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HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Today is Acer's second birthday!  We hope to have him home before his next one. 

My husband

There are many reasons I love my husband, and why I'm proud of him. Recently he showed me in a big way, what a wonderful guy he is.
I've been in contact with 2 women who have actually been to Jingdezhen SWI and seen Acer and his foster mother. They both describe him as blind. When I told Bill what they were saying and the fact that this might cancel out our hope that he would be a coke bottle glasses kid, he accepted it no problem. When I asked if it made any difference, and if he still wanted to go forward with the adoption, he didn't hesitate at all, he just said, 'Sweetie, you don't function well without your glasses either'
So now we make plans for leader dogs instead of coke bottle glasses. I can't wait to get him to the opthamologist & let him tell me what's really wrong, and if there's any vision at all.
The blessing is that we're in an area where there are a lot of resources for blind people.
I know some people would ask why we're going ahead with the adoption with the change in visual status (unofficially). I guess it's like when you have a Bio child, if they turn out to be blind, you don't stop loving the child, you just deal with the new issue as it comes up.

Another 'Co-incidence?'

We believe that God is guiding us through this process, first in actually 'finding' Acer and in being able to request his info. I mean the fact that the number for the little girl we were looking at at first, pulled up the picture of Acer. The fact that despite his obvious cuteness, no one even looked at his folio.
So what is our latest 'Co-incidence?' The fact that for no real reason I decided to joined a Jingdezhen adoption chat group last week. The fact that the group has decided to get an agency to help them sponsor children and the agency just gave them a list of 20 children on the 12th. The fact that one of those children was ACER (and I was able to recognize him despite 6 months growth).
Acer'd already been chosen to be sponsored, but the lady in charge thinks there will be no problem switching.
Wow!
Bill'll be posting the updated picture soon.
note from 1/11/06
The Chinese Gov't doesn't like you to post pictures until after the adoption is finalized so we've removed our older pictures and won't be posting the new ones

Yeah, yippee, wahoo, the bloodwork came in!

We finally got new bloodwork for Acer and all the numbers look good. All rates are well within normal ranges. We'd asked for his bloodwork update way back at the end of August and it finally arrived today. I was worried because his 6 months bloodwork he had low hemoglobin and platelet counts and now we know everything's normal. Extra reassuring that all is well with our little one.

Timing is everything

We've recently heard that the regulations regarding standards for adopting a child from China are going to change May 1, 2007. These changes won't affect us for Acer's adoption because we already have our paperwork in. It won't affect anyone who has their paperwork in before then, but boy will it affect those coming after. China is able to tighten up their standards because there are currently 2 applications for every child, so they can afford to be pickier.
When Bill and I originally talked about children, early in our marriage, we had decided to try to have bio children until I was 40 and then if no luck, we'd adopt. It's really a good thing we didn't wait, I turn 40 on July 5th, 2007. We would have been under the new stricter requirements, and I'm not sure we would make the new financial new worth part.
Another big change coming up in the adoption world will be USA's joining the Hague convention on adoption practices. Some agencies will be unable to complete adoptions if they don't get accredited, some countries will be unacceptable to adopt from and some new countries will open up. That doesn't directly affect us right now, but if we want a second child and can't go back to China, it might.
So, we're really glad we started when we did, and found Acer and we'll just have to wait and see what the future holds for all of us.

Are you ready for parenthood by Dear Abby

These are great questions, I wish more thought went into more pregnancies.



ARE YOU READY FOR PARENTHOOD?

(1) Can you support the child financially? Children are expensive. I always urge people to complete their education and delay parenthood until they are self-supporting, in case they should find themselves in the role of sole provider.

(2) Can you support the child emotionally? Babies are cute, but they are also completely helpless and emotionally needy. While some young women say they want a baby so they'll have someone to love them, the reality is it's the parent's responsibility to love and sacrifice for the child. In plain English, this means the end of a normal teenage social life because babies are extremely time-consuming.

(3) Are you prepared to be a consistent parent? Children learn by example -- both good and bad. Are you prepared to be a role model for the behaviors you want your child to mimic? Because mimic they do. They learn more from what they observe than what they're told.

(4) Have you read up on child development? Are your expectations of what a child should be able to accomplish as he or she reaches various chronological milestones realistic? Ditto for your partner, whether or not he or she is the child's biological parent.

(5) Are you prepared to put someone else's needs before your own for the next 18 to 21 years? Remember, babies can't be returned to the manufacturer for a refund if you're not 100 percent satisfied. Sometimes they come with serious challenges. Can you cope with those realities?

An excellent letter about what to expect from an adopted child

Below is a letter from Amy Eldridge, from Love Without Boundaries, addressing the recent adoption disruptions and parental preparedness. If you are reading this, think about posting it on your site - a waiting parent who reads your blog may benefit from it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~
I have been so saddened by this situation. I most definitely wish there was a way to educate ALL adoptive parents about the truths of institutional care, however I have come to realize in my daily work that there are just as many parents who are not online reading everything they can find on adoption and there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of parents out there who have no idea what life is like for a child in an orphanage, and who head overseas to pick up their "China doll" only to be handed a baby who is unresponsive, thin, unable to eat... and on and on and on.

While adopting my son last month, I walked several times over to the White Swan to talk to parents, and over and over I spoke with moms and dads who had no clue whatsoever about the issues their kids were having. I heard so many times things like, "she won't eat solid foods" (oral aversion), "she has no muscle tone" (muscle atrophy from lying in a crib all day), "she won't smile" (pure grieving from being taken from her foster mom). I guess since I live China 24/7, I assume everyone adopting does, too, which is not the case.

I talked to at least a dozen parents who didn't even know their child's orphanage name, and while I gently said "you might want to memorize that for your child's sake", at the same time I was trying to process how many parents get all the way to China without ever reading about post-institutional issues. It was sobering to me.

Babies in the NSN (non special needs) as well as the SN (special needs) path can have issues with attachment, motor skills, emotional issues and more. I think all of us on the WCC (Waiting Children China) list acknowledge that, while also acknowledging that all children (whether bio or not) can have these same issues. Living in an orphanage of course increases the odds.

I think the easy out is to say that agencies have to do more, as well as social workers, but I do think that most of them do try to give information to the parents but often parents don't want to hear it or else think it won't happen to them. Again, I am often surprised to talk to parents leaving soon and to realize they are not prepared. One family was adopting from our foster care program, and when I told them that the child was DEEPLY attached to the mom, the father said, "guess she might cry for an hour or so then?" An hour or so? She had been in foster care for over a year! I tried to explain that this little girl was about
ready to lose everything she had ever known, and that they should not expect her to be sunny, happy, and full of personality after an hour. I told them to please remember the 72 hour rule.......that after 72 hours they would probably see her spark, but that she would probably grieve for a long time after that as well.

I think for many adoptive parents, they just don't want to read the "bad stuff", and so I do think that ultimately it is the parents who are at fault for not doing more to educate themselves. There certainly are books galore out there about post-institutional issues. I equate this to when I was pregnant with my kids and I would read "What to Expect When Expecting", and I would get to the C-section part and always skip it. Each and every time I would jump to the next chapter as "that wasn't
going to happen to me". Well, on my fifth baby, when they were rushing me in for an emergency C section, I sure was wishing I had read that section earlier! But at that point in the OR, while they were strapping my hands down to the table, it was too late, and so I felt complete panic when I could have been prepared. I think adoption from China is very similar to giving birth...it is much more rosy to only read the happy stories on APC, but I now encourage every family I meet to read the harder ones as well, because if you are the family who is handed a child that is limp and listless and who looks autistic, what you
have learned in the past will help you make the right decision for your family during those very emotional first few days.

I have been called many times in the last few years by parents in China worried about their children. I agree that having a support network to help you through the initial time is essential. Everyone should go to China with at least one phone number of someone they can call if they are panicked upon meeting their new child. I remember feeling so alone when I was handed my daughter and she was so tiny and limp. Because our foundation often helps with the kids who have been disrupted, I am aware that sometimes there are children who have much more serious issues than originally reported... and that is such a hard thing for a parent to get to China and then discover their child is truly autistic or has serious mental delays.

I think everyone on both the China and international side would agree that it is absolutely wrong of an orphanage to not be honest in their reports, and no one would excuse that, but I also know without a doubt that the majority of kids who are disrupted are just suffering from institutional issues and would catch up quickly in a loving home. It is always a very sad day for the orphanage and everyone involved when a child that they know is absolutely fine, but perhaps thin and grieving, is returned by their new parents for being "delayed".

I think far too many people believe their child's life is going to begin the moment they meet them. The truth is, and everyone must realize it...
a child's life is going on RIGHT NOW in China, and all of their experiences are shaping who they are.

The vast majority of aunties that I have met in China are such kind and caring people, but it absolutely is not the same as having a mom and dad at your beck and call. I have had new parents call and say "we didn't think living in an orphanage
would affect her at all", and those statements truly puzzle me. How could they not contemplate life in an orphanage?

Walk through Babies R Us and you will see every gadget known to man to make our children's lives here as ideal as possible. Now Americans have two way video monitors, so that when baby awakens not only can mommy see when to immediately rush in and comfort him, but she can talk to baby so that he doesn't even have one single second where he feels alone. How
many new parents would have a newborn and then put that baby in a crib 22 hours a day on their own? How many would only feed their baby, even if they were really crying hard, every 8 hours? Or prop the bottle in her crib and then not watch to see if she ever really ate?

Of course no one would do that...we feed newborns on demand, comfort on demand, love continuously. .. and whether people want to recognize it or not, that is NOT the life of an orphan in an institution. ...even when the aunties are as good as gold. I remember one night when I took some volunteers in for the night shift in an orphanage, when normally just a few aunties are working. One mom looked at me with tears in her eyes as she slowly realized that it was absolutely impossible with just two hands to feed every child, to comfort every child, to soothe every baby who was crying. She said her heart was aching to realize that her own daughter most likely had many, many times where she cried without someone to comfort her.....and she told me that for the first time she finally understood why her daughter had such a deep seated fear of
being out of her mom's sight.

The aunties are trying their absolute best, but that doesn't equal mother/child care. I remember being in an orphanage in the north this past winter and the aunties were so proud of how they had 6-8 layers of clothes and blankets on every baby to keep them warm. They were swaddled so tight that they couldn't move, but it was freezing in the orphanage and so the aunties wanted the babies to stay as warm as possible. What alternative did they have? It really was freezing there..I was cold
in my wool coat, so the babies couldn't be up and about with just 1-2 layers on, with the ability to move their arms and legs. To stay warm they had to be immobile, and so of course all of those kids have weak muscle tone. But the aunties were truly trying their best, and when a parent is given one of those beautiful children on adoption day, I am sure they will go back to their room with concern and say "she can't sit up by herself..she can't put weight on her legs". That is absolutely the truth, but she also survived 10 degree weather in a very cold province and she will catch up soon enough with parents to encourage her.

To not acknowledge that living in orphanage circumstances can cause lower body weights, low muscle tone, inability to make good eye contact is very sad to me. Can it be overcome? Most definitely! The one thing I have learned over and over again about the kids in China is that they are fighters and survivors. But for some reason, people seem to want to ignore these issues in public forums.

Recently, one of our medical babies that we had met several times in person was adopted, and we all knew that this child was
a "spitfire". When the family arrived and spent a few days with her, they decided she was too much of a handful for them and they wanted to disrupt. She absolutely was not what they expected. When they called their agency, they were told they had two choices: adopt the child, bring her to the US, and change their expectations of what they were hoping for, or adopt the child, bring her to the US and the agency would have a family waiting at the airport to adopt her locally. Option three of leaving the child in China was never once given. I admire that agency so much, as they were thinking of the child and the child alone. The family followed through with the adoption and handed the little girl to a new family upon her arrival in the US. As horrible and tragic and emotional as it was for everyone involved...I still feel this was the right decision for the agency to make. It was done in the absolute best interest of the child, who had waited a long, long time for a family.

I wish more agencies would advocate for the rights of the child, instead of always seeming to give in to the parents, especially in those cases when they know with absolute certainty that nothing is permanently wrong with the
child. Recently with another disruption, the agency I spoke with told me that it was "easier" to just get the family a new baby.

Sometimes easier does not equal right. The first baby who was rejected has now been labeled "mentally challenged" even though the agency knew the child was really going to be okay.

I think all of us, who do realize that delays occur and that babies can usually overcome them, should be these children's advocates by continually trying to educate new parents on what to expect in China. By helping them be better prepared, we just might help stop a disruption in the future. I love Chinese adoption with my whole heart, and it is my life's work... but I also want every family who goes to get their baby to go with their eyes open and to be as emotionally prepared as possible, for the child's sake.

Amy Eldridge, Love Without Boundaries

Time, Time, Time

I pray that our travel approval comes quickly, I want to be approved and get Acer home Reality is that the China Center of Adoption Affairs is swamped with many more applications than they have children's information. I do know they're at least looking at our information, otherwise they wouldn't have asked for more, but based on what I'll paste below, my thoughts of having Acer home by Easter may just not happen. It might, but our dossier was submitted to the CCAA on 10/18/2006

Length of waiting process: Once dossier is submitted to the CCAA, on average, it can take 4 to 6
months for CCAA to issue Travel Approval (TA). Once TA is issued, CHI can start making
your travel plans.

Travel Information: Upon receiving your Travel Approval (TA) your schedule will be coordinated
with other Waiting Children Families and/or with the NSN Referral Families waiting to travel. You may
be traveling to your child's Province without other CHI families, but a CHI Coordinator will accompany
you during the whole process. You will travel approximately 4-6 weeks after receiving your TA.

Nothing Happening Here

Well, this has been a 2 week period when we've not had a single piece of paperwork to submit, re-do, or create. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself.

Aaah, I know I have to find a sturdy box to pack away my china tea cups and stuff that are currently on a wall shelf hanging above Acer's bed. Exciting I know. Maybe I could try to fit them in the regular cupboard, that would involve re-arranging a lot of dishes, also high on the excitement factor. Woo Woo, feel my joy.

Log in Date Finally!

We were pleased to find that our LID is 11/14! A little tiny bit sooner than I'd expected. Here is the notice we got on our CHI chat group.

Congratulations to the 27 CHI families whose dossiers left our St.
Louis office on 10/5/06 (DTC), our Beijing office submitted your
dossiers to the CCAA on 10/18/06 and the CCAA logged your dossiers in
on 11/14/06.

Yeah Us!

Yet more paperwork

Yesterday I received a call from two of the agency staff, they explained that the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) had requested that I write a letter explaining my being a birth mother to an adopted baby. While I felt this was a good thing, because it meant they were already looking at our paperwork, it was frustrating because it's a slow down and I thought this was well addressed in our home study and application. Here's the letter I came up with. I hope this works!



To the China Center of Adoption Affairs
Thank you for reviewing our request to adopt JSC from Jindezhen, Jiangxi Province. As part of this review I was asked to explain about the child I gave up for adoption, what happened and my thought process; what is our current relationship; and whether the child will come back in the future.
In the summer of 1998, when I discovered I was pregnant, I was shocked, I didn't think I could get pregnant at all. I was not married, not in a relationship with a man with whom I wanted to be married, not in a financially rewarding job and not going to have an abortion. As a parent your first responsibility is to do what is best for the child. What was best for my child was to be raised in a stable, secure 2 parent family, as I wasn't able to provide that, I went looking for a couple who were.
I contacted a lifelong friend who had relatives, whom I'd met, who had lost several babies to miscarriages and asked him to ask them if they were interested in adopting, in an open adoption. This couple had been married for 17 years by this point, and had the stability and security I was looking for, for my baby. They were actually in the process of adopting a girl from China at this point, and decided to adopt both children so their children would have siblings.
The adoptive family and I have kept in touch and we meet yearly at the wife's father's home for a weekend visit. They are a warm, close, loving family and have made both myself and my husband Bill welcome during the visits. I have watched my son grow and mature in their care, turning into an intelligent, funny child. He also has a good relationship with his sister, with little sibling rivalry.
I have left the timing of telling him he is adopted up to the adoptive parents, as well as the fact that I am his biological mother. Right now, he just knows me as someone he meets at his grandparents once a year, a friend of the family.
During the adoption process I signed away my right to sue for custody but I kept my right to sue for visitation. I feel it would be very harmful to him to be taken from his family, but I never want to be totally excluded from his life. If as a teenager or adult he wanted to come for a visit to get to know me and my family better, we would welcome him, but his true family is the one who raised him from the day he was born, not the one who gave birth to him.
The decision I made, to give up my son for adoption was the hardest decision I ever made, but it is a decision I am totally at peace with. I would never try to wrest him from his adoptive family and undo all the good I achieved by placing him with a loving stable family. My son will always be a part of my life, always loved by me, but he won't come back to me, to our household, he will stay with his family because that is what is best for him.
Thank you again for considering our application to adopt Jing Shen Chao.
Sincerely,
Heather Annis Bowman-Tomlinson

Eyesight

I just visited a very good sight dealing with what I believe will be part of Acer's vision problems. The site seems to day that surgery will be part of the cure and that therapy will be another part, which is extremely logical. It warned that some surgeons will think that surgery is the best option and will ignore therapy options. So I will continure to study on this and go armed to our appointments with knowledge.

http://www.strabismus.org/index.html

Milestone

For the past 2.5 months, I've had a bookmark on my web browser. The bookmark to Acer's 6 month old pictures and brief medical description, the page where we fell in love with this small boy. I've watched as the description under his picture went from 'being reviewed' to PLACED, as the descriptions under the other children in the batch underwent the same process ahead of his description.

From a group of 35 waiting children, with varying problems, Acer was one of the few left. No one even looked at his file before we did. I have to wonder why. There were children with far more severe or disfiguring problems than his, he has a wonderful cute chubby face, why did no one look? I sincerely believe he was meant for us, he was protected for us, that's why no one else looked.

Today I clicked back to the bookmark to look at those baby pictures and the page is gone. They're bringing in another batch of waiting children, with special needs like Acer, and so Acer's page is gone, cleaned away to make room for the new children.

I'm happy he's found a home and doesn't need to be on the waiting children site anymore, but sad because those were the only baby pictures we may ever have for him and I don't have a copy.

Note,(1/15) I found that the SN Co-ordinator had actually sent us those pictures, I've gotten some from people who've actually seen him and am up to 12 pictures of him now! Album here we come!

Maybe Acer won't go back to the orphanage

I was re-visiting the site about Acer's SWI (State welfare agency) when I came across the following line.


In the summer of 2004, one family found out that there are a few infants and toddlers living in the SWI. Each child's situation is different. Some babies have multiple foster parents, some have only one. Some come to the orphanage 2 or 3 weeks early and some stay with their foster parents up until the day they travel to Nanchang. There is no firm set plan for all children.

It gave me hope, that He'll be allowed to stay with his family. For a guy with limited vision I can't help but feel it would be better for him to stay in familiar surroundings.

You can visit this site via the links on the right of the page

Link to visit, very powerful

I just visited this link and read the article. Wow, very well written and it brings up things you just don't think of and explains them to you in a way you can understand.

It's called perspective
http://www.emkpress.com/perspective.html

Dossier Copy Finally arrives back home!

Our Dossier copy was in the mail tonite when I got home. Yeah! We'll need this when we go over to pick up Acer. What was interesting to us were the front couple pages where the agency had put our pictures into a collage-esque effect. They chose to put the picture of our Chinese language class barbecue at our house on the front page. I think they liked the fact that we had a mix of obviously Asian with obviously not Asian. I'll have to email our friends from class Mark & Kristin, who are waiting for their referral, and let them know they're part of our dossier.

Acer back in the orphanage?

I just found out from another mother to be (out of the same waiting child batch and the same province as Acer) that she heard they will take Acer (and her Hannah) away from the foster families they've been with and put them in the orphanage before we come get them. She says it's so they bond better with us, but I hate to think of the little guy pulled out of his foster family and put into a situation where they don't really know him. No sad little guys! He'll be all confused and lonely for so long until we get there.

Letter of Intent

We received a postcard yesterday that stated our letter of intent had been sent to China 10/27!
Yeah! One more step down the road to Acer!

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Don't forget to read from the bottom up if you want to read this in chronological order!