Becoming a Family

It has been a wonderful, crazy, joyful, stressful few weeks at home with Zane!!!  It is hard to believe we've been together for almost 7 weeks, yet it seems like forever since I've had a full night's sleep (ha, ha!).

Zane is adjusting beautifully and is bonding well with us.  He is a smart little guy and has been testing the boundaries, of course, but its sooo fun to see him learn something new!  He's clearly understanding a good bit of what we say to him, as he will follow simple directions like  "Please put this in the trash", "Find your juice" etc.  He's speaking a little bit of English...more with coaxing from us, but a few words he'll use on his own...first one being "Mama", then "Baba", and then later "Suna" (our dog)....actually it's "Una", as he doesn't get "S's" out!!!  It is hilarious to hear him say "Una, it!" instead of "Suna, sit!"  We were driving down the road the other day and heard him get very excited in the backseat.  Monte asked "What's he saying?"  I figured out that he had spotted a cow and was saying "Cow, Moo, Moo!!!"  What proud parents we were at that moment!  :) 

We've been keeping him busy going to fun places, meeting with friends/other children & experiencing new things in the USA!  He's gone to preschool a couple of times now, to get him prepared for when Mama goes back to work (part-time) in November.  His teachers are wonderful and he seems to be doing really well there. 

Zane will have some surgery in January - 4 different specialists will work with him during one surgery time (yay!)  Thank you God for our clinical coordinator who can work this all out! 

Monte has been such a wonderful daddy.  We realized that Zane was starting to bond a little more to me (since I was with him at home every day), so Monte has picked up the night-time routine most evenings and that has helped a ton!  It gives me a little break and they are creating some special daddy & Zane memories.

God just continues to show me how blessed we are to have this little boy in our life!  Even when I'm half asleep, rocking him back to sleep in the middle of the night, I remember how short this time is, and how quickly he will grow up and not want me to rock him to sleep anymore....  So, I'm cherishing each moment as it comes!

Jet Lag

We're home!  What a trip!  It is wonderful and strange to be home again.  Our home will never be quite the same!  Definitely it will be much noisier :) We are a little mixed up on our days and nights, but we'll get there.  The plane ride was an experience.  Thank the Lord for play-doh, raisins, and sleep! Zane did sleep about half of the trip, which was so helpful.  We had several melt-downs....but we survived.  He does not like the seatbelt AT ALL.  We made it all the way to NC only short one suitcase (which promptly arrived this morning).  After the experience on the plane, we were dreading introducing the car seat for the drive home (no car seats in China).  For some reason, the car seat didn't phase him?! 

Both sets of grandparents were there at the airport to greet us: My mom (lao lao), my dad (papa Bu), Monte's mom (grammy), and Monte's dad (paw paw)!!   Some good friends who live in Gastonia, Amy & Mark & their  beautiful kids also came out to bring our car and take some arrival photos (Mark is an awesome photographer:)  So it was a joyous (though late) arrival!  When we got home, the house had been completely decked out by wonderful friends from church!!!  We had balloons and welcome home posters all over the house and a whole kitchen table full of food and toys!  What a surprise - the "Lion's Den" kids at church went all out!  I can't wait to introduce Zane to them all!!

It has been such a joy to share some of our experiences with so many friends and family this way.  While we are not talented "writers", we hope the things we have shared have been fun for you to read & to see a taste what we've been experiencing.  We'll get more pictures uploaded tomorrow & I'm sure Monte will put together some more video clips (he's the video editor of the two of us!) 

God is so gracious and good to us, we are incredibly blessed.

On the way home!

We are sitting at the Hong Kong airport with our sleeping Zane (wish he could have waited a few more minutes for a nap!! :)  

Our flight out is delayed, but we should still make it in tonight.  

Time to board!

Thank you all for your prayers!

The last hurdle

We are on the home stretch of our time in China!  Today we have the last step before we can come home:  our US consulate appointment to get Zane's visa. His TB test was negative - yeah!  We did have one little girl in our group with a positive skin test, and we all had an anxious morning praying for that family.  Fortunately her chest x-ray was negative.  There have been a couple US families detained in China because of this new requirement for a TB test right before they leave the country. 

 

We continue to fall in love with our little boy.  Even when he has a "meltdown", I can usually smile to myself and empathize with the stress he's under in this transition and all the stuff he's gone through in his short life.  He seems to understand us more and more, but is not really vocalizing any English yet.  He does get frustrated when we don't understand him…he tries to point to what he wants & it is trial and error until we get it right…. or we have a little temper tantrum!  Fortunately, they usually don't last very long - just until we can distract him onto something else.

 

It has really been a team effort with Monte and I. We are taking turns doing the different things for Zane that serve to "bond" us with him.  It's been fun just to see a couple little things that are already better for him.  When we got him, his skin felt extremely leathery and dry & for a couple days he was constantly scratching himself.  We immediately started doing lots of baby lotion after his bath & that has been a sweet bonding time.  Now his skin feels like it should…plus he's not scratching himself anymore!   He does seem to be bonding to us.  We got our first "kisses" from him Sunday!

 

It's been a really busy week with appointments or other activities every day.  That's made it somewhat difficult to have a set schedule.  Poor Zane has missed his nap a couple of days and had brief sleeps on the bus…. but when we get back to the room, he's had just enough sleep to pretty much defeat naptime…then he starts nodding off at dinnertime!!!

 

I'm attaching a photo at True children's home where Zane spent a little time after his surgeries.  We are standing in front of Zane's old crib!  He didn't act like he remembered much as he was very young when there, but it was still special to see it.  We also got to meet other special needs children currently being cared for there.  They are so precious!  It was much nicer than I imagined & has a really low  (2 to 1) child to caregiver ratio. The orphanages are more like 6 to 1.  

 

So we have gotten more info re: Zane's story!  In addition to True Children's home (which provided his surgeries and initial foster care), Another foundation called Pearl River Outreach also helped our little boy by funding another foster family to care for him after he went back into the orphanage's care.  So, basically, he spent most of his life in 2 foster homes.  It is obvious that he's had great care.

 

On Sunday we got to visit a Cantonese/English church service.  It was open to anyone, which was surprising to us.  They had translated several popular contemporary songs into Cantonese.  It was such a blessing to sing "In Christ Alone" together in two languages (Zane's and ours!)  The speaker talked about the grace of God....which was special to me because Zane's name means "God is Gracious".  We met a man from Zane's home city of Zhanjiang, who was very enthusiastic about our English name choice for Zane...this was made us feel very good, since it is something we thought and prayed about very seriously.

We have loved visiting China, but are getting tired of living in a hotel room.  We are ready to come home & get into a more normal routine! 

 

Blessings to you all!

Zane chopsticks video

Fatherhood

After four days of fatherhood Carmen insisted that I write something for the blog.  She said, "Our friends and family want to know what you're thinking.  You have a way with words that keeps people interested, I'll just check the spelling…" I said, "What do you meen I yous spel chek?"  She answered, "Sometimes you outsmart it."  I haven't decided if that is a compliment or not…I guess it is.  Today is day five of this new lifestyle for all of us and I've found myself questioning my sanity in making this decision and other times overjoyed with my new son.
 
Knowing how much he's been through already in his first two years of life, he actually impresses me as much as he has me knocking my head against the wall.  One minute I'll be asking myself, "How do you get crayon out of carpet?" the next minute notice how he has to take his shoes off once he enters the room.  He takes my socks off even and stuffs them into my shoes.   During his first bath I couldn't fathom why it was so fun to thrash around in the tub.  (glad the hotel bathroom has a drain in the floor outside the tub.)  But then the first time I took him to the potty he demonstrated how he's already pottytrained!…mostly.  After seeing some impressive footage on America's Funniest Home Videos I had been imagining what feeding time might turn into with a two year old boy.  Again I was awestruck with his dexterity as he utilized a pair of chopsticks to feed himself.  There's a short video clip of him skillfully taming some ramen noodles.   He does it to scrambled eggs too.
 
Today was day six for our little trooper as we went to get his medical examination and vaccinations.  He probably felt like a human pin cushion as the nurses concluded all five inoculations.  They tenderly placed little butterfly band aides over each shot location as they finished.  If they had been tattoos you'd thought he was into body art.  The two doctors we saw confirmed that he had all body parts accounted for and in good working order.  I found it ironic that the ENT doctor was actually blind in one eye…As I put my wallet away I walked out of there feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted in more ways than one.  We were all glad to have that behind us.

Strollering around!

Ni Hao, from Guangzhou!

We've had a great couple of days!  Yesterday we received the adoption decree and applied for Zane's passport. For now we are just waiting... So in the meantime, our guide Rosa has taken us grocery shopping and sightseeing.  The grocery was quite different!  It was kind of like a Wal-Mart, except it took 3 floors.  There were these crazy escalators that your shopping cart hooked onto that took you to each floor.  We bought a stroller there & have been more mobile ever since!  Zane loves going out in the stroller!  We took a long walk yesterday around a few blocks.  It is a very busy city of somewhere around 10million with people, cars, and bikes everywhere.  I was amazed to see two very young children walking without any adults around...then we saw more & more children as school let out.  Imagine allowing a 6 year old to escort a 4 year old around New York City!!   There is construction everywhere...they are building skyscrapers everywhere you look. What is fascinating about it is that all the scaffolding is made out of bamboo. 

Today we went to a beautiful Chinese garden with many Koi ponds.  Zane loved watching the fish go crazy when he tossed them food. Then this afternoon we went swimming at the hotel's pool!  What a treat after a hot, hot morning!  The pool required swim caps, which we didn't bring with us....so we bought some there.  Aren't we precious? 

So we continue to learn about our son - foods he likes/doesn't like, what gets him cranky, what helps soothe him.  He is surprisingly prone to sharing (mostly food) with everyone.  When we give him purell or brush his teeth, he insists that Monte and I both join in as well. Yesterday am, he started calling me "mama" & has that down pat!  He's calling Monte something we can't distinguish, but we know he's referring to Monte when he says it. He's said "daddy" a few times, but not as clearly as "mama" (Mama is what he would have called his foster mom, too).  He's also saying "ball".  He understands "no"! (He doesn't like it, but he understands it!!).  He waves and says "bye" to everyone whenever we leave a place. 

We are a conspicuous family, for sure.  We get lots of stares and questions. One night our waitress actually left to go find someone who could speak english so she could ask us questions about Zane.  A man in the elevator gave us a beautiful "blessing", and then said that "he" was a "lucky man" - we weren't sure whether he was talking about Zane or Monte, but either way, they are both blessed to have each other!!!  I'm sure that this will be similar in the US as well, so I guess we had better get used to it! 

Adoption is final!

Ni hao!

Well, today we signed the paperwork and had the official interviews with Chinese officials.  Zane is forever our son!  Zane has done much better today (he got a nap, unlike yesterday!)  He still has a strong will....he lets you know it when he's not happy!  He is quite attached to golden raisins and Cheerios.  If he sees us take them away, we have a little temper tantrum on our hands (sometimes complete with kicking feet and all!) 

He is constantly talking....we just can't understand him!  Neither can our guide, Rosa, because he has heard mostly Cantonese which is very different from Mandarin.  We're not sure how his speech is doing, it's hard to tell without knowing the language.  However, we have learned that "niao niao" is "pee pee"....believe it or not he is potty trained....squatty potty trained, that is!!!  We just keep our ears open in all the babbling for the magic words: "niao niao" and we head for the nearest bathroom!  I'm not sure how I'm going to get him to adjust to our toilets.  For now, we just stand him up on the toilet seat & he does his thing!  (He's still so little that he's not tall enough for the "normal" position anyway.)  Speaking of little...he is a bit smaller than we anticipated!!  His 24-month and 2T clothes that we brought are swallowing him up!!!!  He's 26lbs.

I just spent some time looking at the website of the Children's home that funded his surgeries and am sooooo impressed and touched and amazed by what they are doing. http://www.truechildrenshome.org    I've learned from their executive director, Jenny Smith, (from Myrtle Beach SC of all places) that Zane spent most of his first year of life with them either at the home (immediately post op) or with his Children's Home foster family.  Then he went back to the orphanage, which then placed him in another foster home.  So I think he's mainly been in 2 foster homes.  On Friday, we are hopefully going to visit the Children's home (its about an hour & 1/2 from here).  If you go to their website, go to the bottom of the home page and click on "TCH News".  Look at the newsletters from August 2007, October 2007, June 2008, and July 2008.  You can see baby pics of him from different times during his first year.  They call Zane "Chi" or "Hai Chi".  I will be forever grateful to this organization for what they did for my baby.  He has had a rough road with two surgeries, but these wonderful people clearly nurtured and loved Zane.

Bedtime was not nearly the trial tonight as it was yesterday. I think we'll get a routine going pretty quickly.  We actually all took a nap together this afternoon after another somewhat stressful/busy morning and I think that made a huge difference in how we all felt tonight.

Please note: we went out for Cantonese tonight....thought we'd be safe by passing on the pig's feet, fried frog, & eel...but check out the chicken we were served!!!  Hilarious.  It actually tasted pretty good, once you got past the presentation!!!!  :-D  Monte is proud of my bravery.

We love you all!  Thank you SO much for your prayers!  God has blessed us with such a special little boy!!!!!

Zane!

I am a tired mommy!!!

I know you are all dying to hear about our precious Zane!   I will give you the quick version tonight as we are all exhausted and will give more detail tomorrow.  The civil affairs office was truly chaotic with many many families, orphanage workers, and children.  It was very overwhelming.  Fortunately we didn't have to wait but a couple of minutes or so before they brought out Zane.  He immediately started rolling a toy car with Monte.  He's EXTREMELY active!  :)  We are going to be on our toes (I think God had a reason for us to do the triathlon; we're going to need some major endurance to keep up with this one!)  I learned more about his last year & will go into that later, suffice it to say, he's moved around a bit between a foster home, children's home, and orphanage.  He had quite a meltdown as we drove away...he saw his nanny & was pretty inconsolable for awhile. Cheerios came to the rescue and he finally settled down.  We came back to the room and played & had dinner (Pizza Hut with the other family - no Chinese culture for us tonight!) and things were looking up!  He was starting to reach for my hand & clearly knew we were the ones he was with.  In my humble opinion...he's very smart!  He is curious about everything & figured out some stacking toys very quickly.  After dinner was bath time....I don't think he's ever had a bath....or seen bubbles before.  We actually heard him giggle (he thought that sending water flying at Monte was hilarious!)  He a little monkey, trying to climb everything.  Also loves to throw things.  Definitely all boy.  At bedtime, we truly learned what "crying yourself to sleep" looked like.  He was again inconsolable, crying for "mama" (this new mama was crying, too).  Then, suddenly, his head started bobbing up & down and mid-wail he was fast asleep.  I think I shall join him.

We love you all, please keep praying for this little one's adjustment.  We are completely foreign to him & he is going to be grieving at his loss.  

Goodbye Beijing!

I cannot believe that today is our last day as just "Monte & Carmen."  What an awesome husband I have!  In some ways I'm sad to share him, but in other ways I can't wait to see how great of a dad he will be!!!! 

This morning, we attended Beijing International Christian Fellowship, which is only for foreigners.  Everyone entering must show their passport in order to be allowed admittance.  It was very similar to services in the US, but with a multinational congregation. It was a blessing to be there & gave me a new perspective on prayer for this nation as well as the US. As we are learning so much about the culture and especially after the service today, I'm beginning to feel "connected" with China.  This is a wonderful thing because as of tomorrow, we'll be forever connected with this nation!!   

In the afternoon we went to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City & had "Peking Duck" for dinner.  We enjoyed the sights, but I am ready to go meet our son!

Tomorrow am we get our wake up call at 4am, then we will fly south to Guangzhou for the biggest day of all.....GOTCHA DAY!!!!!!

Beijing

It has been a wonderful day in Beijing!  It started very early this morning...but that was no problem because we woke up around 4am & didn't sleep much after that!  (This would be 4pm in NC).  After breakfast at the hotel, we headed off for the Summer Palace, which was a whole complex of interesting buildings and courtyards.  After this we went to the Jade market where we looked at some beautiful jade jewelry (none of which we chose to afford!)  We had a traditional Chinese lunch which was quite good, pretty similar to Chinese food we've had in the US.  The Great Wall was the next stop on our adventure, and Monte and I climbed the "hard" route...(of course, how could Monte want to take the "easy" route??)  The reward for taking the hard route was great views of the wall and surrounding mountains...and a great workout! On the way to dinner, we stopped for a few minutes at the Olympic Green, which was very cool! The architecture really is spectacular!  Overall, we have found Beijing to be a lovely city....lots of landscaping everywhere you go, clean, much less chaotic than I expected with all the bikes. The weather has been awesome!  We hear this is the "golden" time to visit because of the blue skies and very pleasant temperatures.  We know that the cool temps won't last for us....Guangzhou is much hotter! 

There are 13 families here from our agency, and we met other families from other agencies on the plane trip as well.  It is a really nice group of people - we are all so excited & its been a blessing to share our adoption stories with one another.  We'll do more sightseeing tomorrow, then each family will go to their child's province.  There is one other family going with us to Guangdong province.

One more day and then we will meet Zane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

China, here we come!

We are so excited about becoming parents!  At the same time its hard to fathom how much our life is about to change.  The room is all ready to go, and Zane's bags are packed (Monte's and mine still have a way to go, but that's not as important, of course!)

Our travel dates have come together in such a short period of time, that we still don't have the official itinerary, yet, but here is what we're expecting:

We'll arrive in Beijing on Friday afternoon.  Saturday & Sunday we'll be sightseeing and adjusting to the time change.  Sunday morning we'll be able to attend an international church!! 

Monday morning we'll fly to Guangzhou, the capital of the province Zane lives in.  Monday, Sept 14 will be "Gotcha Day"....this will be a big day for us, as we'll meet Zane for the first time and we'll have important meetings / paperwork where custody is turned over to us.  We're hoping we'll be able to meet his foster family, but that may not happen.  

There will be other meetings with officials that week, and a medical exam, but we'll have a good amount of down time with Zane. 

Tuesday, Sept 22 is our Consulate appointment:  this is where we will receive Zane's immigration paperwork. 

Wednesday, we'll be waiting to get his visa, then that evening we'll travel by bus to Hong Kong.  We're hoping to go to DisneyWorld in HongKong on Thursday....we'll see how things are going with Zane! 

Then Friday the 25th, we'll fly home!  When we get out of the plane in Chicago, Zane will officially be a US citizen:) 

It is hard to express how excited I am....what an amazing gift!

Getting Started

My sweet friend, Julia, has been encouraging me to start this blog to record our "journey" to Zane! We are adopting this precious 2-year-old boy from ZhanJiang, China....hopefully within the next month! His Chinese name is Zhan Hai Chi, and we are going to call him Zane. ZhanJiang is on the southern coast of China, in Guangdong province, not too far from Hong Kong. It is actually pretty close to Vietnam. "Zhan" is the name given to all orphans in ZhanJiang's orphanage, and "Hai" is the middle name for all orphans in this orphanage found during 2007. So, "Chi" would be the name unique to our little one. Zane has a cleft lip (already repaired) and cleft palate (to be repaired). Because of his special needs, he has actually been with a foster family rather than living in the orphanage. We can't wait to meet him!!!!!

It has been a long road to this point, but not nearly so long as it could have been. We have seen the hand of God moving us to this particular place and time in our lives and can't help but praise Him for His goodness to us! I'm not the greatest at journaling, but we'll use this blog as a way of updating our friends and family of our journey while we are in China, as well as using it to archive Zane's story for him to read someday:)

First, a little about us: Monte is my amazing husband. I met him the summer I graduated from high school in 1994 (wow). I was on my youth group's "choir tour" to Jackson Hole, Wyoming (aka, the motherland according to Monte:) Long story short, he got my address from a little girl that I had become "pen-pals" with. We corresponded via snail mail for awhile, while I attended college at Samford in Birmingham, AL, and he finished up college in Alpine, TX. Eventually, we graduated from written letters to email and phone calls & he graduated college & moved to Wyoming to live out a young man's dream ministry job in a glorious part of the country. (I do have to say, in some ways email is our loss these days....I used to anticipate going to the mailboxes every day, hoping for a sweet letter from him - even though we were "just friends"! I still have every letter he wrote...but the emails are long gone, deleted in an old Samford email account somewhere). One day, we finally met in person again. I was convinced that God was going to let me meet him once more to get him "out of my system"....he couldn't possibly be as great as I was making him out to be! But alas, that was not to be & no other man has stood a chance ever since!!! Our feelings continued to grow over the years, and in 1997, he moved from beautiful Wyoming to the hot & humid South (it must be love!).

I used to feel almost guilty that he left what was an amazing place and time to come be with me. Even after we were married, it seemed like he was still "searching" or "waiting" for God to show him His plan. Monte had experienced such fulfillment in Wyoming, and when I graduated with my pharmacy degree & we moved to Asheville, NC for my residency, he was still searching for his place. A few years after we married, we felt God's leading for us to go to Kenya on a medical mission trip. Looking back, this trip was really pivotal for us. It solidified our heart for the world and showed me so much about faith & God's faithfulness. Monte also met a man named Dennis, who would eventually inspire my husband to go back to school to get additional training as a biomedical technician.

In the meantime, Monte and I began our journey to being parents:) We tried without medical intervention for about 3 years, then it was pretty clear we were going to need help. So, after another year of many appointments with doctors and specialists, surgery, and further fertility treatments, we came to a cross roads. We could go on with some very expensive treatments that were not guaranteed, or we could adopt.

A few things happened that brought us to the mutual decision to adopt. A friend of mine from work made a statement one day that really stuck with me. She said that raising children was so much more about passing on our values than about passing on our DNA. As that truth really became a part of me, it was easier to see the beauty of adoption as the gift that it is. I was ready to get off the fertility train and look further into adoption.

The event that was the turning point for Monte could have been seen by some as a tragedy, but Monte saw God's divine providence so clearly that he embraced adoption for our family. Some friends of ours adopted a little girl from Guatemala. Soon after she arrived here, they realized that she was deaf. While this could be seen as a hard thing for this family, Monte knew them, and knew that God had brought this precious one to them specifically because he knew they would be amazing parents for this little girl. (And of course they are!! They quickly and miraculously received grant money and she now has cochlear implants and can hear! God is so good!)

By this time, Monte had completed his studies, and amazingly a position came open at Samaritan's Purse offering him the opportunity to use his new skills all over the world! So, we moved to Lenoir, NC, and Monte works in a ministry where he is passionate about his work and he is able to see the difference that his job makes for people in developing countries. So, my precious husband is no longer "searching"....he has found that "nitch" after all the interim years of waiting and preparing. What a joy to see!

While I was incredibly happy for my husband, I was not immediately enthralled with moving to the small town of Lenoir. I loved Asheville. I loved my friends and had a great job. It was hard to leave. Even after moving to Lenoir, I kept commuting back to Asheville for several months to work (and to do fertility treatments). That could not last, of course, but about the same time we let go of the "dream" of conceiving....God also brought me to a crossroads with my job in Asheville. I decided to let it go as well. Once that happened, it was like all the unknown pieces just started falling into place. I happened to meet the CFO and CEO of the hospital here in Lenoir that next Sunday at church, and within a week had a position at the hospital not 5 minutes from our home. We started making friends here in Lenoir, and getting involved in our new church.

What has been really amazing is the mix of people that God has brought into our life here in this small town. Even though I worked in a hospital in Asheville, I wouldn't say that we had many personal, spiritual connections with many people in the medical field. Here, we have friends in our church who include speech therapists, teachers of special needs children, our family physician, and believe it or not, even an ENT surgeon. It's like God handpicked the people around us that could best support us and our son, Zane. God has already used each one of them, along with many others, to encourage us in our wait for Zane and help us see that God is sovereign and will be with us every step of the way in his young life -- we're learning first hand that it's not all about us & our desire to control our circumstances. God is much better at doing that than we are!
Our Adoption Photo by Mark Moore (www.markmoorephotography.com)