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!

Adoption and Bonding letter (written by someone else)

Wow, does this say a lot. I've adapted it to refer to a boy for obvious reasons, (used with permission).

Dear Family and Friends,

As we get ready to embark on the most exciting event in our lives, we are thinking a lot about the people around us and how much our lives are going to change. Family has always been important to us. We are so fortunate to have such loving, involved family and friends. We appreciate the support and excitement that you have all shown to us as we have made this journey. We're thrilled about bringing our new child home! We've done a lot of reading, research and asked a lot of other adoptive parents about this process and we feel prepared to help our baby become a well-adapted member of our family.
There are some things about adoptive parenting that are the same as parenting a biological child. There are also quite a few areas that we have learned are different. Through our adoption agency, books, other adoptive parents, adoption social workers, psychologists and more, we have learned that our baby needs a specific type of environment and parenting when he first comes home in order to feel safe and secure and to learn how to live successfully in our family.
While we know that every child is different, we also understand that there are many possible things that will impact our child's beliefs and behavior when he gets home. These include how much nurturing our child received, if there was abuse or neglect, the amount and quality of food received, illnesses, the quality of care and our child's unique temperament and personality. The result of these things can include behavioral issues, emotional disorders and a sense of grief and loss from being separated from the only home and caregivers our little one has ever known.
Adoption is a traumatic and scary event for any age child whether they are newborn or 10 years old. They're being removed from all of their routines and familiar surroundings. Even babies will feel grief and sadness at an event like this. In order to help our child feel safe and learn that we are his parents, we are creating the type of environment that will help promote security during this stressful time.
When our child gets home, at the recommendation of experienced adoption professionals, we need to implement specific parenting approaches to help encourage a strong, attached, emotionally healthy family member. Our child needs to learn that we're the parents. He needs to feel nurtured and safe.
Here are some things we will be doing for our child based on research and experience with other adopted children. We'll be living a very quiet life with limited trips out and few visitors in for a little while. Social workers and psychologists tell us that when children are first adopted, they may be overwhelmed, scared, and nervous. By keeping our lives very boring at first, we'll be helping our child feel safe. This does NOT mean that we do not want visitors coming to see our little one for the first time. We will just have to limit it a little so it is not overwhelming.
We know you'll all want to hug, kiss and help spoil our new toddler, but it is recommended that we be the only ones to do that at first to improve his chances of attaching strongly to us. Until we feel our child has attached and clearly knows we are his parents, we will need to feed, change and take care of him. I know that missing out on some diaper changes will disappoint many of you. Have no fear, there will be many more once he becomes comfortable at home.
As strange as it may seem, adopted children who act very outgoing and affectionate with strangers is not a healthy thing. It is called "indiscriminate affection" and can mean that they haven't really attached to anyone. It would not be a good sign that our child has attached to us if during his first months home he will let just anyone take him and hold him without searching for his mom or dad.
For sure it is going to be a weird and wonderful experience for us. We are so excited and can't wait to bring our toddler home so you can all see him and get to know him. Things are just a little different when you are adopting a child rather than having a biological child. He will be adapting to a lot of new things . . . new parents, new family, new home, new foods, new time zone (totally opposite what he's used to). That's a lot to swallow at one time.
We appreciate your understanding in reading this. We've giving you all this letter so that you will understand how dedicated and committed we are to helping our new child adjust and adapt during this stressful time in his life. We feel confident that everything will smooth out quickly and we will be on a more normal schedule.

Sincerely,


Heather and Bill

And now we wait

Our last paperwork is at the agency, to be sent to China soon. Small Urchin ETA 2-5 months.
Waiting is not easy, they do all the paperwork by hand and are very thorough. It's good they're thorough on everybody else's paperwork, but don't they know that they should rush ours? That we, because we are getting this wonderful little boy, should be pushed to the front of the list?
Oh well, reality sets in and I realize that all our paperwork has gone slowly, so Instead of a Christmas Child, I should hope for a Valentine's day child. Or I should still be nervous and hope they don't deny our request. Did I really fill out all those forms correctly?

On time

Just so that it's on the record, Bill knows I am a time spazz, I hate to be late and I hate things to be late. I've learned to tell him ahead of time when I want something or someone, somewhere on time. This has saved us many disagreeable moments as I used to time spazz without telling Bill what time I felt things should be happening. This would confuse the heck out of Bill because he would have no idea why I was suddnely so tense and running around like the proverbial chicken. So, Bill knows I run on a different time schedule than he does. Hence my last post of "Errgh' I was time spazzing.

errgh

Our last piece of paperwork is still sitting on the table. I realize that we had a few days when we weren't home long enough to actually write it out and send it, but It should have gone out yesterday. It only needs one sentence on a second piece of paper and then it can go out. My beloved husband has left it now for 2 mornings! I'm going to remain calm, but every day matters, and 2 days is just goofy.

Reality

I realize that the best parenting plan by the best parent in the world will go out the window the very first time the parent actually gets to hold their newest child. What may work perfectly with one child will go horribly wrong with the next child. Oh well, all I personally can do is to try, try, try, and try again to be a good parent.

Ramblings on being a parent Part 3

The main issue I see and have seen through 20 years of retail experience, is that parents don't pay enough careful attention to their children. Parents of children with behavior problems AKA Brats seem to pay more attention to things, how the child is dressed, what the child wants to buy, and less to the important things in life, like is the children running like a maniac through a dangerous area. Parents like those seem to think that the store staff are baby sitters, there for their own convenience.
All of life should be a learning experience. The children should be kept nearby and allowed to ask questions of the sales staff to help learn, not allowed to run lose and break things or body parts.
I can't think that this behavior only happens at stores, I have to believe that behavior like this happens at restaurants. Except the running would be on furniture and through the restaurant, where people seem to think running is both okay and safe, a place it is definitely neither.

Ramblings on being a parent Part 2

Parenting is tough, and I certainly don't think I'll be the perfect parent. I don't think anybody can be the perfect parent. All you can do is to be consistent and love them and hope that whatever parenting plan you personally came up with doesn't screw things up too badly.
I don't believe that grown children should blame their parents for all the problems they have. Let's face it, if you have a problem and you can figure out why you have the problem, then after you figure that out it is your choice whether or not you continue that behavior. If you continue to do the problematic behavior, you have chosen to do so of your own volition, not because your parents made you that way. The problem is now yours.
If you're a parent of a young child with behavior problems and you have figure out what behavior patterns you have that feed into the mis-behavior, you now have a choice. You can continue to feed into the problem or you can adjust your responses to get appropriate small child behavior.

Dossier to China date

Our Dossier was officially sent to China 10/05/06. Now it goes to be translated, and then will be 'Logged in' at some date in the future.