A big announcement!

(Drum roll...) Our daughter has an American name! We would like you to meet Eliana. Eliana is Hebrew for "My God has answered", which we think is quite appropriate. You can click on the announcement picture above to enlarge it and see the Hebrew letters and Chinese characters more clearly. Eliana will be keeping part of her Chinese name, ZuGuo, as her American middle name. So, her American name is Eliana ZuGuo. Qing (pronounced "Ching") is her current Chinese last name, after the city in which she lives, Qingyuan. The first part of her given name, Zu, was given to all of the children at her SWI (orphanage) by the Director in the last few years. It is a connection to her 'brothers and sisters' that she has spent time with there and we felt it was an important connection to keep for her. We are already communicating online with the families of several of her "Zu" siblings. Guo is her Chinese given name and is what she is called now. I am going to try to post audio files of how her Chinese name/American middle name is pronounced in both Cantonese and Mandarin. To my best knowledge, in Cantonese her name is pronounced like "Dzoh Gwoh" and in Mandarin it sounds like "Dzu Gwah". Tone (rising, falling, flat) is very important in Chinese pronunciations and we are not very good at that! Eliana lives in a predominantly Cantonese speaking province (Guangdong), but we won't be 100% sure of how the people taking care of her address her until we get there! We hope you all like her name as much as we do. We will wait to see if any nicknames develop - Elli, Ella, Lia, Ana, Li-li are all possibilities. We will have to wait to get to know her!

Accordingly, I have changed the blog title again, from "Waiting for Guo" to "Expecting Eliana". If you have this page bookmarked, you may want to update your bookmark title as well - the web address will stay the same.

The crib arrived today and I love it! More decorating fun to come. I hope to post pictures of her room in the next couple of weeks.

Love, Eliana's mama :0)

Happy Birthday to me - new pictures of...

I received these updated pictures of Guo today from our agency - what a wonderful birthday present! We hope to also get new weight/measurements soon. I sure hope that some of the pretty little things I bought for her actually fit - she looks like such a big girl in the pictures! We can't wait to try to put a smile on that sweet face. Look for a big name announcement soon!

A couple of birthdays

Looks like I am behind on my posting again! I hope that all of my friends and family celebrating Christmas yesterday had a wonderful day and got lots of great goodies! Our Guo turned 17 months old yesterday and today I am also having a birthday. To determine my age you will have to work for it: multiply Guo's months by 2 and add 2 to get my age in years. My sister turned 40 this year and has been telling me all of the wonderful things that I have to look forward to when that magical age hits! In the adoption community, we are actually quite the young whippersnappers, so we will enjoy our youthful status there for a while.

Last Friday I put our son on an airplane to go visit with my sister's family in Georgia. Ben is having a great time with his cousin and Aunt & Uncle and also got to spend sometime with my mother, my Aunt Nancy (recovering from a hip replacement - get well soon!) & Uncle Charlie and even my cousin Kim, who was visiting from south Florida. Last year Ben enjoyed a ski trip to Utah with his cousin, but this year they are having a relaxing holiday at home in Georgia. Guess what - he got his hair cut! I tried to get him an appointment to have his long locks cut before leaving town but wasn't able to get one scheduled at the salon where I usually take him. I told my sister that if he wanted a haircut while in Georgia, that was fine with me. My brother-in-law was MORE than happy to accommodate Ben with a haircut and sent before and after pics from his cell phone to my cell phone - see below. I think it looks great! And for the bargain price of $9.95 - try getting a haircut for THAT in Northern Virginia! Small town living definitely has some advantages.

BEFORE...


AFTER...

THERE'S my boy! Looking good, Ben!

This week is probably the last time that Adam and I will have any 'alone time' as a couple for a long time to come! We have been a couple for 15 years and Benjamin has been with us for 13.5 of those years, so it always feels strange when he is gone. At the last minute, Adam and I decided to take an overnight retreat to Charlottesville, Virginia - home of the University of Virginia and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. We left on a VERY foggy & rainy Sunday morning for the 2 hour drive south. We couldn't see a THING on the way there through the fog. Our package included a private tasting at one of the newer vineyards and wineries in the Charlottesville area and we wanted to get there before they closed at 5:00pm. The drive was uneventful and we arrived, checked in, got our very nice complementary corkscrew and headed out to DelFosse Vineyards & Winery. The fog was lifting and rain was stopping as we drove the 20 miles or so to the vineyard. The Charlottesville area is very beautiful - rolling hills and valleys with farms dotting the landscape.

We arrived at the winery and really enjoyed out private tasting, which included all of their reserve wines. Very nice! We chatted with the owner, Claude DelFosse and found out that he used to be a software developer in the defense industry and had even spent some time at Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton Beach - what a small world! Adam's hopes of one day owning his own small winery are rekindled. I told him that he could have his vineyard and winery as long as I could have some pasture land and a barn for my alpacas and sheep and a horse or two - maybe a little petting zoo near the tasting room? :0) [I guess the fact that my lineage includes farmers and blacksmiths has my brain genetically programmed to yearn for livestock. Adam, Ben & I even went to an alpaca auction at a beautiful farm in Leesburg once - THAT was an interesting experience! I never knew how much some of the award-winning alpacas sold for - amazing!] Anyway, the wines were great and we bought 15 bottles (you notice I didn't say we CAME HOME with 15 bottles)! As we were tasting, the skies cleared and the sun came out. We walked around the grounds and I got a few nice pictures of the vineyard as the sun was setting. On the drive back to the hotel, a beautiful, huge, perfectly full moon was rising in front of us as the sun set behind us. The pictures don't do it justice - it was quite stunning in person.

The next day we packed up and headed out to Monticello. We really enjoyed the tour of the house and wandering around the garden and grounds. Thomas Jefferson was a fascinating person and the history of Monticello is also quite interesting. When Thomas Jefferson died on the 4th of July 1826 - the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence - and the same day that John Adams died, he was actually in debt. Jefferson's daughter eventually sold Monticello and most of its contents at auction. A few years later, Uriah Levy, the first Jewish Commodore of the United States Navy and an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, bought Monticello and he and his descendants kept it very near its original state for the next 90 years. His mother, Rachel, lived there and is buried on the grounds. Levy bequeathed Monticello to "The People of the United States" upon his death in 1862, but the US Government said 'no thanks' - it was rather busy dealing with the Civil War. Seventeen years passed before the mess got resolved, and Levy's nephew got control back of Monticello, made the repairs required after 17 years of neglect and some abuse by the Confederate army, and eventually sold the home to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1923, which now maintains the home and grounds and runs the tours. We also drove by the former residences of two of Jefferson's friends and fellow Presidents, James Monroe (Ash Lawn-Highland) and James Madison (Montpelier). Madison didn't have a fan like Levy - the duPont family bought the home and it is now undergoing extensive renovations to return it to the state it was in Madison's time. All three homes are in the Charlottesville vicinity and an easy drive from where we live. We hope to return to visit Montpelier and Ash Lawn-Highland, bring Ben to Monticello and also to explore more of the plentiful vineyards in the area. Mount Vernon and colonial Williamsburg and Fredericksburg are also on our 'To Do' list. Here are a few pics - my battery was low and no pictures were allowed inside, so I only have a handful:

One other thing Adam & I had the chance to do last weekend was to go to a large baby store in Maryland. I found a crib I really liked and it is being delivered tomorrow. It is a white painted iron crib and I think it's lovely. This afternoon/evening I will be on the hunt for some bedding for the new crib. We have also been trying out some names for our daughter - practicing referring to her with them to see if they work for us. I think we are almost there! I still need to paint and decorate the room and maybe refinish/repaint the furniture as well - it was mine when I was a little girl. After all the waiting I now feel that time is flying and our little girl will be with us before we know it!

Have a wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year for 2008! It will be a big year for our family and we look forward to sharing it with you.

Four things learned on 4th night + movie 4 of 8

1. My son is a ROCK STAR (on his new Wii Guitar Hero III) - see the slide show below.

2. My husband is definitely NOT a Guitar Hero rock star (he was booed off of the stage 3 times in a row)! Don't quit your day job, Adam. My husband is however, MY hero and quite handy with a set of jumper cables in the dark in a freezing cold grocery store parking lot! UPDATE: Adam spent the weekend improving his Wii guitar skills and can now hold his own.

3. I can do a fairly decent job on Pat Benetar's "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" with Guitar Hero.

4. One way to rapidly cool a smoking pan full of overheated okra-frying oil is to take it out on the deck and set in on a hot pad on top of a glass topped patio table that is covered in about 3 inches of snow. It also makes a really cool hissing sound at is sinks down into the snow.

Don't worry, the fried okra was already safely out of the oil and was quite tasty (if you've only tried slimy boiled okra & tomatoes, then you should really give nice crispy fried okra a chance). I thought that I had turned the gas on the stove down to off, but I didn't quite make it all the way around, so it was on high instead. I couldn't hear it over the sizzling latkes. Oops! The latkes were golden brown and delicious and we all stuffed ourselves silly.

I have fallen behind in my posts, but here are pictures of nights 3 & 4 and the 4th movie (a VERY young Adam Sandler in the original Saturday Night Live debut of his Hanukkah song). Enjoy!

Chai Y'all - Hanukah southern style - 3 of 8

Today was one of those days. Freezing rain falling, running late, family arriving tomorrow morning and I'm not ready... So, I get into my car after loading in the groceries for our Hanukah/Shabbat dinner tonight, get in, turn the key... click, click, click, nothing. Click, click, click, click, nothing. Oy vey! Dead battery. No jumper cables. I briefly considered popping open my hood and doing my best dramatic damsel in distress routine to see if a kind stranger would take pity on me. I decided to use my cell phone instead. Mother-in-law to the rescue! Thanks for rescuing me, Charlotte. I made it home with the groceries and am getting ready to start dinner. Car is still at the store and will be until darling husband takes me up there to retrieve it later tonight - with cables, this time.

To warm up in this nasty weather, we will be spicing things up a bit tonight. My wonderful son's favorite comfort food is my Kosher turkey spicy meatloaf. I know - it sounds disgusting - but it is actually quite good (if I do say so myself) and pretty good for you, too. Thanks Dana for the original Weight Watchers version, which I modified so that my son & husband would actually eat it - not as low fat, but still not too bad. Adam is back home and so tonight I'll be cooking the first potato latkes of the holiday (although Adam & I went to Chutzpah Deli last night and ate some there while Ben was busy elsewhere - shhhhhh - don't tell on us)!

In honor of our southern upbringing, I will be also be frying up some okra, Emeril style - BAM! Chanukah is the holiday for frying in oil, in honor of the miracle that happened so long ago. When the Jews, led by Judah the Maccabbee defeated Antiochus and the Greeks and cleaned up the Temple which had been desecrated, there was only enough ritual oil to burn for one day. But as you all know, it burned for eight whole days. Nes gadol hayah sham - a great miracle happened there! That's why we light candles for eight nights and that's why we eat yummy things fried in oil - to honor that victory and ensuing miracle. That's also why we have to eat low fat turkey meatloaf - it cancels out the latkes (kind of like drinking a Diet Coke with your Quarter Pounder). That concludes Hanukah 102.

In keeping with the southern theme of the evening, I present to you Mark Rubin & Friends singing the Dreidel song - southern style! I think this is the first time I have heard a Jew yodel!



P.S. "Chai" means "life" in Hebrew, but is pronounced similar to Hi - with a little chhhhhh guttural throat noise in it (like you are about to hock a - well, you know).

Menorah fun - Hanukah movie 2 of 8

Yea, Shelli! You win the prize for the menorah question. (Thank you for being the only contestant). It is missing the Shamash, so it really isn't a Chanukiah. Actually, most menorahs (I guess the plural should really be menorot?) have 7 or 9 candles, so I am not sure what is up with the one in the movie.

Here is the background info for my non-Jewish bloggers (stolen straight from Wikipedia):

During the festival of Hanukkah, a special Hanukkah Menorah, also called a Hanukkiah (or Chanukiah), is lit. The Hanukkah Menorah is a candelabrum with eight branches of equal size that all sit in a row (one for each night of the festival of Hanukkah) and a separate candle holder for the "Shamash." The Shamash candle is used to light the other eight candles since it is forbidden to use the Hanukkah lights for any purpose other than viewing.

Okay - enough of Hanukah 101. Here is the 2nd movie. I actually changed my mind about which one to post today. This one should be appropriate for all audiences, but parents may still want to preview. Now THIS is what a Chanukiah should look like! I wish my menorah could do this! :0)



Happy 2nd day of Chanukah! Tonight we will be lighting 3.

Chanukah/Hanukkah/Hanukah movie 1 of 8

Okay - I got this one posted before sunset on Day 1. It counts!

I found this amusing. The only correct answer to the question to the title of this movie, "How do you spell Chanukah?", is actually - with Hebrew letters! There is also a problem with the menorah in this movie given the holiday (okay - who can be the first one to solve that puzzle)? Nevertheless, this was cute and "G" rated. Tomorrow's movie (which I may post after sunset tonight) will be rated "PG" (fair warning).

Happy Chanukkah - we are DTC!

Sorry for the 10 day gap in between postings. We had a small 'glitch' with our paperwork (we were missing a required paper) and I didn't want to post until it was resolved. All is now well and our last piece of paper is hopefully being translated and the originals are on their way to China! I hope to know our log in date (LID) soon and we can count the days until we receive our Letter of Acceptance (LOA). I am still holding out hope that this will miraculously come before the Chinese/Lunar New Year holiday period begins on February 7th. We really would like to travel in March and make it home before the start of the April trade fair period in Guangzhou (which makes travel reservations extremely difficult and expensive). This may be overly optimistic, but you have to at least hope, right?

The first night of Chanukkah was last night - Chag Semeach/Happy Chanukkah everyone! Unfortunately Adam is traveling and missed it, but he will be home soon. We also got our first snowfall of the year last night and today. Adam always seems to miraculously be in a warmer climate when our snowfalls occur. Hmmmmmm...

Here is a picture of Ben with his silly Chanukkah hat before opening his first gift. (Click it to see it enlarged). Notice his little sister's picture on the counter to the left of him with her own brand new "Manny the Menorah" in the background (battery operated - the bulbs light when you touch them & plays Ma-oz Tzur) and stuffed Pooh Bear with dreidle (a hand-me-down from Ben). Next year will be so much fun with her! Ben can teach her how to spin the dreidle and I am sure that she will enjoy her first taste of latkes. I wonder which she will prefer for latke dipping - applesauce or sour cream? I am betting on applesauce, but I am a sour cream girl myself. [Note to all of my family/friends - yes, I know that my son is a long haired hippy and needs a haircut, so please save yourself the trouble of commenting on it. I have purposely have made it a non-issue with him and he is now about ready to cut it shorter again. :0) Teenagers are so much fun (in a very challenging way)!]

Sixteen candles

Today Guo is 16 months old. Her first Sweet 16! We hope that by her 19 month birthday we will have our LOA and be close to traveling to China to bring her home.

It is fun to think about having Guo here with us for her second birthday next summer. Next July 4th we will be on our 12th annual family beach vacation to Saint George Island, Florida. Our son, Ben, and my nephew, Drew, can not remember a summer without being on Saint George Island - they look forward to it and count the months from the day we leave the island until the next year's beach vacation arrives. We were on our 11th annual beach vacation last year when I first saw Guo's sweet face on my computer screen. Next summer she will be enjoying her first time splashing around in the Gulf of Mexico with our family and having an early 2nd birthday celebration. I have already shopped for this occasion for her, so she already has a bathing suit (or two), a beach cover up, a fun patriotic outfit and a birthday dress for her first summer vacation. Shopping for little girl stuff is too fun - good thing this stuff is on off-season clearance sale!

The great paperchase is over!

I am sorry it has taken me so long to post - I have been under the weather with a bad head cold and so busy with Thanksgiving preparations and finalizing our paperwork. We had a lovely, quiet Thanksgiving at home with WAY too much food. Lots of leftovers to consume this weekend. We are so looking forward to having an additional place setting at our table next year!

Great news! Our state-authenticated I171-H copy came back to us from Richmond on Tuesday (although I had hoped to have it last Friday or Monday at the latest). I still was able to finish our document authentication in Washington DC on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This process entailed pulling numbers and waiting - first at the US State Department Authentication office and then at the Chinese Embassy's visa/authentication office (and paying all of the fees, of course). Thank you Shelli for all of your guidance on this process and the tip on where to park for the Chinese Embassy! There is no way I could have done this in one day without your help!!!! All of our documents now have the US Department of State seal and grommet attached and the Chinese Embassy's seal on the back, so they are now legitimate!

Waiting at the Chinese Embassy was a very interesting experience. A tiny little taste of what it will be like to travel in China, perhaps? It was very crowded - standing room only - and I had to wait for about 2 hours for my turn just to drop off my documents, then go have lunch and come back to wait for the pick-up time. I was one of a handful of non-Chinese people in the room. The television program running was also in Chinese - I think it was a tourism advertisment for China. I had forgotten my book in the car but didn't want to leave to go get it and lose my seat and have to come back through security. I tried to have a conversation with the woman next to me, but I was having a hard time understanding her English. She apologized and said her English was very bad. I assured her that her English was very good and was much better than my Chinese! Her 10 year old daughter, 'Sarah', helped act as our translator. I had pictures of Guo with me, as well as the Chinese characters for her name. I asked the woman to pronounce Guo's name for me and she said it differently than how we have been pronouncing it (she said it like 'Tsoo Gwah'). I kept repeating it back and she kept laughing and shaking her head 'no'. Finally, she smiled and clapped her hands after I said it - the only problem is, I have no idea what I said differently that time - it sounded exactly the same to me! Also, Guo lives in a Cantonese speaking province, so someone who speaks Mandarin or another dialect probably pronounces her name differently than the nannies that are taking care of her. I have no idea which dialect the lady next to me was speaking. We will just have to wait and hear it pronounced when we get there! There were a few other Americans - most looked like business people - at the office applying for their visas to visit China. I will be back to do that in a couple of months. There was one other adoptive mother, with her toddler son with her, who happened to have Down Syndrome. She had just received a referral for her daughter in China - after being logged into the non-special needs program for two and a half years! That makes my 6 month long paperchase for Guo seem like a piece of cake!

So, our completed dossier is safely tucked into a small FedEx box and is currently at the sorting facility in Portland, Oregon. It will be in our agency's hands on Monday morning. They will scan the documents and email them to their employee in Beijing who will complete the translation and then they will also ship it to her, hopefully all on Monday. By the time it arrives in China, I am told the translation will be complete and the translator will hand deliver the originals along with the translation to the China Center of Adoption Affairs in Beijing.

The CCAA will review our dossier and process the paperwork and if there are no questions, they will issue our LOA - Letter of Acceptance. This process takes anywhere from 60 - 100+ days. The two most recent special needs families at our agency to receive LOA waited about 65 days, so I am hopeful that will hold true for us as well. We hope to hear good news in early February (before everyone in China goes on a two week vacation for Chinese/Lunar New Year on February 7, 2008) and we hope to travel in March. We are cutting it quite close with our dates - if we miss the LOA window before the Chinese New Year, we may run into travel dates during the April trade show in Guangzhou, which would not be good - our travel dates could get pushed back to May in that case. March sounds so much better than April or May. Everyone pray for speedy LOA!

I am so relieved to have this portion of the process behind us. Now, we wait (and shop, and paint and decorate her bedroom, and assemble a crib, and toddler-proof the house...) Stay tuned!

Special Delivery!

After a difficult 5-month labor, we are proud to announce our new arrival!

• Name: “Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition”
• Nickname: I-171H!
• Measurements: 8.5” x 11”
• Weight: less than one ounce

She reads:

• “You have been approved for a SPECIAL NEEDS adoption.”… “A Cable has been sent to the National Visa Center to be forwarded to the American Embassy/Consulate at GUANGZHOU, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA. You are approved for ONE CHILD.” Love, The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
  

(Okay, I added that last line) Here is her picture:

Isn’t she precious????????? I am sure she will be worth the wait. Soon she will off to China (well, at least a notarized, authenticated reproduction of her), along with many other precious documents, to the China Center of Adoption Affairs for further processing. Please stay tuned for more exciting announcements!

USCIS appointment tomorrow /Wednesday!

Yea! I finally got the email! We will be going into the USCIS office tomorrow morning to give a sworn statement (due to fingerprint problems) and we should be issued our I171H there on the spot! Hurray!!!! This is the last piece of paper we need for our dossier. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers that everything goes as expected tomorrow and we can get this show on the road!

Thank you, Veterans!

Today is Veteran's Day. My son is actually at school today. It seems very strange that a place just outside of our Nation's Capitol doesn't see fit to make Veteran's Day a school holiday. That is so sad to me. My husband, Adam, works in the defense industry and is coming home today after spending the weekend at an air show at Nellis AFB in Nevada. He grew up in a military town - home to two Air Force bases and in close proximity to a third and also a Naval air station. Both of Adam's grandfathers served in the military and one was career military. Two of his grandparents are laid to rest in Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola. Today there is probably a small flag over their grave site, planted there by local Boy Scouts. I can guarantee you that there is no school today in Pensacola or Fort Walton Beach, Florida!

Adam and I have both had the privilege of having many friends, co-workers, and clients who are Veterans. A special 'shout-out' to just a few of you: Active Duty - Major Mike M & his wonderful wife (my friend Dana) and their 3 beautiful children at Columbus AFB in MS (happy 3rd birthday Miss Molly!), David & Jamila G (& unborn Baby Boy G) in New Mexico, Danny & Kara W and family at the Air Force Academy, John & Christy M in Virginia, David & Linda V in Virginia; Retired - Uncle Charlie in GA, Jim L & Karen L (BOTH Ret AF) and family in Colorado, Chuck Z & Charles W & 'Mr. Bob' in Fort Walton Beach, Vietnam Vets -cousin Dave in FL, Uncle Mike R in Atlanta and so many others. Thank you all for your service to our country!

Happy belated birthday to our friend Dan C in FWB, FL. Dan is married to my dear friend Heide and he had a BIG birthday yesterday! I am so sorry that we missed your special day - we miss you guys so much!

I hope that we will all take a few moments to reflect on the meaning of this day and to thank a Veteran of the United States military for his or her service in defending our freedom.

Blog makeover

I hope that everyone enjoys the new look of our blog! I stayed up most of the night last night working on it - this is what happens when my husband travels and there is nobody to tell me that it is time to go to bed! This is my first attempt at any kind of work with digital scrapbooking art and I still have some tweaking to do with font colors, I think. I am pretty happy with the header, but I'm not sure if the background makes it all too busy. Feel free to leave constructive criticism. Hopefully I will have some very good news to post this week!

UPDATE: I ate the snail - sauteed him up in some butter and swallowed him whole (only figuratively speaking, of course - snails aren't kosher)! I couldn't stand the slimy sight of him counting the days anymore. He has been replaced by the much more soothing "Chinese stork" counter (at right), in keeping with the URL for this blog. I hope that soon he will be counting the days from DTC to LOA!

A little news is better than no news

I emailed our USCIS adoption officer this morning (again) and was pleasantly surprised to get an almost immediate response. It looks like we MAY be allowed to come in for a sworn statement next Wednesday, November 14th, and receive our long-awaited I171H the same day. From her email it sounds like she is not yet done reviewing our home study. Hopefully she won't find any 'deficiencies' (her word) with it and we can get that appointment time without further delays. If it really happens, I may be able to complete the document authentication process and get our dossier into the hands of our agency before Thanksgiving. Now that would be something to be thankful for!

One year ago...

One year ago Guo was in the hospital recovering from a ruptured abscess and infection in her head. Thanks to the loving care she received from True Children's Home in Dongguan and the medical care they arranged for her, she was able to fully recover and last December was able to have her cleft lip surgically repaired. After her release from the hospital, she was given lots of love and attention and thrived in their care. We hope to travel to True Children's Home during our trip to China to adopt Guo and thank them in person for taking such good care of her. I have posted this slide show previously, but I am posting it again as a reminder to myself that everything will be so worth the wait! If you go to their website, you can see some of these pictures on various pages and in their newsletters. They are so proud of their babies!

Guo has been back in Qingyuan City SWI since this June and will remain there until we are able to come adopt her.

Rejected, again...

Received the dreaded letter today from Homeland Security that the one set of fingerprints were not able to be processed for the second time. I was expecting this (although I hoped to be notified earlier via email), so I was ready for the next step - submitting notarized clearance letters from the state police of both Virginia and Florida. I didn't check the mailbox until about 2pm and the only nearby FedEx branch that has a Saturday pick-up has a 3pm pick-up schedule.

So, I rushed to put together my cover letter, make copies of everything, create my FedEx shipping label and get to the FedEx office before the deadline so that the paperwork will be in the USCIS officer's hands by 10:30AM on Monday. I was in such a hurry that I did not notice my son's friend's bicycle parked directly behind my SUV in the driveway. DOH! Crunch... It looks like I will be adding "bicycle repair" to my growing list of adoption expenses! I am just thankful that there was not an actual CHILD on the bicycle! The snail is still crawling along, measuring the time that our lives have been in the hands of USCIS. Escargot, anyone????

Guo is 15 months old today!

No news on fingerprints /I171H yet. Stay tuned...

Poop happens

As the soon-to-be-mother to a toddler, I had better get used to dealing with poop. Poop happens. Sometime fingerprints can't be processed properly. No point in whining about it (not that it stops me from doing it). One must just deal with the poop - clean it up and move on.

I understand there is a good potty-training book around called "Everyone Poops", which must of come out well after my now 13 year old was toilet trained (I haven't had to deal with baby poop about 10 years). Will have to look into this.

I have found some unusual poop websites while researching travel in China. Some of the information I found has to do with common Asian-style toilets, called "squat pots". I am trying to prepare myself in case I need to use one. Here are some pictures of squattie potties in China (will open a Word document). The hotels where we are staying will have Western-style toilets, but there may be a time when a squat pot is inevitable, and I want to be ready to go, so to speak. :0)

In addition to people-potty websites, I have found some interesting information on panda potty-related topics. Apparently, the panda research facility in Chengdu is looking to sell their endless supply of fiber-rich panda poop - around a ton/day produced (from the bamboo diet) - as raw material for paper products. Click here for article. This idea may sound a little out there, but it is actually a copy-cat project based on a successful elephant poop project in Thailand. That's right, someone is already making paper products from elephant poop - check it out at http://www.poopoopaper.com/. They even have an online "Poo-tique". You can't make this stuff up.

I can see how there could be a real market for this crap (sorry, I couldn't help myself). In zoo gift shops, for example. There is already a small group in China successfully manufacturing some panda poop products - . In addition, scientists in Japan are researching how to turn panda poop into electricity!

Anyone interested in becoming an entre-pooh-neur with me in a joint venture of panda poop???????

A bump in the road

I have just returned from spending a week with my sister and her family, followed by a nice family trip to my in-laws. Sorry for the quiet period - I didn't have a chance to post before I left.

We ran into a problem with our USCIS process that is causing a delay. The FBI was 'unable to process' one set of fingerprints. So, we have to go in for a "do-over" - almost a month after the first try. Needless to say, this is not what we had hoped for, but like so many things in the adoption process, it is not within our control. The little snail meter is still crawling along at the top of this blog. We will hope for the best at our new appointment on 10/16/07. The approval form from USCIS is the last piece of paper we need in order to get our dossier off to China.

Below are a few pictures from our trip to Pennsylvania over Columbus Day weekend. We tried to do some fun fall activities, but it was hot and humid in the upper 80's. We did go to a farm with a large maze cut through the corn stalks. It was really funny - at the farm we ran into a group of 4 families that had traveled to China together 6 years ago to adopt their daughters! The girls were all from the same SWI and the families get together a couple of times a year so that the girls can see each other. There were 8 children in total, 3 biological and 5 adopted, but only 4 of them from the same trip. Their younger daughters are all 7 years old now and were just adorable. I was so busy taking pictures of the group with about 5 of their cameras that I forgot to take a picture of them with my own camera! They were all wearing matching Halloween t-shirts. They were quite petite for their age - about the same size as my 5-year-old brother-in-law. Yes, you read that correctly. The little blonde boy in the pictures is my 13-year-old son's uncle and my husband's half-brother and he just turned 5 in August. I debated about including the picture of the 3 of us on the tractor tires because it a very unflattering angle of my tushie in the foreground, which appears to be roughly the same size as the continent of Africa. :0( I will confess that there was one that was even more unflattering and it will never see the light of day. The pictures of Adam pulling Ben in the wagon (I guess you are never to big to let your Daddy pull you in a wagon) were taken here in Virginia when we went to get some corn stalks and gourds to decorate our sukkah. For those who may not be familiar with this, a sukkah is a hut-like structure you build outside your home to dwell in - or at least eat in - during the Jewish fall festival, Sukkot. The Chinese Mid-Autumn/Moon festival began on the same night as Sukkot - on the full moon, of course. So, we added some Chinese lantern lights this year and we tasted Chinese moon cakes in the sukkah. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures! We look forward to having our new addition to our family in the sukkah with us next year.

Big thanks to anyone who donated to the Buddy Walk - Barbara's Samster's Union team exceeded their goal of raising $1,000 for the NWDownSyndromeAssociation. Way to go!

Perfect Momsense

For all of you moms out there - a little entertainment that contains universal truths - just to make the wait pass a little faster.

Fingerprints, Naming & Buddy Walk

USCIS fingerprints - check! One more thing on our adoption To Do list accomplished today. Now we wait for the coveted 171H (please pray for God's speed on this - Guo is waiting for us)!

One thing I am thinking about to help the wait go faster is an English name for our daughter. We need a full name for our child before we travel to China! Adam and I are struggling a bit to come to a decision. We have pretty well decided that we will keep part of her Chinese name, "ZuGuo" as her middle name. I think I mentioned before that all of the children at the Qingyuan City SWI in the last few years have "Zu" as part of their name - it is a special connection for them that we would like to maintain. It can mean ancestors, or motherland (China). One American working at True Children's Home in China suggested that her name could be loosely translated as "the fruit from the motherland" (Guo being the fruit). I don't know how I could continue that theme in an English name, other than picking something that has a meaning related to fruit, or perhaps sweetness. We were hoping to find a name with Hebrew origin, in keeping with Adam & Benjamin, which could also be used as her Hebrew name in her religious upbringing. We also want to avoid names that would be difficult for her to pronounce if she has speech issues related to her cleft palate. Hard sounds like "G", "P", "C/K" and "B" can be difficult for children that may have fistulas remaining after palate repair - allowing air to escape from the mouth through the nose. It may not be an issue at all, but I would hate for my child not to be able to pronounce her own name! I guess we will cross that bridge if/when we come to it - nicknames can always be formed later. Feel free to leave comments with name suggestions if you think you have a good idea (just don't take offense if we don't choose your suggestion, please)!

Be a buddy! The pictures below are of my adorable two year old nephew, Sam. Sam was born with Down Syndrome and his mom, my sister-in-law Barbara, is walking in the Northwest Down Syndrome Association Buddy Walk on September 29th in Portland, OR. If you would like to support the "Samsters Union" team in the Buddy Walk, please Follow This Link to donate a few dollars to a great cause. Here is a picture of Sam & Barbara in May when they flew all the way across the country, accompanied by one of Sam's big sisters, Gina, just to attend our son's bar mitzvah, and another one of him enjoying his birthday balloons. What a cutie he is!

We have preapproval!

I got the call from our agency today - we have received preapproval (PA) from China to adopt Zu Guo! We are one step closer to bringing our daughter home! We also have our fingerprinting appointment with USCIS next week on 9/20/07. Once our prints are cleared, our petition will hopefully be granted and they will issue the I-171H form that allows us to bring one child back to the United States (she will be a citizen as soon as she lands on US soil). That piece of paper is the last thing we need to complete our dossier and send it to China. It can be difficult to predict how long it will take to receive the I-171H. I am being optimistic and hoping that we will receive it within 5 weeks of our fingerprints and have our dossier to China by the end of October. The PA goes back to China along with our dossier and is supposed to mean that the CCAA will expedite the processing of our dossier and issue a Letter of Acceptance (LOA) once the review is complete and we are approved. Then, we wait for Travel Approval!

Yesterday our family celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. What a joyous way to start off the year 5768 on our Hebrew calendar! "L'shana tovah tikatavu" - may you be inscribed for a good new year!

A glimpse of our daughter's first year of life...

Wow! What a day today! A family who I met through the Adopt Cleft Yahoo group just returned from China with their little boy, Jack. We had figured out before their trip that our children's lives had overlapped at some point, as we both had pictures that were obviously taken in the same room, on the same brightly colored floral "Boppy" pillow. But the children were in different orphanages - at least 5 hours apart (or so we thought). They both are cleft-affected, so we guessed that maybe the pictures were taken at a hospital they had both been to in Dongguan for cleft-related surgeries.

Well, as it turns out, Guo (as we learned she is primarily called) spent most of her first year of life in Dongguan, NOT in Qingyuan, as we had originally thought. Both cities are less than an hour's drive from Guangzhou (Qingyuan to the North, Dongguan to the East), and both are in the Guangdong Province. Guo was at the Qingyuan SWI from the day she was found, August 26th 2006, until October 27th 2006. She just returned to Qingyuan on June 29, 2007. The rest of the time she has been in Dongguan! When she was not in the hospital, she was in a wonderful facility called True Children's Home (www.truechildrenshome.org), getting lots of love and attention. This is where the pictures were taken and this is the common thread between us and the family we met through the Adopt Cleft group. Jack and Guo were in the same place in the same time period, recovering from surgeries and getting the special care they needed. I learned that before returning to Qingyuan, Guo also spent three months with a loving foster family in Dongguan, from April 6th - June 29th. We are so grateful for the loving care she received in Dongguan from True Children's Home (TCH) and from a foster family that we may never know.

Here is the story of how Guo came to be in Dongguan, as told to me by a wonderful staff member at TCH, in response to an email I sent inquiring about ZuGuo and pictures I thought I saw of her on their website:

"Yes, all those pictures are of Guo and she has been in our care at True Children’s Home. She is a precious little girl whom we have all come to love. Guo arrived at TCH on Oct. 27, 2006 and was one of first two babies to come to TCH from Qingyuan Orphanage.

I call Guo one of our “miracle” babies. Only one day after Guo arrived at our children’s home; one of our loving caregivers recognized that the side of Guo’s head (where it looked liked she had previously had an IV), her ear, face and eye were swollen and she also had a fever. Guo was taken to Global Doctor, a clinic for expatriates that has been very supportive of TCH. After a medical check the doctor’s instructions were if Gu’s fever increased; take her directly to the hospital. You can read about Global Doctor in a previous True News.

Several hours after returning to TCH Guo’s fever did increase and while in the car on the way to a near-by hospital in the in the arms of Katrina, Director of TCH the abscess burst. Katrina called me and I rushed to meet them at the hospital. After several test Guo was admitted to the hospital in serious condition with a bacterial infection in her head.

This was the first time I had ever been to this hospital. I could not believe how over crowded the hospital was and how over worked the limited staff was. There were hospital beds lined up in the hallway. In fact, I actually felt sorry for the staff. After one night at the hospital I asked the doctor if Guo was stable enough that she could be dismissed and admitted to another hospital where she could receive better care and the doctor agreed. For the next 15 days Guo continued to receive treatment in another hospital. I was so thankful to the hospital staff for taking good care of Guo that on November 12, 2006 she was able to be dismissed from the hospital.

December 18, 2006 Guo had successful cleft lip surgery and after being dismissed from the hospital returned to TCH for post surgical care. April 6, 2007 Guo transitioned into local foster care where she was provided care by a loving foster family."

We wish that Guo could have stayed with the foster family until we are able to come get her, but it was not to be. We know she is being well cared for in Qingyuan, but we wish for her sake that she had been able to stay with one caregiver as long as possible. After we travel to Guangzhou and Guo is officially ours, we hope to take a day trip to Dongguan to see TCH and meet the wonderful people who took such good care of her when she needed love the most! Here are some pictures that give us a good glimpse into our precious little girl's first year of life:

You may have noticed that I changed our Blog title. I feel like I know Guo so well now and "A baby waits for us in China" just seemed too impersonal! I will probably change the title again when we pick Guo's new American name. We are pretty sure that her middle name will be Zuguo.

The next step & a care package

As I type, our completed home study is on the FedEx truck to be delivered to USCIS (United States Citizenship & Immigration Services). It was supposed to be there by 10:30am, but there was a weird delivery exception ("Recipient location security delay. Delivery will be reattempted."). I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I am not thrilled about it - I want that paperwork there NOW! They have been in receipt of our I-600A (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition), birth & marriage certificates and associated fees since 06/12/2007. Now that they are receiving our completed home study, they will be contacting us to come in for a fingerprinting appointment. We were already fingerprinted for the Virginia State Police clearances, but USCIS does their own fingerprinting. Once we are fingerprinted and those prints are cleared, we just sit and wait for them to review and approve our application and home study and issue an I-171H (Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition). That document is the last piece of paperwork we will need to complete our dossier and send it to China! While we are waiting for the approval form, I will be gathering the remaining documents needed and going through the authentication process for them so that we will be ready to go with our dossier when we receive the form.

We know from friends and from reading other adoptive families' blogs this part of the wait can be frustratingly long! I have introduced my snail tracker to see how long it takes. Of course, you will have to add 75 days to the snail tracker to see how long the whole USCIS process takes from application to approval. In fairness to them, they can't process the application until they receive the home study, so I didn't use 06/12 as my start date.

In other news, our agency has given us the okay to send ZuGuo a care package! I am assembling a few items and will take pictures of what I put in the package before I ship it. I already have put together a baby-friendly (chew and drool proof) photo album with pictures of Adam, Ben and I so that she can get used to the sight of our faces. She has probably never seen a man with a beard, and we don't want her to be terrified of her ba ba (Daddy) when she meets him! The pictures are labeled with the Chinese characters for family, ba ba, ma ma and ge ge (older brother). I am putting in a couple of small toys and a blanket and very small fabric teddy bear, which I will wash with our detergent and fabric softener so that she can get used to the smell of her new family. I am also tucking small pieces of a dryer sheet inside each page of the photo album so that it will also be scented like us. When I pack our bags for China, everything will be laundered in that way and I will throw a few dryer sheets into our luggage so that hopefully we will smell familiar to ZuGuo when we finally get to hold her! That covers sight and smell. I think for the next care package, we may go to Build a Bear and create a bear with a squeeze button with a recording of our voices - that covers sound. I haven't figured out a way to package up our touch or taste, so I guess she will just have to wait for that until she can touch and chew on us in person! :0) Shipping to China is quite expensive, so we want to squeeze in as much as we can into a small box. In our first package, I think we will put in small gifts for the Director and "Aunties", and a case of cleft nurser bottles for ZuGuo and any other kids that need them. The bottles are manufactured in the US and difficult for them to get China. We aren't sure if she is still getting a bottle or not and what solid foods, if any, she is eating. We should get an update on this and her measurements at some point before we travel.

Speaking of measurments, our little girl is apparently quite petite - at least by US standards. I was thinking about including some clothing in our care package, and was trying to figure out which size to buy. I have monthly measurements for her up to 6 months of age and I charted these on the US government infant growth charts. For length, she was below the 3rd percentile curve until her 6th month, when she jumped up to between the 5th & 10th percentile. For weight, she has pretty well followed the 5th percentile curve, until she jumped to just above the 10th percentile in month six - I guess she had a little growth spurt! For comparison, Ben was typically in the 75th percentile for height and the 95th percentile for weight when he was a baby and toddler (he is off the top of the charts now for height for a 13 year old boy). Another way to look at ZuGuo's information is that at six months of age, she was roughly the same size as a three month old child that falls in the 50th percentile. At three months of age, she was the same size as a one month old in the 50th percentile. This is nothing to be concerned about - she is definitely growing and following a nice curve - just not one on the US charts! Chinese children are smaller in general, but especially those raised in an institutional setting. I could not find 'official' Chinese growth charts, but from the Chinese charts I found, she appears to be small, even by China's standards (25th percentile for weight and 10th percentile for height). I will definitely have to take this into account for clothing sizes. We will look forward to updated measurements!

Here is a slide show that includes the 8 pages of the baby photo book going to China. Enjoy!

Pictures taken today!!!!!!

Looks like I need to change my description to - A TODDLER waits for us in China! Thanks to a wonderful family from our Qingyuan City SWI web group that is in China adopting their daughter right now, we have new pictures of our daughter that were taken TODAY! She looks happy and healthy and we are thrilled. The family that was able to get the pictures for us has a great website and some wonderful descriptions and photos of the orphanage. - http://www.allensjourneytochina.com/web/do/site/photo?ID=246381. I was amazed and delighted to hear that the baby to nanny ratio there is 4:1 and for special needs babies (which should include our daughter) it is 2:1. We hope this means that ZuGuo has been very well cared for and bonded with her nanny. I am sure the separation will be difficult for her, but if she has a bonded and attached to her "Auntie" we know she has loved and been loved and therefore has a better chance of bonding more quickly to us.

From the pictures it looks like her hair is growing out a little bit, but will probably be cut close again before we go get her. I will be packing some girly-girl clothes, hair bows, hats and head bands so that there will be no doubt that she is a little princess (or should I say Empress)?

Pics of Qingyuan & Explanation of Process

Pay close attention - there will be quiz on all the acronyms later! Just kidding...

Well, our agency shipped our LOI (Letter of Intent) to adopt ZuGuo to China on August 6th. We are now waiting for Pre-Approval (PA) from China, which we can take up to 90 days (but we have seen some come back in less than 30 days - pray for us). Our home study case worker is completing our home study as quickly as possible, and an official copy will go to USCIS (formerly INS) for approval, which is the slowest part of the U.S. piece of the paperwork puzzle. We are planning on 12 weeks, but some very lucky local families have had theirs processed in 5-7 weeks recently ...you just never know (keep praying)! As soon as we get the approval form from USCIS to bring a child back to the US, our “dossier” will be off to China (we are then 'DTC' - Dossier to China) and we will be given a Log In Date (LID) by the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA).

We then count days from LID to the day we receive our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) - we anticipate 60 -80 days, but some families have waited 120+ days. The LOA is followed a few weeks later by Travel Approval (TA). Then we are off to China for “Gotcha Day” and our Consulate Appointment (CA) where we officially adopt our daughter! [Thanks to my friend Shelli for all the lessons on the China adoption process - let me know if I got anything wrong!]

While I am waiting for USCIS approval, I will be gathering all the documents we need for our dossier and walking them through the authentication process, which is quite crazy. It involves getting certified or notarized copies of documents, then taking them to the appropriate Secretary of State from which they originated (Florida, Illinois & Virginia) to have them authenticated, then to the U.S. Secretary of State for additional authentication, and then to the Chinese Embassy in DC. Lots of overnight packages - buy stock in FedEx!

I have made quite a few new acquaintances online through various adoption web groups. One group is for adoptive parents of cleft-affected children, another group is adoptive parents with our particular agency who are adopting waiting/special needs children, and yet another just for parents who have adopted (or are in process of adopting) specifically from Qingyuan City SWI. In fact, there is someone from the last group who is in China right now adopting her daughter and she is going to TRY to get an updated photo of ZuGuo for me! Hi Beth!

In the meantime, here are some pictures I copied from the Qingyuan web group travel photos that show photos of Qingyuan City and the SWI (orphanage) grounds and some interior rooms. Please note that none of the children pictured are ZuGuo, although one picture of the baby room was taken during the time which she has lived there. It is actually a very nice and clean facility. It is certainly not the ideal home for a child, but I am sure they do the best they can. It is still sad to see the little ones all lined up in cribs or walkers. I almost cried when I saw that instead of mattresses, the babies sleep on pieces of varnished plywood in the cribs. I am sure it is for sanitary purposes, but it must be very uncomfortable!

First Birthday & Letter of Intent

Here she is! On Tuesday July 17th we received an email from our adoption agency with the translated medical file and a picture of a baby girl attached. She was on their new list of Waiting Children in China. She was just about to have her first birthday. Her name is Qing Zu Guo and she is in the Qingyuan Social Welfare Institute or SWI (orphanage) in Guangdong province. She has been diagnosed with bilateral cleft lip (which has been repaired) and bilateral cleft palate (unrepaired). Here is the most recent picture we have of her. How could anyone resist this precious little girl? We know that she has been shaved bald in this picture (which is common practice in the SWIs), because we have another picture in which she is younger and has a nice covering of fuzzy black hair.

I immediately began researching everything I could find on cleft lip and palate and joined a chat group for parents who have adopted children who are cleft-affected. It is amazing how many parents are in this group (over 700) and how many are actually in the DC-metro area! I posted an inquiry regarding experience with doctors performing palate repairs in our area and got several immediate responses. These parents are a great resource and a wonderful support system for each other. I contacted one of the recommended surgeons by email late Wednesday night. His name is Dr. Ananth Murthy and he is a plastic & reconstructive surgeon on the craniofacial team at National Children's Medical Center in Washington DC. Less than 12 hours later, I received a response from Dr. Murthy. He had already reviewed ZuGuo's file in detail (which I had attached via email) and was very kind and compassionate. He is awesome! He is only 30 years old and is a top surgeon in his field. This is his picture and here is link to an article about him from a special kids' career section in the Washington Post - http://www.dcchildrens.com/dcchildrens/findadoctor/pdf/dr_murthy_kidspost.pdf

Adam and I took a few days to do more research, discuss and contemplate this life-altering decision. We wanted to make sure that adopting this baby girl would be in her best interest, and in the best interest of our family. We decided that it was. On Monday July 23rd we contacted our agency to let them know that we wanted to submit our Letter of Intent to adopt Zu Guo.

On Wednesday July 25th we celebrated Qing ZuGuo's 1st birthday for her. We know that this isn't her real birthday - it was an estimated that she was about one month old when she was found abandoned and July 25th was a best guess. We also know that birthdays aren't celebrated in China the same way as in the U.S. (birthdays are celebrated as part of the Chinese New Year holiday - by the way, she is Year of the Dog)...we just couldn't help ourselves! Ben, our budding artist and graphic designer/computer animator, helped me design the cake on paper and then helped me shop for the ingredients. We did a panda bear design and I think it came out great (if I do say so myself)! A nice added bonus for ZuGuo's birthday was that my renewed passport and Ben's first passport arrived in the mail that same afternoon. That night after dinner we had a little private celebration with the panda cake. Here are some pictures.

On Thursday July 26th, a DHL package arrived with ZuGuo's original documents and medical file and the Letter of Intent form. We wrote our letter and emailed it to our agency for any edits before printing it on the original Chinese form. Unfortunately, I didn't get the OK until after my FedEx drop-off location was closed (our agency is on Pacific time), so I had to wait until Friday to send it off. Our agency should get our package tomorrow, Monday July 30th, and we will be officially on our way to adopting Zu Guo!

Now, the great paper chase begins!