Life Unscripted - Capturing Our Moments in Life, Faith, & Adoption

The Christmas Memories Meltdown

2017-01-11T18:10:00.000-08:00

Christmas. That magical time of the year that we all love to see come, yet hate to see go. This was our reality this past weekend. Little one is three and this was her second Christmas with us and this season was filled with every bit of the awe and wonder of a child. She was engaged in every. single. moment.

The lights-

The nativity & the story of Christmas-

Decorating the tree-

The special treats that only come at Christmas-

Dressing up for parties-

Putting out cookies for Santa- (and a large one we might add because she said Santa was a big man so needed a big cookie)

Picking out presents for others- (these were some of her choices for daddy’s gift she wanted to give him)

The Ninja Turtle ice cream bowl won and found itself under the tree-

Reading Christmas stories-

Opening presents-

… and then it happened.

This past weekend came, things slowed down, and we finally took down the decorations, the tree, and in her mind Christmas was now officially over - and the Christmas meltdown came.

Tears.

…as the stockings were folded and tucked away for one more year…

Tears.

…as her almond shaped eyes watch every ornament start to disappear from off the tree…

She loved every ounce of Christmas like no one I’ve ever seen and there was this disappointment in her tear-filled eyes that all of the glitter, the sparkle, and magic of Christmas was now over. (and apparently taking down the decorations made it official) With tears streaming down her cheeks, she held onto us and our only condolence in the matter, was reminding her that we get to decorate for Chinese New Year very soon, so she would get to help put up some new decorations again.

As we took the decorations down for yet another year, I couldn’t help but reflect on so many of the items and ornaments that have come to have special meaning as part of our Christmas. When we first married, we chose to adopt one of the traditions that I had seen in my parent’s marriage—collecting a special ornament from all of the places that we have gone together or ornaments to commemorate special moments from that year. We have a tree that is mainly white, silver and has a few accent colors.

We also have a whimsical child’s tree for Little One to collect ornaments that are special to her and also represent various memories.

As you can imagine, you cannot always find an ornament easily where you choose to travel, but somehow we’ve managed to look for at least an object that I could creatively turn into an ornament in some way, so that we would forever remember that moment in time each year that Christmas comes along. In addition to ornaments we have collected, we have also been given some wonderful ornaments over the years that also bring back special memories of places, events or people in our lives.

As the boxes came out and little fingers helped to take each of these memories off of the tree, we reminisced of so many special moments God has given both of us in this journey of life and the ornaments that represent each of these stories and so many God moments-

Of my first trip overseas to India, meeting lepers and 600 orphans and seeing the dire poverty and conditions the majority of our world lives in…

Of a special engagement proposal from a wonderful husband who is now a wonderful father…

Of materials once hung around a wedding reception space and now gets spread out underneath our presents and draped beneath our Christmas tree…

Of an engagement ring, and trips to San Francisco and Seattle…

Of ornaments made by Nate and I in our first year of marriage on a “date night” (pretty sure he never let me talk him into that again)…

Of a special Chinese co-worker I first worked with who taught me how to make authentic Chinese dumplings and dipping sauce…

Of a nativity scene from South America that reminds me of all of the places both visited and lived…

Of wrinkled hands of a Grandma that made an angel-

A dove that represents women and girls in Cambodia that have been victims of sex trafficking, yet have now been rescued…

Of people in Korea that need our prayers and who handcrafted stars and birds as a way to remind us to pray for them…

Of several trips to Guatemala with special friends to minister to our adopted village. Of a special trip where we found this star ornament the year we had been matched with our daughter just days before leaving for Guatemala. While there we walked dusty roads of our rural village, built a church building, all the while wondering what it was like for our little one to have been in her village in China for a short period of time and what her life currently was like…

Of ornaments given to commemorate us being matched that year…one of which our official adoption photo given to us in China fit absolutely perfectly in.

Of items discovered in China during our adoption trip that will forever remind us of that special time…and the lady in China that gave our little one a butterfly ornament…

Of a little girl that was once an orphan, but is now our daughter. Of that moment that she became ours and changed her name & those first socks that she wore when they handed her to us- a symbol of what she would soon become ( a little star that would shine so brightly in a dark world and overcome the darkness of her story)

Of little feet, little hands, and little fingers that joined ours that first Christmas home…

Of the first ornament she made her 1^st Christmas in her class at church, after 10 very hard months of getting her to acclimate to being away from us (of which now she absolutely LOVES and can't wait to be in each week)

Of balloons and ice cream- her favorite toy her first year with us and what soon became her favorite treat later that year…

Of special Chinese wire ornaments made by individuals in China to help support their family…

Of a handmade ornament box that helps count down the 25 special days until Christmas with special family activities and Christmas books to read…

Of a fortune cookie announcing to everyone this summer that we were adopting from China again.

These ornaments and many more represent so many precious moments in life and in our family. So while the nostalgia from Christmas 2016 dies off and a new year ahead of us begins, we look forward to 2017 and the new moments, new memories, and new experiences that are yet to unfold for each of us. Memories that will somehow find their place on a Christmas tree at the end of this year.

Reflections on Easter

2016-04-06T18:33:00.001-07:00

In the very few and far between quiet moments of our day, the pitter patter of little feet running across our bare wooden floor and an angelic tiny voice exclaiming "Easter is coming! Easter is coming!" could be heard at least several times a day in the month of March. We aren't quite sure when it started exactly, except to say that she heard us talking about Easter coming and I guess you can't quite hide from all of the eggs, giant bunnies, flowers, chocolate, and well, "all things Easter" that suddenly appear months in advance in every store where you shop. We could be in the middle of almost anything when she'd suddenly look up at us with a sheepish grin on her face to tell us, "Easter is coming!" Yes, sweet one, it's coming, but let's take some time this year to tell you what Easter truly is about, since you have more understanding.

Easter this year was quite the contrast to our Easter a year ago. Last year we had been home only a few weeks before Easter arrived. Little One was so overwhelmed by literally everything, that we did very little her first Easter. We were doing good just to make it to church with her at that point in time.

[That. little. face.]

Not a care in the world a bubble couldn't fix...except for when an animal came near.

This was the moment she saw Gram and Papa's little tiny dog coming towards her. (the second time she'd ever seen a dog) To say that we've come a very long way with animals over the last 8-10 months is truly an understatement. This same little dog, she now talks about and loves to cuddle with when she goes for a visit.

This time last year, she wasn't speaking English, she comprehended very little of what was being said, she would have ran from the Easter bunny or anything moving for that matter, quicker than lightening strikes and to put eggs in grass and ask her to go touch the grass to find them? Yeah, right. She hated grass, as in "I don't even want daddy holding me while standing in or near grass" and if she'd venture into it, it would only be for a quick second.

Fast forward a year...

Huge smiles.

As in, the kind that will make your heart skip a beat.

Curiosity, joy and sheer engagement in every.single.little.thing leading up to this special week and special day...

In painting "carrots" with her feet.

(she wasn't so sure about paint on her foot at first)

In painting a cross with sponges and washi tape.

In painting eggs with potato stamps.

In making Easter treats.

(of course eggs, bunnies, bird's nests, and crosses were part of the Easter treat lineup; yet, the irony--she didn't like any of our Easter treats & wouldn't even come close to tasting or touching the jello! (haha)

In painting eggs- lots of eggs.

This girl has an obsession (as in a real a real obsession) with all things "egg"--plastic, play sets for cooking, real ones you eat-- it doesn't matter. Our girl LOVES eggs! It was only natural that we painted eggs. (and yes, we chose to paint them rather than dye eggs... in our opinion, way more fun and interesting-- and not to mention...

A two year old + dye + indoors = ruined things

Eggs + acrylic paint + plastic baggies & little hands = lots of sensory squeezing fun and creativity, paint on eggs and really cool egg designs

[Please be quiet while I focus on my special design.]

We even added some letter stickers and used a realistic set of plastic eggs that were cheaper than buying real eggs - so BONUS--reusable, too!

Yes, we had to have a UVA blue/orange egg.

In learning with eggs.

Since Little One mastered her ABC's several months ago, we though we'd move on to learning/recognition of the lower case letters, but teach these in a fun way and through playing a matching game by matching up egg pieces. We love it that she calls them the "Mommy" (capital) and "baby" (lowercase) letters.

In the outdoors & hunting for eggs.

What? You mean I have to wait until you say I can go look for the eggs? Hmm, let me guess- ya'll need to get your cameras and videos ready, am I right?

Hmmm... can I reach that one?

Hey- this one is empty! Since I shake every egg I pick up, I am onto you if you try to be sneaky and didn't put something in my egg.

Hey, flower and all-- you do what you gotta' do to try to get this little one to look at you and smile for a picture-- as you can see from the above, it wasn't quite working on this particular day. Nor in this picture below either…

(since this was Brielle trying to make a mean face, we captioned this- "This is our mean face because Satan thought he killed Jesus, but guess what- He's alive because Jesus wins every time!")

And of course- most importantly, the Easter story.

Since she loves eggs, we created a "toddler version" of the resurrection eggs. Short and easy so that she could learn and also tell the story through objects.

Egg 1- A paper heart & a toothpick cross- Jesus loves everyone and died on the cross for us.

Egg 2- A piece of cloth- They wrapped Jesus in strips of cloth and laid him in the grave.

Egg 3- A stone- The put him in a grave and rolled a stone in front of the door.

Egg 4- It's Empty- Jesus is alive! He is risen!

Egg 5- Happy Face- Everyone is happy because Jesus is alive.

For some reason, Egg 4 she wasn't too keen on- I'm thinking because it was always empty, but she'd make the saddest face when we'd get to that one. (guess we'll have to keep working on building excitement for that one)

Once it was actually Easter morning, this was about as it good as we could get on Easter Sunday... she was not much into smiles, but did want to stick close to Mr. Bunny and her blankie that day...

Photo Courtesy of www.ctylercorvin.com

Thank you, Tyler Corvin, for capturing the one and only Easter shot of our family again this year at church. Apparently, we are starting an Easter tradition with a little one that's not too "into" taking an Easter picture the day of Easter. Ha!

As you can see, Easter month was a lot of fun with a toddler that quickly learned the phrase "I try I try!" "Brielle try, too!" regarding everything that was put before her. From painting, to teaching with eggs, to hearing the words "Jesus Cross" every time she saw a cross somewhere- it was a beautiful Easter season.

Ladybug's First Halloween- Viewing it through Different Lenses

2015-10-31T21:18:00.000-07:00

This weekend we took little peanut on her first ever Halloween rendezvous.

For all she knew we were just taking another evening stroll around the neighborhood- except that you couldn't get too far before the sounds of giggling children and a few mysterious characters would suddenly emerge on the horizon.

I often wonder what goes through toddler's heads regarding Halloween. I mean, let's be real, a two year old has no concept of what is about to happen really and probably wonders what happened to their comfy jammies and why in the world are my parents putting me in a weird outfit and acting like the paparazzi? (this momma would never be guilty of that, right?)

I can only imagine what might go through those tiny little minds of theirs. I also wonder for a child who has lived their entire life in an orphanage, what the night must look like through their eyes for the first time.

To suddenly be surrounded by a bunch of giggling and screaming children running down the street.

To be coming face to face with a number of strangers - in crazy costumes no less.

To have these weird glowing orange things out on porches.

To have absolutely none or very little context for the majority of kid's costumes they see. (some that can be downright frightening if you run into the wrong kid)

To, in some cases, be able to have access to candy that is "all yours" and take as much as you want of it out of bowl when in the past all you've known is nothing is yours and everything is limited or there is never enough.

To experience candy for the first time.

To wear a costume for the first time.

We have to admit, this weekend proved just how far she's come in the last 9 months since being placed in our arms. This was a girl who we couldn't, for the first month or so, even get to walk outside on the sidewalk without being frightened by everything. To think it took us several months to get to the point where even could even walk down our sidewalk together as a family.

Fast forward to Halloween night-- before the actual process started, little ladybug wanted to wander up and down the sidewalks and pretty much wanted to lead the way. She wanted to run in the grass...

(something she wouldn't even come close to doing for months when first coming home) She also wanted to pick up straw and act like a music conductor apparently!

She wanted to make silly faces and sniff the bush in front of the house...

It took about 4 houses before she would come out of her daddy's arms,

but once she got the knack for this new little activity, she would point to the next house and then begin to walk up to the door and either knock or ring the bell. Though she couldn't say 'Trick or Treat' she definitely knew something was up if someone didn't come to the door. She'd look at Nate and I as if to say, "Well that wasn't fun. Where's the guy with the candy?" Of course, she still doesn't even know what candy is nor what it looks like (if only we could keep her that way forever, right?) but she knew she was getting "something" that was hers to put in her little treat bag she had made just days before.

It was fun watching her face turn into all smiles when someone would give her candy or when she came to a house where you could "get your own" out of a bowl... she'd look as if to say "Hmm....I wonder if I can take as much as I want--do you think they'd mind if I took a few extra ones for momma and daddy?"

She was mesmerized by all the pumpkins (which was one of her newest words in the last two weeks) and especially the ones that were lit up. She was in awe of the people who had a little fire pit in the front yard and kept using her new word "fire" over and over again. (I think she may have liked the fire more than the actual candy process and decided those were her new favorite neighbors)

Halloween took on a whole new meaning seeing it for the first time through the eyes of a child who has never been a part of this little activity. If you are a social media person, you know that the whole afternoon and evening was filled with photos of cute little babies in costumes, of little toddlers and their siblings dressed as their favorite characters, who of course had made up their minds that they most certainly were not going to smile for their mommas who were taking the pictures. Facebook and Instagram feeds were filled with adorable faces, cute costumes, creative costume ideas, crazy adults, and cute kid pictures--you automatically knew that was pretty much all you were going to see if you viewed your Facebook or Instagram accounts that day of or the day following. (and let's be honest, most parents are guilty and there is nothing wrong in sharing your joy)

However, this day feels very different for many. I could remember being in the adoption process and watching Halloween come around. Watching the Facebook pictures as they poured in and thinking "another year without our little one". I would enjoy seeing the cute little eyes staring back at me on social media, but would find my mind often wandering and asking, "If she had been here this year, what would we have dressed her as? " "Would we have even gone out to trick or treat?" I have a new found sensitivity for those holidays and times of the year when I know it's a struggle for my friends who want oh so badly to have a little one, for my friends who have lost children, for my friends who have been told they can't have a child so are looking into what that might mean for their family. I know certain holidays can be fun for many people, but we often overlook those who on this day or other family or child related holidays, hurt deeply and long to be the one posting cute little photos of their little one in his zebra costume or watching their little girl twirl around in her princess dress. To be the daddy that gets to toss his little girl into the air or walk hand in hand with his son down the sidewalk both dressed as super heroes.

For some it is more than they can handle and they feel crushed by the weight of what "might be" or "one day be" but isn't at this moment. Feelings of frustration, jealousy, anger, questioning....the list could go on and on about the various emotions that some of those around us may be feeling during these times. "Why isn't it our turn to post cute Halloween photos?" "When will we get to pick out a cute little costume for our little one?" "How much longer is God going to ask us to wait?"

These are just some of the many thoughts that many of those around us may be thinking on this holiday. Sure our friends rejoice with us and yes, they may enjoy looking at their Facebook feed because who can disagree that at Halloween pretty much every kid is just flat out cute? However, it doesn't change the fact that looking at their Facebook or Instagram feeds bring about some strong emotions tied to all that they are seeing and feeling during this holiday and longing for that missing piece in their lives and family.

So while this is a fun time for many families and their children, let us always remember that not everyone is viewing Halloween through the same set of lenses. Let us be compassionate with those who need that extra dose of compassion or lend a listening ear for those who just need to just be heard. That listening ear or big hug might be just what they truly need from you following the weekend of Halloween.

That First Look into Her Eyes A Year Ago

2015-10-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

A year ago today, we laid eyes for the first time on this sweet little one.

I will never forget that feeling. Let me rewind a little and go back to that very day…

I was at work and it was just your typical day, but extremely busy as I was taking off for two week to help lead a mission trip to Guatemala. Nate and I had joked a few months before when we committed to leading two teams back to back that wouldn’t it be funny (or not so funny) if we got a referral while we were in Guatemala? (knowing that it would be complicated and quite honestly they would unlikely be able to reach us anyway) So on this very Wednesday, October 22, I had been working hard to try to get ahead on work and cover all the bases while I would be out when suddenly I looked down and my cell phone was ringing.

It was our adoption agency. (Insert both excitement, panic, and shock!—well sort of, we were on alert and in our hearts knew we’d get the call soon, but you just never know exactly when to expect it)

For those of you who have given birth to a child, you know what it is like to wait for “that moment to arrive” – when you will see your child’s face for the first time. When you will suddenly realize that labor is beginning and things are going to start moving along at a fast pace that, quite honestly, you have absolutely no control over. In the world of adoption, there are some experiences that parallel with this and “THE REFERRAL CALL” ,as it’s known in the world of adoption, is one of those moments. The only tricky thing about “the call” is that much like a pregnant momma who experiences false alarms prior to giving birth, families can get a call and it still not always result in the start of “adoption labor” and doesn’t always result in the family’s final match of their child. There are so many variables with international adoption, and particularly when families participate in a medical needs program. So many unknowns. So many decisions. (but we will leave that for another day and another post)

I hurriedly answered it and on the other end was one of the China staff members saying, “We have a match for you and would like to talk to you about a beautiful little girl!” I will admit my heart skipped a few beats because all I could focus on in the moment was where my mind was already racing to and apparently I had already begun carrying on a conversation with myself-- “Oh my goodness, I’m leaving the country for two weeks in just three days- how in the world will we find time to go through the review process, get information from doctors and her orphanage, and make a decision like this?!” I listened to her as she shared the medical needs this little girl had, that she was currently 14 months old, and then she asked if we wanted to review the file. That part was easy- of course we did! She then shared she would email everything to us to review and then I shared with her that I was just about to contact them, ironically, to alert them to us leaving the country “just in case” we got a referral and that communicating with us over those two weeks would be quite difficult if not impossible really.

I hung up the phone and sat stunned and excited, trying to process what had just happened. Seriously? Did I really just get that call 3 days before leaving the country?

What??!!! I immediately started having an internal conversation with God. Are you kidding, God? This kind of things happens to the clients I work with when I call them with their referrals- how in the world is this now happening to me? What kind of timing is this? I know you know that I don’t do well with making fast life-changing decisions, so why in the world would you allow them to call us three days before leaving the country?

I quickly came back to reality and called Nate and shared the news with him and asked him how quickly could he get home so we could look at her file together. He was shocked too, to say the least, and of course headed home a little later. Imagine having a giant present that you just CANNOT wait to open and yet have to exercise such an amazing amount of restraint not to open it or even take a little peak. That short hour seemed like days as I waited for Nate to arrive home. Let’s just say that the rest of my few hours at work were pretty much pointless as I could--

NOT

FOCUS

BIT.

Finally the moment came for us to pull up the email and review her file. That moment can be likened to that moment when you lay eyes on your child for the first time. It’s a rush like none other, but yet because it’s an adoption, you don’t know for sure that everything is going to work out and that you know for sure it’s going to be your child, etc. There are just so many variables.

We opened the email and laid eyes on a sweet little face with dark, big, round eyes staring back at us (not to mention a cute, little, bald head). She was a tiny little one weighing only 15 pounds. A medical file that had some big unknowns in it as well as some known things.

We just sat there and stared.

We took in every word.

We read every detail.

We hung on every description.

We were drawn in, but ever-so-cautiously with guarded hearts.

And then we talked. We talked into the early morning hours about how this would look. How could we make a decision? What else did we need before we made a decision? Would our team of doctors we had established for this big moment, even be able to provide feedback before we left the country so that we could even confirm that with our agency? So, so many questions.

Then I had read this on that very day—

“I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths they have not known- I’ll guide them. I will turn darkness into light, and rough places into level ground. These are the things that I do- I do not forsake them.”

I then realized, there are just things that we may not know. There are things that God will make clear. (I knew that in my head, but it just hadn’t made its way fully into my heart) That night we forwarded her file to three doctors, one of which was the leader of our local International Adoption Clinic and two others who had experience with adoptions from China and who had adopted as well. We told them our situation and that we were leaving the country in 3 days and desperately needed to have answers and, at the very least, needed to know from a medical standpoint, what additional questions to ask the orphanage so that we could obtain important updates and ask more about her health, etc. We knew there were some questionable things in her file that were concerning and unclear, so we wanted to ask questions and get clarity.

The day before we left for Guatemala, we heard back from doctors some who had good things to say, but also had to share with us some concerns and risks we needed to know about moving forward. There could be some other big medical needs that they wouldn’t be able to confirm until she was actually examined stateside. We had to be ok with those risks and unknowns.

Ok God, we knew adoption was a faith-walk, but did you really have to add in an extra piece like this- another unknown variable requiring us to make the decision of our lives all the while not knowing exactly where that decision might lead if we say yes?

We called our agency to let them know that we received feedback from doctors and there were some big questions that they needed to ask for us and some updates we really needed in order to make a final decision. (even though at this point we just almost knew in our hearts it would be yes) We told them responding from Guatemala would be very difficult and we likely not have Internet connection that was reliable. We also knew that as a team we “unplug” while on mission, so that we can fully focus on God, our team, and our serving while in country, so connecting via email at any given time would be very hard to do.

So with that, we left the country with our team headed to Guatemala to serve for a week, later to be joined by our second team on week two. We were so excited about our trip, yet it was so hard to focus and keep this big news a secret, but we knew we had to since we had not yet given our agency a decision. Try hanging out 24 hours a day for two straight weeks with a bunch of people you’ve come to know and love over the past several months and have such a big secret resting on your shoulders, yet not sharing it with a single person. Add to that finding out upon arrival in country that you would not be sharing a room with your spouse at any point on the trip, so quiet moments together alone would be few and far between. When and how would we even talk about this if we did get an update?

There were oh so many times while in Guatemala where it would have been so easy to accidentally slip up and say something. I’ll never forget one night walking down to dinner several on our team asked us all sorts of questions about adoption and our decision to adopt, etc. Talk about a hard conversation! It wasn’t until we later announced our adoption of “Little One” that several people later told us that they felt something was different about us those weeks, but they just couldn’t put a finger on it. (of course this made us smile big)

Oh the thoughts that went through my head that week as we served in our village.

I’ll never forget thinking as we walked along the dusty path through the middle of the village our church adopted, that there was a little girl from another village on the opposite side of the world who now needed a family. A girl whose face just three short days ago, we had never seen- whose name we had never heard; yet, whose face we could not get out of our minds no matter how hard we tried.

I remember celebrating our very first church service in the village in the building we had just constructed on the very day that Orphan Sunday is celebrated globally and thinking, wow- at this very moment as we stand here worshipping with believers in this tiny village in Guatemala- all around the world in churches around the globe believers are banding together for the cause of the orphan, sharing God’s plan for adoption both physically and spiritually, and sharing how the Bible admonishes believers to care for the orphan, the widow, and the poor. What was even more interesting was that Orphan Sunday 2014 was being filmed and shot on location in another part of Guatemala at the very timeframe we were in our village in a church service…coincidence? - I don’t think so.

As we spent time each day in our village, I distinctly remember walking past thatched roof and homes with walls made of sticks and thinking, “What was her past like?” “What kind of home did she come from in China?” “Who found her at a month old abandoned?”

I remember holding abandoned babies who were very ill, but who were now in a hospital on the campus of the ministry where we were serving... babies who were being nursed back to health and who, for many, would be sent to the orphanage on campus to be cared for in the months to come. I remember thinking “I wonder what their stories are?” “I wonder if this child will ever see their mom or dad again?” “I wonder if this child I’m holding is the size she is?”

Question and question filled my mind for the entire two weeks. (and lest you doubt, I was able to focus on ministry that week, albeit a bit clouded at times with personal thoughts and moments to process)

Then the day finally came.

I could check email and saw that we had received an update from our agency. This was it! The information Nate and I had been waiting for! Then to our dismay, we couldn’t get any of the attachments to open, no videos to play, and could only make out part of the email for a short time while the internet cooperated that basically said we need a decision by Friday or we cannot guarantee this child’s file to your family.

What? Suddenly, we realized we would head back to the states not knowing whether we’d now have the chance to even confirm that she was our little one. We would not be able to meet the requested deadline and would have to wait until we entered the states late that Saturday and with hopes, send an email to our agency that weekend, knowing they would not receive it until Monday. When I shared this with Nate he was just calm and said, “If it’s God’s will, she’ll still there on Monday and it will all work out.” (all the while I’m thinking- HOW IN THE WORLD can you be so calm about this, right NOW, knowing we have pictures and video and can’t see them and could lose her file and are under the pressure of this and just the day to day difficulties of being overseas serving, etc. – hey, they say adoptive mommas get crazy and stressed too during their “paper pregnancy”, so this probably proved that!)

That’s when a little 5-letter word that we are all so familiar with came to mind.

Faith.

If there is one word that describes adoption, it is faith. Even one of the International Adoption Clinic doctors we spoke with right before leaving for Guatemala said this very thing during our referral review about international adoption, “I truly believe adoption is a walk of faith, it can be hard with limited information, but you must know what you can handle.”

-Faith in the unseen and the unknown

-Faith in knowing God has a bigger plan in mind

-Faith in knowing he has her in His very hand on the other side of the world

-Faith in knowing that if God calls, He will equip us for every last thing we could possibly ever face

-Faith in knowing God knew all of these details well before the beginning of time and He’s got every single detail under control.

Every. Single. One.

Little did I know that the entire two weeks in Guatemala, God had given Nate this very same word- faith- and had been telling Him, let go and just trust Me.

So, two weeks after our feet had walked the dusty roads of Guatemala, we arrived back home and our feet walked among familiar people and upon familiar ground.We could access our email easily and finally see those updates that had been sitting in our inbox for a week.

It was decision time.

Time to send that all-important email to our agency Sunday night. We talked and both agreed God had used our trip to open our eyes to faith, trust, and to accept. Though there were some big unknowns in our “yes” to this little one, we both felt God saying and reminding us of what “Fear, Trust, and Surrender” looks like and to take that leap of faith.

So on National Adoption Day, we made the final decision to make this little one a part of our family.

The following day while waiting to hear from our agency, I just couldn’t work. I took off an extra day to just rest and felt the need to continue to hear from God. That day God gave amazing things that to this day, provided an overwhelming sense of peace and trust in our decision like I never could have imagined.

Here are just some of the lyrics from worship songs I listened to (by no choice of my own- just random sampling that day on Pandora):

“You are peace, you are peace, when my fear is crippling…”

“…where fear surrounds me, you’ve never failed and you won’t start now- lead me where my trust is without borders, help me walk upon the waters, wherever you would call me- take me deeper than my feet would ever wander, where my faith will be made stronger, in the presence of my Savior…”

“…I know who goes before me…”

“I’ll stand, with arms high and heart abandoned, in awe of the One who gave it all..my soul surrendered- all I am is yours…

“Who makes the orphan, a son or daughter…”

“Bring your doubts, bring your fears…”

“I surrender all to you…”

The Daily Oswald Chambers reading that day- -

As long as you maintain your own personal interests and ambitions, you can’t be completely aligned to or identified with God’s interests. This can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world. Your understanding of your ways must also be surrendered, because they are now the ways of the Lord. I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great perspective and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. I should never say, “Lord, this causes me such great heartache”. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will without hindrance. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and in His goodness.”

Other verses read that day:

“ I will praise the Lord…blessed is He whose hope is in the Lord… who keeps faith forever…who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry… the Lord lifts those who are bowed down…The Lord watches over the sojourner and He upholds the widow and the orphan… -- Psalm 146

“Fear not...when you pass through the waters, I’ll be with you…they won’t overwhelm you…

“Fear not… I am with you. I will bring your offspring from the East…”

“…Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth…

Verse after verse that day spoke truth to my heart and gave me a peace that could only come from Him. Were there still concerns in our heart and things we wouldn’t know for months until we brought her home and things we may not know for years to come?

Absolutely.

Yet we were being held together by the one thought and promise that God was completely in control of every last detail.

Just. Trust. Me.

There are some amazing things that followed on the heels of our decision. Things that I will save for another post for another day. What we can say emphatically is that God truly was in every last detail of our adoption and we can look back now with eyes wide open that He did above and beyond anything we could have ever imagined and brought a little girl into our family that we could now never imagine living without.

“Unto Him who is able to do exceeding and abundantly above all that we ask or imagine…unto Him be the glory…” - - Ephesians 3:20a-21a

Guess Who is Turning Two Soon

2015-08-08T14:22:00.001-07:00

As we sit here not the eve of our little one's birthday tomorrow, it's hard to believe that little one is about to turn two tomorrow.

TWO ya'll! (watch out) Just typing those very words makes my heart skip a beat.

We've been in planning mode for the last couple of weeks to get things in order for her birthday party. Funny thing is, the summer was just rolling along with its normal string of events and the bustle of activities and suddenly before we knew it we were about a month out from her birthday and we hadn't even started thinking about what we wanted to do nor had begun any planning. (this coming from someone who loves to plan in advance-yikes!)

We started thinking about this being her first birthday that we will have the privilege of celebrating with her, and wanted to make it a special day. I guess you could say, it's like her "first birthday" to celebrate with her forever family. (and let's be honest, we won't likely do another bigger one until peanut is 16)

We started thinking about what we wanted to do for her party--what did she like? What are her favorites? What has she sort of latched onto in these last 5 months since living in our home? We quickly realized that many of the typical things you'd find at a child's two year old birthday, she has no understanding of. She doesn't know Nickelodeon characters or Disney or anything affiliated with it. She hasn't seen Frozen yet.( but I know "little miss music" will LOVE it when we finally do watch it) She's not been exposed to many of the common things that little ones start off early learning about, playing with, or begging for while shopping in the stores with their mommas. So where did that leave us?

Well.... we sat back after thinking a minute and knew that Brielle loves:

Bubbles
Pinwheels
Flowers
balloons

**bubbles, flowers, and balloons were among her first English words ironically

It's a bit of a random grouping, but hey-- we can work with that. We sort of took this thought and from it decided to go with something that looked like flowers or pinwheels or bubbles. So, since momma finds it very therapeutic to do crafts and make things, it was off to grab some paper at the store that had some patterns that favored "bubbles and flowers" and get a little bit of fabric with a similar thought in mind. (dots, abstract patterns, etc.)

Nate may laugh at me sometimes, but I have my "party box" that I keep for times like this when we're hosting something, or throwing a shower, etc. So off to the box I went to see what all was in there just waiting to be used. Well, I may get teased by my husband about what I keep sometimes to re-use, but trust me, when it comes to art/craft supplies, you can reuse a lot of things you keep on hand and I hate wasting and can always find a use for something. While digging through the box, I found ribbon and washi tape from other projects I've done, glue dots, (if you don't know what these are, you haven't lived life-- best item they ever created!) items from our wedding (yes, that was 8 yrs ago but some things still come in handy!), yarn from projects for Brielle, frames from her nursery and play room, and by the time it was all said and done-- we came up with a party idea based off of objects in our home that we could pull and use alongside a few crafts made out of paper and fabric. (did I mention we like to save money, too?)

We decided to pull colors from her nursery and playroom, so that we could re-use anything that was made for her birthday party. Since we already had some things we could work with, it just made sense (and saved a lot of time since time is of utmost importance most days while living the "toddler life")

So, with just a bit of "treasure hunting" around the house and going through the trusty craft drawers and the "party box", we were set with a plan with a lot of fun details. This momma loves a plan and thankfully details just happen to be "my thing", as I realize most people probably hate detailed projects or thinking through lists, and just the very thought for some might make them break out in hives. It energizes me- call me crazy, right?

So, thanks to little one's wonderful and patient daddy, this momma had a few evenings to work on some craft projects for her birthday that will act as nursery/play room decor additions later. (gotta' be strategic!)

So, despite some setbacks with the birthday party and our original plans for the day, we are excited to soon celebrate the life of one of God's most amazing gifts to us. We know she really won't remember much about this first birthday with us. We realize she might not even want to put her hands anywhere near a cupcake since she likes her hands clean. We laugh because she probably couldn't even tell you how old she is turning, but hey-- she's still learning English, right?

What we do know is this--tomorrow as she turns two, we will celebrate life.

We will celebrate that God had a beautiful plan for her life and one that we will continue to see unfold in the years to come.
We will celebrate the joy that she brings to our lives and the lives of others
We will celebrate with thankfulness that He has brought her to this second year of her life, even if it involved a bumpy road full of medical needs, sicknesses, medical appointments, and overcoming difficulties
We will celebrate, but always remember there is someone on the other side of the world who likely will be thinking of her on this very day and would love to know that she is taken care of

We are so blessed to have you, little one, in our lives and can't wait to celebrate the gift of you, Brielle!

God Kisses- An Unexpected Surprise by Mail

2015-05-27T20:55:00.001-07:00

Sometimes in life there are moments that you can look back at and know immediately that it was a "God moment". Throughout our adoption process both while we waited to be matched, during our time in China when we met our daughter, and most recently in this post-placement stage, we've continued to see those moments that have come to be known as "God kisses".

"God kisses".

You know, those sweet little "extras" that God pours out on you when He certainly didn't have to. Those tangible little moments or things that you know could only come from Him- moments that point to an all-perfect God that is so concerned with every little detail, even the littlest details- that He thinks of something that even you wouldn't have thought of if you could have orchestrated it.

That's what our family received several weeks back. Several little "God kisses".

It was an ordinary day. Nothing special going on and we had been home from China for about two months. I was getting dinner ready when Nate came home from work, walked in the door and asked me if I had ordered something. I looked at him funny and said, "No, why do you ask?" He then pulled up a huge brown flat package and said, "This was at the front door."

Curious, I took it from him and looked at the return label which showed that it was mailed from "Show Hope." I couldn't imagine what would be in such a large flat package and knew we weren't expecting anything from them.

In case you've forgotten from previous posts, SHOW HOPE is the Christian organization in the Nashville area founded by music artist Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife Mary Beth. Show Hope was founded to help with orphan care initiatives such as adoption grants, orphan care/surgeries, orphan advocacy, and most importantly for us- to provide care centers in China to help children with medical needs who need additional care, surgeries, etc. above and beyond what the orphanage can provide. When we were matched with our little one, we soon discovered that she was in one of these 5 care centers in China (hers was on the fifth floor of her orphanage- run by Show Hope and New Hope Foundation). She was receiving much needed additional care for her medical needs, for which we are abundantly grateful. You can read more about the amazing things we found out about our daughter and the way that Show Hope played such a huge part in our daughter's life by reading our post HERE.

Fast forward a few months later when we have our little one home and this package arrives at our doorstep. I carefully opened it as I soon noticed a note that said "X-rays- Do Not Bend". I was suddenly curious as I couldn't figure out why we would be receiving X-rays by mail, but as I opened up the package I suddenly realized it was more than X-rays.

We had been mailed all of our daughter's original MRI's directly from her orphanage in China to Show Hope and then on to us. A package full of "MRI film" poured out onto our kitchen table---

(future doctor in the making, perhaps?)

---but that wasn't all.

We looked further into the envelope and another packet of items were deeper inside. We had been sent a wonderful booklet about all of Show Hope's work sharing about the amazing life-change they've seen over the years.

Then we found original segments of our daughter's referral information with medical tests we had seen before, but these sheets were from New Hope Foundation's intake notes they had written on her when they completed her medical exam. These documents had original handwritten notes on her paperwork, written by those who had cared for her in China. We then noticed several other items paper-clipped to these documents.

More "God Kisses"...

Attached were several laminated ID tags in several different sizes. I immediately recognized the photo and layout as we had seen it at her orphanage when we visited and I had quickly snapped a photo of it.

It was her bed identification tag that we had seen in her room. I was beyond curious by this point that when I realized what I thought we were holding. I quickly sent an email to Show Hope to ask if they could share what these were and confirm, since I was unsure of why we had been sent several of the same item in different sizes. They went on to explain that they had sent us the original identification laminated tags that had been used in China for her bed and used with the few belongings that she had at her orphanage, so that her items didn't get mixed up with other children. (i.e. her bottle, etc.)

"God kisses".

It's rare to receive much information on your little one, much less to receive the original MRI's taken in China and her ID tags for her few belongings and her crib. I know many a family that I've both worked with or known personally as friends who would give anything to receive something like that for their little one's history and especially to have for their medical history.

However, we haven't reached the cherry on the top of this story yet. (shocking, I know) The "God kisses" aren't over yet. There's one more to share.

A few days later we received an email with a surprise invitation from Show Hope sharing that Steven Curtis Chapman and Mary Beth were inviting all of the families who have had children cared for in one of their care centers in China, to join them for a private reunion in Nashville at the Chapman Family Barn to celebrate all that God has done over the years and all of the lives changed through adoption. (picture "day of fun for kids and families" in your mind )

We didn't think we would be able to make this happen, then Nate came home a few weeks back to share that he'd worked out all of the details and we were going to go and be a part of this and meet other parents at this adoption reunion. So exciting!

.....and that's what we will be doing. We will have the privilege of visiting the Show Hope offices, meeting the staff and thanking them for the wonderful care they provided for our daughter. The following day we will meet other families who have also been impacted by all of the wonderful things that Show Hope is doing in China. We will share in the joy of being reunited with several families from our recent travel group in February who will also be attending this event.

And if all of that wasn't enough excitement, we were asked to be filmed and share our story-- the story that HE so beautifully wrote. You can be praying for that this weekend too, that God will give us the words to say that will bring Him glory and praise for all that He has done. (and pray that our little peanut cooperates in this endeavor-- this is where I'm tempted to consider inserting a number of emoticons for your enjoyment, but I'll let your imagination run wild with the random faces I might be making right now just thinking about a one and a half year old sitting/participating in a 45 minute interview process-lol)

We are beyond blessed to have the opportunity to add one more piece to the story of our daughter's life- to have another tangible moment and memory to share with her down the road.

We are excited to take a little mini-trip to Nashville and grateful for all that God has done to make this possible. (and yes, you can say a little prayer for us as this will be our first road trip of any distance with Little Miss since we've been home these past three months) Our hearts are more than full and we don't ever want to take any of these "God Kisses" for granted and what they mean to our family and the life of our daughter.

US Citizenship Certificate & Re-adopting

2015-05-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

Well, it's official! We finally have the all-coveted US Certificate of Citizenship for our little peanut. They told us at the US Consulate in China that it would take several months, but this little gem showed up in our mailbox right around the three month anniversary date of when they placed our little one in our arms in China.

Now-- while you probably don't think much about this document and its importance, it's truly one of the most important documents for a child that is adopted internationally, as it grants them the ability to have all of same rights and privileges that an individual born here in the US receives. Thought it's an important document, something tells me our little one wasn't really too enamored with this little piece of paper and its significance. She'd far rather take some crayons or a pen in hand and mark all over it. (and for those of you looking at the below pictures and freaking out thinking that she might have tore this when we gave it to her to look at...we put it in a protective case before she held it. Unfortunately, the way it was already mailed by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, it was bent when it arrived- which was a little disappointing)

While this document is important not to lose for a number of reasons (and also would come with a not so fun replacement fee), we have chosen to do the re-adoption process for our state once we reach that point in the upcoming months which will replace this document with a US birth certificate. Many people ask why do we need to do this re-adoption process in our state. Well, while we don't have to do this in our state as a requirement, it would not be wise to skip this step as it will help "B" later in life with so many areas.

Re-adopting here in our state through the US court system will provide her with a state birth certificate just as if she were born here in the US to us. This will then allow her to use this more familiar US document to enroll in school, obtain a driver's license, get a job, enroll in college, and a host of other things. While you can still do those things with a US Certificate of Citizenship, it's just more complicated because it's a document that most people aren't as familiar with and can often come with more hoops and hurdles. Having the state birth certificate makes life much easier on a family and the child if/when a family chooses to re-adopt in their state, particularly when the state grants a state birth certificate as part of the re-adoption process. (re-adoption looks different in each state)

To clarify, "B" was officially a US citizen at her first point of entry into the US, so she became a US Citizen on February 13, 2015 when we landed in New Jersey. Despite her now claims to being a "southern girl" -- I guess she officially started out as a "Jersey girl".

Just looking at this certificate, it's amazing to already see the change in 3 months since we took this photo in China-- her hair has grown so much already and oh the changes we've seen over these past 12 weeks since she was placed in our arms. We'll save that for another post, but there are so many things we could name.

What a wonderful journey it's been already and with this official document in hand, we now get to move on to our next step in applying for her social security card. Excited and thankful that some of our final steps on the paperwork side are coming to a close. As always, we are so thankful to God for each step He continues to carry us on in this journey.

A Medical Update- Miracles from the Father

2015-04-26T15:46:00.002-07:00

This post is well overdue since so many have been asking for an update on how everything has gone with all of our testing/medical appointments over the last two months. We are hopeful that you can excuse the lateness, as we just might have had our hands just a little full the last several weeks settling into life as a family of three, juggling new schedules, numerous medical appointments, and work schedules. We know that so many have been asking the results of everything with our little one, so we’d like to take a few minutes to share some moments that we’ve had in the last 8 weeks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a one and done type of appointment, so much of this has been ongoing.

Upon coming home from China, there were many medical appointments and processes we had to go through for Little Miss. We just finished one of our last ones a few weeks ago, and will at least get a short respite for a little bit. A child that is adopted internationally has to be examined for a multitude of things, not just the medical needs that we knew our little one had. We had to go through rounds of blood work and testing for infectious diseases (it’s standard, even though this has been tested in China, it gets re-tested stateside), parasites, thyroid issues, standard blood panel, TB (tuberculosis), hearing tests (which is coming up in May), lead levels (since often buildings in China may have higher lead levels which can be very dangerous to a young child) all the while meeting with our pediatric cardiologist, international adoption pediatrician, and an occupational therapist for evaluations and next steps in a treatment plan for our daughter. Whew—makes me tired just remembering all of the back and forth to these appointments and re-reading this list.

During all of this, we quickly learned that “B” doesn’t have exposed veins from which nurses can draw blood, which they said is in part due to her heart condition and the way her blood pumps throughout her body, as it makes her veins very restricted and difficult to access. All of her blood draws were the most difficult thing to watch as the first round they probably pricked her about 6 times in one arm trying to get blood before they realized the issue they were dealing with, tried the other arm and then realized they had to get additional assistance to come in and try to figure out where to draw it from, which ended up being from a vein they had to “push up” in her hand. It was painful for us to watch and hold her and know that it’s for her good, but that she was traumatized a bit by this whole process.

After our initial consultations and testing which was about 4 weeks after we returned home from China, we were given the news that our cardiologist wanted to continue to wait and watch her heart for the next few months and see if she could continue to gain weight and grow. She’s still a tiny little thing at right under 20 pounds (which she’s thankfully gained about 3 pounds since Gotcha Day in China on February 2) We will go back to cardiology in June for a re-evaluation and to see how things are going. Her cardiologist was very positive and is hoping for continued progress with hopes that we may avoid surgery. Time will tell.

During all of these weeks of testing, we did come across a concern and some results that came up regarding her liver, which was a bit frightening, so the doctors wanted to do some further testing. We are so thankful to report that after further testing, everything appears to have checked out just fine and all of her other tests came back with wonderful results as well. She did test positive and was diagnosed with a parasite that generally would make a child her age sick, but God protected her and she didn't and hasn't had any symptoms which surprised doctors. God is good. There were even some initial concerns about some things we knew could be possibilities once we got her home, but God took care of those entirely and there are currently no additional issues at all.

Since coming home about 10 weeks ago, we have learned a bit more about our little one thanks to two wonderful non-profits that provided care for our daughter in her orphanage care center. Oftentimes when an organization is working with orphans in China, they do not have the ability to share all of their information in advance to parents until the family finalizes their adoption. It’s a hard dynamic to explain as to why this is the way it is, but we knew that once we returned from China, we were going to receive a lot more information on “B” than what we had received when we said “Yes” and she became ours. We just weren’t sure how much info or what exactly we would receive, other than we knew we would receive some additional photos they had taken since the time she came into the orphanage at a month old.

We will still never forget that moment when we visited her orphanage...

...the medical staff handed us a piece of paper with New Hope Foundation letterhead on it and shared some notes and provided us with the name of the doctor and his contact information that had treated our daughter while in China. I literally almost fell in the floor as that sort of thing just doesn’t normally happen in international adoption. This one piece of paper held so much value as they shared that our specialists in the U.S. were welcome to communicate with this doctor at any time with questions.

Wow. Just wow. There were no words...and trust me, neither of us are usually speechless very often.

Here is a short video that highlights the work of New Hope Foundation:

https://vimeo.com/115624870

We will forever be indebted to the wonderful work of New Hope Foundation in Beijing and Show Hope in Nashville for the wonderful work and financial support that made it possible for our daughter to be cared for in a way that far exceeded anything we could have imagined. In partnership together, they provided specialized medical staffing and care for our daughter’s Special Care Center that was housed in her orphanage. As you may know, Christian music artist Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife Mary Beth Chapman founded Show Hope. The Chapmans saw the needs in China a number of years ago and adopted several children from China and then expanded to create an amazing non-profit that now has care centers in China for medical/special needs children, provides adoption grants to Christian families, provides foster care/adoption conferences and training for foster/adoptive families and more.

About a month after we had come home from China, we received an email from Show Hope that said they had finalized all of the additional items from China for “B” and were sending us that information. About five minutes later we were both staring at our computer, mouths wide open, looking at a screen which now held file after file of new information and additional photos.

Almost 150 new photos from each month she was living there
Photos of our daughter from the very day she came into the orphanage at 26 days old

Photos of her “ayi” (nanny) and other nannies that worked with her

Photos of the children that were her “crib mates” in her room

Photos of her with her little friends
Photos of their version of Christmas (which they did have Santa hats & cake-LOL)

As if the photos weren’t a blessing enough, we then received a large excel document that were medical charts on our daughter with notes from almost every day or every other day or so where they charted her progress, her medical issues, each/every sickness she had, every medication she was given and more. We were blessed to receive important growth measurements for every month she was there, which was an incredible asset to her physicians here in the states. Our International Adoption Clinic and doctors were all stunned, as they had never seen anything like this provided on a child they had cared for upon returning from overseas. We had told them that they weren’t going to believe it until they saw it.

Through this amazing information, we learned a great deal more about our daughter’s health needs, medical issues she had experienced during certain months while in China, and also learned about some additional medical needs that we were weren’t aware of when we first reviewed her file and made the decision to adopt her. All of these wonderful notes just helped us piece together some of the missing pieces that were helpful to doctors and to us in general and will hopefully help us to continue on the best path of treatment for her in the days to come.

We know that the dynamic surrounding our daughter’s situation is unique and not what is commonly seen in China. It was without question- God ordained. The prayers of many were answered in a way that is “Above and Beyond” anything we could have asked for on our own.

We realize many a parent adopting internationally would give anything to receive the kind of information God so graciously bestowed upon our family. We know without a doubt that God ordained the exact place where she would be born, where she would be found, where she would be taken for care and placed her in a special care center where she would receive more one on one care and medical attention to help her survive her current circumstances and better grow and develop. As if this wasn’t enough, to think that both of these organizations that helped provide treatment and care for our daughter were Christian organizations. If that’s not the cherry on top, I’m not sure what else could be?

We want to thank each of you who have prayed for many months for our daughter, for her care, for her medical appointments/tests and for this entire process in general. This very post would not be possible without numerous prayers from so many and we want you to know that it is because of the power of prayer that we are able to sit here and write this incredible praise report of all that God has done and is continuing to do in the life of our little one. She still has a ways to go in many areas and there are still more medical appointments ahead, but we are thankful for where things are right now and how God has truly had His hand on her life.

If we learned anything out of the new information we received, we learned that this little one is quite a fighter and the outcome could have looked a lot different had God not intervened. As her doctor in China noted to us several weeks after we returned home, “You have a very special daughter. After seeing so many other children in China not recover from some of the issues your daughter experienced early on, we do not take that for granted and we tried to optimize her chances to do well…” We know without a doubt that our little one is thriving and doing as well as she is today thanks to the wonderful care she received in her care center.

We prayed from the beginning of this process that God would use her life and story to reflect praise to her Heavenly Father…that her life and story would bring honor to God and point to moments and details that only an all-wise loving Father could orchestrate. It’s not at all about us, but ALL about Him. May God continue to write her story in a way that only He can write.

“To Him who is able to do exceeding and abundantly above all that we ask or think…

to Him be the glory…forever and ever.”

– Ephesians 3:20-21

Two Important Things to Know About Little Miss

2015-03-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

We wanted to write to let you know a few things we feel you need to know about Little Miss at this stage of us being home. We want to shed a little light on what this transition period of coming home with “B” has and continues to look like for our family – and how you will be a part of that! Things are going well and we know a lot of you have had various questions and probably are curious about many things. We are always more than happy to talk about our process or answer questions, so feel free to reach out. We want to educate people who are interested in adoption in any way that we can.

There are two important areas we want to highlight to everyone...

Her Health

Her Attachment

Because of B’s medical needs, we are being careful right now with her exposure to a lot of the things still going around right now, since it is still the end of flu season. Obviously we can't shelter her nor have we, but in essence, she has had no exposure to and does not have built up immunities to any of our U.S. “bugs” that are being passed around like crazy right now and as we all know, it’s been a rough winter and continues to be for all of these bugs and viruses. Because she will continue to see doctors and specialists in the upcoming days, we do need to continue to aim to keep her as healthy as possible for any other testing and any possible future treatment(s) she may have in the weeks/months ahead; otherwise, these important things can be delayed. We just want those who are close to us or will have close contact with her to understand why we’d like to be as careful in this area as possible. This is why we’ve stayed at home the larger portion of the time since bringing her home. That said, we just ask everyone to please exercise caution in this area, especially if you have been or are sick to try to refrain from touching her little face and hands, etc. [trust us- we think her little face and hands are cute and oh-so-irresistible and just begging for touching, too! :)] This will hopefully aid us in continuing to keep her well for any upcoming appointments she will have. We know this may sound over the top to some, but we hope that you will understand where we are coming from and that we aren’t trying to be “crazy paranoid parents”… we promise we are very laid back- there are just a lot of things still unknown right now until we get further along with continued medical appointments.

The second area that is equally important is the area of bonding and attachment to us as her parents. This is one of the number one issues/concerns families can suddenly find themselves facing in adoption. Because we know you care for Brielle and our family, we want to share with you some information that we hope will best equip everyone around her to assist us in laying the strongest and healthiest foundation we can for her – emotionally, physically and spiritually.

In many ways, Brielle will be like a child who entered a family through birth; we will parent in many ways just as other Christian families as we aim to bring our children up in the instruction of the Lord. However, there will be a few, initial differences. For several years now, we have researched and studied bonding and attachment in children, especially those coming home through adoption from an orphanage setting. We are confident of this: God’s design is PERFECT! His plan for parents and children is a beautiful and meaningful picture of His love for us. Because our daughter is new to us being her mom and dad, it is important for us to have some important boundaries for the first few months. If you’re someone who we will see regularly at home, church, our just out and about, please take the time to read these notes on attachment and why this plays a crucial role in our daughter’s well-being long-term. These come from well-known Christian international adoption specialists and medical professionals with years of adoption experience and research.

Attachment between a parent and child occurs over time when a baby has a physical or emotional need, communicates that need, and a primary caretaker meets the need and soothes the child. This repeats between a parent and child over and over to create trust within the child for that parent - the baby is hungry or needs changing, cries in distress, mom feeds/changes/calms the baby – which teaches him/her that this person is safe and can be trusted. This also aids in very important early brain development. By God’s very design, an emotional foundation through attachment is laid in the tiniest of babies, which will affect their learning, conscience, growth and future relationships. The security provided by parents will ultimately give children a trust for and empathy towards others.

Children who come home through adoption (especially orphanage settings or difficult foster home settings) have experienced interruptions in this typical attachment process. The loss of a biological mother and father at an early age can be a major trauma in their little lives. For our daughter, she has experienced the loss of everything familiar- the sights, smells, food, people, and language of her birth country to name a few as well as comforting caretakers. These losses can easily overwhelm a child and may manifest themselves in various ways day to day. Everything around her continues to be new and she will need to learn not just about a new environment, but also about love and family. Though we could see by visiting her orphanage that she was loved, she still did not experience God’s perfect design for a family while living in an orphanage setting. In many ways, her world has been recently turned upside down. She may struggle with feeling safe and secure at times and may develop new fears in her new environment and may lack the ability at times to trust that we will meet her needs or protect her from these new fears.

With God’s help, we can now, as her forever family, work together to rebuild attachment and help her heal. The best way for us to form a solid parent/child bond is to be the primary ones to hold, cuddle, instruct, comfort and feed her in these early stages of her being home and learning to identify us as her parents and primary caregivers. As this repeats between us, she will be able to learn that we are safe to trust and to love deeply and will always be there to meet her needs. We are, essentially, recreating the newborn/parent connection. Once she begins to establish this important bond over time with us, she will then be able to branch out to other healthy relationships.

Children from orphanage settings are prone to reach out and attach too easily to anyone and everyone – which hinders the important, primary relationship with parents. Children who have had various caregivers may appear very friendly and may eagerly go to anyone at times to have their physical or emotional needs met as that is what they’ve learned in their early days of life as a mode of survival. A child struggling to learn to attach may exhibit indiscriminate affection with people outside of their parents. It may appear harmless and as if they are “very friendly” but this is actually quite dangerous for the child. Please understand that we want nothing more than to have our daughter hugged, cuddled and cherished by those closest to us, but until she has a firm understanding of family and primary attachments, we would be so grateful if you direct her to us if you see that she is seeking out food or comfort.

Please know that these decisions are thoughtfully made choices based on years of research from both trusted medical and international adoption professionals and advice from adoption professionals. We will be doing what we believe is best to help her heal from the early interruptions she had in attachment. We hope that you will understand and trust that we are doing this to give our little one an ideal environment to become a secure, well adjusted, and confident little girl in our family.

Though we continue to see amazing signs every day that she is attaching well, we can’t give an exact timeline on what this will look like or at what point we’ll say that she is “fully attached” to us. This takes time and every child is different. We hope and pray that this transition will continue to be smooth, but given the huge amount of new sights, people, and experiences day in and day out, we will continue to watch her progress carefully and how she interacts with both others as well as us.

Why are we telling you all of this? Because you will actually play an incredible and vital role in helping our little girl to settle into her new home, heal, and lay a foundation for the future. It will help us immensely if adults who are around our daughter limit what is typically considered normal, physical contact with a young child who you are around frequently. This will (for a while) include things like everyone holding her or excessive hugging and kissing. Waving, blowing kisses, high fives (which she loves to give), or a pat on the back are perfectly appropriate and more than welcomed. She should know that the people with whom she interacts are our trusted friends and family.

We are so grateful to have a community of friends that will help our daughter feel loved, safe, and secure. We couldn’t ask for any better family and circle of friends for her. Thank you so much for your love and support throughout this entire adoption process. She is doing so well and God continues to grant us so many answers to prayers that have been prayed for so long.

** some portions adapted from Show Hope resources

Today We Celebrate Our One Month Gotcha Day

2015-03-02T21:40:00.002-08:00

A month ago today God placed this sweet little bundle in our arms on her Gotcha Day. It's hard to put into words and believe a month ago she was an orphan living in China without the love of a forever family. We've had her for one month today and have been home from China for 2 weeks. Looking back, it's amazing to see how Little Miss has gone through and continues to go through an amazing transformation each and every day that goes by.

What we used to see---

A frightened, lifeless, lethargic child with no facial expressions.

A child who would barely eat or walk in the first week we met her; yet, would want to hold a food item in each hand when given the opportunity or would hold food in her mouth after meals.

A child who did not know who we were and why we were suddenly there in her world.

A child who could not comprehend who was holding her on this special day for us, yet oh so very difficult day in her life.

A child who didn't speak our language and we didn't speak hers.

A child who had hardly seen outside the walls of her orphanage and who had not seen much of or ever experienced the "outside world" that the rest of us live in daily.

A child who had never experienced the noisy, polluted, and crowded streets of her hometown in China.

A child who had never experienced multiple vehicle rides or a plane ride.

A child who had never experienced the true beauty of music and rhythm.

A child who was often dressed in layers of worn boy's clothing.

A child who never smiled in any of her referral photos or updates.

A child who had never experienced riding in a car seat.

A child who had limited exposure to stimulating things and very few, if any, toys and would sit on our bed and just play with her hands.

A child who had never experienced a variety of foods or as much food as she could want to eat.

A child who most likely had never attended a party thrown in her honor.

Fast Forward one month in a family. What do we now see? We see---

A beautiful little girl who has now transformed into a child full of bubbling personality.

A little girl who would only drink formula and mainly only eat rice congee while in China and who now loves to eat bananas, oatmeal, yogurt, apple sauce, and avocados- just to name a few!

A little girl who makes more funny faces than we can count in a day.

A little girl who loves to wear bright clothing and headbands and princess slippers her Grammy gave her.

A little girl who crinkles her nose just like her mom and flashes a mischievous grin more than several times a day.

A little girl who dances to music every time she hears a beat and who has already learned a line of one song (even if it's just animal noises- she knows exactly when it's coming up in the song and when to do it- lol)

A little girl who already recognizes Jesus Loves Me when she hears it and tries to say "The Bible tells me so".

A little girl who mimics anything or any face that her mommy and daddy make or do.

A little girl who loves running from daddy when he chases her to tickle her and then explodes into laughter.

A little girl whose big smiles and giggles light up a room.

A little girl who just recently experienced her first snow.

A little girl who can now identify a momma and daddy and point to them in a room.

Brielle- We've watched you observe the smallest of details and then immediately copy it perfectly on the next try. We've watched you observe us taking lotion from a bottle, rubbing it in between our hands and then putting it on you and you now can mimic these steps perfectly. We've watched you fall in love with the cartoon Ni Hao Kai Lan and already recognize the theme song and imitate some words in Chinese and a few in English. We've watched you try to learn new words and even though it's a struggle, we see you try every now and then. We saw you take your first tumble in the snow even when you weren't quite sure what that cold stuff was. You've tried every food we've given you and thus far you've liked pretty much everything you've tried since being home. We've watched you make a new face practically every day. We've watched you imitate us "cleaning" and you seem to like things clean just like your mom and dad and you like helping mommy sweep the floor. You are learning how to feed yourself and have been practicing using a fork and spoon. You don't like food all over your hands and face and will make it clear when we need to clean you off. You're still not a fan of whole milk yet, but are doing much better drinking water and using a sippy cup. You still love your bottle and we don't mind cuddling with you to give it to you. You still have some trouble with sleep and definitely fight those naps! We've nicknamed you "crouching tiger" because you have a little crouching position you love to sit in and you love to make a tiger sound. You went from not being sure about this whole "American bath thing" in China to loving to take a bath and now loving to play in the bath. You even find your reflection in the chrome in the bathtub every day and giggle at yourself.

You know what a remote control does and could mimic that after watching it demonstrated only once. You're in love with cell phones and will have the funniest conversations with yourself when you have one in your hand and if you don't have one in hand, you'll turn any object into one. Amazing how quickly you've learned what cell phones can do! There are still so many things you are intrigued by and have never seen or tried yet, but you will.

You will eventually meet your wonderful church family and take your first trip to a grocery store, Target or a mall. You will try ice cream (it's your mom and dad's favorite) and pizza and I'm sure many other things that, in time, you'll be ready for. You'll have your first appointments with the international adoption clinic and specialists next week and we know you'll do great. There is still oh so much for you to explore, little one, and everything right now is such a world of curiosity and wonder for you.

We know you were given amazing care in your Care Center at your orphanage in China and had wonderful nannies that loved you dearly; however, even as great as that is, we know that God designed you and each of us for the love of a family and we are so blessed to see the results of one on one nurturing just exploding forth in you now that you are home. We also know that this is also the result of the prayers of so many.

Brielle- we've loved every minute we've shared with you in the last month and can't wait to see what the next month holds for our family! You've already been a blessing to us and your extended family and I'm sure the lives of others both in China and at home. So thankful for a faithful God who chose us to be your parents.

'B's First Party & Meeting Great-Grandma & Family

2015-03-01T19:34:00.002-08:00

This weekend, we had the joy of heading back home to my parents for a shower, and celebrating Brielle being home. For those who know a little about Chinese adoption, there is this little "story" and I'm not quite sure where it started, but that says that ladybugs in Chinese adoption mean good luck. You'll find a lot of ladybug items that are related to this thought and you'll hear a family say "I saw a ladybug, so our family may get our referral soon!" That said, since the ladybug is a little iconic to the China adoption world, that was the theme of the shower & I thought it turned out so cute!

We were able to introduce her to many of our extended family who had not yet met her as well as some very dear friends that we've known for over 20 years.

Friends that have pretty much watched me grow up since high school
Friends that I have learned so much from over the years
Several women that I consider mentors in my life who have taught me so much in past years and who I still respect and look up to for so many reasons
Friends that I've done ministry alongside of during and after college
Friends that I've gone to youth camps with and on mission trips (oh the stories!)

(and you can see what she found first in her little play bucket gift before we even started the shower- a mirror! haha)

Just seeing so many of these dear people brings back so many fun, sweet, crazy, and humorous memories from past years. If we could have stayed for hours and talked, I know that we would have reminisced about so many things.

'B' also met her great-grandmother for the first time. Great-grandma has been having some real struggles in the last month since we left for China and returned. Her memory is far worse and she fell a week ago and broke her arm and hurt her hip, so getting to see Little Miss when she arrived from China wasn't quite possible. However, it was fun to watch these two interact and watch grandma wink at her and the two play peek-a-boo at the kitchen table and just enjoy spending time with her.

She also got to hang out with her uncle a bit and saw and interacted with her first dog. (that was hilarious) She couldn't decide what to do at one point when she was with my brother and there was our family's little dog coming up from behind her. By the time she left, I think she had warmed up to the idea, but it was fun watching her facial expressions and we swear she said "doggie" at one point in the evening.

Nate and I first want to thank my mom who did an amazing job of putting together such a sweet and special day for us and Brielle. (and for anyone else that assisted in this endeavor) I know what it's like to plan and coordinate events and showers and though it can be a lot of fun to do, I know the hours of work that went into it and it was such a sweet day enjoyed by all. Thank you for going above and beyond and as always- the "little details" that make a day special. It was beautiful and so much fun to be able to introduce our little one to every one for a brief period of time.

We would also like to thank family and friends who took of their time and busy schedules to travel up to be with us on Saturday. As always, it was great seeing each of you and let's be honest- we know who you were really coming to see! (haha)

We'd lastly like to thank those who came out who we haven't seen in quite a while and for blessing our daughter. We know without a doubt that many of you have fervently prayed for her from before she was even born and before we were even matched with her- in fact, a few of you wrote adoption reference letters for us when we were beginning our process! We cannot begin to express how much we've appreciate each of your prayers that have been uplifted before the Father during our adoption. We know that it's because of so many of you praying, that our time before China and while in China went so smoothly and continues to go well since coming home.

We truly stand amazed at the ways that God has continue to provide for 'B' and meet every need. God has provided everything we have needed for her and that is not an accident, but a tribute to a very faithful God that you truly cannot out-give. There were even a few surprises that we discovered later after coming home Saturday that just sort of blew us away. You know who you are and we thank you. (one day, she will too)

Thank you all for sharing in such a sweet time together with us this weekend! Our hearts are smiling big and are truly full.

Leaving China & Home Sweet Home (2.13 & 2.14)

2015-02-14T22:56:00.000-08:00

Today we wanted to highlight our trip home from China and our little one's entry into the U.S. and what that day looked like as we departed China on February 13, and arrived in the airport in New Jersey on Friday, February 13th. (Gotta' love how those time zones work!) Below are our reflections from journaling that long trip home with little peanut and our arrival home:

Friday, Feb. 13th- Leaving China- Homeward Bound!

Today is bittersweet. Today we leave for home, back to where all things are familiar for us, but where nothing will be familiar to our daughter. We will land in a country where freedoms exist-where we can again use the internet and Facebook without anyone blocking it or tapping into our conversations, where we can worship freely and can raise our daughter to love the Lord and where she will have the opportunity to attend church freely and learn about a loving God who gave His only son for her. A country where foods that we love will be easily accessible, but will completely unfamiliar to her.

Though we are so excited to bring her back and introduce her to her new family and friends, a part of us feels like we are leaving a piece of our heart in China…. and that’s because we are. We loved China before this trip and even more so now, as we have learned so much about this beautiful country and its people, its customs, its beliefs or lack thereof in some cases, its amazing food and tea, and so much more. Today we leave the country that gave life to our daughter and where she grew up for the first 18 months of her life. We leave wondering who her birthparents are and wish they could see how well she is doing and that’s she is going to be ok.

It’s going to be a long trip today and we have no idea what’s in store in the long hours ahead. Today we leave at 5:30 am to take a van across the border into Hong Kong, to go through customs, and then head to the airport. Poor “B” had no idea what in the world was happening at such an early hour, as we had to wake her up to head out.

We were all supposed to have one van per family, but then one of the vans got stuck in customs and couldn’t make it across the border, so we shared a van with another family. It was just fine and we certainly didn’t care and had to laugh at how the next few hours went with our little ones. When we got to the border, we had to get out of the van and head through customs on foot, as apparently, you can only have a certain number of people in a van and be able to drive across the border. As we waited in line to get to the customs building, we had to laugh hysterically as all of the Chinese drivers in the various lines waiting to get one step closer were just laying on their horns as if that was going to change something. It was like a horrific symphony of various vehicle horns all with their variety of pitches-- as if fussy children trapped in a van trying to cross the border wasn’t enough, this just about did us in.

We tried to get a video of the moment, and this was the best we could do, but it seriously doesn’t do it justice as to what we had been hearing just moments before we tried filming it:

Once we reached the building, we headed inside to go through customs

in China before entering Hong Kong.

(sorry for the very rough iPhone photo that was technically not supposed to be taken--shhh) Things went smoothly and then we jumped back in the van to enter Hong Kong. Immediately upon entering Hong Kong, we went just a short bit and then the road system switched and we were driving on the left side of the road. It was pretty amazing how smoothly they set that transition up!

In about a half hour, we arrived at the airport and with luggage in hand, headed to the ticket counter. When we arrived at the counter, we unfortunately found out that our flight had been delayed 3 hours and that due to this, we would not make our connection in Newark, NJ and were being booked on the next flight out which wasn’t until the next morning, since the other two flights were late night flights and were all full. They offered us standby, but we couldn’t quite imagine waiting in the airport for standby flights for over 5 hours with a toddler. A free hotel room for the night and food vouchers sounded much more appealing in the moment.

Once we talked with the airlines, we made the best of it and then settled down in the airport for our next 4 ½ hours until take off. We contacted family and everyone to let them know that we wouldn’t be arriving on Friday night, which unfortunately caused a few changes to a few people’s schedules who were planning on meeting us at the airport.

Thankfully, we found a neat play area for “B” for a little while and then had lunch and let her nap and then it was time to board our plane for the U.S.

We weren’t sure how she would do or how his next 15+ hour flight was going to go. Once we got settled on the plane, just as she had done on her other flight, she fell asleep before take off. Again, I think this was a blessing!

The next almost 16 hours were ticking by so slowly and this time around having a little one, I didn’t have as easy a time watching a movie to distract me and help pass the time.

The hours seemed to creep ever so slowly and finally “B” fell asleep with what seemed to be her “night time” sleep. During this time Nate and I fell asleep too, holding her and letting her stretch out in her seat.

For anyone adopting internationally, I HIGHLY encourage buying your child a ticket for a child seat and not a lap pass. You will NOT regret that decision. It was worth every dollar to purchase a child’s ticket and have a seat and for us to have the extra room not only for us, but for her to stretch out, play, stand, etc. for the long ride home. She did so well it was unbelievable. Between either playing calmly or sleeping, it was a pretty uneventful flight with her which we found to be amazing. She even slept through the bad turbulence that almost gave her mom a heart attack.

She was asleep again when we landed (thank goodness because with all of us being sick, it did a number on our ears) and we had to wake her in order to take her through immigration where she would immediately become a US Citizen upon entry.

We gathered our things and headed off our plane into brutally cold 11 degree weather that was a bit of a shocker after leaving 75 degrees at our last stop in China. We headed to customs and at the point of entry was asked for the brown envelope which contained her adoption paperwork provided by the US Consulate.

We were ushered to another section of immigration and in less than 3-5 minutes approximately, she was given the green light to leave and with that, Miss Bri became a US citizen in New Jersey. I guess you can now say she’s a Jersey girl. (haha)

It was off to gather our luggage and head to get things arranged with the airlines for a hotel. Because she was a little stir crazy and we had to get a few things accomplished, we may or may not have created a little suitcase cage against the wall to keep her contained. (Like I said, this may or may not have happened. :)

We bundled her up, pulled our coats from our luggage and headed to catch the van to our hotel. We settled in for the night and definitely had a little one that was not too keen on the whole “sleeping” thing and was definitely showing signs of jetlag. We had a quick dinner, bathed “Bri” then tried to get rested for the next day’s early flight.

We are so thankful for the safety and how well “B” did while traveling. It is good to be back in the U.S. and we can’t wait to see friends and family tomorrow.

Sat- 2/14/15- Valentine’s Day & The Love of Family

We had an early morning departure of 6:30am to catch our next flight, so this year’s Valentine’s Day is going to look a little different. I can think of no greater day to celebrate arriving home with little “B” and for her to meet her extended family who will show her love beyond words. What a beautiful day to celebrate the love of family and belonging.

We headed to the airport early this AM to catch the first flight out to Richmond and then couldn’t wait to introduce Little Miss to her new family. We landed in the airport a few minutes ahead of schedule, as we were to arrive at 10:20.

Again, Bri did amazing on this flight and we couldn’t have asked for a better trip with her. I cannot begin to give God enough praise for how well she traveled over this entire last two weeks and particularly the last 36 hours of flights and travel.

When we landed, we had to do a diaper change for little one, called our family to let them know we had arrived, and then we were off to see our parents, family, and friends. We are so thankful to Leah O'Connell at Firefly Photography, as she was SO flexible despite our flight cancellations the day before. We are so glad she took photos at the airport so that we would have these for Bri and our family. It is so important to us that we are able to show her just how much she was loved and prayed for these past few years and this was just one of those moments you can't capture on your own.

It's still hard to believe we left this airport a few weeks ago as a couple and today arrived as a family of three!

Our parents were there waiting along with fresh chocolate chip cookies, a few gifts for little one, and some balloons and signs.

We all had to laugh, as Little One did not like the giant panda balloon (which is quite comical, really, since it's one of China's national animals) even though we all thought it was pretty cool. Let's just say that one got deflated rather quickly upon arrival. I guess a giant panda balloon that is the same size as you might be a little scary, huh?

For the first 30 minutes, it was back to her usual stare-down. She wasn’t quite sure what to think and definitely was determined not to show any personality. It was what we expected and anyone would expect from a child with her background and who had no idea that these were her relatives and friends.

She quietly watched everyone and just let us hold her and then relaxed on the couch, until around 20-30 minutes later when she decided she was ready to walk with her daddy and then suddenly the personality began to come out.

That was when we began to capture more of who she really is and her extended family was able to see the real “Bri” we had begun to see the last several days.

After spending some time with family and friends, we headed to baggage claim

to pick up our luggage.

As we left the airport, we took a moment to pray as a family and with friends to thank God for all of His good blessings on both her life and our trip and all that we’ve seen His hand so graciously a part of, throughout this entire process. We know that the journey is not ending, but only just now beginning and the weeks and months to come will continue to show new things and new challenges; yet, moments of new joys, new smiles, and new moments that only God could orchestrate.

We exited the airport and though we knew the car seat was next (which most adoptive families know is THE worst part of the entire traveling since children have ever been exposed to them in China), we were also ready to grab lunch. Since it was Valentine’s Day and restaurants were already swamped with long waits, we decided to do a quick lunch and grabbed Chik-fil-A. (you can’t get much more southern and American than that, right? Not to mention, this momma couldn’t wait to get her hands on something with ice and a sweet tea!)

During lunch, more and more of her personality came out and she became a little ham for everyone at the lunch table. After we left lunch, we are blessed to say that the whole car seat thing went fairly well and we only had two minor meltdowns on the way home, which is pretty remarkable. She fell asleep drinking from her bottle on our way home (as she hasn’t quite learned the knack of the sippy cup).

When we pulled in our driveway, we were surprised to see a sweet banner and flowers that friends had left for us to welcome Brielle home.

When we went inside, our stairway had also been decorated for Bri with Valentine’s Day balloons.

It may not have been the typical Valentine’s Day that one is used to having, but it was the best Valentine’s Day for so many other reasons. Little one, it’s so good to have you home, even if it’s still a new place you are exploring and trying to figure out.

Welcome Home!!

A BIG THANK YOU to each of you who made our return home special and welcomed us and our little one back with open arms. There are so many individuals we could name who orchestrated little details to make our acclimating back into life as a family of three so much easier. To those who made banners, welcome home signs, put food in our fridge, diapers on our steps, prepared meals, prepared showers, attended showers, loved on "B" and us and have encouraged and most importantly prayed for us during this journey- we cannot begin to express our thanks to each of you adequately. We are forever grateful for your acts of kindness and never forget that God sees each of those sweet and selfless acts. BIG hugs from our family to yours. We are blessed beyond measure.

A Taste of the Culture of China (2.12.15)

2015-02-12T21:54:00.000-08:00

Reflections from our trip to China: The day before we fly out...(pardon the lack of editing to some of these photo-- no time for that these days!) :) Please note- video link may not be viewable on some mobile devices)

2/12/15 (Thursday)

...Today we had a lazy morning and some of the families went to the zoo or had a chance to visit the Safari Park. Since Bri’s a little young and these options were going to cut a bit into nap time and a large part of the day, we felt a restful day visiting the local park and seeing some of the nearby areas would be a better fit. We had a late breakfast and let her take her morning nap and I headed out to a nearby store for one last run to ensure we had all of the souvenirs for Bri that we had wanted to get while here and a few gifts for a few others.

Once she got up, we headed to the local park near our hotel which is was absolutely stunning. Since Chinese New Year is just a couple of days away, everything is decked out and ready for the big celebration. You can’t quite picture what this is like, but if you think about how we celebrate and decorate for Christmas in the states, it’s sort of like that, but in some ways even more elaborate.

It’s been really amazing seeing how important this holiday is in Chinese culture and how it’s celebrated. We walked throughout the park and there were so many beautiful decorations throughout. This year will mark the year of the sheep (or goat depending on which Chinese person you talk to as you'll find sheep and goat in various places- it's quite humorous and has been a bit confusing to most). Everywhere that you see displays, there will be little sheep throughout them.

Some of the displays and decorations have been so amazing to see. The park was absolutely beautiful to stroll through and we didn’t even touch a fraction of it! Such a gorgeous little lake and buildings and décor for the upcoming holiday.

Local children had also made numerous types of lanterns for the upcoming Lantern Festival which marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebration. These lined the walkway beside the lake and were so colorful and varied greatly
with such detail. Pictures just couldn't do them justice.

After we left the park, we headed back to the hotel, which happens to have a Starbucks on site, and Nate grabbed a coffee and he bought me a Mango Hibiscus tea which was an absolutely amazing drink. I will say the Starbucks drink menu in China has us beat (at least in my personal opinion). They have some different drinks than the U.S., but also have many of the same drinks as well. If nothing else- coming across one, is a little piece of home away from home.

We headed to the meeting room briefly to pick up Bri’s packet of paperwork and passport which now had her new US visa in it.

Once that was done, we decided to head back out and take a stroll out of the “tourist” area and walk down some streets off the beaten path. A friend had given us a street to check out and it turned out to be an amazing suggestion! The area around the hotel, is very “touristy” and you can’t go far without seeing other adoptive families or just foreign travelers in general in the area where we stayed. To explore and get off the beaten path and see a different piece of “China” in this province was a neat site.

We walked down a little stone-path alley and it opened into a narrow street where apartments lined the path.

Along the road were markets and vendors and just about anything you could buy or need if you were a local. The first store we encountered was a meat market and the owner didn’t take too fondly to us videoing his store, so we quickly put that away, but did get quite a few pictures of the things that were for sell- butchered meat, live "chicken-birds" (because I don't know what they are or what to call them) and other living critters like snakes, eels, fish, etc. (ok, so maybe fish aren't critters)

Just a few steps down we came across fruit and veggie vendors and tons

of Chinese New Year decorations for sell.

(there is just something about this picture above that I just love...)

There were flower shops, tea shops, little convenience stores and more. I would love to have had more time to wander this street further, as it was bustling with energy as people were heading home from work and buying what was needed to cook dinner or to decorate for the upcoming holiday.

( sorry for cutting your head off in this picture, Nate--oops!)

While walking, we had a funny experience as a “Chinese grandma” saw Bri “having a little meltdown moment” and she walked up to her in the stroller and started talking to her and within seconds, the tears dried up and she just looked at me and all was made right in the world again. We’ve noticed that several times while here that a little Chinese lady will say something to her and she gets so enamored by the conversation. I guess we’ll never know what they said to her, but whatever it was, it worked!

We were definitely the only foreigners on this street so we got the stare down more than we had on any part of our trip. Everyone would walk up to us and look at “B” and then start chatting among themselves or pointing to her big eyes (which they are all so fascinated by) We’ve been told that “big eyes” are quite coveted by Asians, so I guess that explains why they are so interested in her eyes all of the time.

Here's a little piece of China via video...

We snapped a few photos and then decided it was time to head back to the hotel.

We headed back for the night to start the fun process of packing for our long trip home. Now is the moment of truth- will all of our stuff fit in our bags and not be overweight! Thankfully since we have “B” with us for the return home, we are allowed one more bag, so we can stuff our carry on with more this time around and check it if need be. Lucky for us, some of the items for “B” like food and diapers have slowly diminished over these last two weeks, so we should have a bit more space in our bags due to that. We will definitely be loaded down- backpacks in tow along with several suitcases and a baby this time! Hard to believe we leave tomorrow for home.

US Consulate Appointment & Shamian Island (2.11.15)

2015-02-11T20:20:00.000-08:00

Reflections written from 2/11/15 (Weds)- U.S. Consulate Appointment & Shamian Island:

Today we headed to the US Consulate in downtown, which is run by the Department of State. This was the last step needed in order to finish our adoption to receive “B’s” US immigrant visa for her passport.

We went through security and couldn't take any type of camera or phone into the building (even Bri's diaper creme didn't make it through security- lol!). Once through security, we headed to the second floor of the building nearby to wait for our number to be called in order to finish the steps for her visa. We all took oath together as adoptive families and then did a fingerprint signature and they made sure we were 100% aware of our children’s paperwork and medical needs, etc. before leaving China. They checked everything over on the paperwork and made sure nothing was missing and everything was accurate. During our interview they did bring up a medical item that had not been listed in any of our paperwork from the orphanage, but did not come as a surprise to us- so we hope that once we are able to get additional records from her orphanage once the adoption is finalized (this is something they shared with us that we will receive since she was in a care center at her orphanage), that maybe there will be some additional notes that were taken.

The American officer on staff who gave instructions and led us through the oath was hilarious and did a great job with something that most likely could be so monotonous day in and day out for him. He had us all laughing and just told us that we had to keep our brown envelope of paperwork and do not open it at any time as this will go directly to the U.S. immigration services in the airport when we land in the U.S. and will grant automatic citizenship to our daughter. He told us if we opened up our brown envelope that we would end up in parts of the airport for immigration that we didn’t want to be in and made a bunch of jokes about everything and kept it funny and lighthearted. Someone should seriously consider giving this guy a raise.

After we wrapped up things at the US Consulate in Guangzhou, we took a few last pictures as families in front of the building, since cameras and other devices are not allowed inside.

Gotta' love the Chinese lady photo-bombing!

We headed back to the hotel and then Nate and I met up with a friend from Beijing who wanted to hang out for the afternoon and so graciously agreed to take us out and about to a few places this afternoon. We headed to the pearl market (which we had missed earlier in the week) where pearls and other items are wholesale (jewelry store owners and people from all over the world come here to purchase and bargain for pearls, jade, precious stones, etc. and then take them back to their home countries to sell in stores, etc. We had wanted to pick up a few small things for Brielle for when she is older. This area is considered one of the busiest in the city of Guangzhou and was filled with people! There were marketplaces selling foods and fruit and just about anything on a stick. We then took about a 20 min walk and headed over to Shamian Island.

This lady below didn't like me taking photos of her food booth apparently...

While in route to Shamian Island, we passed this tea store...I thought it was really amazing how they packaged all of these different types of tea.

and another store with some sort of native food item (wish I would have written it down) that they dry out and then make into hangings for their home.

Shamian Island was absolutely gorgeous. I had no idea what to expect, other than I knew it was a place many families liked to shop for items to take home for their children and was a popular spot among adoptive families.

Suddenly, within minutes, it was as though we had been transplanted from China and suddenly arrived in Charleston, SC. Huge gnarly trees with beautiful wood, lined all of the streets, each adorned with moss hanging from above. (sorry ya'll, I'm not a tree connoisseur so have no idea what kind of trees these were, but I loved them and some were just massive!)

There were no motor vehicles, no large crowds or noise (something that is beyond rare here) - just beautiful Chinese lanterns, lush greenery, flowers and cobblestone streets.

Christmas decorations and Chinese New Year decorations were also hanging

throughout the streets.

The buildings were beautiful and surprisingly, didn’t have Asian architecture. It was a beautiful place to take a stroller and walk along the sidewalks and browse through the shops. (and yes, there was even a very modern plantation style Starbucks here)

There were also a lot of really neat bronze statues throughout the area and we tried to get “B” to take some photos with a few of the more popular ones, but she was terrified of them for some reason. Total meltdown. That said, this is pretty much all we got.

We came across an amazing store called China Charities, which was a Christian store that sold really nice and unique items, but gave the profits to charity to help feed, clothe and take care of orphans and children in foster care in China. You couldn’t really bargain in this store, but the items were so neat and being sold for such a good reason, that we loved that concept and purchased a few neat things here. We were able to get “B” a little bracelet and a doll dress that is a traditional Chinese dress. Nate also found a very cool Chinese print and we realized it had a great Bible verse on it and as we walked through the store, there were a number of other items with Bible verses on them throughout the store. I’m not exactly sure how they are able to sell a lot of what was in this store, but they had quite a bit in there and Nate bought a neat Chinese scroll for his office with the verse from Philippians 3:13- “...Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth to those things which are before…”

Before we knew it, it was time to leave and find a taxi back to the hotel, which unfortunately proved to be quite the challenge. We had to be back for individual and group photos at 4:30 in the hotel lobby and though we started the process early to get back, we couldn’t find a cab anywhere for the longest time. Finally we hit a point where we were racing against he clock and suddenly it felt like we were contestants on the ‘Amazing Race’ (those who follow that show will understand what I mean-- but I'd vote that our little experience was one level crazier than the actual show, since we were running around in a foreign country with a baby, all the while trying to get to the next place. Maybe they need to launch a new show called- The Amazing Baby Race). We ran several blocks with “B” in her stroller looking for either a metro station (which we knew was a few blocks up) or an available taxi. (we knew the taxi would be much quicker) I'm sure the Chinese people we passed wonder what in the world the crazy white Americans were doing jogging through the streets with a baby stroller.

As you can tell, she didn't have a care in the world and was probably loving the crazy stroller ride! Finally we found a taxi and made sure they knew we only had 15 minutes left and they had to drive quickly. The next 15 minutes was certainly the ride of our life as this guy was quite the driver. They say if you can drive in China with all of the craziness, you can drive anywhere in the world and now I understand that quote more fully. It was as though Nate and I were suddenly in the last leg of the Amazing Race, trying to make it to the next pit stop, racing against the clock. “B” fell asleep so fast after we started riding in the taxi, that she missed out on one wild ride-- and that was probably a good thing!

We arrived just two minutes late at the hotel, but families were still piling into the lobby, so we were good to go. The next half hour of photos of the entire travel group and their families, a group shot of just the children on a big long couch, and individual family photos proved to be very interesting. Try getting over 30 people plus the 17 new children to all look at the camera and smile together...

Oh.

My.

Word.

Organized chaos.

It was actually quite hysterical and made me laugh. All the parents just had to make jokes and keep lighthearted as kids were crying, falling sleep, or wiggling and wouldn’t let anyone take their picture. (Hence an example from the photo above-- not one of mine turned out as kiddos were moving everywhere- lol!) Our little one decided it was nap time still, so barely woke up in enough time to get a picture or two and we definitely didn't have a chance to get "sleeping beauty" dressed in her Chinese "silks" as they call them. As it turned out, we weren't the only ones. Oh the funny travel moments we’ve had with our children while in China.

After the photo session, little “B” was quite ready for food and a nap since her naptime was a bit shortened today with all of the moving around and she just slept in transit to places. We settled in for the evening and miss personality started showing her fun side again. We fed her and then gave her a good bath, then started to wind down for the evening.

Tomorrow we are going to keep it low key and likely visit the local park and maybe hit up a few last places before we leave China. We will receive our daughter’s final paperwork and passport and US Visa tomorrow afternoon around 4pm. It’s bittersweet to think we leave in less than two days.

Chinese Keepsakes & A Cantonese Dinner (2.10.15)

2015-02-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

Reflections from 2.10.15- written while in China:

Today was a fairly low-key day as we are all waiting for our visas for our children to be processed, so we had some down time today. Nate was SO great to volunteer to keep Brielle and let me run to a few stores to find some items we would like to take back home with us to have as a family and to purchase for “B” for some of her special days in the future. There is a wonderful market place just a few minutes from our hotel and where the quality of workmanship or authenticity can be guaranteed (that isn’t always the case in many stores in China). (example: an actual tea set you can use and drink out of that isn't made just for sitting on shelf or made with harmful things) I went with another mother in our group and we were able to walk around and look at amazing Chinese tea sets, tea cups, Chinese knots and embroidery (Chinese knots are commonly hung in homes as they are thought to bring good luck and happiness), jade items, fine porcelain, Chinese art, clothing, chopsticks and more. Some of the most beautiful items were in this store and to have to choose a few things was quite difficult.

Since tea is a common staple at meals and very customary throughout China, we bought a really neat tea item that has the Chinese symbol for “double happiness” on it and will be something that we will give to her when she gets married. We were also able to pick up some other items we will give to her for special days in the future or when we celebrate either "Gotcha Day" or "Forever Family Day". Though I hadn't planned on it, we did purchase a really neat tea set that was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. (seeing that I'm a bit of a tea lover, I think it was an easy sell) :)

This shop also has artists located on site and they can create specialty items for you. We wanted to have someone write “B’s” Chinese name in Chinese characters and then her English name below. It was interesting to watch how they wrote with brushes and ink on rice paper and so carefully scripted her name.

On the side, they wrote her “Gotcha Day” date in Chinese as well. We absolutely love how it turned out and can’t wait to frame it!

We also purchased a few traditional Chinese items that we are going to use as Christmas ornaments and bought one that we will give to “Bri” one day when she has her own Christmas tree.

One entire section of this store was just tea set after tea set, so many intricate details and beautiful designs. (Of all the days not to bring my real camera and have to resort to using my not-so-updated Iphone for a few shots….oh well) It was just so fun to look through everything and see the amazing variety and artistic design of each tea pot or set. I can only imagine the amount of hours that went into making so many of the various designs in the store.

Later this evening, we headed with our travel group to have a traditional Cantonese dinner at the Macau Street Restaurant. The food was incredible!

I just loved these vintage looking Chinese high chairs and couldn’t help but take a few pictures of “Bri” in them.

We had different dishes of beef and pork, eggplant, Chinese buns, varieties of Chinese green beans, fried veggie rice, thin noodles, and a few other items.

I think Brielle liked the noodles!

One thing about dining in China is that you don’t just have 1-3 items for dinner. You generally have a large variety of dishes and it’s absolutely amazing. Chinese food in the U.S. can’t even come close or compare to authentic Chinese food. (and if you think you know of a restaurant in the states that compares, please let me know!) I’ll actually miss the food here.

We came back to the hotel and chatted on Facetime with family. They were all so amazed at the difference in “B” since the last time we chatted right after we first had her for a few days. They couldn’t believe the facial expressions and personality she was displaying.

Here's a look at many of the faces she made in just a few hours tonight:

It’s been remarkable to everyone and especially us. We can’t wait to continue to watch more of her personality shine through as she continues to bond and attach to us as her parents. She’s a joy to be around and is such a good baby. Only a few more days until we head home!

US Consulate Medical Exam Day & Pearl River Tour (2.9.15)

2015-02-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

Reflections from “B’s” US Consulate Medical Exam Day & our One Week Anniversary in China: (the following was written in China when we couldn't post everything we wanted and internet was not working)

2.9.15--

Today marks one week since “B” was placed into our arms. Wow- it’s hard to believe. What a long way she's come in those short 7 days. To watch her now reach for both of us to pick her up or feed her, etc. is wonderful improvement from where we were a week ago today. To watch her play mimic games with daddy and run from him with huge giggles as he chases her around the hotel room is amazing after 4 days of constant blank stares and nearly no emotion.

All of our guides and our friend in Beijing who is in Guangzhou right now as well, have all said how well she seems to be adjusting overall to us and how happy and resilient a child she seems to be. We agree. (well, at least most of the time-haha)

Today we left the hotel at 9am with half of our travel group for a 15 minute bus ride to head to the US Consulate to have “B’s” medical exam. This exam is required in order for her to receive a US visa and enter the United States. The exam consists of three different stations that the children have to go through. The first station is the ENT (ear, nose, throat) and then each child goes to the weighing station and lastly a general exam room.

This face says, "I know something is up, but I'm just not sure what!"

It’s a bit of organized chaos in this fifth floor as there is one side that is for U.S. visas for many other Chinese citizens and then the other side is for adoptive families. Thankfully because she is under 2 years old, she doesn’t have to do the blood draw for a TB test.

What happened when we arrived was nothing short of comical- or at least we had to make ourselves laugh at what transpired. On the ride to the medical exam, we learned that the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China is the busiest one in the world, processing 2,000 US visas of various types daily. The US Consulate moved to a new facility about two years ago and when we pulled up to the building where the medical exam would be done, we passed lines and lines of Chinese people outside waiting in line for different types of US visas. It was pretty remarkable. We also drove alongside the Pearl River, which is the fourth largest in China. Tonight we will take a river cruise to see more of the city and river.

As the bus pulled in, we decided to do a quick diaper check before we entered the next 3 hours of madness with all of the kiddos. As we’ve learned quickly here in China, when you have a chance to check/change your child’s diaper in a somewhat convenient or private environment, you do it and do it quickly as there aren’t bathrooms with convenient child changing stations located in them as most bathrooms are squatty potties (a hole in the floor for waste to go into). If you’ve never used a squatty potty it’s an awesome experience (said with the highest level of sarcasm ). Sometimes you come across a Western toilet in certain places and are SO thankful to see those. One of the squatty potties I used while in Beijing was in a nicer restaurant by China’s standards, yet I literally dry heaved several times and almost decided to just hold it a few more hours. (lol)

As the bus stopped, we pulled “B” up really quickly to check her diaper AND as we had suspected, Little Miss had had quite the major poop explosion right before her medical exam. (nice, kiddo. You must have known what was about to happen and decided “I’ll show them!”) So, we ripped off her clothes as fast as we could so we didn’t get far behind the group, but unfortunately, it took more than a few seconds to change her this round and by the time we got her cleaned up and clothes changed our group had disappeared. We thought they had headed to the Consulate building we had saw when pulling in so we headed in that direction. We crossed the street and sorted through line after line of Chinese people standing outside and could not see anyone from our group anywhere (and trust me, you can’t miss our group when we are wandering around)

We then wondered if they were able to bypass the lines since they were a group so weren’t quite sure what to do next. We decided worse case, let’s head back to where the bus originally parked, about a block down and see if maybe they realized they had left us and figured our guides would eventually notice. As we headed that way, a Chinese lady saw us with what was likely a very puzzled look on our face and in broken English said, “passport photo for baby?” We knew we had to do another photo today, but that it was a visa photo, so weren’t sure if she actually knew what she was talking about. We followed her anyway for a block towards the direction we were headed anyway and she pointed to a building for passport photos, but which as we suspected was for Chinese citizens and not the office we were looking for.

As we turned around to walk back and wait for our guide to find us, straight ahead we saw one of our guides and she spotted us and the look on her face was priceless. I seriously think we gave her the biggest heart attack. She just grabbed us and hugged us and said, “So sorry, so sorry” and thought that they had left us on accident at the hotel. We told her not to worry, that we weren’t afraid of walking around on our own and we would have figured it out, but you could tell she was just dismayed and terrified at the fact that we had wandered around the streets on our own for about 15 minutes. She led us into the building where we had “B” take her visa photo for her medical exam paperwork.

They then led our entire group upstairs to the 5^th floor that was filled with adoptive families and their children. It was loud and crowded and a bit chaotic. You could tell that many of the children did not love this part of the process. We have to admit that once it came time for “Bri” to do her medical exams in the 3 stations, she did amazing! No tears, no wiggling, and complete cooperation with the nurses and doctors (let’s hope that this is a sign of things to come as poor little one is going to have a lot of appointments coming up in the days ahead and tentative surgery unless the Lord intervenes)

We were also excited to see that she had gained about a half pound since our last update about 2 ½ weeks ago and weighs in at a whopping 17 ¾ pounds.

We checked over our paperwork and the doctor scribbled some notes on it in Chinese then we were done! This is out last big step before we come home. We will have one more appointment on Wednesday, but that one should be fairly quick and easy.

Today, “Bri” continued to show us more and more of her personality. She loves watching me make fish faces, and she’ll try to figure out how to do it and the reaction is priceless. She loves to mimic and today she tried to copy daddy as he held a remote in his hand and pointed it and then she later tried to do the same thing. She’s a smart little thing as often she's observed something one or only a few times and then can repeat it or try doing the same thing we just did. Today's funny thing- it has become very clear that she doesn’t like things on her clothes (today she thought her tiny polka dots on her shirt were crumbs and kept trying to pick them off, it was hilarious!)

She is also showing us the “fussy/sassy pants” side of her personality too. As we've probably noted before, her most difficult time is when she is sleepy as there is really nothing you can do to console her until she just stops fighting and settles down and falls asleep. She usually falls asleep quickly, but the few minutes leading up to it, watch out world! We’ve hit a few points today where it’s just been exhausting for both Nate and I as she’ll get really upset and she can’t understand us and we can’t understand her and she’ll get to a point where she’ll start arching her body and almost hit her head on something or do something that’s dangerous and just doesn’t want to be held or put down and nothing we do seems to work in the moment.

We have now figured out her new favorite snack, which is a Chinese rice cracker that she was fed in the orphanage. We are going to stock up on these before we leave for home. I have a feeling these will be a lifesaver on our long plane ride. She is also loving her Chinese rice cereal, so much so that today she got upset when we stopped feeding her and it was gone, so we made up a second bowl and she ate every last drop. Food is still quite the experiment, but all in all it’s going as well as to be expected while in a foreign country without familiarity and the convenience of home in which to try new foods. Thankfully all of the hotels we’ve stayed in have had amazing breakfast buffets with a huge assortment of Chinese foods (the Chinese eat what to us is regular dinner food for breakfast in hotels) and a large amount of familiar American breakfast foods. Yogurt is also a new favorite for “B”. We’ve been so thankful for the individuals who gave us little organic food pouch packets with veggies, fruits, etc. before we left (if you have kids you’ll know what I’m talking about), as those have been our staple when she wouldn’t eat anything else. She LOVES those things! We have several varieties of fruits and veggies so she’s eating those well. Again, solid foods still continue to be a challenge.

Tonight our group took a two hour riverboat tour on the Pearl River. It was absolutely stunning!

Since it is almost Chinese new year, there are decorations everywhere for Chinese New Year’s alongside Christmas decorations that are still up in many places, so the river cruise had not only the beauty of the city skyline, but the addition of Chinese New Year décor on the bridges we would pass under or on buildings.

Our tour took us past the Canton Tower building, which is the tallest tower/building in China and tallest TV tower in the world. It was breathtaking as it lights up in numerous colors as you stand and watch it change.

The bridges we passed under had beautiful colors and characters lining them. “Bri” was mesmerized as we would pass under colorful bridges that would be right over her head and her eyes would just look up and stare at all of the beautiful colors.

She also loved listening to the Chinese music as a lady played a Chinese instrument on the boat.

At one point tonight, poor Nate was holding “B” and all of these little Chinese ladies surrounded him and kept making over “B”. We’ve noticed and been told that the Chinese people love “big eyes” and so the fact that “B” has what they all consider “big eyes” means they will all stare at her so intently and look at us and point at her. She often gets surrounded when we are out and about and they want to take a picture of her or with her- it’s quite interesting to watch. I’m not quite sure she knows what to think of it, but we have learned one thing- this kiddo loves to hold a Coke bottle!

We were blessed with a great day today and it was a wonderful way to spend an evening with all of the adoptive families in our group.

Our First Rough Night - 2.8.15 (Sun)

2015-02-08T10:49:00.000-08:00

Reflections from February 8, 2015:

Unfortunately Saturday night, “B” had a rough night of sleeping and kept waking and crying. It was her first night in a new hotel, so I'm sure with the travel and the new place that only contributed. I'm pretty sure we've gotten spoiled these first 5 days with a very happy and easy to go to sleep child. Needless to say, due to the limited amount of sleep we received tonight, we decided to just take the day and rest and not have a lot of activity, so we could all get rested and just spend some one on one time with Little Miss.

Today, her personality continued to shine through. Wow. She continued to give us tons of smiles and laughs and giggles. Pretty much anything we do is funny to her. She loves to try to imitate things we do and she even tried to mimic and sit like someone who had just visited our room. She loves to try to make fish faces, but hasn’t quite mastered that one yet and you can just see the wheels turning in her little head as she tries to figure it out.

She continues to tell us “things” and of course we act like we know and just shake our head and smile and agree (who knows what we might have just agreed to-haha) She does so well with both Nate and I and continues to let either of us feed, dress, or bathe her, which is a blessing. She likes to pretend she is cleaning things with a Kleenex if you give her a tissue. It’s really quite fascinating to watch. It often makes me wonder if she had been shown how to clean things, even at her young age, at her orphanage. I guess we'll never know.

She definitely likes to keep her hands and clothes neat (she’ll pick off crumbs or want her hands wiped after touching something unfamiliar (i.e. a new food, etc.), but she does enjoy exploring and touching new items and textures. She’s a joy to be around as long as she’s napped.(haha) When it's time to sleep, a whole new side of her comes out. She'll fight sleep so hard sometimes and just arch her back and can be a bit uncontrollable in those moments until she gets comfortable and is ready to let her body sleep. Several times during our travel to appointments, she nearly hit her head on the glass in the bus as she was fighting sleep very hard.

Little one has a number of funny sleeping positions too-- her paperwork we received had said, "She sleeps in many gestures" which translated means many different positions-- I think these photos capture that quite well!

In the last few days, Nate has laughed as we’ve found crackers and other miscellaneous objects in his shoes…ahhhh welcome to parenting, right? She’s a smart little one and though in some areas she’s still a bit behind with motor skills and walking really solidly, it’s been great to see her progressing even more in the last 2 days. She’s around a 12 month old developmentally in some areas, rather than an almost 18 month old. She is definitely tiny and even 12 month clothing (depending on the brand) swallows her up a little. She can wear a 9-12 month onesie no problem and the same with little leggings. We can’t keep pants up for anything, so have learned that slim fit little leggings are our go to right now as they stay on her fairly well. (thank you Old Navy!) She’s a tiny little peanut! Tomorrow she’ll have her US Consulate medical exam so we’ll get to see what she currently weighs.

All in all, though we are a bit sleep deprived today, she’s progressing leaps and bounds, which is a blessing to see.

Off To Guangzhou for “B’s” Visa ( 2.7.15)

2015-02-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

Reflections from Saturday 2.7.15:

Today we left this morning for Guangzhou, where “B” will have a medical exam by the U.S. consulate and eventually receive her US entry visa for her passport if there are no issues. We had our bags packed and "Bri" was ready! (well, except for this was her bed head and it needed a little taming... and ya'll think I'm joking, but this is seriously how she woke up with it- wild hair!)

We left the hotel around 9am to head to the airport. As we were waiting to leave, families were taking pictures in the lobby with the new Chinese New Year decorations that had been put up. The hotel lobby looked so beautifully decorated for the holiday.

Off we went to the airport and for the first time, these little ones would take their first flight and leave the province that has been the only home each of them have ever known. I know there were a few anxious mommies and daddies in the bunch to see how some of these little ones were going to react to flying. (heck- I was interesting how this mommy was going to react to flying with a little one on my lap- since I’m not such a big fan of flying myself- you will be glad to know I survived) We had already seen how many of them had done on long bus rides, train rides or in taxis, so the thought of several hours in a plane (which was only prep for the BIG one coming up in another week) would prove interesting.

As we waited for our flight to take off, I came across a little tea store and come to find out, it carried teas from the very city our daughter is from (and anyone who knows me knows I love tea!) so of course I quickly purchased some, since it originated from Xinyang, so that we can share that later with our daughter.

As we waited on our flight, we suddenly realized it was delayed by over an hour, so needless to say we all had some restless wee ones in the airport who were all ready for food and naps. (thank goodness for snacks!)

We finally were called to board and everyone settled in on the plane. I have to say this picture cracks me up as it truly shows the expression of what everyone in our group was thinking after waiting so long to get on to the next location. This photo says it all- lol!

Our flight was ok, and “B” fell asleep before take off, during, and for about 40 minutes of the 2 hour or so flight. She did way better than mommy did when we hit bad turbulence. She woke up with about an hour or so left in flight and boy did we see a new side of little one. She did not want to be on the plane any longer (Yikes, let’s hope this is NOT an indicator of things to come on our first of two flights home)

By the time our flight landed and we took a bus to the hotel, it was around 6:30 and all of the wee ones were ready to be settled in. “B” had been super cranky until we were in the airport and that’s when Miss Personality came out. She was so happy to have freedom and be able to move around and for some reason everything was just so funny to her. Our group commented on what a change and contrast to what everyone had been seeing for the last 4 days since “Gotcha Day”. She was all smiles and full of tons of giggles after we got off the plane.

We checked into our hotel for the evening and everyone was quite exhausted. We actually ordered Papa John’s pizza (yep, it tastes the same as the U.S. and can be found in this city, but with a lot of very strange varieties) for delivery to our hotel (which apparently is a common thing to do here) and enjoyed a simple meal in our hotel room. We got “B” ready for bed and then crashed.

Thankfully, we have a low-key day tomorrow so that greatly helps. We will also do visa paperwork in the afternoon.

Day 5- Kung Fu & Miss Personality Pants ( 2.6.15)

2015-02-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

Reflections from Day 5- 2.6.15:

Today was officially passport day and our children’s passports arrived. Because it was a fairly low-key day, our group had the chance to take a full day excursion and go 2 hours outside of the city where we have been staying, into the mountains where the Shaolin Temple is located- the birthplace of Kung Fu. (and for those of you who were Kung Fu Panda movie fans- you might enjoy this post even more) Nate loved the idea of this little excursion, as he was in martial arts/karate for a number of years and this would involve some Kung Fu and if you're this close to where it all started, you sort of have to go check it out, right?

Our guide shared with us that many children are sent to Kung Fu schools around age five and are there until around age 15 when they graduate. These schools are boarding schools and families surrender seeing their child but once a year, (generally during Chinese New Year) all in order for their child to master Kung Fu while getting a good education. In turn, they then have the opportunity to be a part of the military, or earn a job as a security officer/official, or be a Master in Kung Fu and teach others the art of Kung Fu. They can choose to have their child learn at the Shaolin Temple Kung Fu school or other local Kung Fu schools. Over 30,000 children are enrolled in one of the biggest schools and they are also taught Zen Buddhism while learning to master Kung Fu.

As we entered this ancient mountain as they call it, we were amazed at how beautiful the area was , how clear the air was here in these majestic rocky mountains (smog/pollution here in China is among the worst in the world). Nestled in the center of these mountains is this large temple and training center with pagodas and multiple buildings surrounding.

The buildings, though many were temples, were absolutely stunning to look at; however, one cannot walk amongst Buddhist temples without your heart breaking for these people.

People come from all over to visit this temple and region and as we walked throughout the grounds, you would watch locals walk to the temple entrances, kneel before the incense bowls, light incense and walk into the temple and do a number of religious rituals all to multiple golden Buddhas that were inside of the various temples we walked past.

It was heartbreaking to see how vigilant many of the people were as they kneeled

before golden god after god- gods that cannot see, hear, understand,

or answer any of their prayers.

You also would find a lot of prayer beads for purchase around the grounds, which are used as a part of their religious ceremonial practices to count their recitations.

One of the largest temples housed about 8 or so very large golden Buddha statues.

(we weren't technically supposed to take photos inside of the temples of the Buddhas and other ornate objects as this was "holy ground" for worship for those who had come to kneel and pray in these temples, but I tried my best to zoom in on a few from the outside) As we walked among the temples, you would also find monks walking throughout the grounds or keeping incense lit.

Another building was the ancient library and they said that it housed the various “Buddhist scriptures” that they are taught in Buddhism along with other religious artifacts. Chinese culture is certainly steeped in tradition and even in talking with several people during our last two weeks, we’ve come to realize that though there are many who still are Buddhist, many of the younger generation in China are either agnostic or Atheist.

It has been amazing to see how many interesting conversations you can start here and the many questions that people will ask when they find out that Nate is a pastor. It's a pretty interesting "lead in" to many a gospel-centered conversation as those who live in "closed countries" and have had little exposure to the gospel are always so inquisitive when they ask what Nate does for work and he shares with them. We’ve been able to have some amazing conversations with several individuals during our trip and I’ve been so proud of Nate and how clearly he has been able to share the gospel with several individuals who have eagerly asked so many questions about the Bible and Jesus. Our friend in Beijing was so inquisitive asking numerous questions about the Bible. While we were on our way to and from the Great Wall...

Nate and I talked to her about so many different topics she brought up and helped answer questions she had about who Jesus really is.

"Jesus Reigns" - captured on the side of the Great Wall

She had been given a Bible a year or so ago by a mission team and said she had read through parts of it, but had trouble understanding a lot of it. As Nate explained many of the things she was asking or confused about, she responded with a heart-breaking statement as she said, “I understand it so much more when you talk. If I had someone like you to help teach me the Bible, I think I would understand it so much more.” Like many Chinese, she had some very limited exposure to Biblical things, but you could tell because of this that she did not have a clear understanding and certainly no way to truly be taught all that I think she would be willing to learn if given the opportunity.

The verse came to mind from Romans 10:14-15, "How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!"

We found out that our friend in Beijing will be in the states around Easter time and we told her we’d love to figure out a way to have her join us for Easter Sunday. When we shared this about her attending a church with us in the states, she looked at us so clearly and said, “You mean, I can go to church there? That would be so amazing!” For those living in China, church is fairly unfamiliar and unless it’s a government run or endorsed church (which usually in most cases will not be a true Bible-believing church), it is illegal for them to attend. Most have never attended a church and so to hear us say she could attend a church with us freely as a Chinese citizen, was a bit mind-blowing to her. ( Can we just say, we would LOVE to have her join us on Easter if her schedule allows for it) It was beautiful to see how many "God moments" were orchestrated during our trip.

While we were with her in Beijing, we had seen another temple there that was a Tibetan Buddhist temple. There we had seen where the people write out their "prayers" or "wishes" of what they desire to have answered and leave them for "Buddha to fulfill". A common theme in Buddhism is to wish for good luck, health, wealth, wisdom, peace and happiness. The Chinese believe a lot in luck and happiness and its a central theme to most everything you come across in China, from home décor to general conversations.

While we were at the Shaolin Kung Fu Training Center, we were able to watch a Kung Fu demonstration, which was pretty amazing.

Unfortunately, we had a bit of a rough day with “Bri” who decided that she was not all that into walking around today and looking at Chinese architecture, pagodas, statues, and temples (I can’t imagine why not?). Unfortunately, she has not been a fan of us using a baby carrier (apparently she has not read adoption books and child attachment books yet on that subject) as that freaked her out yesterday, so we’ve had to carry her quite often, which can get exhausting. She certainly showed us a new side of her personality while there today if you know what I mean. (lol) Nate was a great dad today and helped take care of her and sent me on with the rest of the group to capture some photos since she was not really in a cooperative mood for most of the day.

Today was probably what I would consider her first big meltdown day per se. It wasn’t all that bad, but she had a rough 2 hour drive back to the hotel and was fighting sleep so hard and was crying and just didn’t want to be on that bus! We gave her a Coke and then she was fine....JUST KIDDING. (we don't let her drink Coke, she just wanted to hold it.)

It’s been a little harder to feed “B” when we are out and about as she is still trying to figure out solids and how to chew some foods and is not into most snacks that many of the kids are eating. Though her file said she could eat certain things, we learned that most of the things that she was eating would have been cooked to a mush and then made into a paste-like substance. That said, she loves foods of similar texture, but has a hard time still taking to harder solid foods and knowing how to chew them or what to do with them. Thankfully some friends back home provided us with some food packets (organic fruit/veggie squeeze packets and those sort of things) before we left for China and we took them with us and they have been so helpful and she loves every single one of them!)

Today was the first day that she actually continued understanding how to take something from her hand and put it into her mouth. This evening, she even knew how to pull it into smaller pieces before putting a bit into her mouth. It’s been fascinating to watch her eat and learn to try new things and experiment with food; although, many of our experiments aren’t quite successful yet.

We’ll eventually get there though as she continues to learn how to chew and eat in a new way. Until then, we continue to supplement her diet with things familiar that are Chinese that we find at the breakfast at our hotel or have found in Chinese stores.

After we arrived back at the hotel, she settled in for the evening and was so full of personality. She just laughed and giggled and talked and talked (mind you we have no idea what she’s saying) She would look at us, smile and start saying things, then start laughing. (apparently she thinks she's hilarious) She continues to love to stare at her reflection in the mirror. (I'm sure our hotel room was likely the first time she'd ever seen her own reflection or looked in a mirror) She loves to reach out for us and certainly recognizes us now and will give us the biggest grins.

It’s so fun to see her slowly go from a very solemn, quiet, and sad child that nothing we did could warrant even the slightest grin, to it taking very little now to get a big smile out of her. The littlest things amuse her- whether it’s hitting a balloon around the room, playing with a simple Kleenex or paper napkin, or playing with a shoe- every little thing she touches or sees is fascinating. We often wonder if she ever went outside of her orphanage much at all or how much exposure she had to the outside world. For most children with her background, it is generally very little to none.

It’s been a full day today and tomorrow around noon, we fly from her province to Guangzhou, Guangdong in Southern China, where we will soon receive her U.S. visa at the U.S. Consulate which will allow her to enter the U.S. at the end of next week.

Our First Smile & Peanut Butter and Jelly- (2.5.15)

2015-02-05T18:56:00.000-08:00

Reflections from Day 4 - February 5:

Today was a day of many first for little Brielle. We can’t even begin to tell you how thrilled we are about some of these milestones. Today Bri decided that she would actually walk around, as up until now, she was been acting like she couldn’t walk (which we knew she could) and would barely just stand up when we wanted her to. Today she walked to and from breakfast with us and was all over the room today moving around.

As we continued to spend a lot of one on one with her today, she began to show glimpses into her personality. A number of times today she would try to talk to us and her first big full smile came when she handed me a toy and I said thank you to her in Chinese (which I had never done before with her) and for some reason that made her smile really big! It was so cute.

As the day continued on, she smiled time and again and even gave us a little giggle when she was being tickled. She continues to try talking to us more and loves the big mirror in the room and has fun trying to figure out her reflection.

Be. Still. My. Heart.

Today, she tried small bites of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time and actually figured out how to self-feed with this. It was precious. I’m pretty sure she didn’t know what to think about it entirely. We found out today that the foods that were listed in her paperwork were most likely foods that were cooked and made into a paste like substance, which would explain why eating solids seems a bit foreign to “B” even though we were choosing some of the foods that her paperwork said she liked. The texture of what we’ve been trying from the buffet in the hotel isn’t exactly what she’s used to.

She is starting to allow more of her personality to show today. It’s been an amazing day to observe her. It's as though we have rounded the big curve now and are getting small glimpses into the little person that she truly is. Today we introduced her to her new ladybug toy that Nate picked out. At first she wasn’t quite sure what to think of it. She also played with a balloon for the first time and was quite enamored with that.

She is fascinated with tissues and will play with them as long as you will let her. Today she pretended to take the tissue and wipe her hands and face (which I know she’s figured out by watching us since that’s what we’ve been doing this week to her with wet wipes when she eats or at other times)

We’ve also observed that she apparently likes to keep her sleeves pulled up a good bit of the time and doesn’t like socks—maybe she’s going to be like mom and prefer the warm weather and flip flops! She also doesn’t like "stuff" on her face or hands and will pick up things and even acted like she was cleaning things today with a tissue she was playing with. (again, she sounds like her mommy a little- lol!)

She made a multitude of funny faces today and made sounds with her tongue and did all sorts of funny things imitating us today. We tried making fish faces and she tried so hard, but couldn’t quite figure that one out. Just by observation of a number of things today, we can tell she's a smart little thing and picks up on things very quickly.

We’ve learned when it’s naptime, it’s naptime. She fights sleep so hard and gets a bit fussy at those moments, so it’s easy to know when she’s ready to go to sleep. We’ve been trying to stay fairly consistent to what she’s used to doing on schedule from her orphanage with regards to meals and sleep. Thankfully that was something that was given to us right before we met her Monday so we had her most recent schedule.

She is already a daddy’s girl, no doubt. Nate has been amazing to watch with her and he absolutely adores her. He is a great helper with getting her bathed and fed and playing with her. We have laughed more at this little one in the last several days and some of the funny things that she does. She definitely has a little personality that’s peeking through now which is so exciting to finally see. She may be tiny, but she’s a sassy little thing with what appears to be a big personality!

This evening we received the rest of the legal documents for our adoption and copies of our first official photo as a family of three taken on “Gotcha Day”. We also received the police report or "finding ad" for our daughter, which is the newspaper listing they are legally required to submit in China, which highlights where the child is abandoned and found. It is a small newspaper ad giving the details of where she was found and a little more info about her. It was all pretty much the same thing we had in her original paperwork, but we learned in reading this today that her mom or parents left money with her when she was abandoned, which one might guess may mean they likely wanted to make sure someone could take care of her. That was a new detail we had not known before. There will always be details in adoption that we will never know and could certainly guess about all day without knowing for sure. Since “B” was abandoned a month after her birth, we can only assume she was with her family that first month, but then couldn’t be cared for possibly due to her medical needs and the expenses in China that would be associated with it or it could be solely due to the one child policy in China. We will never truly know.

We have one more day here tomorrow and will be traveling with some other families tomorrow to see more of this province and then will be flying out on Saturday to Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, which is the southernmost province in China. We can’t wait to get there and shed all of these layers, as the weather there will be in the 70’s! That is where we will have our daughter’s immigration medical exam and U.S. Consulate appointment for her visa to be issued for her passport.

So thankful for these milestones today!

Visiting Her Orphanage & Birth City- (2.4.15)

2015-02-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

Reflections from the day of our orphanage visit and passport trip. This post contains videos that may not be able to be viewed on mobile devices and may only be able to be seen via our blog on a computer:

(2.4.15)

Today we have a full day ahead of us as we head to Xinyang city where our daughter was born. I think all of the husbands that are going today (there are four couples) are a bit excited as we all get to ride a bullet train today. (one of the fastest trains there are) We were lucky to get tickets as this is the busy travel season for Chinese New Year, which is much like our Christmas/New year’s where families spend time together, take off work, and everyone heads back to the town where their families live.

We left around 9:30 to head to the train station for a full day, which will include a visit to our daughter’s orphanage. Though one might think that this would be exciting, it comes with great anxiousness, as it could be good or bad for the little one if they are taken inside. Everyone has a different opinion on this topic in adoption. Visiting the orphanage is a chance to also more fully understand where a child came from, the type of care they were given, meet those who cared for them, ask more questions and see a small snapshot of what their life was like. It also allows there to be more information to share with the child later in life when they start to ask more questions about their life and adoption. We have mixed emotions about this, but also see much value in it, particularly since we know our daughter has been cared for in a Show Hope care center partnered with New Hope Foundation, located on one of the floors of the orphanage. We've been praying for this opportunity and had others do the same, so are excited that the details have worked out.

As we entered the train station, news reporters suddenly surrounded our group and started interviewing our adoptive families on why they were in China, what they thought about China and Chinese food, why we were traveling on the first day of the busiest travel season in China, etc. Our guide shared with us that many of them are from areas that do not see foreigners very often so our little group walking through this busy time of the year draws just a wee bit of attention.

The bullet train was an amazing way to travel. “B” seemed to like it as did her daddy since there was a lot of leg room. They told us that once the train stopped, we had only 2 minutes to disembark or we’d miss our stop. It was interesting watching “B” as we wondered at times what she was thinking about it all, what she was thinking as she looked out the window of the train headed back to the only home she’s ever known.

We arrived around noon in Xinyang and took about a 20-minute drive out of the city

to our daughter’s orphanage.

As we pulled up in front of the building, “B” was dead asleep and we thought maybe that would turn out to be a good thing after all.

(***We have chosen not to show most of the video we shot on this day or in some cases files were too big to load, but here is a brief snapshot of us on the way to meet the staff and her nannies)

We walked through the halls of the orphanage and then after another family met their child’s caregiver, they ushered us to the floor where “B’s” care center was located.

As we made our way and she looked out of the windows, you have to wonder what was going through that little mind. Did she recognize where she was? Were the sounds and smells familiar? Did she recognize the voices that she was hearing or the ladies who were peeking out of the rooms to watch our group as we walked through? Something tells me she did.

As we entered the floor where she lived, you could immediately tell the difference on this floor upon entering. The floor was decorated for Chinese New Year and the moment we stepped into the hall, nannies came out of nearby rooms and starting yelling to others in Chinese that our daughter was here. They were all smiling ear to ear, looking and touching her new clothes, taking in every detail of her, pointing at her boots and hat, etc. You could tell they were excited for her, but more than that, you could tell she was well loved here.

Within seconds, the nanny that cared most individually for her came down the hall and before we knew what had happened, she just grabbed her out of Nate’s arms and was hugging and making over her and poor little “B’ was stunned and started to cry. To guess what she thought in that moment, I have no idea (though I have a few thoughts), but I was ready to leave the building so that she was not upset by everything going on around her. I quickly took her back and explained to our guide that we would just hold her and wanted to see her room, etc. We told her that we know the nannies love her, but we didn’t want to confuse or frighten her by them holding her. “B” settled down and we took cues from her, but felt we were able to get a few quick photos and then leave.

We were able to see a neat child and nanny board they had in the hallway where they displayed the photos of the children in the center and the nannies’ pictures. We entered her room, which was very small- white metal beds with mosquito netting hanging above lined the wall.

They took us to the right side of the room to a corner bed. It still had a sign with her name on it, both her Chinese name and the name Show Hope had identified her by.

The walls had Disney characters on them and were very bright and such a contrast from what we had seen on the other floor.

We had one last chance to get a picture with her nanny and it was so cute to see all of the other nannies peeking through the glass door at her and us and waving at her. Something tells me she might have been one of the favorites on this floor.

As we were leaving, our guide shared with the medical staff at the Care Center that she had been having trouble breathing and been sick since they dropped her off to meet us on Monday. They quickly took us to their medical room and did a quick check of her breathing and told us that this was also the reason they halted the surgery about two weeks ago when we found out she had been moved 9 hours away for surgery.

They felt she was ok and they didn’t think medicine was necessary at this time. They also wanted to get a picture with her and us before we left and then handed over to us medical information to the doctor at the Care Center who has cared for her since intake. We now have his email address and they said as soon as we get home, they would be sending us all of her medical records and notes from intake until now which will be a blessing to have for our medical team that we will meet with upon returning home. They will also be providing us with all of the photos they’ve taken of her since the day she arrived at the orphanage.

(this is pretty much the same face we've gotten for the last three days)

We left the orphanage and the guides had us make a very quick food stop (ironically, it was KFC) as we had to head to the passport office to get our daughter’s passport photo processed alongside her passport paperwork. While at the station to apply for the passport and take the child’s passport photo, we had to hold up our children, make sure they kept still (take a wild guess how fun that was) and that they looked directly at the camera (and you thought your job was hard?) and then we could move along to the next step.

While we were waiting for our name to be called for our next step, we fed Brielle her first taste of mashed potatoes and chicken nuggets (how American of us, right? LOL. Trust me- You do what you have to do while in China to feed your little one and get anything into their little stomachs) Let’s just say it was the first time that little “B” had downed something so quickly. She LOVED mashed potatoes! (she must take after her uncle "J")

The nuggets, well- in very small pieces she would eat a little and try to figure out how to chew this new item, but actually only ate a full one. She’s been so good to let either of us feed her, which is a blessing and certainly helps with attachment to both of us and gives us both a break from time to time.

After we finished up in the office, we headed back to the bullet train for our trip home to our hotel in Zhengzhou.

Unfortunately, because all of the children had been very off-schedule and it had been a long day of traveling by train, taxi, and bus- they were all a bit fussy on the way home. “B" just decided she would be squirmy and fight sleep, but at least didn’t scream and cry. I’m sure all of the Chinese families on the train just loved our loud little group.

As I left “B’s” orphanage and city today, tears streamed down my face driving through the streets of her city.

(seriously, I’ve cried more on this trip than my lifetime I think) A feeling of intense gratefulness to those who cared for her and also recognizing all the losses and difficulties she’s experienced in her short little life truly overwhelmed me in the moment. Seeing her quickly attaching to us as her new family is truly a blessing we do not take for granted and are thankful for each day of this journey here. Some have said that visiting an orphanage can be closure for a child and marked improvements can occur shortly thereafter. It’s hard to truly say, but many that witnessed our visit at the orphanage today truly felt that during “B’s" short meltdown, she quickly recognized us as her caregivers now and didn’t want to be separated. We hope that is true and continue to look to each new day as a new one where we will see more of her personality shine through and hopefully more walls coming down day by day.

We were truly blessed to have had this experience to visit her orphanage as the majority of families do not have this opportunity since many of the orphanages or foster homes are too far from the location where the children are brought to meet their new parents. We are so thankful.

Once we got back to the hotel, we decided to give our first “real bath” with “B” a go and see how she’d respond. We filled the tub with some water and then undressed her and stood her in the water to see how she’d respond. Ya’ll, what happened next was beyond hilarious.

Can’t.

Even.

Handle.

It.

In less than 3 seconds after her little feet hit the water, she just began to pee in the water. She just stared at us as if to say “What?” “Why are you looking at me like that?” It was priceless. Needless to say, we had “Bath: Round Two” of which she actually handled very well and seemed to really enjoy taking a bath (which her paperwork had told us she enjoyed).

With that, it was off to bed with a restful day ahead and no agenda- just plenty of down time tomorrow to bond with “B” with hopes that we can continue to see improvements and a full smile in the days to come.

It's Official- She's Ours! (2.3.2015)

2015-02-03T22:59:00.000-08:00

Reflections written on her official adoption day while in China. Videos included may not be able to be viewed on mobile devices and may need to be viewed via the blog from a computer or may take a moment to load:

(2/3/15)

Today I get to share my birthday with what will become an important day in the life of our daughter. Today, she will officially become ours in the eyes of both the U.S. and China. Today, she will receive a new name, our name. Today we will receive documentation that will reflect this process and show that she is legally our daughter. We posted a short video below of this moment.

There is nothing that she or anyone else can do after today to change that.

She’s ours forever.

Today, as we’ve reflected on the beauty of what is happening today, we can’t help but for the first time truly understand what it means when God chose to adopt us in Christ as his own daughter or son, for those who have made the decision to follow Him. Just as in the moment of a physical adoption, it’s truly a mystery and a process that can’t quite be summed up into words. In much the same way, our adoption by God at the moment of salvation is such an amazing picture. I can more fully understand now why He chose to use that analogy a number of times in the Bible.

As we met Brielle yesterday, we brought her back to the hotel and we knew she needed a diaper change. It’s a common practice in China to “bundle” a child, which means they are always in layer after layer of clothing and generally wear many layers even in the middle of the summer when it is hot. Chinese ladies will come up to you in the street and “scold” you if your little one isn’t bundled enough. The Chinese believe they will get sick if they are not layered and if skin shows, so to say she was about four times her actual size with all of the clothes they had on her would be an understatement.

One of the first things that families often do too quickly is to take everything that is familiar and comforting to the child and strip them from the clothing that they are wearing on “Gotcha Day” because they feel they need to bathe them or change their clothes immediately. For “B”, we tried to do this rather slowly on the day that we received her so that she was still surrounded by something that was “hers”- something that was familiar. When we got to the hotel room we realized that she was soaked through layer after layer, as we had initially noticed when they handed her to us. (but which was understandable seeing they had traveled for over 7 hours with four children to meet us) So as you can imagine, she was in great need of a diaper change.

As we began changing her diaper and taking off her lower layers of clothing in order to change her, I couldn’t help but reflect on the beautiful analogy of adoption and salvation again in that moment. There we were taking off these very soiled clothes- clothing that was a bit worn with rips/stains only to replace them with new clothing. Removing the old and replacing it with the new.

In the same way, that’s what God does, he looks at us as orphans, as those without a loving Father- as those still clothed in our dirty, stained and sinful “clothing” and wants nothing more than to clothe us in His righteousness at the moment of salvation. He wants to give us a new name, to call us His son or daughter. He wants to make us into a new creation- old things are passed away and all things become new.

In a beautiful way, our salvation/ adoption in Christ has taken on a new meaning for us. We now more fully understand how God is able to look past our past, who we were or used to be and chooses to accept and love us as we are. Like an orphan, He knows we were without a spiritual family- without a Father, but was willing to love us unconditionally for who we are, no strings attached. He was willing to give us a new name and take us in as a part of His family and in doing so, we inherit everything. There was nothing we could do to earn that, it was freely given to us as a gift just as an orphan can do nothing to earn his/her place in a family, it is a gift given to them by the family who chooses to make them their son or daughter.

It has been our prayer ever since the beginning of when God called us to adopt, that He would be glorified through this process and our little one’s life and story. It is our prayer that those who don’t know Christ or have not yet experienced the joy of salvation would come to know Him or more fully understand God’s perfect plan of adopting us in Christ.

Today we received our Adoption Decree and went to the notary office to complete paperwork. Once that was complete, we had the rest of the day to spend time with our children.

Today has been a day of watching “B’ trying to figure out who we are and how to respond to us. A day of many firsts. She continues to have the same expression we saw in every referral and update photo- that blank and solemn stare. If there were a staring contest, I promise you she’d win it.

There are no smiles and she still struggles to eat and has very little interest in most foods, even those that were listed in her paperwork. Rice congee seems to be her “go to” since that is what she ate a lot of in the orphanage, so thankfully she continues to eat that consistently. We keep looking for other foods she will eat (both Chinese and American) and she has certainly tried quite a few, but we are coming to realize that she has very little experience chewing foods and isn’t quite sure what to do with many of the small things we’ve tried feeding her. Even allowing her to self-feed hasn’t gone so well and she doesn’t seem to know to take the food item from her hand and put it in her mouth. We know she will learn in time. We are thankful that she does take her bottle very well and we were blessed that her orphanage brought us her bottle that she’s been using at the orphanage and gave to us along with the type of formula she is used to. It is great to have this little piece of her history to keep.

It was so tiny and had a little Chinese label with her name. Her bottle nipple was pretty much chewed through, so we were able to gradually transition her to a bottle we brought and that went very well, though she likes to hold her the bottle herself most of the time. (as this is commonly taught to children in orphanages since there can be many little mouths to feed all at one time)

She has also started to sound a bit worse with her breathing and came to us with a bit of congestion in her nose and what now sounds a little like her lungs. We are monitoring that closely and have shared that with the guides so that a doctor can see her or obtain medication if necessary. Unfortunately, what we brought with us for her, we found we can’t use now as the pharmacy mixed it incorrectly and it has now expired.

We are thankful that she is giving us some eye contact, but she is very clear when she doesn’t want more food given or doesn’t want something. She will slightly close her eyes and pull her head away from us indicating she doesn’t want what we are trying to give her. We were excited today to see her try to make a few faces at herself when she saw her reflection in a mirror, for what might have been the very first time. She tried to wave at herself and stick out her tongue and make faces. At one point, when she first saw herself holding a toy, she pulled it away as she thought it was another child getting ready to take her toy. It was pretty cute to watch.

We know these next few days are important ones as we continue to take cues from her, learn more of who she is, and she learns more and more to trust us. We know that she is still grieving and anticipate this could last a while, but we can’t wait to see a big smile break through on that sweet little face! At least today she did try to talk when we weren’t looking at her, which was great to hear, even if we have absolutely no idea what she is trying to say.

Tomorrow we head to her birth city to apply for her passport. We may also have the opportunity to visit her orphanage as well, which could be both a positive or negative experience. For many adoption professionals, this can be a topic of debate as to whether or not it is good for the child as it can confuse them or could cause a child to withdraw more after seeing their caregivers. Sometimes it goes very well, but not always. Regardless, it’s important to go in with a “plan” of what we will do and whether we will both go in and meet staff and see her previous home, or whether only one of us will go inside. We plan to see how tomorrow goes and make that decision upon arrival depending on how she seems to be doing. We know there could be some helpful info we could glean by going, so are prayerful it works out. We know it is a large piece of “her story” and want to be able to better share with her later, when she has questions, what we may have seen or learned there.

Hoping for a great day tomorrow and especially a good trip with her and the three other families, as we all will have a long travel day on the bullet train to her home city.

Brielle's Gotcha Day- 2.2.15 The Full Story & Video

2015-02-02T23:02:00.000-08:00

Because of the dynamics of internet in China, we were unable to share our daily blog posts which we journaled for each day's experiences while we traveled to meet "B". The following is what was written February 2, 2015 after Gotcha Day:

It’s hard to put into words exactly what “Gotcha Day” looks like. For most families, this day is the culmination of everything they’ve worked towards for such a long time. Everything they’ve anticipated, dreamed of, and prayed towards throughout their adoption process. This morning we woke up and both Nate & I had both feelings of excitement and nerves as we had no idea what this day might bring. How would she react to us? Would she cry and grieve hard? Would she come to us easily? A million questions flooded our minds this morning.

As we prepared to meet our daughter, we took one last moment in our hotel room to pray for her and for this exciting day and give it entirely over to the Father who we know has been in complete control of every step of this process. We left the hotel around 9am and filed into our bus to head to the office where we would be handed our children. Here is just one of the short video clips from that morning:

As our guides began to share with us what to expect, you could feel the anticipation, anxiousness, and excitement building with every mile we drove.

As we pulled into the parking lot and started to exit the bus, our guide suddenly shared that four of the babies were already in the building waiting. No one knew whose children were already there, so you could see everyone suddenly thinking to themselves, “Is it my child?” “Where is my camera?” “Am I ready for this? (of course we had to shoot a quick video even though we were hurrying to get inside- trust us, this is only one of a few funny video moments and we can assure you some will never be seen on this blog! lol)

As we walked up the stairs and into the building with our hearts pounding, we entered a large room full of people. We were told it would be a bit chaotic and to expect a lot of noise, a crowded room, crying children, etc. Within minutes we realized our daughter was not among the four already there, but had the joy of witnessing these first four children united with their forever families. Tears of joy streamed many faces as we watched one by one, child after child handed over to their “mamas” and “babas” (dads).

Having worked for 10 years in the international adoption field and witnessed many a “Gotcha Day” video and story, nothing truly compares to standing right there in the middle of it all and seeing these precious children handed to their families and knowing ours was to come.

We were told that for our group it would be about an hour or hour and half for this to all be completed and then we would head back to our hotel for some down time with our child. As minutes ticked by and our anxiousness continued to build, we soon realized an hour and a half had already gone by and our daughter still had not arrived. To say that we were on pins and needles would be an understatement. We continued to watch each car or van pull up, caregiver or orphanage director bring the child(ren) into the room and hand them over to the new parents.

For many children, it was a traumatic day. We watched as some children screamed and cried as they were handed over to their parents. Some kicked and fought their new parents and some arched their backs and pulled their bodies as far away from their new family as was possible. It was what we all know can occur on this day, but to see it unfold was harder to watch than I had imagined.

Two hours later, we were still waiting for our little one. Though I had a few moments of tears of joy for several of the families receiving their little ones, I suddenly had “my moment” where I could not contain it in. Most that know me know that I’m not the typical “crying girl”, but between the excitement, fear, and uncertainly of what was to come and then witnessing an older little girl have to say goodbye to her foster family and watch that foster family struggle to leave her, my heart just broke and the tears began to flow. We often focus on how this day is for us and for our child; yet, we often forget how very hard this day is for those who were caregivers and who poured into and loved on our children. The nannies or foster families have loved on these children for months or even years and suddenly have to say goodbye to little ones they’ve grown to love as their own.

My heart broke on this day as I thought about the ones who had cared for our little girl. For the family or mom who had to make the choice to give up their little boy or girl- maybe because of poverty or maybe because they could not afford to provide the medical care he or she will need for their medical condition; yet, they chose life for their child even amidst the most difficult of decisions. We will never know the full story of the “why” but on this day my heart grieved for these individuals too, even in the midst of the joy of what was to come.

Our guide pulled us over to finally share with us that our little ones were on the way, but would not arrive until around noon. She said that they had tried to get train tickets for the children, but could not do so due to Chinese New Year and the crowded trains so they had to leave the orphanage at 5am to drive the little ones to meet us. I guess you could compare this moment to what it feels like to be in the hospital just waiting for labor to begin and for word that “ the little one has entered the world”. I found myself pacing the floor of the big room and trying to make small talk with those who had already received their children while waiting for “B’s” arrival.

Nate continued to stalk the doorway as he wanted to film her arrival and we watched through the glass door for a van to arrive with our little ones. Finally around 12:30 our children pulled in the parking lot. Our hearts began to race with the uncertainty of what was to come.

This was THE moment.

THIS

Was

Gotcha

Day.

As “B” entered the building, she was so bundled up we couldn’t see a face and at first even the staff couldn’t tell who she was. Nate was standing facing her and looked at me and said, “That’s her!” We walked over to where she was being held by staff from her orphanage and waited for cues from her to try to allow them to hand her over to us. As the gentleman put her down from holding her and tried to have her stand on the floor and come to us, she burst into tears and started crying hard. They quickly picked her up and she continued to cry and then they looked at us and started to hand her over. My mind was racing, “Are we going to be that family?” The one that has the most difficult experience on Gotcha Day? (even though we all prepare for the worst)? “Will she scream and cry all the way back to the hotel?”

Words cannot describe what transpired in that Divine moment. As they placed her into my arms with Nate standing by my side...

...suddenly the tears that were flowing and fear she was experiencing, was so quickly replaced with a calm that words cannot describe. There is but one word to describe that moment.

GOD.

God showed up that day in a powerful way and was present in that room- of that I am convinced. We know without a doubt the thousands of prayers that had been prayed in advance of that day and on that day were so amazingly answered in that moment. She slowly calmed and just stared with a puzzled look--no eye contact and emotionless. There were no more tears and no crying, only tears that were in her eyes as if she was ready to cry, but couldn’t.

We each signed a few documents, took our family photo for her adoption certificate and within minutes we were off.

Looking back, we were so thankful that she arrived when she did, even if we did have to be the last family and wait for over 2 ½ hours for her arrival. For others who had to wait this long with their children, it was difficult. The children were all so exhausted and ready to go, so we are thankful that by her arriving late, she had less stress in that moment. We were also amazed at the fact that she would allow Nate to hold her and take a few photos with her. That is rare. We were beyond blessed by that “cherry on the top” that God allowed on this day.

The remainder of today, we spent time in the hotel room getting to know “B” and working on attachment with her. In the afternoon, we signed more paperwork for her that would be processed to make her adoption legal on Tuesday, February 3. They also used our thumbprints as part of the signature for her paperwork and then her footprint was printed on her document.

These items were signed with the following day's date and would be delivered tomorrow to the notary office after we received the adoption certificate in order to finalize the paperwork for her adoption.

It was a full and emotionally charged day for everyone, but one that we will never forget. As the night drew to a close, we did a simple cloth "bath" beside the sink since we wanted to ease “Bri” into our “American” way of bath time and we didn’t want to scare her with her very first bath. Even taking off her clothes and starting a “bath” slightly scared her and her eyes started tearing up and her lips started to quiver, so we followed her cues and wiped her down quickly and got her ready for bed. Within a few short moments, she quickly snuggled with Nate and he put her on his chest and within minutes she fell asleep.

We are so blessed as this was such a contrast to what we were seeing many of the other families experience today. Our hearts truly hurt for so many of them. As we drifted off to sleep, you could hear the eery sounds of children screaming and crying as it echoed throughout the hallway. To say we were truly blessed on this first day is an understatement.

We can tell you that from the moment we saw her in that crowded room, there was a love for her that was indescribable. o watch Nate fall in love with a little girl halfway around the world that would become our daughter cannot be fully put into words. I think from that brief moment she looked into his eyes on “Gotcha Day”, she had his heart. (and hey, who could look at those eyes & not fall in love, right?)

Thank you to each and every person who has prayed for us and for “Bri” for the last almost three years. We are blessed beyond words and so thankful to now have her in our arms. We still stand amazed at how He chose us to be her parents and for how God led us on this journey of adoption. We are so thankful for His provision and for those He also called to join us in following His mandate to “care for orphans and the fatherless.”

Psalm 68:5

“A Father to the fatherless…is God in his holy habitation.”

Psalm 146:9

“…He upholds the fatherless and the widow…”

Today, "B" transitioned from being known by most as an orphan...

...to a much loved daughter and member of our forever family.

To God be all the glory!

Today is Gotcha Day!

2015-02-02T08:44:00.000-08:00

Wow. There are not enough adjectives to describe today. The most current one, exhausting. Gotcha Day is a day that we all have anticipated for so long; yet, we never know exactly what it's going to look like when we meet our child for the first time. Because of how long a day today was, I'm going to post more details later as tomorrow is a lightly scheduled day with just a little bit of paperwork, but we just wanted to give you a brief snapshot from today.

Let's just say that in brief that due to some transportation complications created by the mad rush of Chinese New Year travel, our little one along with 3 others from her orphanage couldn't get train tickets and had to come by vehicle leaving at 5am this AM and were the last ones to show up for Gotcha Day. What was supposed to be roughly an hour or less wait quickly became a 2 1/2 hour wait. Talk about stir crazy! Every time a van or vehicle would show up, families would eagerly anticipate that it might be their little one. After nearly everyone's children had been handed to them, there were the final four of us left to pace the floors and try to chat with others to pass the time. (it's pretty much the same feeling as someone waiting on the birth of a child and pacing the floor of the hospital)

Oh.

My.

Word.

Ya'll.

Seriously- no words.

It was a crazy day, but one we'll never forget. Until we have time later to post more, you'll have to go to Facebook for photos to help you get a small glimpse into today as uploaded photos from China has proven to be super slow and not always successful and quick as we'd like. (We'll come back later & add photos to this post)

"B"-- you have done so well today and we can't express how great it is to hold your tiny little body in our hands. We know you aren't feeling so well right now and your little heart is probably so overwhelmed by everything today, but we are so thankful to have you sleeping in your little crib next to us tonight. Rest well, little one!

The Day Before We Meet Brielle

2015-02-01T07:55:00.002-08:00

“B,”

These last few days have been SO busy as we’ve been in Beijing learning and soaking up as much as we can of your culture so that one day we can teach you more about your birth country. We’ve had so many types of amazing food native to various provinces in China (I’m sorry to say that Chinese food in the U.S. won’t be as good as it is in China- it's just something you should know). We’ve seen some fun parts of Beijing, taking in the hustle and bustle of the traditional markets where locals purchase food, vegetables, and snacks.

(we taste-tested a lot of amazing new things which was a lot of fun- we just prayed for strong stomachs as we couldn't resist!)

We visited the CCCWA ( the office that oversees adoption in China) on Friday (1/30) and saw where all of the paperwork was sent that we created to bring you home .

We also saw the offices that helped create your paperwork for adoption and that gave us the approval to adopt you and travel to China. We visited Beihai Park, where it was SO cold and the river had frozen over and people had created different ice activities.

(it looked so fun and we think this could go over well in the U.S.-- they even had bumper cars on ice and a sliding board made of ice!)

We visited the Laoshe Tea House, a traditional teahouse for tea and then had lunch.

These teahouses, for many years, were a common meeting place for people to sit around and catch up with each other. (similar to our modern day coffee shops) They also performed a special show called Piying. It was fun seeing one in person as we’d only seen them in movies or television.

We saw Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, which was home to many of China’s emperors. The Forbidden City was an amazing site to see and we learned

so much about your culture.

We visited the Silk Market and saw a Kung Fu Show. Of course we couldn’t leave China without visiting the Great Wall again. It’s one of your dad’s favorite places in the world.

We wrapped up our time in Beijing with a traditional Peking Duck lunch which is
famous in Beijing and then had dinner at a noodle house
with noodle dishes from different provinces.

We are thankful that our adoption trip schedules time for us to learn as

much as we can about your birth country.

Today we flew from Beijing to the province where you have lived these last 17 months.

We traveled with a large group of families who are all here to pick up their little ones, too! This afternoon they took our large, crazy, American group to the local Walmart (which wasn’t quite like our Walmart), so that we could make sure we had enough baby supplies and Chinese baby formula.

I know that our group was quite a sight trying to make sense of labels in Chinese and metric measurements and push our way through the crowds and endure the oh-so-interesting smells of China. They wanted to make sure we had what you are used to eating, drinking and snacking on, so that hopefully your adjustment will go a little better this week.

Tomorrow, commonly known as "Gotcha Day", they will bring you to us and we will meet you for the first time in a government building sometime after 10am. In less than 12 hours, you will officially become our daughter. Just typing those words brings a flood of various emotions to your dad and me. There are moments where this doesn’t feel real. Some moments it feels so exciting, while other times frightening. It’s quite surreal. We have prepared for you for so long. There are so many emotions involved and yet, we know there will be equally more emotions you will experience in your little life when this “big day” happens to you tomorrow. For us it is a day of excitement, a day we will meet you for the first time; however, for you- you don’t know we are coming for you, you don’t know that tomorrow you will meet us and you don’t know all that is about to happen in your little life in the days and weeks to come. You will probably be scared. It’s ok- we are scared, too.

While this is going to be an exciting day for us and we will gain a beautiful daughter in the process, we recognize for the second time in your very short life, you will again lose everything and everyone you’ve ever known. You will lose the main home you’ve known the longest and you will be separated for the first time, from the two nannies that love you dearly. You will travel a long way from Xinyang on a journey where they will bring you to us in your capital city, Zhengzhou. We know that you will not understand what’s about to transpire. Though we are excited, our hearts grieve for you in that you will go through so much in the next 24 hours as everything that is familiar to you suddenly will be replaced by what is largely unfamiliar. There will be many new experiences. We know it will be very overwhelming for you. We know a lot of the next 72 hours may be quite over-stimulating and hard for you to process. We know you will need to learn to trust us, to reach out to us and recognize us as your new caregivers- your mom and dad. (We met a nice Chinese man on the plane when we were flying from Hong Kong to China and he taught us some helpful Chinese phrases that we practiced with our Chinese friend in Beijng. I'm sure it will sound awful and you probably won't understand us, but maybe we'll try anyway. At least it will sound a little familiar, maybe?)

After you meet us, you may grieve immediately and hard over the losses you are experiencing. You may cry and be inconsolable or you may just shut down for a period of time when we first meet you. You may not look us in the eyes, you may not want to be held, and you may not smile for a while. (we still haven’t seen a smile out of you in any of your photos or videos, so we look forward to seeing that from you soon! We know it’s in there somewhere)

We don’t know how you may react so we prepare our hearts for any of these possibilities. We know “Gotcha Day” may not be that “beautiful” day that so many parents dream about for so long. For many families—it’s a very hard day. It’s not always the “picture perfect” day that so many dream and wish for. For each child and parent, it will look so different. We just pr** that you adjust well, attach well, feel loved and protected and learn to trust.

Your first week with us will be a week of MANY firsts for you:

You may take a train, bus, or car ride for the very first time in your life.

You will be around many new and unfamiliar people.

You will experience new sights and sounds and smells that you’ve never experienced before. (some you may like, others you may not)

You will meet your very tall dad and your mom (and you might be very scared of your dad since you haven’t been around men much at all, especially very tall men)

You will hear English and be confused and will likely get frustrated since you can’t understand us and we can’t understand you. Don’t worry- your dad doesn’t understand me half the time since I talk so fast, so you will both be in the same boat for a while I think.

You will experience new foods for the first time. Some you may love, some you may dislike. Your dad thinks you’ll love pancakes since we both do. We anticipate that you will make some very funny faces in the next few days as you learn to try new things and experience new foods. (it’s alright, we experienced quite a few new foods on this trip to meet you and we might have made a few funny faces too)

You will venture out for the first time into this great big world. A world that for the last 17 months has existed outside of the 4 walls of your orphanage, but also a world which you’ve never known- full of busy and crowded streets, numerous people, loud noises, and a multitude of new experiences.

You will take a long train ride just 48 hours after we have you so that we can get your passport processed. I’m sure this won’t be easy for you (or for us!) since it’s almost Chinese New Year here in China and everyone from all over China is traveling home to be with their family on the biggest holiday of the year. This train will be quite crowded so you might be a little overwhelmed by all of the people.

At the end of this week on Saturday, February 7^th, you will take your first flight to the southernmost part of China where you will get your visa from the U.S. Consulate so that you can enter the U.S. You will have to meet with doctors and you probably won’t like that too much. They are responsible for ensuring you are ok and approved to enter the U.S.

On Friday, February 13th, you will take a long van ride with us, leaving China (the beautiful home where you were born) at 5am to cross the border into neighboring Hong Kong. There, you will prepare for your second flight—a very long one, around 16 hours, that will bring you home with us to meet all of the wonderful people who love you already and haven’t even met you yet. People who have been pr**ing for you during this entire three years and during this trip as we’ve prepared to meet you and bring you home. Even though we will leave on the 13th from China, we will still arrive on the 13th U.S. time, so ironically, we get to relive that day twice. (boy oh boy!)

Your world is about to change in so many ways, little one. We know it will take some time for you to acclimate to all of these new things and we pr** that your adjustment will be a smooth one, that you won’t be afraid (even though we know you are afraid of strangers), that you would be calm and trusting and that Go* will continue to prepare your heart for this big day tomorrow and the many that are to come.

We don’t know everything to expect tomorrow, but we do know this. We do know that thousands of pr**ers have been pra*ed for you both in the last three years and this week by many around the world. We know that G** knew every detail of what you would experience far before any of us did. He has you in the palm of H** hand and will equip us as your parents, for everything that you may need. We have seen H** hand in every detail, great and small, in this process.

“Bri” --We are so excited for you to be a part of your forever family. On Tuesday, February 3, only 24 hours after we hold you in our arms for the first time, we will have an appointment and you will officially become a part of our family and will receive a new name, our name. In the eyes of both your birth country and the U.S.- you will be our daughter legally. (even though you’ve been our daughter for far longer than that) That very day, February 3, is my birthday and there is no greater birthday present one could receive than the gift of you. What a fun birthday present and day of celebration for us as your parents!

For now, rest well little one. Tomorrow will be a big day for all of us. We are going to try to do the same. (though something tells me that it’s not going to be easy to do tonight) We look forward to meeting you tomorrow!

Love,

Mom & Dad