Moving Along

This is the 'story of our lives' right now...moving along.

The house build is moving along, the adoption is kind of moving along...we are going day to day, moving along, trying to get closer to bringing our son home.

We got 3 short videos a few weeks ago. Needless to say, it took me a few days before I could watch & not bawl my eyes out. The video made him see so much more real to me. He is happy & smiling, so joyful. I also bawled because you can see the love between him & his foster mother. It breaks my heart to know that his he will be taken from the only mother he has ever know, that his little world will be rocked to the core. But I see how he loves her & I can only hope that one day he will be like this again, with us.

These videos showed us that he knows no sign language, rather communicates through gestures....lots of thumbs up. He does make noises however when he gets happy & is proud of what he has done. The sparkle in his eyes...oh my! I could go on forever about his cuteness...but I will save you :)

They orphanage in China has also taken him in for more hearing test. The test results they have provided however do our doctor here in the US no good, as it does not show pitches, etc. So we will not know the extent of his deafness until we get him home.

As I said, we are moving along...well, as a couple we are! We have all our dossier paperwork done & back from the Chinese consulate. However, the state is NOT moving along. We have now been waiting for our child abuse clearance for over 7 weeks. We need these in order to officially be done with our homestudy & start our USCIS for the I800. When we did the clearances previously, it took a week...2 max.

We only have 6 months total to do everything for China...so now at 7 weeks waiting for this, it is really eating away at precious time. My grandfather has always been big about writing your congressman...that is what he is there for he has always told me, so I took his advice. Yesterday, I did it, I wrote our congressman...& wouldnt you know, they wrote back right away! They are talking to the agency that does the clearances as we speak, so finger crossed!

I know this is a lot of thrown together thoughts...but just wanted to get them out. I need to write more about the 'special needs' adoption & his deafness....but that will need to wait for now.

Hi ICLW Peeps!

Hello! Welcome to my blog :) It's been a few months since I have done an ICLW & wow do I have some news if this is your first time here or you haven't been here in a while!

Want to learn about our loooooong journey? Click here to check out our timeline. Want the cliff note version?! WE ARE PARENTS!!

As of September 20th, we have been the parents to an adorable little boy in China :D All the twist & turns have brought us to exactly where we need to be...this little guys mom & dad. We have sped through our homestudy & dossier & are hopeful of traveling in the spring to bring our little guy home.

Random facts about our adoption journey:
1) I knew from the minute I saw him that he was our son...no questions about it
2) He is deaf
3) I consider this our unplanned adoption. We were not planning on adopting until we got in our new home & settled, but I wouldn't change this for the world.
4) Our son will now add to my family's craziness of birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. He will be the 6th birthday in a 2 week period!

Thanks for stopping by!!

Fundraising

We are doing a fundraiser to help bring our little boy home. If you love coffee, know somebody that does or even looking for holiday gifts, check out our page here. Just Love Coffee Roasters has a great variety of coffees & I love how they help people do fundraising for all different reasons.

If you go through our store front from the link above or even the link on my home page, a percentage of everything sold goes directly to bringing A home.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me. Also, if you are in need of a fundraiser yourself, check out Just Love Coffee

Stairway to Heaven

I have not talked about it much yet, however our son is deaf (more coming in upcoming post). We are not adopting him because he is deaf. We are not adopting him due to his 'special need.' We are adopting him because the moment we saw him, we knew. We knew he was meant to be our son. He had a twinkle in his eye & his smile...we just knew. We would be adopting him no matter if he could hear or not.

We do not feel the need to tell people he is deaf, as it doesn't matter to us. If they ask if he speaks English, we will then tell him, but other than that...we do not 'advertise.' I prefer not to tell people, because it seems as soon as they do..the praising starts.

We have been told we are building a stairway to heaven, that we are angels...you name it, we have heard it. This may sound wrong...but I HATE it. I am not doing this to be a 'saint.' His hearing does not change the way I felt about him when I first saw him. His hearing does not change the way we will parent him...he will have every opportunity we would have given a hearing child...we are not doing this for a gold star, a free pass at the pearly gates, whatever you want to call it. I don't want the praise, I do not want to hear about how amazing we are. We are not! We are just a couple that fell in love with a boy & knew he was the missing piece to our family.

I had heard people talk about how others would say things like this when they just said they were adopting & I knew it would be annoying, but I had no idea just how much it would bother me. I had no idea how 'bad' it would be because we were adopting a waiting child.

If I were giving birth to a child & he happened to be deaf, nobody would be telling me I am building my stairway to heaven, so why now?!

I am just me...I am just A's mom. I am nobody special because of who my son is. But I do not think the comments will get better. Am I wrong to be so annoyed by them?!

Update

We got our first update on our lil man last night. (we will all him A)

I cannot get over how fast he is growing already! I feel like he is losing his baby fat cheeks & they cut his hair, he looks like a lil grown up man. He is so tall too..the 95% tile for US babies his age, so a tall guy. I cried when I saw his pictures. I already feel like I am missing out on so much & he is literally growing up before my eyes.

They say he likes to hold paper towel rolls & act like he is singing; imitating what he sees on TV. He also picks up after his foster sister...a child after my own heart, HA! They say next month they will take video of him, so I cannot wait for that.

We already have 2 of our 4 homestudies done & will be doing the last 2 all next week. We also have finished getting all our dossier paperwork & already have some of it at the consulate. Hoping to have the rest to the consulate in the next 2 weeks. At this rate the dossier will be done in a month..meaning it only took us 2 months! We are going as fast as we can...we want A home!

Fast Forward

We are on super fast mode to get our lil man home. The thought of having him in another country one day longer than he has to be breaks our heart. So it has not even been a month since we decided to adopt this little sweet heart & we already have done all our homestudy paperwork & had our first visit. We have 3 more visits to do & have them all scheduled & will be done with them by November first. So that means 1 visit next week and 2 visits the week after that. We are already over half way done with our dossier paperwork as well...so we are chugging right along.

My head is still spinning & there are days that I look at his picture & cannot believe he is my son. Even a month and a half ago, I could have never imagined I would be in this spot, working on everything to bring my son home.

So nuts, but I love it. I love seeing our families so excited & I love the way G lights up when he talks about him. (I'm totally understanding this 'your husband is so sexy as a dad' thing!)

Our goal is to have everything done & in for the dossier by January. Originally it was February...but the way it's going, we now thing January is plenty of time!!!

How we became parents!

So yea, things have all happened faster than I ever could have imagined!!

On September 9th I did something I do a few times a month-checking out waiting children's lists. I figured this would be like any other look I had made in the past...I see cute kids, one may stand out more than another, but no child would ever catch my eye enough to inquire on.

Not so this time! There was this little guy...his smile & eyes lit up the picture. He caught my eye right away. I read his bio & noticed he was deaf, however that did not phase me at all. I saved the link to his page, but thought...no, this isnt the right time, we do not even have a house, nobody will let us adopt in the middle of building a house. At lunch I decided to mention something to G about this little guy & show him the information. He was like what are you waiting for?? Mind you, he has never said this before. I still sat on it a bit. Then I sent my mom the link & she too was like go for it!

I kept worrying about the house stuff, but was like, what the heck...what is the worst that can happen? They say no. So I put in for more information on this little man. A day later they called me, however I missed the call. Once I heard the voicemail, the nerves kicked in..I could not believe this was happening, we were actually talking about a child.

I called the social worker back & after a 30 minute conversation, I knew in my heart that this was my son. I went to G with all the information they provided me with at the time & got working on our application with the agency so that we could receive all his medical records. 2 days later we received his medical records...this began a week of insanity!!!

We started with a friend of ours that spoke Chinese. We asked him to check the records & make sure the translation we had received was indeed correct. We then sent them on to our GP just to see what he thought & if it would be worth taking on to Cincinnati Children's International Adoption program. The GP saw what we did...a healthy child, just hard of hearing.

Last Friday, the 20th we were off work & literally attached at the hip as we awaited the call from Cincinnati Children's. We had sent his records over 2 days before so that they may look over everything. We were told the dr. would call between 11:30-4. This meant we did everything together waiting for this call. I wanted a smoothie...G went with me :) Finally about 12:30 we were tired of sitting in our little apt & decided to go to the outlet mall. We figured that if the dr. called this would be a place that was easy to walk out & set on a bench somewhere.

At 1:45, when we were almost to the mall, the dr called! The next 40 minutes were spent in the car, in the mall parking lot speaking with the dr. After going over any concerns we may have had & a bunch of little things here & there, she ended her call by saying: 'hang up the phone & call the agency right away, do not lose this little guy!'

See, we had found out the day before that another couple had requested his records. You know that feeling when you have your first real heartbreak & you think you just felt your heart actually break in half?? That was the feeling I had when I found this out. In my heart, I knew this little guy was meant to be my son & the thought of something happening killed me.

We hung up the phone with the dr., looked at each other & started crying. It was all coming together...everything was starting to make sense, he was always meant to be our son. I called the agency right away & left a message, followed by an email. Within moments our email started 'blowing' up with emails from different people at the agency. They stated they would be accepting no further applications on this little guy & would start moving forward with us.

Saturday was spent filling out some paperwork for him, to make sure we were indeed suitable parents for him. After going through our paperwork, we received a call on Monday evening congratulating us on being parents...us parents!!!

Now we start the paperwork & homestudy process. We are trying to do everything as fast as possible because we want this little guy home with us!!