Shanghai!

We made it to Shanghai on Thursday, November 30th. The 14 hour flight from Chicago with a three year old was as miserable as you might imagine it could be. We had hoped for the best but alas she was very unhappy for most of the flight and only slept for maybe 3-4 hours. She kept wanting "out" and "outside" and "got go"... It didn't help that she'd been woken up at 3 in the morning and Walter and I hadn't gone to bed. We were all exhausted.

The flight had some other drama as well as they handcuffed a guy about 5 or 6 hours before our arrival. We think he might have been drunk. We saw a flight attendant scolding him and I could hear her saying "this isn't your seat". We think he came from coach into economy and planted himself in an empty seat (that was actually occupied but the guy was in the restroom). He wouldn't leave the seat willingly so eventually they cuffed him and brought him back to a seat closer to the back.

A little later a call came over the loud speaker asking for anyone on board who might be a doctor or an EMT! We never found out what happened there.

The drama of the plane was mellowed by our experience on the way to the airport though. It was about 4:20 a.m., and Eliza was saying "fun" (or as she pronounces it "pum") when I noticed a car moving really close and was thinking "where does he think he's ...." and then it hit us. Our driver maintained his cool and kept us on the road but the other car careened off our front bumper and launched into the air turning end over end somewhere between 4 and 8 times. It was surreal. When the car stopped and our driver moved off the road I started to freak out about the driver, "help him..help him" I was saying as I was clawing at the door to get out. I couldn't get the door open and Walter finally yelled at me to stop and demanded I stay in the car. He got out and with the assistance of a trucker who had stopped they were able to get the woman out of her car.

She had been hanging upside down by her seatbelt and crying for help. I couldn't believe it as they helped her to her feet and over to the van, that she was visibly uninjured. They put her into the van and I was rubbing her back asking if she was OK. She said she thought she might have broken some fingers. She seemed to be in shock but maybe she was intoxicated or medicated, we couldn't tell. She said she had been on her way to work.

When the sheriff arrived he asked her what happened and she said she had been writing down a note. He asked, "while you were driving?" (he didn't look pleased!) and she said, "yes...there wasn't much traffic". But the truck driver had told Walter that she had been driving erratically for some time and he actually in the process of dialing 911 when she hit us. The police think she fell asleep (or maybe passed out?).

Jet lag is worse this trip than last time probably because of Eliza. She is being very good but has had some big meltdowns about wanting to go home, especially when she is tired. Yesterday we woke up from a very long nap and she was having a nightmare, it looked like she was trying to run and she kept saying "home home". When she finally woke up, she didn't seem to be truly awake and she was inconsolable. Nothing was helping, she kept going to the door and saying "home".

It makes me worried about RoRo. If Eliza is this homesick and her loved ones are with her, what will it be like for Ro, being taken away from her home and her foster family? I am praying hard that it won't be as bad as it could be, for her sake not ours.

Yesterday was our 1/2 tour of Shanghai. Our guide's name is "Chris". She is very sweet and took us to old Shangahi and new. Shanghai really became the city it is (of 23 million) only in the last 25 years. Before that it was a fishing port. But now it is a very modern city. It was colonized in the 19th century so a lot of the "old" buildings are very European.

More people speak English here than in any of the other cities we've visited. Now that we have been in five large Chinese cities we can safely say that Beijing has the worst driving conditions! Shanghai is much more civilized. Eliza was good on the tour but right at the beginning she spotted a kiosk that must have reminded her of the popcorn stand at our zoo because she kept asking for "co-corn" after that. She eventually settled for a hot snack that looked like pretzels but was actually sweet and tasted almost like a doughnut.

Today we will take the bullet train to Nanjing! Silver, our same guide as last time, will meet us at the station. We are staying at the Holiday Inn Aqua City hotel, a different hotel than last time. I heard good things from other families about Aqua City and it has a pool that kids can swim in (unlike our last hotel) so that was the main driver. It's also attached to a mall so it will be good to be able to entertain the girls with walks through the mall when they get restless.

Time to pack for Nanjing! Hopefully we'll have good luck getting online as we have had here. Thanks once again to Marquette's VPN which is the only way I've been able to connect to this blog and Facebook too.

Six days to RoRo!

It's 1:00 in the morning. Walt is in the shower and I am wrapping up a few odds and ends. I would love to go to bed, and am considering resting for awhile, but we get picked up by our shuttle in three hours. By the time we are finally at our hotel in Shanghai, we will have been traveling for almost 24 hours. If it were just Walt and I going, I would be fondly looking forward to sleeping on the plane. However, a certain very busy, quite demanding three-year old will most likely have other ideas for me. So it's going to be a very long 24 hours indeed, on no sleep.

But with all the craziness of the last three days of getting ready, I still am in awe that we are so close to our girl. Six days. In six days we will meet our RoRo!

Bring on the 24 hour day of travel hell...I'm ready!

Eliza says....

Eliza talks about RoRo all the time. In the beginning I'd say thing to her like, "Eliza...when we get RoRo home, where will she sit while we're eating?" ... or ... "Eliza, when we get RoRo home, will she like to read books too?".

But for several weeks now, Eliza is the one to bring up RoRo. If we are sitting at the table for dinner to eat (at home or out) she will point to an empty chair and say "RoRo!". When we sit on the floor in her room to read bedtime stories, she'll sit on one side of me and point to my other side and say "RoRo!".  Every night she goes to the picture of RoRo in their room and says her name and lately she has been saying "Thank you, RoRo". I don't know if this is because when we say our prayers at night I tell her to thank God for RoRo. Who knows what is going on in her mind.

Now she talks about the trip to China a lot. In her own unique Eliza language she'll say "China".."Go"..."RoRo"..."Up"..."Fun"...."Nanny"...."home". It translates to: We are going to China to pick up RoRo. We'll have fun (she pronounces it as "pum"), then we'll visit my nanny and then we'll come home. Sometimes she includes her little pantomime for swimming since we told her we'll be swimming when we are there.

We have know way of knowing for sure but we really think she understands that RoRo is coming home to live with us. What we aren't so sure about is how she'll do sharing mama with a sister. :)

RoRo in pictures

Because RoRo is from Eliza's same orphanage we have been lucky enough to have received quite a few updated photos of her over the last 8 months. Most came directly from Coco, our contact at the orphanage (we heart Coco!). Here is a sampling!

And by the way, RoRo (aka: Sadie Mae!) is four years old. She turned four in October and is exactly one year and one week older than Eliza.

13.5 hours left!

It's 2:42 p.m. and I have miles to go before I sleep. But who am I kidding? There will be no sleep tonight! Our shuttle picks us up at 4 a.m. so there is no way I'm going to get any sleep, even if I do get to bed early enough. I'll be too worried that my alarm won't go off!

It is hard to believe that in six days we will finally be united with our daughter. I am so hopeful that it will be a joyous meeting for all of us. But I'm fearful that RoRo will be scared or sad that she has been taken away from her foster parents. This poor child, she has loved and lost too many times in her short four years.

Like Eliza, she has had three mamas before me. What must these kids be thinking when they are handed to strangers and told to call them mama and daddy? We can only hope that the orphanage, and the foster family after that, has been talking to her about us daily for the last nine months.

Nine months! I'm about to give birth to a four year old! :)

I will try to post from China but I didn't have much luck last time.

Best finish the remaining items on my to-do list.

We know our Gotcha Day!

We received our travel approval at the end of last week (it came in less than a week!) so we took the weekend to talk about when we'd want to try to leave. On Monday I emailed our case manager Kelsey (the world's BEST case manager) to discuss options but she was off for the Veterans Day holiday (but being the world's best case manager she was emailing me anyway). The next day I had to take off of work to go to Chicago to get Eliza her passport. Around 3 p.m. I called Walter and asked him to email Kelsey just to let her know that December 3rd was our preference for Gotcha Day but if that wouldn't work out that the 10th would be our second option.

She had told me earlier that it typically takes 3-4 days to hear back about making the consulate appointment which is the first step in figuring out Gotcha Day.

So the last thing I expected when I opened email this morning was to see a note from her confirming the consulate appointment AND our Gotcha Day already!

We will be united with our sweet girl on Monday, December 3rd! Words cannot describe the excitement knowing how very close we are. Even though we've been through this once before, the joy and excitement is exactly the same.

Baby girl, here we come!

Another daughter (brought to us by our very own Canadian fairy godmother)!

When we were matched with Eliza (aka: Tao Bao'Er) a year ago, I found a yahoo user group for people with children from her orphanage, the Nanjing SWI. I wanted to know as much as I could about the place our daughter was living. About a month before we were to travel to China a woman named Alicia from Canada posted that she was looking to connect with the orphanage to find out what size shoes her son wore, because she wouldn't be traveling until winter and wanted to bring him shoes to wear. I wrote back and said I'd see what I could find out when we traveled in August.

I had no idea at the time the chain of events that Alicia's simple request was about to put into motion. On the day we toured Eliza's orphanage, I asked about Alicia's son and they said I could go and visit him. Our guide and I took the elevator to the 3-6 year old room where the children were having their lunch. Jiesheng, Alicia's son, was more interested in his lunch then me but he was very sweet (and so darling) and I took lots of photos of him and of the room, so his mom could see where he was. I was even allowed to talk to his nanny and ask lots of questions about him.

The room was full of children and I told myself that surely they were all waiting for their forever families to pick them up. But I couldn't help looking at them and thinking how much we had wanted to get matched with a second child when we were matched with Eliza. I even told my guide this on our way back down the elevator. We laughed as she said that "Bao'Er" was like having two children! Quite true. But secretly I was hoping she'd say, "as a matter of fact there is a child in there you should also take home with you".

I was anxious to let Alicia know what I'd learned about her son, and that I actually got to meet him!...I emailed her pretty quickly after we got back to the hotel and sent her a couple of photos and the update. When we got back to the states I sent her all the photos and she was so grateful. When we are matched with our children, the wait to get to them is torture and updates and new photos are very rare so I knew that this little thing I'd done would mean the world to this waiting mama.

From there Alicia and I became Facebook friends. In January of 2011 she and her family traveled to China to pick up their son and I was able to follow their journey. It was very exciting as I felt a special connection to this family since I had met their son even before they did!

It was during this same time that Walter and I were trying to figure out whether or not we could financially pull off a second adoption. It was in our hearts but we knew it wouldn't be easy. We were eligible for a significant tax refund because of Eliza's adoption and we knew that that was the only way we might be able to make it happen but even so, there was much to consider. But we were also under some pressure to make a decision as we had one year from Eliza's "Gotcha Day" to be matched with a second child in order to "re-use" our original dossier (no small thing considering how long they take to put together!).

We both wanted to go back to Nanjing. We got such a great feeling from the orphanage, the staff, the fact that they are connected to the Half the Sky Foundation. We loved Eliza's nanny, she cried when we left. Our guide was wonderful, the orphanage was clean and the children seemed so loved and well cared for.

And then Alicia posted pictures from her visit to the orphanage. The very first picture that I saw was of a beautiful little girl in a light pink coat. Alicia's caption read, "I can't believe this little girl is waiting for a home".

I remember turning the computer towards Walter to show him the photo and his eyes widened and he said, "can we find out anything more about her?".

We found out that her name was Jin Fanrou and she was three years old, exactly one year and one week older than our Eliza.

Alicia holding Fanrou

Of course we fell in love with her immediately but we needed to be practical. We hadn't figured out any of the logistics, let alone the financial. We had to believe that if she was meant to be our daughter then she would would still be available by the time we were ready to proceed. But she sure lit a fire in our hearts because we worked all the harder to figure out how we could possibly pull off the impossible; a second adoption.

No matter how we told ourselves that adopting THIS child was a long shot, especially given that other families were interested in her and we weren't ready yet, the seed had been planted. I couldn't stop thinking about her. Alicia and I shared many, many messages to one another about her.

By the time we were ready to move forward, her file was gone from the list. This usually means one of three things. The child was being adopted, the child was designated to a particular agency, or the child was removed by the CCAA with no reason listed.

So our agency called the CCAA and found out that she was indeed now designated to a particular agency. The CCAA said that if we were 100% committed to adopting her they would pull her file from that agency and allow our agency to give it to us.

And so on March 7, 2012, we were officially matched with our second daughter, Jin Fanrou!  She is known as Rou Rou, although I've taken to spelling it as RoRo.

Once we made it official I was anxious to let Alicia know. She was, after all, the fairy godmother in this story...the one that connected us to our new daughter. Alicia was thrilled with the news and not long after that she tagged me in a photo that I had taken in China of Jiesheng's room at the orphanage. But Jiesheng was not in the photo and I couldn't understand why she had tagged me in it. When I asked she said to look closely at the little girl sitting directly in the center of the photo, looking at the camera. That was RoRo.

Photographing my soon-to-be daughter without knowing it.

Inadvertently I had taken a photo of our soon-to-be daughter. She had looked right at me through the lens of my camera. Her bed was located right next to Jiesheng's and I suddenly remembered kneeling at his bedside and getting up and turning around to see her looking at me. And I smiled and waived. Later in the elevator I told my guide about our desire to be matched with a second child -- I was feeling a tug at my heart in that instance and now I know why. 

There is a proverb in China that says that an invisible red thread connects us to the ones we are destined to meet, and nothing can break the thread. The tug at my heart that day, as I left that room, was that red thread pulling at me as I left the bedside of my destined daughter. That same red thread that was first woven when adoption was originally planted in our hearts. It led us to Eliza who brought us to Nanjing. It wove it's way through the virtual world and connected us to Alicia and to her son Jiesheng and to his sweet little friend, who slept in the bed next to his.

God is in the details (and He's a pretty good weaver too).

The Fourth Mama

So much has changed since August 15th. Eliza is stronger, bigger, brighter and funnier than ever. Always confident, she now seems to feel as we do, that this life is simply how it's always been. But as happy and well adjusted as we believe her to be, she reminded us recently that she has not forgotten her past. A week or so before Christmas I looked around expecting to see her following me from the kitchen. When I didn't see her, I went to find her tucked into the small hallway that leads from our kitchen to the back door, pantry and basement. On the pantry we keep a bulletin board with random things attached (as is the story of most bulletin boards). She was intently staring up at something tacked there which included a large print out of the travel approval and also a photo of Eliza and her nanny taken at the orphanage after we sent her the care package. I asked her "what are you looking at, honey?" and she started to point and grunt. She was pointing at the picture of her and her nanny. Walter and I looked at each other trying to determine if she was recognizing her nanny after all this time, or simply noticing herself in a photo. (We had shown her photos of her nanny often in the beginning but never got much of a reaction). So I took the photo and lowered it so she could see it better (and touch it) and she immediately pressed her finger against it multiple times and again, grunted something only she understood.

Then I asked, "Who is that, Eliza?" and without hesitation her finger landed on the nanny and she said, "Mama".

Walter and I gasped and looked at one another. "Mama" is what the children call their nannies. I wanted to be sure she was recognizing her nanny after so long so I asked again, "who is that, Eliza?" and again she said "Mama" and and what she did next broke our hearts. She kissed the photo, something that she has done with our photos before.

There are moments in life -- blink! -- that can change your perspective entirely. Everything you thought you knew, changes. This was one of those rare moments. It wasn't that we had forgotten that Eliza's early life was marked by loss and grief, and it wasn't even that we entirely believed that she had forgotten it (although we hoped). But she is still a baby, just over two, and a long time has passed since she lived with her nanny mama (a quarter of her life in fact) and because she can't tell us how she feels, we just didn't keep it top of mind, especially as time continued to pass. But it that very continuation of time that makes this moment so remarkable. It isn't just what it said about Eliza's memory, it is what it says of all children and their early ability to love and attach, long before they have words to express those feelings. I don't know how to best explain how I felt in this moment other to say that I truly believe we were given a gift. We are grateful for Eliza every single day but in this moment, we realized how truly blessed we are to be the able to love her and not have to leave her. As Walter said afterwards, "you are her fourth mama". And it's true. She was with her birth mother for six months (we presume) prior to coming to the orphanage and then she was with her nanny mama for well over a year. After that she spent two months with her foster mom (who gifted to Eliza a red string and jade ankle bracelet which we haven't taken off of her yet). When Eliza kissed the photo it had been four months since she'd seen her nanny mama and six months since she lived in the orphanage with her as her caregiver. Again, that's a quarter of her life spent away from her nanny and yet, she hadn't forgotten her. She remembers her face, and more importantly, she remembers her love for her (and hers in return).

As I repeated this story over the course of the next few days, it brought tears to my eyes each time. And as I write it now, I am welling up again. The surge of love and need for protection that I felt for my child in that simple moment is indescribable. The gratitude I feel for those first mamas that loved and shaped our baby girl is overwhelming.

In the first weeks after we brought her home, when her character and charm and personality (to spare!) made everyone she met fall in love with her, I kept saying, "I can take no credit for who she is". And it's true. That credit goes to Eliza's first caretakers, those women who loved her and had to give her up. The truth is, we don't know anything about her first mamas, other than her nanny at the orphanage. And I have seen for myself that children come out of the womb with their own individual personalities, before any of us humans lay a finger on them, but I also know that our touch can help them to blossom or to whither and because of who Eliza is now, it seems clear to me that her first mamas showered her with love and love and love.

To those women, Eliza's nanny mama that we met, and the two other mamas that we will never know ... thank you, thank you, thank you. My wish for you is that somehow, by God's grace, you know that Eliza is well and that she loves you still.

The little things she does

Because of our dogs, we have to feed our cat Theo on the stairs and put a gate up to keep the dogs out (and Eliza from going up). Theo often sits on the steps and cries to be fed. Eliza likes to play in the cabinet where we keep the paper plates which we use for his food and also where we keep his cat food. She likes to move the cans around, stack and unstack them. Very two. She was playing in there earlier today, right before I took her up for her nap. On the way back downstairs I noticed that she had left one paper plate and one can of cat food on the bottom step ... seemingly for Theo. It made me smile. Smart girl!

Yesterday my mom and I taught her to pat her chest indicating "mine" which she was using today. I'm pretty sure she even said "mine" at one point. While we were practicing this she also let me know that she understands the other meaning of patting her chest, which means "Eliza". I'd say her name and she'd pat her chest. Then she looked at my diet coke and patted her chest. I had to pat my chest and say, "mommies". Ha!

Eliza at home

Yesterday marked one month since we've been home with Eliza. I can't believe how it's flown by. The time has been spent recovering from jet lag, my cold and then hers, cocooning and nesting getting to know each other. We've spent lots of time visiting Nana and Papa, aunts and uncles and cousins and taking Daddy out to lunch. I can't believe how seamless it's been, like she's always been with us (which indeed she has been for many years in a way). I know that other adoptive parents have echoed the same thing; but it's like she was meant for our family. She fits us like a glove. The boys are great with her, Nick especially. He likes having her attention and she is happy to give it. Actually all of the boys have been cute with her, even our favorite neighbor boys who are almost like family. Everyone has been so excited to have her home with us finally.

Today we visited my office and co-workers. They knew we were coming and had planned a little shower for us. I was reminded how blessed I am to work at Marquette and to have the co-workers that I do. Eliza was a hit. Her obsession with men is crazy. Of the nine men working in our office today she forced 7 of them to pick her up (some more than once) and pitched a fit when they put her down before she was ready. But she wouldn't go to a single woman. She didn't show an ounce of shyness, I've never seen such an outgoing toddler.

But by the end of the day it was evident that her runny nose of the morning (which had turned into a faucet by evening) had developed into another full-blown cold. Poor baby. Poor mommy.

I've been trying to find time to catalog the photos and finish uploading them all from our cameras, but every day -- during nap time when there is one -- seems to bring new priorities to tackle. Maybe tomorrow since we'll probably be nesting at home because of her cold.

This isn't a very exciting post but I wanted to write a little something since we just passed month one of being home. More soon.

The orphanage

We can't say enough good things about Eliza's orphanage and the nannies there. They are amazing and so clearly in love with all the children. When we visited Eliza was like a rock star, surrounded be nannies saying "Baoer! Baoer!" (her Chinese name). Her main nanny cried when we left. We joked with our guide later that it's because Eliza was so much work she was relieved to see her go. Ha! Here are some photos from the visit to the orphanage. By far my favorite is of Eliza looking into the baby play room where she used to spend so much time.

We have our daughter!

Thanks to Marquette's VPN connection we are able to sneak onto our blog and also Facebook. Woo hoo! The trip has been amazing, the people, the sites, everything. But of course nothing can beat Eliza! Gotcha Day was as magical as we anticipated. She is amazing and smart and funny and pig-headed and brave and lovely and naughty and sweet and has us wrapped around her little finger already. I won't waste too much time with stories for now, I'll just post some pics here and gush more later.

And we're off like a herd of turtles...

Yesterday was chaos to say the least. We scrambled and packed, counted and sorted money...lots and lots of money!... and picked up and bathed dogs and did laundry and repacked and picked up some more, chased some paper for our travel package, emailed our poor case manager late in the evening in desperation on some MIA paperwork, packed some more, recounted the money .... into the wee hours of the morning. We left the house at 2:30 a.m. and headed to Mitchell. By 5:30 we were in Chicago.

Now it's time to let you in on a little secret. Our travel agent, assigned through our adoption agency, is a big giant idiot. We hate her, I mean really really hate her. I won't go into it here, this is a happy place...ha!...but here's how she rolls: She originally wanted to book us directly out of Chicago. We said, "well, it's doable but it's a two hour drive and we'd rather leave from Mitchell (Milw)". She said, "Ohhhh, OK...yes, two hours is too far to drive, I'll book you from Milw to Chicago and then directly to Beijing". Excellent. Then -- after many other things that irritated, angered, annoyed and frustrated us ... we got our final itinerary exactly 11 hours before we had to be at the airport. All in military time. Did we have time to check it? Nope. If we had it would have taken her 30 hours to get back to us anyway (her average response time) so we just figured it would be fine, how bad could it be?

After finally settling on the flight to Chicago at 5 a.m., after 3 days of little sleep followed by not going to bed at all last night.(and looking forward, oddly enough, to the 14 hour flight to China so we could finally sleep)..we had time to review the itinerary. We arrived in Chicago at 5:30 a.m. .. our flight to Beijing is at 1:00 p.m. YES. A SEVEN HOUR layover, two hours from home. We could have driven here almost 3 times. We could have gone to bed. We could have almost walked here from Milwaukee.

Did I mention how much I hate our travel agent?

But with that said, here we ARE! Full of coffee with two games of Farkle under our belt. We look comical with our money belts that are oh-so-not disguised under our shirts so full of cash they are (if you want a definition of stress look under adopting internationally and the requirement to bring 10K in cash with you overseas). I actually look pregnant because of my money belt...irony at it's best. ;) Walter is passed out on the bench next to me. We'll be boarding fairly soon so wish us luck. After this it's all smooth sailing!! (Right?...please say "right!").

Next stop, Beijing.

Seven days to Eliza!

One week from today, we will be united with our baby girl. According to our itinerary, "Gotcha Day" will be Monday, August 15th, although we've been warned that she could be waiting for us at the hotel on Sunday when we arrive in Nanjing. And to complicate matters further, if we get her on Monday morning, it will actually be Sunday evening here. :) So if we cross your minds anytime between Saturday and Sunday it's a safe bet that it's because the magical moment has happened. Seven days. ONE WEEK. It is impossible to find words to express what this feeling is like. It is part disbelief, part shock, part awe and total joy all mixed up into one emotion. I had a hard time sleeping last night knowing that in less than two days we'd be boarding a plane to China. We have waited so long that there have been many points along the way that have felt more like daydreams rather than a wait. Adoption is peaks and valleys I always say. Sometimes we see her clearly and other times it's as if she has been blanketed in a mist. But now she is SO CLOSE that I'll say it again, I have no words to describe what I'm feeling right now. Maybe just this...wow.

What Ethan has to say

My nephew Ethan was over last night and wanted to see Eliza's room. Ethan is 10 years old and we call him "E". I said to him at one point, "Ethan, we're going to have another "E" in the family!" and he grinned. He also said that he would be Eliza's favorite cousin because he always wanted a little sister and he'd play with her a lot (and make her dolls fall off of a pretend cliff, etc....great). Later he asked what kind of nickname she would have "What can I cal her?" ..."Maybe 'Little E'?" His mom and I thought that was pretty cute. :) Ethan is very proud of the fact that he helped pick out the new drawer pulls for Eliza's dresser. He likes to show them off to people and say how he picked them out in part because he felt they fit nicely between the fingers as you pulled the drawer open.

He's a punk and we love him! He'll be a good cousin!

Our travel approval is here!

I got a call from our agency a little after 2:00. Our travel approval arrived! I ran around the office showing everyone the document ... I was high! Our agency will plan to work with the US Consulate in China to get our appointment for August 22 meaning we can plan to leave by August 10th!! We were told earlier (sometime around the time of the referral) that after 3 days in Beijing we'd get to Eliza's province on a Saturday or Sunday and get her either that Sunday or Monday. That means our "gotcha day!" will be either August 14 or 15th. Wow. We are so crazy happy! Walt and I opened a bottle of champagne when we met at home after work. We can't stop smiling.

Good morning, baby girl...

Dear Eliza, I have found myself each morning passing your room and stopping in to say, "Good morning, baby girl". Your room is beautiful now that it's complete, but it is empty. I can't wait for you to come and make a mess of the gorgeous pillows on the window seat, to see toys strewn across the perfectly polished floors, to come in to find the expensive curtains pulled off the rods and onto the floor. (Someone will have to remind of this oath once it actually happens ... ha!). Because until we see your sweet face in that room it will always feel incomplete.

Today is Monday. It was back to work after a beautiful and lazy weekend. Saturday we spent the day in the lake with your Auntie Alison and Uncle Michael. We laid about in floats all day and got too much sun. It was relaxing and just what we needed. Yesterday I went to brunch with Maggie and Max (I'm Max's godmother). Max is 4 and has a sister just a month older than you, Maggie and I expect the two of you to become close friends once you meet! We had our brunch at the very restaurant where your father and I made our monumental decision to begin an adoption almost 5 years ago. All we knew of you in that moment is that you hadn't yet been born but would be born in China.

During brunch with Maggie and Max I noticed at the table next to us a dad and mom with their Chinese daughter who was about 8 or 9 years old. I tried not to stare but I couldn't help watching them as I thought about how many times I've imagined taking you to that very restaurant and sitting in the very booth where we made our decision to come and find you.

As always I said goodnight to you as I passed your room.

Disappointing news about our travel approval

We were expecting to receive our travel approval somewhere between June 9-23rd. As the 23rd approached we were getting anxious. And then the 23rd came and went. I tried to control myself and not write and bug my agency about it but that lasted two days. They said that they weren't worried since it was only a couple of days outside of the window but that they would contact their liaison at the CCAA. Soon after they said the liaison said the paperwork had all arrived but she would check to be sure it was in order. Our agency suggested we hold tight as there didn't seem to be any problems. When we didn't hear anything back about problems with the paperwork we assumed that it would come any day.

Fast forward another 2 weeks. We have now been waiting a total of 8 weeks for our TA! Last Wednesday I contacted our agency again and again they said they'd contact their liaison. On Friday I made the image shown here of the DHL trucks and Eliza as my screensaver, trying to will the TA to arrive. I posted the fortune cookie image also shown here, on my Facebook page, trying to will the TA to come. Then I received a call from our agency. They had reached the liaison and it turns out that the procedure that our agency followed for sending paperwork for finalizing the match, had been changed by the CCAA but they'd never been notified. So the CCAA had all the correct paperwork but since it didn't arrive as their new process dictated, they simply sat on it.

What does this mean? It means that we should be in China RIGHT NOW but instead are delayed by another 5 weeks (if not more). I couldn't help crying as the agency delivered this latest news. Five more weeks! Five more weeks for that baby to sit in an institution. Five more weeks of development and growth and milestones we will miss seeing. Five more weeks of an empty crib in the nursery. I realize that in the scheme of things five weeks is not the end of the world but it is devastating none-the-less. We are so close!

Hang on baby girl, we'll be there as soon as we can.

Finally, a completed room for Eliza

After the referral the next few weeks were a mad rush to finish Eliza's room which we had started over two years ago. It was frustrating to have to move our bedroom furniture into her room in order for Walt to finish refinishing the upstairs floors which included our bedroom. All I wanted to do was put her room together. While Walt hammered away at the floors I was having curtains and pillows made for the windows and window seat. Once we were able to move back into our own room, I was finally able to start putting Eliza's room together. Walt went to Canada around that same time and by the time he came back, the room was pretty much complete. My two year obsession with collecting bird art for her wall collage paid off, I was very happy with the end results. Let's hope she likes birds. :)

New photos of Eliza!

In May I posted about sending Eliza a care package. That was on a Sunday night. The following Friday we were wrapping up the evening and I decided to check email one more time before bed. It was about 10 p.m. and low-and-behold, there in my inbox were photos from Ann at Red Thread China! My reaction was ridiculous! I was so excited (having had a few glasses of wine earlier made my reaction all the more animated). I screamed at Walter to come and look and together we viewed photos of our daughter, taken in the days before, enjoying the cake we sent to her and the other children at the orphanage. I couldn't believe it. She had so much hair and was still so perfectly chubby and sweet. She was wearing one of the outfits from the care package. Baby girl, there YOU ARE!!

We were also thrilled to see how clean and bright the orphanage seemed to be and that the caretakers had logos on their shirts from the "Half the Sky Foundation", a wonderful organization that provides nurture and developmental care for children in orphanages. This is a great sign.