Signs of Fall

Fall is my absolutely favorite time of year, and yesterday was a perfectly glorious fall day. We went pumpkin picking and the weather was so nice that Amelia actually wore shorts. We won't have that kind of beautiful weather too much longer, so we really need to enjoy it while we can before winter comes. I also managed to take a picture of these geese as they flew overhead. Fall is here!

Back up and running

I made the blog unavailable for a while because of some concerns I was having about privacy, but I couldn't locate the blog when I searched for it, so I am opening it back up (and hopefully keeping it more up-to-date)!

The family on Cadillac Mountain

Amelia and I in the Azalea Gardens
Spencer (or maybe Charlie?)

The saga continues....

So, it has been a long time since I've updated. I really need to start posting more often... About a month and a half ago, we contacted our wonderful agency and let them know that we are open to adopting either a boy or a girl. We realize that since most families are waiting for girls, this means we most likely will be matched with a little boy. We are absolutely thrilled with the possibility, and our agency director was very happy too and told us that things could go "quickly" for us. We decided to take a nice, relaxing family vacation to Bar Harbor, Maine and Acadia National Park. It was wonderful, but unfortunately on the very last day we were there, Brian dislocated his shoulder (on the top of South Bubble, no less). He has had problems with his shoulder dislocating since the injury first happened in high school (he was a gymnast), but this time he couldn't get his shoulder to go back in by himself. We ended up having the park ranger and some EMTs help him hike back down the mountain with his shoulder still dislocated. He spent the last evening of our vacation heavily medicated in the local hospital. His shoulder was dislocated for about three hours, and because of that, he now has some nerve damage that could take a few months to heal. Once the nerves are back to normal, he needs to schedule surgery to repair his shoulder and hopefully prevent it from dislocating again. The good news is that the surgeon expects him to make a full recovery. The bad news is that we asked our agency not to show us any files until 2009. Hopefully by then his surgery and physical therapy will be behind us.... We are trying to stay optimistic. We knew that this was a surgery that he would need to have at some point in time, and I know that someday I will look back and be grateful that we needed to wait so that the child that is right for our family can join us when the time is right.

In other sad news for our family, we lost our beloved cat Oliver to cancer. He was such a big part of our family for thirteen years. It is amazing to me how much one little being can fill a house while he is here, and leave it feeling so empty after he is gone. We miss him so much. Our cat Emmy has been very clingy since Oliver died, and she is alone in the house all day (and sometimes all evening), so we know that she misses him too. We know that we will never be able to replace Oliver, but we also knew that we would look for another cat to join our family in the near future. Last week Amelia and I stopped at the Humane Society to ask for an application and was told that we could only fill out an application once we found a cat that we were interested in. We decided to take a look around and visit all the cats, but I never expected to find a cat that I was interested in. Long story short, Amelia and I fell in love with a orange cat that the shelter had named Truxton. Brian went to meet him the next day at lunchtime, and he filled out an application for him on the spot. We were approved (and no one even needed to fingerprint us!), and I picked him up that afternoon. We renamed him Spencer, and he seems to be exactly what we all needed. He and Emmy still have to officially meet since Spence has been sequestered in our guest bedroom for the past few days. Today I took him to the vet for a checkup, and when Emmy saw him in the carrier, she ran and hid behind the curtains in our family room. I am sure that with time they will be friends.
Stay tuned... I will add pictures, but I can't seem to get that function to work right now.

Updates....

We have had a very busy few months, and I can't believe it has been so long since I have posted an update. Lots of things have been going on...

First, I called our homestudy agency a few months ago to request that we get started on our homestudy update so that we could update our USCIS paperwork which will expire in June. They are a very small local agency that deals mainly with domestic adoption, and when I called them they told me that they are no longer working with families who are adopting internationally because they don't have enough IA families to make it worth their while to become Hague compliant. They weren't sure that they could provide us with an update that would be acceptable under the new Hague guidelines. I contaced USCIS, and was told that they also did not know and were awaiting guidance. Well, we certainly didn't want to wait around to find out that a homestudy from this agency wouldn't be acceptable, so we decided to switch homestudy agencies. The great news is that now we will be able to work with the same social worker that provided our homestudy for Amelia's adoption (she was not able to work with us when we first started this second adoption, but now is working with an agency that will allow her to provide a homestudy for another agency). We are thrilled to be able to work with her again. The bad news is that we have had to do a lot of the paperwork AGAIN for the new agency. We are also required to take the 10 hours of adoption courses, which we have never done before. They are actually really good. SO hopefully we will be done with the homestudy process and get our USCIS paperwork updated soon and be able to put it behind us for another 15-18 months!

We have also been talking for quite a while about special needs adoption, but I always was the one to say that I would not switch to special needs unless I felt strongly pulled toward a specific need. Well, for the last year or so, I have definitely felt a pull, and finally I felt like we just really needed to take action. We were added to our agency's list of families waiting for a waiting child on Feb. 28. We were told that it will still be at least a year, based on the needs that we said we would be willing to consider and the age of the child we requested. With our agency, we are also able to stay in the NSN line. I will say that I feel like we have made the right choice for our family, and putting ourselves on the waiting list has just felt like what we were supposed to do.

Tonight I helped with a fundraiser/silent auction/dinner that our local FCC group does every year, and I won two of the auctions that I bid on (unlike last year where I was severely outbid on everything). We have now added another gorgeous mooncake mold to our collection (above), and a basket that contained an awesome cookbook of food from Hunan Province. It even has a recipe for the famous steamed eggs that Amelia ate until we thought she would pop. I can't wait to test out some recipes! Best of all, the money all goes to provide medical care for children in China. I already can't wait until next year!

Cyber Shower

Some of us from our January DTC Yahoo group had a cyber shower today. Each family gets another family to send a shower gift to, and everyone opens their gifts at the same time. We received the nicest gifts from Amy, Eddie, and Morgan. They sent us a butterfly spinner that has cute little butterflies and ladybugs that spin and rol around inside it. Amelia loves it and can't wait for her sister to play with it. They also sent matching hooded bath towels and washcloths with a very cute fishy theme, and an adorable ladybug crib sheet. The ladybugs are the exact same purple, pink and green that I am using in the baby's room! Thanks so much for the wonderful gifts! We appreciate them and can't wait for our little girl to be home so that we can enjoy them with her!

Secret buddy

We got a wonderful surprise on Friday afternoon at the end of a very long and stressful week. We got a huge package from our secret buddy! This package contained so many great things for the baby. We got the most wonderfully soft blanket (Amelia is trying to convince me that it is hers), a cute hooded bath towel with a princess crown attached, bath items, princess-themed bibs with really cute sayings on them, a Cinderella sippy cup, an outfit, an E1mo doll that makes sounds like he is blowing kisses when you put his hand up to his lips (Amelia is trying to convince me that E1mo is also hers), a cute ladybug bib, and a thoughtful card. Thanks secret buddy! We have been thinking of you and I hope that all is well!

My big girl

Xin Nian Kuai Le and Happy 1 Year LID-versary

In just a few hours, it will be Chinese New Year. We are celebrating tomorrow with me going to Amelia's preschool to read a book and hand out hong bao to the kids in her class. I love Amelia's school so much for so many reasons, but this week I am especially happy because they have actually done a whole unit on China and Chinese New Year. Another little girl in the class was also adopted from China, and her mom brought in a bunch of Chinese-themed stamps that the kids have been making art projects with. Their teachers have been reading China-themed books all week, and they have made paper lanterns to hang in the room. Every day her teachers tell me that Amelia stands up during story time and talks about whatever book they are reading for that day (mostly because they seem to all be books that we own and read often!). At one point she stood up and talked about the Great Wall and why it was built (to keep the bad guys out). She is so proud to be Chinese. Anyway, I love her school, and the director has told me that since we have already had one child there, a spot for the baby is just about guaranteed. I plan to call them often after Amelia goes to kindergarten next year, just to remind them that we are still waiting for our second child and that we would love for her to attend there as well!

Tomorrow also is the one year anniversary of the date when our paperwork was logged in at the CCAA. It is definitely a milestone, and I am happy that we have one year of the wait behind us, but unfortunately we will probably wait at least two more years before we hear anything. I do like the fact that the LID anniversary falls on Chinese New Year this year though!

Xin Nian Kuai Le! Happy New Year!

Froggy quilt

I finished this quilt top last week when I had a day off. This will be a wall hanging in the baby's room. So far, the nursery has a garden theme with frogs and ladybugs. I love the way this quilt top turned out, and I am really excited that I finally figured out how to miter the borders!

Themed Hong Bao!

@lympic red envelopes
Amelia's @lympic shoes


Yesterday I was out shopping and decided to pick up some extra hong bao (lucky red envelopes that adults fill with lucky money and give out to children as part of Chinese New Year), and look what I found. I found @lympic-themed red envelopes, complete with the @lympic rings and a rat (for the Year of the Rat) playing several @lympic sports! Our family really looks forward to the @lypmics, especially the summer games, and have been really excited about the B*eijing games ever since they were announced. Ironically, when we adopted Amelia, she came to us wearing a pair of 2008 "@lympic" shoes. The design on them certainly wasn't the offical @lympic design, but they had a yin/yang symbol and the colors of the @lympic rings on them in place of the zeros in 2008. I always wondered how, in 2003 in a very rural part of China, a baby in an orphanage would end up with 2008 @lympic-themed shoes. I think it just shows how much of a big deal these games are to China. I believe that the @lympics has been a big reason for the big slow-down recently, and I am truly hoping that things will turn around after the @lympics are over and more effort can be directed toward getting children who need homes "paper-ready" so that they have a chance to be adopted.