Heisler's Adoption Blog

All good things must come to an end....

2008-01-22T10:01:00.003-06:00

Our initial intent with this blog was to take our family and friends with us on our adoption journey. It has become apparent to us, and probably to you as well through our lack of posts, that it's time to officially end our blog. We have really moved from the ongoing excitment of the adoption process and getting to know Sydney to a typical family and we all know everything about her. We have pages on Facebook if you'd like to find us there.

Thanks to all of you for sharing in this remarkable journey with us!!

So much has happened....

2007-04-22T09:20:00.002-05:00

Christmas 2007

The girl will make a dress out of anything!

Swimming with cousins.

Wow....it's been so long once again! Sorry to everyone for the lengthy lapse in posts. I'll try to get everyone caught up....starting with Alycia. She completed a very successful volleyball season and we all enjoyed watching her play this year. She just keeps improving all the time and is such a good "all around" player. She is currently starting her Junior Olympic volleyball season and continues to hit the weight room regularly. We're looking forward to seeing the results when the regular season resumes next year. Sydney will look forward to once again referring to her sister as "Shesha Bobbyball", since that's where Alycia was every time Sydney asked for her! The varsity team lost about 7 girls this year, so there are lots of spots to fill and her coaches are hoping she's ready to dominate the net next year.....Go Shesha!

Alycia is doing an exceptional job with her tough classes this year, she has some advanced placement classes and 2 science classes. She currently has straight "A's"...she gets her brains from her mother's side of the family?? She also completed Driver's Ed. and has her permit (she's not really old enough to drive, is she???). She is still an amazing, wonderful young woman that we truly love to have around....which is rather remarkable because she is technically a teenager!

Then there is Sydney. We had our 6 month post adoption visit from our social worker in January, which gave us the opportunity to go back through pictures and think about how far we've come in such a short time. Sydney's development has progressed rapidly in all areas. Her dad explains her language development the best by stating that it took her a little while to figure out English but once she got it, she hasn't stopped talking! She truly talks almost non-stop and uses complete sentences. Physically she is doing great and has jumped from below the 25th percentile to above the 50th percentile on the U.S. growth charts. She came to us in July with little ability to play and now can direct her own play activities, even engaging in make-believe play. My favorite part is her ability to sit and read several books in a row! When we started trying to read to her, she would flip through the pages of one book and she'd be off to something else! She is still a busy girl but now she takes the time to engage in activities. Emotionally, she seems to be appropriately attached to her family. She is such a contrast....she is a very brave and tough girl when it comes to painful situations such as falls, wounds, shots, etc. but she can be such a softie emotionally. Unless you get her mad.....then it's the "tough as nails" girl once again, who is very good at ignoring you until she's convinced you have suffered enough to get back in her good graces.

We all had a wonderful Christmas and Sydney quickly improved her math skills by calculating that Santa=presents and presents=lots of fun for Sydney! She did a great job of making sure her sister got presents to open too. Our next big holiday event was our first Chinese New Year celebration. We attended an event at MSU-Moorhead that we all enjoyed. The food was great and she seemed to recognize some of the songs the children sang. We look forward to having a larger celebration next year....Happy Year of the Pig :) Valentines Day also meant another party at preschool and some of her favorite treats C-A-N-D-Y (we now have to spell things in our house)!! Today, in fact, marked a rare event for Sydney. The little girl who only wants to wear dresses, wore pants today! Only because she got a new bunny shirt from her Granny Goo for Valentine's Day that she couldn't wait to show off at preschool! I'll have to snap a picture as proof. Some of her other favorite gifts are the pink puppy from Auntie Jo and the quarters for the horsie ride (we have to plan a trip to the Chinese Dragon soon!) and the teddy bear from Gran-Gran, who waits for her to get home every day and is frequently seen hanging out with pink puppy in her chair. We're sure that Easter will also be entered in Sydney's list of "top 10 favorite holidays".

In the time we spent looking back, we found ourselves truly blessed with the support we have received from family and friends. We thought about those "sanity saving" moments after we returned home from China from my sister Cheri who took care of us in our first few days home (which are still a blur), to everyone who dropped by to visit (an adult conversation!!), to those whom we dropped in on when we felt more than a little stir crazy (Jo), to everyone who called just to check-in, to those who said a prayer or thought about us, and to the grandparents and extended family members who bonded with our new addition at a level we never anticipated.....thank you!

Not flesh of my flesh
nor bone of my bone
but still miraculously my own.
Never forget for a single minute
you didn't grow under my heart, but in it.
~Adoption Creed~

Bad Bloggers

2006-09-18T18:40:00.002-05:00

October 13th - Cute pigtails.

October 11th - Watching the snow fly

September 21st - getting ready for bed...sure
looks tired doesn't she :)

October 14th - Alycia and Sydney

October 12th - Chillin' on the couch

August 29th - Pretty in pink

We (Tina) have been bad about posting anything lately. We (Donny) are also very behind with adding some new pictures of Sydney. Here's what's been happening lately:

Our oldest cat (Fluffy) has once again shown his maternal side by running to Sydney whenever she gets mad and cries. This only makes Sydney cry harder because she wants to be left alone when she is mad, which includes being looked at by any humans or cats!! Temper, temper, temper! It's a difficult adjustment for Sydney to give up her reign as queen of her universe but she is slowly making progress. The additional language skills that she is gaining have helped immensely but unfortunately for Sydney, "no" in English doesn't translate into anything that she likes!

Sydney is spending a lot more time running around town shopping and visiting family and friends. She loves to hear the words, "do you want to go....." it doesn't really matter where! She has attended several of her big sister's volleyball games and is turning into a great little Lakers Cheerleader. Alycia is playing on the JV and Varsity teams this year. She gets lots of playing time on JV and got into her first varsity game this week against Moorhead. We can already see improvements in Alycia's skills from last season and we're looking forward to watching her games again this year. She also has a tough academic schedule and is doing a great job of juggling everything.....including spending some time with her little sister.

We are finally getting some of our pictures developed from China but have not begun the process of sorting through the video footage yet. Sydney had a couple of negative reactions to things from her time in China, so we're being cautious about what we expose her to at this point. One incident involved her viewing of some video footage taken by another family when she was with the orphanage staff. She woke up screaming from her nap for the next two days. The second interesting but less intense reaction from her was her first trip to a Chinese Restaurant in town. When some of the waitresses came up to talk to her in Chinese, she froze and refused to look at them or take food from them. She didn't eat much of her meal either, which is not like her at all! It would be nice in these moments for her to be able to talk to us but for now, we're just trying to read her behaviors.

Daycare is going great and Sydney seems to enjoy the preschool curriculum, especially the songs and the artwork. She can't wait to show everyone her pictures at the end of the day! She helps her daycare provider (a.k.a. Patty the Saint) and her friend Abby with diaper changes and seems to be doing better in the "plays well with others" category. It was a tough adjustment for Sydney when the school age kids left and a few new little bodies appeared in their place. Taking turns and waiting for what you want are difficult tasks for adults, so we think that she is doing remarkably well considering her developmental age!

Sydney's current favorite things to do at home are:

1. ANYTHING with her big sister
2. Anything with her cousins
3. Launching her little body through the air (both feet leave the floor!) to body slam her dad
4. Watching "Finding Nemo" or "Dora"
5. Playing in the water with her kitchen toys
6. Putting stuffed animals, her parents, her sister, her cousins, any visitors, dolls, etc. "night - night".

Her new favorite saying: "hey, hey, hey" from the scene with the crabs in "Finding Nemo". She knows what's funny!

We (Donny) will try to get some new pictures posted soon, so you can see how much she has changed since we brought her home.

THE Appointment

2006-07-31T13:28:00.001-05:00

We had Sydney's BIG appointment with her pediatric cardiologist (Dr. Rios)on Friday. He is a fantastic doctor and we immediately felt at ease that Sydney was in his care. Dr. Rios conducted a brief exam and sent us to have her ultrasound. I was a bundle of nerves and the procedure seemed to take forever! Sydney did very well during the eternal ultrasound. Donny helped hold Sydney in place and I kept her busy eating Yogos (Yogurt to go) and fruit snacks. The end result was that everything looks good and Dr. Rios will continue to see Sydney for yearly check-ups.

Sydney was very happy to have her big sister return home on Sunday too. Sydney seems to speak more English with her sister than she does with us. I heard several new words pop out of her mouth while those two were talking. We're very glad to have Alycia back home too....she was gone for too long! How will I handle this when she really leaves the nest in a few years??!! Denial, denial, denial....

We also took Sydney to meet her Auntie Jo, Alex, Bob, Spike, and Baby. She caught a glimpse of Spike but Baby was MIA and did not get to meet Sydney (I'm sure Baby is eternally grateful for this as she will not require therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder!). Sydney was not too sure about Jo's dog Alex. She did much better and dared to venture onto the floor as long as Alex maintained the required distance. Otherwise, Sydney mainly hung out between Donny's lap or Alycia's lap UNTIL.....Jo offered us a snack! Suddenly the Snickers bar and pop were worth the risk of having to sit on a kitchen stool alone with Alex at her feet waiting for something to hit the floor. Too bad for Alex.....Sydney made sure she devoured every last crumb! Sydney definitely liked Jo and Bob, so we'll have to visit again soon. I think Alex will win her over in the end too.

We hope everyone is doing well and have enjoyed spending time with friends, neighbors, and family as they stop by to meet Sydney. Come and see us soon!

July 23

2006-07-23T10:47:00.002-05:00

Lounging with Dad

Sydney and Alycia on one of their many wagon rides

Having a few potatoes with her ketchup!

First slice of Godfather's Pizza

Everyone is finally healthy in our house! Sydney had her first doctor's appointment with her regular physician and everything looked good. He said that he could not hear anything out of the ordinary when he listened to her heart but we won't know for sure until she sees her cardiologist on Friday. She did very well during her examination until the nurses gave her 5 shots! She went back to daycare after her appointment and proceeded to fall on the sidewalk and scrape her h ands and knees. All together the bandaid count at the end of the day totaled 8! As of today, we're back down to zero bandaids, so we're headed in the right direction. Sydney is also doing a lot better at naptime and is crying less when we lay her down for the night.

Alycia spent the weekend with Donny's family in South Dakota. She comes home on Sunday and leaves for volleyball camp on Monday. When she returns from camp, she is leaving the next day with her other grandparents (my family) for Medora. Donny and I would love to go along to Medora....it's kind of been our family trip with my parents for many years now...but we don't think that Sydney is old enough to enjoy it this year (maybe next year??). She has earned a new nickname from her little sister. Whenever we say Alycia's name Sydney says, "shesha bye bye" and waves at the door. We all miss Alycia already, so we'll be very lonely by the time she finally comes home. I plan to visit her at volleyball camp just to see her....how bad is that! This is her first year staying in the dorms for camp and I know she will have a great time. She's such a great kid!

One of our neighbors (Sara) came over to meet Sydney on Friday and they had a great time! Sydney decided right away that Sara was just another "big kid" and had her running up and down the stairs, tickling her, making all kinds of weird faces, and giggling at everything! Sydney was sad when Sara had to leave and sat on the steps by the door for a while before she was ready to play again. We'll have to visit Sara again as soon as she's ready for another stairmaster workout!

Sydney and I went shopping yesterday at Wal-Mart and a department store downtown. Sydney was very patient and even tried on some clothes. She loves to ride in the shopping cart at Wal-Mart. She could be mistaken for a greeter at Wal-Mart ( if she were a few decades older)! Sydney loves to just ride around, sing songs, and say "hello" or "ni hao" and "bye bye" to almost everyone. Like her friend Sadie, she is still talking a lot in Chinese when she plays. We looked at Emily and Erik's blog with Sydney last night and she kept pointing to Sadie in the pictures. It's been fun to get updates from the other families in our travel group, as well as the family in Holland that adopted one of Sydney's playmates. I hope we can keep in touch as the kids get older too.

We hope to see some more of the extended family soon. We've settled into a comfortable routine and would love to have you all meet Sydney. She is still shy at first but warms up quickly. In a couple more weeks we plan to take Sydney on her first big overnight trip to grandma and grandpa's house to spend some time with her great-grandma and meet family and friends in Devils Lake.

Hope to see you all soon!

What's been going on at home

2006-07-19T13:13:00.002-05:00

Sorry that we've neglected the blog but we have been busy nesting. We all struggled with jet lag for about a week and then Donny and Alycia got sick with a cold. We have all kicked jet lag and most of us are healthy now. Donny is still trying to shake his annoying cough but finally seems to be feeling a little better every day.

Alycia jumped back into her summer schedule of speed/strength training and volleyball. She has spent some time at the lake with her cousins and has reconnected with her friends too. She still seems to enjoy her little sister (the novelty hasn't worn off yet!). Alycia has always been a remarkably easy child and continues to be an amazing young lady and a wonderful big sister. Her little sister thinks she is the best!!

Sydney has made an amazing adjustment as well. She struggled with sleeping through the night during our first week home but is doing well in her own bed now. It's difficult for us to know when she is awake because she won't make a sound when she wakes up... she sits quietly on the floor in her room or the hallway upstairs until someone discovers her! It would be nice to be able to communicate with her to tell her to say something or make some noise so we know when she's up!! We have tried to be creative and put some bells on her door and we'll keep working on the communication stuff. I don't sleep as soundly anymore because I keep listening for the bells or some sign that she might be awake before anyone else is up in the morning.

Sydney has not had any major temper tantrums since the first few days we were home and the screaming fits seem to have disappeared too (our ears are thankful!). Her personality is fantastic! She has a wonderful sense of humor and loves to be silly. She wakes up happy in the morning and stays that way until it's time to go to bed. She does not like taking naps or going to bed at night and still cries for a while when we lay her down. Her communication skills are growing every day. Mom was correct when she said that if we were half as smart as she is we could be learning her language as quickly as she is learning ours! Sydney understands most of what we say and uses lots of gestures to communicate with us. She still mainly speaks in Chinese and refers to herself as Er Wei most of the time, however, she responds all of the time now to Sydney and has started to use her new name too. She is extremely observant and figures things out very quickly.

I thought that I would be cooking congee and noodles until she was 20 but she has decided that whatever we are eating is much better than congee! She's pretty happy when her plate looks like ours and she will point to her food and her sister's food and smile! She had her first pieces of pizza and discovered ketchup last night.....her Grampy Gary will be so proud (pictures to follow soon)!! We haven't discovered much that she doesn't like to eat and, thankfully, her system seems to tolerate all of the new foods too.

We decided to try her at daycare to see how she would do and planned to gradually transition her during August so she would be ready to roll when school started in the fall. We picked a small (about 8 kids), home-based daycare with a provider (Patty) who has her early childhood degree and follows a curriculum. Sydney decided that she LOVES her daycare and the kids! Her first day was going to be half a day but she did so well that she stayed the whole day. Patty thought that we could try her a couple days a week to start. This week is her trial run. Yesterday Patty decided that if we wanted her to come Monday through Thursday every week, that would be great with her. Sydney has already learned the routine and plays so well with the other kids that she's easy for Patty to keep. Sydney is very excited in the mornings when she sees her bag by the door to go to Patty's house!! She is happy to see us when we pick her up and does well when we bring her home, so we'll see how the rest of the week goes. We don't need to push Sydney and we'll be watching for any signs that she feels overwhelmed.

With Sydney off at daycare, that means that Donny and I are back to work this week. It feels like we have been gone for months!! One of my co-workers commented that Sydney looks like such a natural part of our family in our pictures. Although the adjustment for Donny and I has taken a little longer then it has for the kids (slight change of pace from parenting a 15 year old!), I can honestly say that she is a wonderful fit for our family.We'll post some new pictures as soon as we can so you can see the little monkey in action!

The trip home

2006-07-19T11:13:00.002-05:00

We left for the airport in Guangzhou at 5:30 am on July 6 and we were all excited to finally be on our way home. The airplane ride was horrible for Sydney and she had several screaming rages during the eternal flight home! On the flight from Guangzhou to Tokyo, a nice Chinese woman sitting behind us talked to Sydney in Chinese and calmed her down. Unfortunately, there was no nice Chinese woman on the long (11 hours...seemed much longer) flight from Tokyo to Minneapolis. Thankfully, I had grabbed a couple of bags of lollipops on our last shopping trip in Guangzhou. We decided to try a lollipop during her second or third screaming tantrum and she stopped crying! She actually fell asleep sucking on them a couple of times. She only slept for a few hours but we were grateful for any short period of rest that she was able to get! I don't think that we were ever so happy to see Minneapolis as we were when we came down through those clouds!!

Then we had the long line in immigration to get through. I counted the number of lollipops that were left and prayed that we would make it through the airport without her laying down and screaming. She was fussy but we managed to hold her together. Sydney received her official stamp on her passport and processed her paperwork to make her a U.S. citizen. Erik, Emily, and Sadie (Herbivores go to China) were in front of us in line, so we cheered with them and were sad to see them go. It was the last family from our group that diminished slowly due to differing connecting flights. They are a great family and we enjoyed visiting with them and sharing time with Sadie.

Fortunately, Sydney loved to ride the buses in China and also loved to be in the van. She fussed for about 30 seconds over being in her carseat and then decided it wasn't so bad after all. Donny and I decided to pull a Cooper and Lisa and (against expert advice to the contrary)drove ourselves home from the cities. We made it safely to our front door and managed to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime.

Jet lag was much worse coming home then it was in Beijing. Sydney was up for a few hours during the night, which meant that we weren't able to sleep until 3 or 4 in the morning and were up again by 8 am. Our saving grace was that my sister came to stay with us for the weekend or I'm not sure how we would've made it. She did the shopping and cooking and entertained Sydney while we sat on the couch in a daze. To add to the jet lag, Donny and Alycia decided to get sick with colds, which made it more difficult to snap back to a normal routine. We somehow managed for the four days after my sister left until my mom came down to stay on the following weekend. By then, Sydney and Alycia were sleeping on a normal schedule and Donny and I were gradually catching up on our sleep as well.

Sydney had a few difficult moments at home and had several more screaming tantrums. At least in our own home we didn't have to worry about needing lollipops anymore! Those rages seem to have subsided now and she is settling into her new home. She wasn't sure that she liked the cats at first but she is learning to be nice to them and pets them, unless they try to smell her toys or try to lay on her, then she gets made and fusses at them (in Chinese, of course). She is using quite a few gestures now to communicate and continues to parrot a lot of our words. We're trying to stick to a routine here and use similar phrases for things, so she can catch on a little quicker.

Sydney got to meet both sets of grandparents and her great-grandmother already. Unfortunately, we were all having a bad day due to a short night of sleep when my family arrived, so they will have to wait to experience Sydney's better side. We've been busy trying to run around after Sydney so she can show us the spots that we still need to toddler-proof! She enjoys dragging her ill father up and down the stairs and already knows that she is not allowed to climb the stairs without help. Lucky dad!! She doesn't seem too interested in playing with her toys for very long and is more intent on exploring her environment and putting toys in drawers. Mom also got a purse full of presents from Sydney stashing her toys.

Sydney seems to enjoy being a girl and already has a favorite dress from great-grandma. If it's in her closet, it's the one she wants to wear! Mom also bought her some hair clips, which she loves to have in her hair unless they are hidden in a purse or a drawer.

She still likes her baths but doesn't like to lay down for her naps or bed and cries herself to sleep. It's frustrating to not be able to communicate with her at times like this! We'll just keep trying different things to see if we can stumble across a solution.

It's great to be home and we can't wait for everyone to get to know Sydney!

4th of July

2006-07-04T00:51:00.001-05:00

Sorry to the morning coffee club for not having posted anything for a while. We have had a couple of slow days and didn't have much to post. Yesterday afternoon we did some shopping at our favorite little shop, Jordon's. I wish he had everything that we are looking for in his store because it's nice to be able to just look at things without people following you around trying to sell you everything in their store. We bought Sydney some traditional dresses and two pairs of squeaky shoes. They certainly make the squeakers in the shoes loud enough! It's fun to hear other kids squeaking down the hall in the hotel!! Sydney LOVES these shoes! We might have to see if we can find a larger size to bring home because she will likely grow out of these pretty quickly, judging by how much she is eating. We're still keeping her on a bland diet of congee, toast, noodles, rice, bananas, and yogurt. It seems to help keep her stomach settled down.....we just hope it holds for a few more days!

We have really been blessed with a great group of other families here. Everyone is so generous and caring. It helps so much to have them around and it's been fun getting to know them. It's so fun to watch all of the kids bonding to their families and changing already. We will miss not seeing them and their kids every day.

Last night we ordered in food from Danny's Bagels and Alycia and I had some incredible macaroni and cheese. Sydney enjoyed her chicken noodle soup and crackers and Donny tried a hamburger and fries. He said it wasn't bad but it's not quite like home either. After supper Donny and Alycia took Sydney swimming for the second time. This time we remembered the cameras! She had a blast and seems to enjoy everything a little more if her sister is there. She let Donny and Alycia hold her in the big pool and spin her around. She didn't want to get out of the water but it was getting close to bath time. Thanks to the squeaky shoes she agreed to get out of the water! While I put Sydney in the tub, Alycia and Donny went down to the deli and grabbed some ice cream. Donny gave Sydney a few bites of ice cream....she knows who to go to when mom says "no"! By the time her bath and snack time were over, it was close to bedtime. She decided to be a night owl last night and it was almost 10:00 when she finally went to sleep. She was content to just roll around in her bed but she wasn't so content before lunch today. She decided to spend around 20 minutes howling and crying! Not quiet tears either....the kind of cry that you can hear in the elevator a couple of floors down!! Alycia and Donny left to go to Lucy's Cafe for lunch and I decided to keep Sydney here and feed her when she calmed down. She doesn't like to be held or touched when she's upset, that seems to make things worse. She likes to sit by herself and just cry....it's heartbreaking not to be able to comfort her! I made her noodles and got her food ready and she started to calm down a little bit, so I went over and asked her if she wanted to eat and she decided to be done crying. We're not sure what made her mad in the first place but we figured she's likely just tired and irritable. She was pretty lazy after lunch and just lounged on her dad and pretended to bite off his finger.

Sydney is taking a much needed nap right now and we're hoping that she wakes up feeling better. We're just planning to hit a few more shops this afternoon and we've started packing things that we don't need for the trip home. I usually hate packing but packing to go home is very exciting!

Tomorrow we have our appointment at the consulate and then we are done! We hope you will all enjoy the 4th of July and maybe someone will take pity on us and repeat the grilled steak and potato salad (some with no onions, of course!) when we get home???!!!

We're counting down the hours!!

White Swan July 2nd

2006-07-02T01:24:00.001-05:00

Today we did some more sightseeing. We visited a Buddhist Temple, an art museum, and a jade store. It was hot again today but we rented a stroller for Sydney, so it was much more comfortable for all of us. Thankfully, she loves to ride around in her stroller! I think we are done sightseeing for this trip. China is a beautiful country, but we are ready to be home. There is a dinner cruise on the Pearl River this evening, but we'll wait until we get back to Strawberry Lake before we go on our first pontoon ride.

We didn't make it to the pool yesterday, but should have time today after Sydney's nap to check it out. We'll have to be careful to keep her ear out of the water as she is still recovering from an ear infection.

Day 2 at the White Swan

2006-07-01T01:06:00.001-05:00

Last night was much better. Sydney slept through the night without any teeth grinding or diarrhea!!!!! She is a wild sleeper and ended up squirming her way off of her bed (which is on the floor between our beds) and across the floor until she couldn't go any further because of the TV. She cries a little when we lay her down for a nap or bed but it takes her a shorter amount of time to calm herself down then it did a few days ago. We are amazed at the changes she has made in such a short amount of time. She is responding more to her new name and repeats a lot of the English words that we use with her. She also understands more of the English phrases that we use with her, such as "go potty", "flush", "soap", "wash hands", "sit down", "all done","bath", "brush teeth"....etc. One word she understands but probably wishes she didn't is the word "no". She can definitely act like a typical 3 year old when she hears that word. She likes to feed herself with a spoon but lets us feed her things too. She shares her food sometimes but seems to do that when she has already had enough to eat. We have been holding her on our lap to feed her but today she sat in a high chair and did just fine. Her fever is gone and she ate much better for breakfast this morning. We're still keeping her diet pretty bland just to be sure her stomach has settled down. She ate 2 dishes of Congee (looks like rice soup), half a banana, half a piece of toast, and a little yogurt. So far, no more diahrrea :) The breakfast buffet is very good here and we all ate a lot.

Our group met our guide, Molly, at 9:00 this morning and walked a few blocks to get Sydney's visa photograph and complete her medical examination. The doctor listened to her heart and then had another doctor also listen to her heart. They held up two fingers to each other but didn't tell us anything. They asked us if we knew that she has VSD but that was all. They also looked into her ears and told us she had an ear infection. They prescribed her some drops for her ears that came in a box that says "compound neomycin sulfate eye drops". We haven't looked up the neomycin sulfate on-line yet to see what it will do for her ear. Any eye doctors out there that could comment on this one??? We're supposed to put the drops in twice a day...we'll see how she likes that after her nap today. We're once again, very thankful to Cheryl for sharing her antibiotics with us!! Her ear is much better and seems to have stopped draining. Alycia and Donny seem to feeling better now too....they did't get as sick and Sydney and I did but seem to have shared in the crud with us. Hopefully we are all done being ill now and can enjoy our remaining days in China. Sydney did really well during the doctor's visit but got very silly and refused to walk when we were done. By the end of the visit we could tell that it was stressful for her. She perked up again once we got back to the hotel.

Donny is with our guide filling out some paperwork and Sydney, Alycia, and I have been playing in the room and having snacks until he gets back. Sydney entertained herself for a long time with a cookie that she had me break into pieces and put in a cup. I gave her a spoon and she walked around the room feeding herself the cookie.

Donny is back for now and we're going to go out for lunch and maybe walk around a few shops this afternoon. Tomorrow we get to tour another temple and a jade factory, so that should be fun. We're going to try Sydney in a stroller today and see how she likes that....she's very heavy to carry around!

1st Day in Guangzhou

2006-06-30T05:51:00.001-05:00

Snack time

Last night was a little rough for all of us. Sydney was not her usual self when we went for a walk to the lake last night and was pretty miserable. We found out a little later that she had diarrhea. We were worried about the flight today to Guangzhou with her ear infection and diarrhea combination. To top that off, she has developed some aversion to public restrooms and refuses to use the toilets. We tried some Children’s Imodium last night but that didn’t seem to help. This morning her temp. was over 104, so we have been pushing Tylenol. She actually did really well on the flight and only complained when we were landing. No other major blowouts either...she held it until we got to the hotel room! Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn!!! She is pretty stressed again and was grinding her teeth in the airport while we were waiting for our luggage.

But we all made it to the White Swan Hotel in one piece! It feels good to be in a new location with a wide variety of restaurants and places to go that are very close to the hotel. The hotel rooms are very nice but are still fairly small. Donny just went downstairs to meet one of our guides to find the grocery store and some places to eat. We ordered delivery pizza and spaghetti for supper for us but we will try some of the local food tomorrow. We are going to go look around the hotel to see what the pool looks like…Alycia and Donny are ready to swim; we’ll try Sydney in the pool but will have to be careful with her ear. We are finally able to see our blog using this hotel’s internet access and noticed how few pictures we’ve posted. The pictures posted above were taken in our hotel room in Guangzhou. We will add more pictures soon!

More Hangzhou

2006-06-29T03:16:00.002-05:00

Hello-

Last night went fairly well. We went for a walk down by the lake and ended up eating at Pizza Hut (again!) and Donny and Alycia tried the Dairy Queen. They said it didn’t taste exactly like the ice cream back home but they ate all of it. Sydney had a couple of bites of the melted ice cream left in Alycia’s Blizzard cup and she seemed to like it. We don’t want to try too many new foods all at once. Sydney cried for the first time when we put her to bed last night. Not too long but long enough to let us know that she wasn’t happy about it. We all slept better than we have since we arrived and I don’t think Sydney was grinding her teeth at all last night!

Earlier in the day we went back to get the adoption decree signed by the local Hangzhou official. The picture above was taken after she had signed the decree. This is just one step of the process; we still have to meet in Guangzhou to have another official sign more paperwork.

This morning we decided not to go on the boat trip, so we met with the group and received our documents to take to Guangzhou. Then we went to the breakfast buffet in the hotel. Sydney ate a lot for breakfast and lunch today….I’m not sure where she puts all of that food but the girl loves to eat! She also seems to like to feed herself sometimes. Today she ate her rice and dumplings by herself. She kept looking up at me like she wasn’t sure if she should do it by herself or not. She is also playing a lot more now by herself and with us. After breakfast we walked over by the lake again and she was hopping and running while she played with her big sister. She is learning more words everyday. She has “bye bye”, “yep”, “bird” and her own version of Alycia figured out. She is parroting a lot more words but mainly uses gestures for things that she wants.

After lunch we let Sydney play in the room for a while and then laid her down for a nap. She had been quietly going to sleep when we laid her down for previous naps…..this afternoon she cried for about 30 minutes! She can be VERY stubborn!! Hopefully some of the transitions to naps and baths and things will improve as the communication improves. We’ve used some pictures with her but she hasn’t grasped the concept of using them to communicate yet. Her feelings get hurt easily and it doesn’t take much to make her sad if you try to tell her “no”.

After the little howler wakes up from her nap we’re going to find Haagen Dazs and have some ice cream. I think we’ll also find the little children’s clothing store and buy her a couple of outfits….hopefully two that will fit her this time! Tomorrow morning we are FINALLY off to Guangzhou. We’re just praying that Sydney tolerates the flight and that her ear is better. Otherwise, it will be a long morning and an even longer flight home.

We hope you are all doing well and we’ll post again once we get settled in our new home away from home.

Hangzhou

2006-06-28T03:53:00.001-05:00

We made it through another night in Hangzhou! Last night was much better for Sydney and the rest of us as well. She only woke us up a couple of times grinding her teeth last night, so hopefully that means that she is relaxing a little more. We went for a walk last night in a park over by the lake. There were two ladies with a little girl about Sydney’s age, who stopped to say hello and ask how old she is….she is very hesitant around other kids. I thought she would gravitate to kids after being with them in the orphanage but she likes to observe them from her dad’s arms. Things are getting better every day that we spend together. She is cueing us more and pointing to things more frequently. She learns very quickly! The orphanage staff said that she is very smart and so far, without the aid of a formal IQ test, she seems to be pretty sharp!

We have been concerned about her cough and ear drainage. Last night she was digging at her ear again, and this morning she had more drainage. We asked our guide if we could take her to the doctor. She said it is a pubic hospital and there are many people so we could just show up this afternoon and wait to be seen. Another family here was sent with several samples of an antibiotic by their pediatrician, so they gave us a 7 day supply. We did some reading on the internet about a ruptured ear drum just to see if there was anything medically that could be done, just in case that’s what happened. We decided to skip the trip to the hospital for now and see if she improves on the antibiotic. We will still see a doctor in a couple of days in Guangzhou or we can go to the hospital tomorrow if she seems worse. Hopefully the antibiotic will clear up the ear infection and knock out the rattling cough that she and the other girls all seem to have.

Today we had breakfast in the hotel and left for a tour of a Buddhist temple (Lingyin). It was amazing and fun to see the monks. They smiled at the girls when we would walk past them. Our guide said that this is a very famous temple and monks from all over the world come to visit. Our camcorder battery died part way through the tour but we couldn’t take pictures in the temples anyway. It’s always humid and warm here and today was no exception but it was nice to be in the caves and trees. Alycia, Donny, and the other guys in our group climbed up some of the rock steps, while Sydney and the rest of the mom’s and kids waited. Sydney is such a trooper! She walked a lot and was carried a lot in the heat and never complained once. I’ve only seen her complain a couple of times so far. Today she cried and went limp when I tried to take her to the public bathrooms at the temple. I’m not sure why she reacted so strongly. They were squatters but she used one of those in a shopping market and didn’t complain. We’ll never know why it happened and she was perfectly fine using the bathroom when we got back to the hotel.

We went to Pizza Hut today and fed Sydney her first bites of American food. She had some spaghetti, fried shrimp, and beef with barley soup. It was my first “real” food after being sick for two days. I had a couple of bites of spaghetti and followed that up with yogurt and a banana when we got back to the hotel. So far, everything is staying put! Sydney is very similar to her big sister. She loves soup, does not like to be messy when she eats, and loves noodles! She asks Alycia to hold her and wanted to sit on her lap a lot today. On our way back from Pizza Hut today, I carried Sydney but she held Alycia’s finger the whole way back from the hotel. We discovered a Dairy Queen on our trip back from the temple and we’ll probably check that out tonight.

I also have to try on her new clothes that we found yesterday. So far she seems to fit the 2T clothes the best. She is wearing a little 3T skort today but the only reason it stays up is because she has a round little toddler belly, otherwise it would slide right off of her! Her little 3T shirt keeps falling off of her narrow shoulders and she doesn’t like that at all. She also doesn’t like some of the tags in her clothes……remind you of anyone else??!! She can wear the dresses that we brought but she’s not very “ladylike” when she sits and is definitely better suited for shorts!
We’re all excited that tomorrow is our last night here!

Our first 24 hours

2006-06-27T02:19:00.001-05:00

Hello-

Our first afternoon with Sydney went well. After we brought her back to the hotel, she took a long nap and didn’t want to wake up! She cried twice yesterday. Once when she woke up from her nap and had all of these strange people around her again and once when I tried to break her cracker in half so she could eat it easier. Alycia saved the day and gave her sister a new cracker, which immediately stopped the tears. Donny and Alycia went down to the hotel restaurant last night and brought food back to the room for Sydney. She loves to eat but we’re never sure when she’s full! She doesn’t really give any signal that we can read. Sydney really has transitioned well so far and was getting very silly with us in the hotel room last night. Alycia and I (Tina) gave her a bath and she LOVED being in the tub with her squirt toys! She looked like a little prune when she finally got out. She will still be a little feisty at times but she seems to be getting better at reading our signals that hitting or throwing too hard is not o.k. She also started pointing to things and said her first English word “bird” while she was out for a walk last night. I have been room bound since yesterday, with the exception of our official meetings today. I’m feeling better this evening but it’s been a miserable two days. There’s nothing worse than being sick and not being home!

We weren’t sure how Sydney’s first night would go but she went to bed between 8:30 and 9:00 and slept through the night. Between her grinding her teeth, the car alarm going off twice, and the noise in the hotel, we ended up not getting much sleep. I have never heard anyone grind their teeth as bad as she does! I am hoping that it gets better once she continues to relax more with us or that we learn to sleep through it. So far she seems to like eating, sleeping, baths, being outside, and sitting with her dad the best. She was wearing underwear when we got her and did fine yesterday and so far today. She doesn’t ask to use the bathroom but goes when I sit her on the toilet. We put her in a pull-up last night and were glad that we did because it was wet this morning. However, she is used to being awake at 6:30 and I think we woke her up around 8:00 this morning. She fights waking up!

Health-wise, she still seems fine. She was picking at her ear last night and a little bit again today. She still has a loose cough once in a while. We don’t see the doctor until we get to Guangzhou. All of the families that are with us here are anxious to leave for Guangzhou. The hotel rooms are small here and the food is not very good. I guess if I had to be sick somewhere along the way, I picked the right place….I’m not missing any great meals!

We had a couple of official stops this morning to start the process for Sydney’s passport and receive our official adoption agreement. Then we went to a store and bought her some new shoes (her old ones stink!) and a few outfits. They didn’t have much to choose from for clothes, so we grabbed a few things and we’ll see if they fit. If they don’t and if I feel better tomorrow, there’s a little shop down the block that sells kids clothes for around $6 an outfit. We have the next two days free while we wait for them to process her passport. We are going to try to tour a temple tomorrow; the following day they will take us on a boat tour around West Lake. We are not able to view the blog or any comments that are posted.

Sydney...oh yeah, Great Wall, too

2006-06-25T23:06:00.001-05:00

Hello-

Sorry that we missed a day but it's amazing how quickly the time goes when you're having fun! We spent the previous day climbing The Great Wall.....I thought that was the best part of the trip so far but today topped the charts!! Today (6/26 over here), we finally met Er Wei. She was very slow to warm and didn't want us to pick her up or touch her at first. She is definitely a Daddy's girl and took to Donny and Alycia really quickly. Within a matter of a couple of hours, her caregiver and the orphanage director were gone, along with everything else that she has known. We stopped to take her passport photo on the way back to the hotel and the rest of this day we don't have anything scheduled.

Sydney is sleeping right now and Donny and Alycia have taken off to find Pizza Hut. It's also amazing how quickly you get homesick for the things that you know! We found a market last night, thanks to another adoptive family here, and loaded up on Pringles, Oreos, and Diet Coke. We've decided that it has been fun touring China but now we're ready to be home! It will be good to have some time to let us all adjust though before we have to leave.

Sydney is quite a little character. So far she has shared her feisty, playful side and her loving, gentle side. She likes to throw toys and giggles when you put things on your head and tip them off. The communication gap is tough, so we're hoping she picks up some English words soon. We're also working on our Mandarin words but our pronunciation is not very good! We'll try the picture cards after she wakes up from her nap. It's difficult to read any cues from Sydney, like when she is hungry or tired or has to use the bathroom.....she just takes what you offer and uses the toilet when you sit her on it. Hopefully, she will have us trained to her schedule pretty soon.

She seems to be in good health other than a little, loose cough. She has some old bug bites and a scratch on her leg. She is making me nervous when she keeps scratching her head but I don't see anything other than a dry scalp. We've only been with her for a few hours now so that's about all I know of Sydney for today.

We're counting down the days until we can see you all again!

Forbidden City

2006-06-23T07:19:00.001-05:00

Ni Hao-

It’s Friday night about 6:00 and we’re just lounging in the hotel. We are waiting to get hungry enough to walk down the street to try our first Peking Duck for dinner. We are also going to try to find the street vendors tonight. They sell all kinds of foods from their stands….our guide Peter told us to look but don’t eat anything! We tried to find them last night but we didn’t walk far enough.

Another CHSFS family joined us today (Cheryl & Steve and their 8 year old Sarah) for our sightseeing trip to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. I have e-mailed them several times and talked to Cheryl on the phone once. Their youngest daughter is also named Sydney, so we’ve already started the “your Sydney” and “our Sydney” discussions. They are from Indianapolis and this will be their third adoption from China. I think they are going to come with us tonight to eat some duck. Peter told us that another family will arrive tonight and will come with us to tour The Great Wall tomorrow. That will be our longest day of touring, as we will also eat lunch and do some shopping in the afternoon.

As far as the sightseeing, today was hot and more humid than yesterday. The Forbidden City was fun to see and is so much larger than I imagined it would be. We (Donny) took lots of video footage and pictures. We also broke down and drank an iced Starbucks halfway through the tour, so if I weren’t bringing back a good bargaining chip for my sister (her new niece), she may contemplate never speaking to me again! Hey, I think we all sweated off about 5 pounds apiece, we were desperate! We had lunch at our hotel’s French Restaurant and the food was very good! We’ve found some really great, inexpensive food.

The jetlag is much better today. Alycia and I didn’t need a nap today (let’s see…that leaves who that slept for 45 minutes??) and I think we’re just lazy from the heat. We’re all still healthy and I’m hoping that my throat irritation is just from the smog….it’s very heavy in Beijing.

We are getting very impatient to get to Sydney at this point! We have our plane tickets in hand to fly to her province. One more day of touring and we’re off to Hangzhou!!!

Ni Hao from China!

2006-06-22T07:43:00.001-05:00

We FINALLY made it!! Everything went smoothly and our flight actually left the airport a little early, so we had extra time to make our connecting flight in Tokyo. From all outward appearances, Donny did very well on the flight. We had some turbulence on both flights but it wasn’t too bad. It was definitely a long flight and we were all pretty wiped out when we arrived in Beijing. We stayed awake for the flight to help us shift our days and nights around. It was about 11:30 p.m. or so by the time we got into our hotel room. I think we were all feeling some jetlag this afternoon but hopefully we will sleep well tonight. Our guide in Beijing is Peter (he is employed by our adoption agency) and he is great! We are the only family that he had today, (another family arrives tonight) so he took us to the Summer Palace this morning and Alycia got to see the panda bears at the Beijing Zoo this afternoon. The pandas had just eaten, so we didn’t get to see them do much other than stand, sleep, and scratch themselves. It was hot today, so we didn’t walk around the zoo other than to see the pandas and buy a t-shirt.

We braved the traffic and hit the streets of Beijing a few times today (Thursday). We get lots of stares but only had our picture snapped by one family because we are (comparatively) soooo tall. It takes some time to get used to all of the store clerks trying to talk you into their stores. It was a little too overwhelming after a short visit to a few stores, so we just went back to our hotel. We took a nap this afternoon and decided to brave the shopping once again. We found a market with several vendors who weren’t quite as aggressive. The only thing we bought was some candy but at least it was a start! We also looked at some art and bartered on that…..we might go back but need to figure out if it’s something we can haul around for the rest of our trip. I was hoping to find someplace where I could buy a bunch of different items and have them all shipped home. I’ll ask Peter tomorrow if that’s possible.

Tomorrow morning we are off to do some more touring. It’s good that we’re busy doing things because it keeps us from counting down the hours and minutes until we get to Sydney.

We're going to China!!!

2006-06-06T09:41:00.001-05:00

We finally have our travel approval and a confirmed consulate appointment!!! Sarah Wu from our adoption agency e-mailed us yesterday morning(June 5) to let us know that our consulate appointment would be on 7/3, so we could book our flight. Donny was the winner of the "who can find the cheapest flight first" award. He was off to a slow start, so I thought I had him beat....apparently he was just toying with me, as his next phone call was a winner! Here's what our trip looks like (unless I get a last minute phone call from a travel agent this morning with a better deal.....there's still time!): Leave MNPLS on June 20 and arrive in Beijing on June 21; travel to Hangzhou (to get Sydney :) on 6/25; and then on to Guangzhou on 6/30 where we stay until our flight home on 7/6. There are still some seats available on this flight Cheri...it's not too late to come along!

Now we get to start packing and planning for the next grand adventure in our lives......

“You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” --Winnie the Pooh

Surprise!!

2006-05-16T15:50:00.001-05:00

There was a nice surprise in my e-mail yesterday.....new pictures! The grandparents of one of the adoptive moms on my Yahoo group, who live in Wenzhou, visited the orphanage again and took these pictures. We're not sure what the marks are on her face and hands but they look like bug bites or something that must itch. Alycia looked at the pictures last night and wanted them to stop cutting off all of Sydney's hair! She still took one of the pictures to school today but I'm certain that she will veto any haircuts for her sister for the foreseeable future! Sydney looks smaller than she did in her other photos, since she isn't bundled in multiple layers. I think I might have to bring a couple of 2T outfits along just in case. The other outfits that Alycia and I bought her are all 3T.

Still no news on travel but I sent our visa applications and passports to a courier in Chicago today to deliver to the Chinese Consulate Office. They cannot be mailed anymore and need to be hand delivered. With any luck, they will return to us by the end of next week. I'm sure I'll hold my breath until they come back! It would be devastating to have to wait for new passports and visas if anything happens to them.

We (meaning Tina) have started to organize documents and things to pack for China. We (meaning Donny too this time) have completed some errands and we (meaning Donny) will hopefully finish some projects at home this weekend, while Alycia and I travel to Devils Lake for a belated Mother's Day.

Still waiting to kiss up those cheeks!

History Lesson on Wenzhou

2006-05-10T09:47:00.002-05:00

This is part of an article that appeared in the Smithsonian. Portions of the text were removed. It provides some information and history about Wenzhou.

"A Tale of Two Chinas - As the red-hot Chinese economy feeds the world’s appetite for consumer goods, the one-time workers’ republic is more than ever a nation of haves and have-nots".
By Stephen Glain

Chen Chuang and Dai Wei located their factory in Wenzhou (pop. seven million), China’s unofficial shoemaking capital, because of the city’s ready supply of laborers. The factory produces some 100,000 pairs of shoes a year—deck shoes to cross-trainers—making a profit of about three yuan, or 37 cents, a pair. Chen, who wears a T-shirt with “Welcome to the Love Hood” on it, says he would have been miserable in the state-run rubber factory that employed his father. “Our future is much more interesting,” he says. “We work for ourselves, and we are more successful because we can survive with such small margins.”

In less than a generation, Wenzhou, a port city on the East China Sea about 200 miles south of Shanghai, has transformed itself from a charming backwater to a showcase of China’s new commercial vitality. Wenzhou churns out not only shoes but also pharmaceuticals, garments, sporting goods, optics, kitchen appliances, valves, paint and metal works. Construction cranes rake across work sites manned by crews on double and triple shifts. The city’s annual per capita income of $2,500 is almost double the national average of $1,300. Gated communities of opulent villas have mushroomed in the suburbs, while entire neighborhoods of dilapidated hutongs—wooden homes and courtyards that have stood for centuries—await the wrecking ball. Traffic along the city’s main thoroughfares is a frenzied ballet in which bicycles, wagon-pulling tractors and carts pedaled by coolies (derived in part from the Chinese ku li, or “bitter labor”) vie with Cadillacs, BMWs and even Hummers.

In Wenzhou, I found China’s bold future, where newly made fortunes and go-go consumerism have transformed lifestyles but at a cost to the environment. “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away.” The old Chinese proverb alludes to how much can be achieved beyond the meddling reach of the state, and it is nowhere more appropriate than in Wenzhou.

Wenzhounese are known for their resourcefulness in turning what could be a geographic liability—isolation due to the forbidding Yandang Mountains—into an asset. Neglected for centuries by the central government, Wenzhou’s citizens began pioneering a more nimble, private-enterprise economy long before Beijing launched its “market- socialist” reforms in the early 1980s under Premier Deng Xiaoping, who ended more than a quarter-century of totalitarian restrictions under Mao Zedong. “People are defined by their geography, and Wenzhou was once an island, always remote from the cities,” says Chen Youxin, a 73-year- old semiretired government historian who edits Wenzhou’s official statistical yearbook. The city was a tiny kingdom with its own language and culture until, he says, it participated in a failed rebellion against a Han dynasty emperor in the second century b.c. In retaliation, the emperor exiled Wenzhou’s entire population to the present-day eastern province of Anhui, and replaced it with people from the northeast who were among China’s most cultured and educated. By the tenth century a.d., Wenzhou had emerged as an enclave of art, literature, handicraft and scholarship. Wenzhounese became shrewd and self-reliant, Chen says. Centuries before the state began experimenting with private enterprise, the Wenzhou economy revolved around a nucleus of small, family-owned businesses financed by gao li dai, or high-interest loans from one family member or friend to another. Often capital is pooled among members of a meng, a fraternity of sorts of half a dozen or more male friends. The meng might help a member finance a home, find medical attention for a loved one or ensure that the seats at his wedding are filled—a real bonus in a country where guests are honor-bound to give newlyweds money. Last year, according to the Chongqing Morning Post, a provincial newspaper, Wenzhou residents spent nearly 11 percent of their income on wedding gifts, the highest in China.

The Wenzhou shoe market and factory complex takes up several city blocks. Inside a honeycomb of small shops and factories, pedestrians compete for sidewalk space with scooters, construction crews and boxes stacked outside crowded showrooms. The streets are slick with oil and garbage. Rows of squat warehouses roofed in corrugated steel or terra-cotta tile front sewage-choked waterways.

Pan Wenheng and his wife started the Wenzhou Rui Xing Shoe Factory 13 years ago with an initial investment of $6,230. The factory now turns out a thousand pairs of shoes a day. In its warehouse, canvas moccasins for Chinese buyers and leather loafers and lace-ups bound for Italy and Germany are stacked in black boxes on wooden pallets. The company generated sales of $4.6 million last year, according to Pan, whose laborers earn between $125 and $374 annually. “We work from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.,” he says. “We Wenzhounese work harder than anyone else in China.”

A few blocks from Pan’s factory, Wong Tsinhuei is cutting linoleum for a storefront. Wong says he makes ten times the amount he could earn back home in Shaanxi Province. He says he came to the city five years ago with his wife and three sisters, who work as chambermaids. They’re among the 300 million people who left rural villages to find work in cities since Beijing lifted restrictions on personal movement in the mid-1980s—one of the largest migrations in human history. “I work every day if I can,” says the 38-year-old Wong, an expert furniture-maker who began an apprenticeship at the age of 18. Wong says he makes about $200 a month, and he and his wife, who earns about $100 herself, send more than 15 percent of their income to family members back home.

The abundance of cheap labor in China has kept the prices of most consumer products low. Chinese people can now afford such commodities as televisions, refrigerators and personal computers, which were once considered luxury items. But services such as healthcare, which was jettisoned by the government to the free market decades ago, are costly and of uneven quality, and rent can absorb half of an average worker’s wages. Still, many of China’s itinerant workers have the same ambitions as their counterparts in other market economies. “There is no way we could make this kind of money in the village,” Wong says. “But we won’t stay here forever. Our dream is to make enough to build a big new house and lead a quiet life back in Shaanxi.”

Getting rich may be an article of faith in Wenzhou, but it is not the only one. Religion, both Western and Asian, is enjoying a revival in a city known, because of its many Christian churches and Buddhist temples, as the Jerusalem of China. Organized faith has rebounded since the 1980s, when the Communist Party relaxed Mao-era prohibitions on religion. “Communism has become bankrupt as a worldview,” says Daniel Wright, author of The Promise of the Revolution, a book about his experiences living in rural Guizhou Province, one of China’s poorest regions. “Since the early 1980s, you’ve had a vacuum that religion has partially filled.”

One of Wenzhou’s oldest Christian establishments is the Cheng Xi Tang Methodist Church. It was built by British missionaries about 120 years ago, and its cherry-wood pews and lofty pulpit would make any Anglican congregation in Surrey proud. Yu Jianrong is the parish priest. He was attending a seminary in Nanjing when it was shut down in 1958 in the backlash that followed Mao’s “Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom” campaign inviting public criticism of the Communist Party. (The movement turned out to be a ruse to expose and punish dissidents, clerics and intellectuals.) The genial Yu was forced to work in an electronics factory, and the Cheng Xi Tang Church was turned into a cinema. The church reopened in 1979. “There were 200 people then,” he told me. “Now thousands come every Sunday.” The parish bookstore offers Chinese- and English-language Gospels, prayer books, self-help books and Holy Land tour guides. There are even Chinese-language copies of They Call Me Coach, the autobiography of legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, a pious Christian. Business is brisk.

What to do while you wait and wait and wait....

2006-05-05T14:33:00.000-05:00

We still have not heard anything about travel yet. It's getting very difficult to wait, even though we have a lot of things to do before we leave. We are continuing to take Chinese Language classes from Cheng (she's from Nanning China) in Lake Park on Saturday mornings. The language is very difficult for Donny and I to learn but Alycia seems to be picking up on it much faster. She will likely be our interpreter when our official guide is not around! Smart cookie, that girl!! We attended her academic excellence ceremony at the high school this week where she (and several other high school students) received a certificate for maintaining a GPA of 3.5 or higher.....and she was nervous about not doing well in high school??!

If you would like to pass some time with us, you can learn some of the same Chinese phrases that we are trying to learn in class. Here's the website http://www.wku.edu/~yuanh/AudioChinese/parent.html and don't forget those four blessed tones!

Thanks for waiting with us!

The Wenzhou Children's Welfare Institute

2006-05-05T14:32:00.001-05:00

Ni Hao!

Some of you have asked what it's like at the Wenzhou CWI. The only information that we have is from other families who have adopted children and have visited the orphanage. We know that the CWI is located in the Zhejiang Province in China (dust off that globe!). Other adoptive families have mentioned that their children have been well cared for and that the staff seem to really enjoy receiving updates on the children who have left them for their forever families. One family also commented on how the children seemed to enjoy seeing the director of the CWI when she was around the children. The director has been open to allowing the grandparents (who live in Wenzhou) of one of their adopted children several visits to meet with her and take photographs of the other waiting children. Their daughter (adoptive mom) is a member of one of my Yahoo groups. Her parents are going to ask to visit the orphanage in a week or so and if the director approves (keep your fingers crossed), they will take some new pictures of Sydney.

We have also heard from other families that there can be around 200-300 children of various ages in the CWI. Wenzhou apparently houses many children with special needs but also has non-special needs children. The top three pictures are from inside the CWI. The bottom two pictures were taken outside at the entrance to the building.

We're glad that Sydney seems to be in a place that cares about her health and is doing the best that they can to take care of her needs. We are still preparing ourselves for the worst and are praying for the best.

Thanks for continuing to support us :)

What's going on now?

2006-05-05T14:31:00.002-05:00

"Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue." -Ambrose Bierce

Now, we frantically wait patiently. Frantic because of all of the paperwork that needs to be organized, packing lists to make, arrangements to have in place, pre-travel medical appointments, rooms to paint, toys to purchase, etc., etc., etc. but we're doing all of these things patiently. O.K., some of us are working harder on this than others.

While we wait I have joined a few Yahoo groups and have connected with other families who have also adopted from Wenzhou. One of the parents was kind enough to take pictures of Sydney while she was there adopting her child. These are the pictures of her at the table with her playmates.

I have also connected with a parent in the Netherlands who is adopting the little boy in the white coat next to Sydney at the table. Our adoption agency has a Yahoo group and that has helped link us with other families, who are also practicing on improving their level of patience while they paperchase for their children.

We were also able to send her a little package last week which contained a disposable camera, a little blanket, a small beanie kitten, a photo album of us and some immediate relatives, a book, and a list of questions for the staff to answer about Sydney. We hope to get the camera and the answers to the questions back on "gotcha day" (the day we get Sydney). Alycia has the same kitten that we sent to Sydney and she is planning to bring it with her on gotcha day. Hopefully, Sydney will receive the package by next week and will be meeting us, as well as her grandparents, great-grandmother, Auntie Cheri, Auntie Deb, and her cousins!

We are hoping to hear something about our travel dates in May but nothing is in our control at this point....if it ever really was in the first place. I think (knock on wood) that the only paperwork we have left to complete in the U.S. is our visa applications. Here's what we know for now. We will receive our travel approval and our agency will schedule an appointment for us at the consulate office in China. Then we book our airline tickets scheduling around that appointment. Our agency provides a representative for us in China, who will assist us with the process while we are in the country and is also available for assisting us with some sightseeing excursions. We will be there for approximately 14-18 days. We will have time to do some sightseeing in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and we are hoping to visit Sydney's orphanage in Wenzhou (but that's not guaranteed). And the best part of the trip.....we get Sydney on the third or fourth day that we are there and we get to spend the rest of the time with her!

Thanks for being part of this journey with us and for everyone's encouragement, shared wisdom, enthusiasm, and most of all prayers. As we get more information on our travel plans, we will post them here. Feel free to share this site with other family members and friends.

Xie Xie (thank you)!

All About Sydney

2006-05-05T14:30:00.000-05:00

These are the pictures that we received when we requested more information on Er Wei (Sydney) from our adoption agency before we officially proceeded with the adoption. Here is some of her story. Her surname is Chen (the same last name as the orphanage director - this is typically how children are named and several of her playmates share that name). Er Wei are her given names and they mean you and small, slight. However, this also depends on the source that does the translation. We are doing some more checking to clarify the meaning. She was born on 6-14-03 and is staying at the Wenzhou Children's Welfare Institute (CWI), Zhejiang Province while she waits for us.....her "forever family". She is well cared for there by her aunties (please see the information on the CWI post for more information on her current home). Sydney has been diagnosed with congenital heart disease, Tetrology of Fallot. She had surgery to repair a hole in her heart (VSD for you medical buffs) on 10-25-04. She appears to be a healthy and active little girl!

We requested an update in December of 2005 and the CWI was gracious enough to honor our request and even sent us some updated photos!

The CWI also took Sydney to the hospital and provided an updated ultrasound of her heart, as well as some additional developmental information. Get out your metric conversion charts....and you thought you'd never use the metric system! Here are her stats from 12-31-05: Height=93 cm; Weight=15 kg; Chest Circumference=53 cm; feet length=15 cm; Number of teeth=20. Here's what else they had to say: her heart problem does not affect her daily activity, she can run, she likes reading and can turn pages, she can speak in short sentences, she responds to praise and encouragement, she can mimic adults, she will be interested to sing some children's songs and lullabies (get your singing voices in shape grandmas!), she needs help using the bathroom, she plays games with other children voluntarily, and my favorite.......she lays on the ground when upset or mad and acts like a spoiled child when she is happy (I can hear Grandpa Bud laughing at her now!). We are praying that she is healthy and happy and that He will continue to watch over her while we wait to hold her in our arms.....see her smile....and hear her laughter.

An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet...

2006-05-05T14:29:00.001-05:00

.....regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break.--an ancient Chinese Proverb

We started this process with a vision of the child who would be added to our family. We decided to adopt a child a few years younger than Alycia. She requested a sister, so the child would be a girl, and we would adopt in the U.S. We submitted our application to our adoption agency (Children's Home Society and Family Services in St. Paul) on 7-18-05. As we learned more about adoption from our agency, we decided on a toddler....and international adoption. Now we had to take a few more classes and learn about the process in each country and the children who are available, so we could pick a country and decide on an age range by the time our social worker was ready to complete our homestudy (the process that approves us as an adoptive family). Did I mention the large stack of paperwork?? There was also a LARGE stack of paperwork to complete!!

During one of our pre-adoption classes, we watched videotapes of orphanages around the world. Now we're looking at each other and freaking out about developmental delays, attachment, abuse, etc. and all of the other things that can impact children in orphanages (thanks Lisa for helping us through this!). At our final home study visit with our social worker in November 2005, we decided that were going to adopt a healthy, non-special needs, infant girl from China. WHEW!! Sure glad that all of those decisions are done!

My family knows the "eerie" process that now begins to unfold. Here it is in abbreviated form (O.K. as abbreviated as I can make it!). While we wait for our adoption agency to type up our homestudy and we start our paper work for China, I decide to keep looking at pictures on our agency's website of the "Waiting International Children". I had a "close encounter" at our agency with one waiting child already, but Donny and I decided to stick with the infant program at that time. As I am surfing through the pictures and descriptions of the children, there is a face that stops my mouse from scrolling any further down the page. I quickly call Donny and run it past him. I sleep on it for a night but dream about her....so I call our agency for more information, only to find out that two other families are already looking into adopting her. Funny how I continue to think about her and look for her picture on other adoption message boards to this day. I've never found her.

A few pictures down from where her picture used to be posted, there is another little girl waiting in China (see photo above). How many times have I scrolled past her face...paused...read the description....and moved on? She has a heart condition....that's too much for us to take on. Several weeks pass and I keep seeing her on the website....keep scrolling past....pausing....it's tough "playing God" but really, we need a healthy child, isn't that what all parents want? But I can't stop thinking about her, so I call the voice of reason (a.k.a. Donny) and ask if he minds if I call the agency to get more information. I wait for him to remind me that she has a heart condition and it's just too much for us to take on but he tells me to go ahead....after all, there's no harm in looking, right?

I called our agency on 12-9-05 for more information on Chen Er Wei and had documents in my e-mail account within the hour. Now begins the fight to remain objective and unattached from these photos. After having a pediatric cardiologist review her current and updated medical information (for no fee....thank you MeritCare and Dr. Rios!), everything looks good, so we sent our pre-approval forms to China to adopt Er Wei. China gave us their pre-approval on 2-24-06. It is really an almost indescribable feeling to be responsible for selecting a child for your family. It is not a comfortable position to reject children and it's difficult to remain objective when making life altering decisions like this one.

I'd like to thank my mom, grandmother, and Tracy (a.k.a. friend and free therapist :) for helping us process this decision and praying for us on this part of our journey. Tracy, our conversation about the "myth of health" truly helped us through a difficult fork in our road. Hey, that might make a good book title...I'll expect 50% of the profit but you can write it! Grandma, I know what you mean when you say "be careful what you pray for!" I think that maybe we weren't "playing God" as much as we thought but were perhaps struggling and stumbling along the path that was created for us.

"I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself." - Lone Man (Teton Sioux)

In the beginning.....

2006-05-05T14:28:00.002-05:00

I know that there are those of you out there who think that we are crazy for "going backwards" when we have achieved this level of independence with an older child. We simply love being parents and are really looking forward to many more years of parenting. Alycia expressing her desire for a sibling over the past few years was one of our deciding factors. There are so few things that we like to do that don't involve Alycia and would not include our new child, so really, it was a simple decision. The complicated decisions, however, were about to begin.

2006-05-05T14:28:00.000-05:00

OUR HOUSE IS GROWING BY TWO FEET!

We found it difficult to figure out what information to post and how far back to start our story, since some of you have been with us on this journey from the beginning and others have joined us along the way. We agreed to provide a little history.

"Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart walking outside your body" - Elizabeth Stone