3 Monthiversary....

We met Zoey three months ago today.

As I have said before...she casually and quietly walked across the room and into our arms.

She came prepared and seemed to know we were "her people."

She grieved, quietly at first.

As she has learned to trust us she has opened up and let us in to the true depth of her emotion.

We are so privileged to take these important steps toward attachment and bonding with her.

Just as she has shared her grief and confusion with us; 

she also shares her joy.

The last three months have been a whirlwind of emotion 

and learning about who our mighty girl really is.

This child packs 36+ feet of personality in her 36 inch frame.

In fact her personality is so huge that I sometimes forget how little she truly is.

She is bright, fierce, funny, strong willed, silly and in non stop motion from sunrise through sun down.

She sings, dances and marches to the beat of her own drum all day long! 

We are blessed beyond measure to be a part of her story.

It's all about perspective....

Our Sweet Girls

That mop of shiny black hair on the left is Mary. She is teaching our Zoey how to say Mommy, Daddy and brother while pointing to our pictures in a photo album that we sent to Zoey. This is a screenshot from the video we received after sending a care package to Zoey. I worked hard to capture this moment because I absolutely adore the way Zoey looks at her in this very moment.

We have shared the story about the nine year old girl that we have been pursuing in addition to Zoey. The one they said was "unadoptable." We begged for the orphanage officials to make a file for her. She is adoptable! We will adopt her! THIS is the girl. This is Mary. Mary is not her Chinese name. I cannot share her Chinese name or any photographs that identify her until and unless we have approval to adopt her.

We made it very clear to our agency and to everyone we know that with two boys in college and a third almost there, we would definitely not be able to afford two trips to China. Our best hope of bringing both girls home would be in convincing Mary's orphanage to prepare her file very expeditiously. Her orphanage agreed to make a file and we prayed, prepared and prayed some more. We knew this was out of our hands at this point.

Well, we reached a milestone in our adoption process. We received our I800A approval. That is approval from US Customs and Immigration that says we are suitable to adopt a child from a Hague Convention country or in our case: two children. We are taking the steps to Authenticate our approval and when we finish that process it will be sent to our agency in Colorado. This will complete the dossier process on our end. Our agency will then triple check our documents, bind them in a file, translate everything and ship it off to China. We will finally, blessedly, officially be DTC (Dossier to China) this month. With this knowledge and bearing in mind that timing is of the essence in order to pull off a concurrent adoption, I asked our agency to check on Mary's file for international adoption. Our agency rep got back to me today and said it's coming along slowly and she will check back in a few months...few months???
We should be traveling to China in a few months.
I asked her what this means for our chance at a concurrent adoption.
She said it's not likely.
Not likely.
That's a punch to the gut.
Now what?

I told Pete. We were both devastated. I kind of sat here all afternoon steeping in my own misery and then I thought about a post that I read yesterday that was written be a sweet friend and fellow adoptive mom Nicci Scarborough. In the post she talked bout people who said they always wanted to adopt but could not afford it. I went back and re-read it. She said:

That’s a problem with perspective. If you look at it as though you ARE a parent of a child living in deplorable conditions, who yearns for a home, who desperately needs to be shown love in order to grow healthy and strong, if your heart tells you that you ARE a child’s parent and you’ve decided to see it from that angle, then how much money could stand in the way of you going to get your child? What would you do if your child was being held half way across the world? What would you pay to ransom him/her? What is that life worth to you? Would you say, “Darn, my child is living apart from me. I’m not sure if she’s being adequately cared for, but probably not. I just can’t come up with the money to go get her and bring her home.” What WOULDN’T you do if that were the case? What could possibly keep a parent from their child?

In answer to that. Nothing. Nothing will keep us from fighting for this file. Nothing will keep us from pursuing this adoption. We will do whatever we have to do in order to bring both of our girls home. Keep us in your prayers please. All of us. Pete and I, Zoey and most especially Mary.

Thank you.

The name on her door...

Someone has a new bedroom.

I bet you could guess who.

 if you knew her name!

;)

Watch 'til the end...

We have been anxious 

to make the perfect little space 

for the little girl

that has occupied our hearts 

for so long now.

We still have some

more work to do.

We need new closet doors, 

an area rug, 

closet organizers 

and lots of toys....

It's a great start though.

We quite literally woke up one day 

and said "lets do her bedroom."

(you can verify the spontaneity

 with my bed head 

and Pete's flashy AC*DC pajama pants!)

We are so happy that we did it.

We open the door and imagine 

our little girl enjoying the space 

that we created for her.

Yes. We cry.

All of the time.

 BIG FAT tears of joy and anticipation 

and gratitude.


the video on you tube (if you don't have flash)

Sigh...

I have been a bit emotional lately. 

I joke and say that I am "paper pregnant" and it's "adoption hormones" but truthfully, there is a lot going on. 

Our boys are great. 

They are making tough decisions about their lives and exploring their place in the world and these are necessary though never easy growing pains. 

I dropped Taylor off at Mass Maritime Academy this past weekend. 

He is at orientation. 

Orientation is run boot camp style to prepare them for life in a regimental academy. 

It's very disciplined. 

I took his i-phone home with me. 

He is cut off from the outside world. 

We are allowed a little glimpse in to his new world as the school does an orientation blog with daily updates on the training of the cadet candidates. 

You can follow at:

http://mma2014orientation.blogspot.com/?m=1

Taylor is in 1st Company. 

This is a tremendous  opportunity. Admission was more selective this year than ever before. 

Between the blockbuster Captain Phillips casting light on the merchant marine life and US News and World Report naming MMA a "best value" in education, the admissions competition was tough. 

We are so proud of Taylor for making it in. 

Nevertheless, it was really difficult to drive away on Saturday. 

Harder than I had imagined. 

My stepdaughter from my first marriage is getting married to a wonderful man this December. We went to try on dresses at the beginning of the month and she looked so beautiful. She radiated in her final choice. Her beauty, from the inside out, was jaw dropping. Tears? Whoo! Her wedding day is going to knock me out! 

It was just a minute ago that she was twirling in special occasion dresses. When Betty was little that was how she judged a dress: by the swirly-twirlyness of the skirt. I can tell you that her standards have changed BUT she did get a fabulous skirt! 

Betty's hair and make-up trial. She is going to take everyone's breath away on 12/14. 

On the adoption front we are kicked in to high gear. Our homestudy is done! We are sending it off to the USCIS for processing, which usually takes 4-6 weeks. They will give us our biometrics fingerprinting appointment and after that we will prepare to send our dossier to our agency to be reviewed and hopefully sent to China! That's a pretty big deal in our world. The DTC (dossier to China) date is a huge milestone. It puts us in the fourth quarter! 

We have had a few emotional set backs. We realized that we will not, in all likelihood, have our dossier to China by 9/14. 

That is the due date. 

Our agency assured us that this is fine and they are prepared to submit a request for an extension on our behalf. This is a routine procedure and does not reflect negatively on us...but it was difficult to accept. 

We just really want to bring our sweet girl home. 

We also lost our SW right after our homestudy was completed.  

We became really attached to her and were looking forward to doing post placement visits with her but we do wish her well in all future endeavors. 

She was super awesome to work with and came in clutch at the eleventh hour to change our adoption approval to "two children."

And YES...

You read that right. 

Two children. 

Because:

We saw a little girl. 

She is bright, beautiful and super sweet. Nine years old. 

She is at the same hospital as our Yiman. We were each thinking about her privately and then found that we were both thinking the same thing.  

We couldn't shake the image of her. 

Our conversations of "too bad we couldn't" quickly turned to "why can't we?" 

Then Pete said the magic words every wife wants to hear "it can't hurt to look into it, just in case". 

Well, that's a done deal, amiright?

After speaking with our children and our extended family we spoke with our SW and we were approved for two! 

We got the little girl's information and gave it to our agency. They were happy to try to locate her adoption file. 

We started talking bedroom furniture, names, schools, doctors and treatment. 

In other words, we were in this. 

110%

That is, until we weren't in it. 

She has no file for international adoption at this time. 

She never has. 

Nine years old. 

I prayed so hard that this would not be the news I heard. 

Soul crushing. 

I wrote an impassioned plea to my agency. 

I begged to see if a file might be made soon. 

Even if not for us...for someone. 

She deserves a family. 

I am waiting for their reply. 

We are really having a hard time finding peace with this turn of events.