are so blessed to have been able to spend two days of our visit with my grandparents. Mamapa and Grandaddy are the foundation of our family and we are blessed by their leadership and love for all of us!  We haven't seen them since Christmas, so it was especially nice to have time now to visit with them.  They of course noticed right away how much Anna Kathryn has changed and grown up since Christmas-- she is now walking (often running), talking more, and definitely wants her own way in things!  She had a terrific time playing with and entertaining them. 

One of my favorite family stories is about the day my younger sister was born.  I was 2 1/2 them and spent the day with Mamapa while my mom labored at the hospital with my dad alongside her. Family lore has it that I hosted an all day tea party, and  Mamapa drank cup after cup of imaginary tea to entertain me.   If it had been real tea she would have been floating away by the day's end!

Anna Kathryn's favorite toy right now is her tea set (complete with a British-voiced singing tea pot), so she carried on the family tradition by having a tea party of her own with Mamapa and Grandaddy.  They enthusiastically joined in the fun!

Would you like a spot of tea?

I'll pour, Granddaddy!

Try the cakes, too; I hear the chocolate is the tastiest.

Mamapa, I think you need a refill.

This tea is delicious!

Why, I will take another cup, thank you!  This stuff's better than apple juice!

A happy hostess and beloved great-granddaughter.

Spring Break part 1: Easter Sunday

We enjoyed a short but relaxing spring break in Florida with my parents and grandparents last week.  We enjoyed the first day of our holiday on Good Friday, and spent the day at home doing chores, hanging out, and playing with Anna Kathryn. 

Saturday, after The Longest Car Ride Ever, we arrived at my folks' house.  We had a joyful reunion with my parents and grandparents, whom we hadn't see since Christmas.  Mom let AK sip some of her Vitamin Water (sounds healthy, right?)  and we watched AK run in circles for about an hour.  Apparently there is much sugar and corn syrup along with the vitamins in Vitamin Water, plus she'd been cooped up for the past 11 hours.  Whew.  Think we'll be sticking to apple juice from now on. 

Sunday morning arrived and with it Easter!  We skipped sunrise service, opting for a little extra sleep.  Not much extra, since Anna Kathryn was up, bright and early, at 5:45 a.m.  We had a blessed and relaxing day celebrating the Resurrection as a family.  I of course had AK's Easter ensemble planned to the last detail.  She looked so cute!  It was a different Easter service for me, since I spent it in the nursery with Anna Kathryn, who was more wiggly than usual in church.  She was able to make it until Children's Church, so I got to enjoy the music, but missed the sermon.  After church we feasted on ham and all the side dishes, watched movies, took a walk, played with all the "new" toys in Nana's toy closet, and enjoyed a family day together. 

Happy Easter!

Visiting with friends at Dad's church.

We attempted to take a "four generations" picture of my mom, Mamapa (my grandmother), me and Anna Kathryn... as usual, the results are more hilarious than frame-worthy. 

Attempt #1.  Anna Kathryn decides to examine the tree. 

Attempt#2: Anna Kathryn is not really into the photo shoot.  Escape is on her agenda. 

Attempt #3:  Oh well, it was worth a try!

Oooh, for me?? 

My mom, aka Nana, is the Queen of the Easter Basket.  For a couple of reasons, we ended up not doing a real Easter basket for Anna Kathryn this year.  My mom, though is a firm believer in the Easter Basket and always is prepared for surprises for little ones.  She had some goodies and so did I.   We combined our loot and Anna Kathryn had a great time digging in the basket to find all of her treats.  

Sharing her Cheerios with Pop-Pop.  I just love this picture!