The Waiting...Empty Strollers....Both Ends Burning

We are still awaiting news of our Preliminary Approval (PA) from China.  We are waiting much longer than the "usual" but we hope that is b/c they are taking their time with our PA that the next approval from China (Letter of Approval - LOA) will go a bit faster. Then on to the "US wait".

On the topic of waiting...

I have a friend online who is going to DC in late August for the "Empty Stroller" march on Washington. Families are marching for their waiting children that are sitting in orphanages around the world. The march is being organized by the Both Ends Burning Campaign, a global movement to transform the broken system of international adoption. During the march, protesters will be pushing empty strollers wrapped in red tape to represent the bureaucracy that prevents children from being with families.

For more information, see two videos below...the first provides a horrific impact of the broken process in Vietnam.  The second provides an overview of Both Ends Burning Campaign and their objective.

And if you need another reason why --

Emma will sit in either foster care or orphanage care for months longer than is necessary b/c of the delays during the process (on both the US & China side). While the process is required to keep adoptions "legit" by the Hague convention (the international body that governs adoptions), the time delay to complete each step due to staffing levels, lack of automation, etc is something that is frustrating beyond belief. I truly believe that if the people that process this paperwork and/or make these decisions had to look at these children's faces, the process would be radically different. 

As an example of the process... our I-800A took less than 2 hours to be approved once an agent was "assigned" to the file but it sat "in queue" for 49 days prior to being assigned.  It also cost us $1,000 to USCIS to be processed.  For <2 hours of work. While we didn't have a child referred to us yet, many other families do! Their children sit in orphanages for months longer than necessary.  


Many ppl point to the adoption credit as a step in the right direction for the US.  While the US gov't has done miracles for the adoption community with the most recent tax credit (it will rebate families ~40% of the costs of the adoption), it doesn't fix the underlying problem of WHY it takes so long for adoptions to be processed (and why its so expensive). I can't help it, I have done tons of business cases at work before and the process of international adoption is ripe for opportunity.

Anyway, for those of you interested, please sign their petition here!  

Name Selection: check!

We wanted to drop a note to everyone to formally announce our dear daughter...we are absolutely honored to be able to parent her and so excited to bring her home!!

Emma Jean Chunxiao Lillie

• Emma – two meaningful inputs...
• Emma comes from the name "emmanual", meaning "God is with us".
• Emma means "strong", which we know she is, she is a fighter!!
• Jean – two meaningful inputs....
• Jean is a family name on both of our sides. She is named after Grandma Lorna Jean Scheid, Grandma Glena Jean Lilley, Aunt Catherine Jean Weber (aka Lilley), Great Grandma Norma Jean Clough, and Great Grandma Linda Jean Ballantyne.
• Jean also means "God is Gracious", which he is! We gave Lexie the middle name Grace for this same reason. We feel so lucky we will be able to parent both of these girls! :-)
• Chunxiao - means "Early Spring".  As I mentioned in my last post.. Chun means "spring" and Xiao (pronouned like "shower" minus the "er") means "early morning".  Since she was born in the city of perpetual spring and was born early, we think this makes perfect sense!
• Lillie - of course!

We are absolutely excited to share her picture with everyone...its just not going to happen today. The CCCWA (China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption) wants some more information from us before providing us with Provisional Approval (PA).  Our agency has assured us its nothing to worry about and that this is common.  We still *hope* the pre-approval comes in the next week or so but it could be a while longer so we thought we would share the name now!

On the positive side, we got an update on Friday morning from Emma's orhpanage! At 8 mos she has continued her phenomenal growth and is actually getting herself onto the American growth charts, even without adjusting for her prematurity! I didn't initially realize it but apparently the American growth charts are always larger than the international ones, b/c Americans are "large", ha!. :-)   Also, we were told that at 8 mos she could roll over & sit up unassisted!  This is great news for any baby in an orphanage but even more phenomenal given that she was born so small.

In closing, I've included a few crazy pictures. We tried to take a family photo over July 4th but Lexie was not having any part of it! I attribute it to the fact that we did it at the end of the holiday weekend and she was exhausted from playing with her cousin Wesley. In any case, here are a few of the shots (with Emmy's face removed b/c we don't have PA yet!).

Welcome Emmy to the Lillie and Lilley clans, you are in for a wild ride!! :-)

Tidbits & Friendships

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July!  Matt and I had an awesome weekend - we spent it traveling around the state of Michigan...with my nephews/neice in St Joe on Friday, swimming at a cottage up north with Matts family on Saturday, & Grandma Lillie's 91st birthday party on Sunday.  We wrapped it all up on the 4th of July with family and friends at home. Gotta love Michigan in the summer!

We still cannot share pictures of our daughter but I did wanted to share some information about her below:

1. She was born on 10/5/2010 - the very same day as my good friend Kate Rojas' daughter, Mary Frances.  Amazingly, 3 years ago, Kate and I had our first dear daughters only 5 days apart.  I didn't think it could get closer than that but I guess it can!!  Shamefully, I didn't realize when we got the referral that her birth date was the same as Mary Frances' but Kate reminded me this weekend that they were born, across the world, on the very same day!!
2. She was found in a public place on her 2nd day of life and was brought to a police station. At that time, she weighed ~3.5 pounds. We are guessing she was born about 8 weeks early (although we will never know for sure). She is a fighter -- at 4 mos. she had already TRIPLED her birth weight, weighing in at 11 pounds!!
3. She lives in the Yunnan province of southern China in the capital city of Kunming. The province borders Laos, Vietnam, and Burma.  The city looks nice and I am excited for our trip!  A few random facts:
• The city is at 1900 M elevation – the same elevation as Lake Tahoe.   Given it’s elevation, China has their high elevation Olympic training center there.
• Kunming is located just north of the Tropic of Cancer.  For those of you not map inclined, the Tropic of Cancer runs through Mexico (just N. of Cabo San Lucas), the Bahamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India and Southern China!
• They call Kunming "the city of perpetual spring" because things are always blooming there.  Like other “tropic” cities, there aren’t wide varying seasons. The weather looks very temperate, similar to North Carolina.

4.      The name she was given by the orphanage is Chun Xiao. Chun means “spring” and Xiao (pronounced “sh” & “ow”) means “early morning”.  Given that she lives in the city of perpetual spring and was born early, we think the name makes perfect sense!

5.      The orphanage she is at transitions most of their children at 6 months to foster villages outside of the city. These villages are tiny towns where multiple famlies have agreed to foster children while they wait for their forever family. We *think* this is where Chun Xiao is now, given that she will be 9 mos tomorrow but hopefully will learn more over the next month or two. 

6.   She has ears like her dad, a Mohawk like her mom did at her age, and facial expressions that resemble her Great Grandma Norma.  We are so excited to bring her home!

One other interesting point: when we first started our adoption process we asked 3 families - the Walsh’s, the Yonak’s, and the Clark’s - to write us letters of recommendation for our Home Study.  At the time, we had known all 3 couples less than 2 years -- but we needed local reference letters (no family!) and we felt like we had known these famlies forever.  We didn’t realize it at the time, but each one of these families has been instrumental in getting us to this point…Lana and Marty have helped open our hearts to adoption and continue to support us throughout the process. Nancy and Serdar lead the local March of Dimes chapter -- helping to educate and advocate for premature babies.  Little did they realize that by supporting us they were also bringing another preemie across the world to her forever family! Finally, Chad and Katy -- our dear friends who, over the past 2 years, have reminded us that God is always with us (and given us a laugh in between as well). 

We feel so lucky for all of our friends and family and it seems that all of the above friends (Rojas', Walsh's, Yonak's, & Clark's) were meant to be part of the process of bringing our daughter home - pretty cool!

That’s all for now -- more to come (hopefully pictures and a pre-approval) later this week.

BTW - I apologize for the length of this post, but there was a lot to share!!

Referral & LOI!!

Matt and I spent this weekend in Grand Rapids. It was an amazing weekend - dinner at a wonderful restaurant downtown Grand Rapids, great food, great wine, and time to relax.   On Sunday morning, Matt and I had the opportunity to visit one of our favorite speakers, Rob Bell, at his church in Grandville, MI - Mars Hill Bible Church.   I'll admit, I was a bit under the weather due to the bottle of wine we consumed from the night before but that wasn't going to stop us from going!  The service was amazing. If you haven't seen Rob Bell in person before, you should!  It felt like he was speaking directly to us - the service was about how we sometimes look for the presence of God, when the scripture tells us that His Holy Spirit dwells in us already. It ended with a personal anointing where Matt and I were able to speak 1:1 with a wonderful man who prayed for us and our baby girl. He prayed we would feel God this week as we make this life changing decision.  During the prayer, the entire church (probably 1,000 people) sang a wonderful song about how "All will be well".  Rob Bell ended the service asking the holy spirit to take each of us to "uncomfortable places" to allow us to grow but for us to feel God within us as this happens. It was one of the most moving services we've ever been to and it felt like a gift from God that we needed this week.

On Monday night, 6/27, we received a referral for an 8-month-old baby girl born on October 5, 2010.  Matt and I knew the email was coming - our amazing social worker Sarah had given us that heads up earlier that day. We called her mid day to confirm we were a "go" and she said she had just returned from a relaxing vacation, was well rested, and ready to roll.  :-) She told us we were one of her only matches that evening with paperwork in China already so she felt really good about the evening. She told Matt to keep our email on "ding" mode so if we fell asleep or were away from the computer when her email came in, we would be notified...lol.

I proceeded to sit at the computer hitting "refresh" from 7 pm until 10:30 when the email finally came in.  Matt and I opened the referral and were so pleasantly surprised! The referral was for a little girl (8 mos old now - which is super young in adoption land) who was low birth weight - the Dr. estimated 32 week premie - but now looked to be catching up. She had adorable big eyes and pink fat cheeks. Was this our daughter?

The next two days were nuts ....trying to get answers from doctors, making sure Matt and I were on the same page, thinking about all of the information being thrown our way. Meanwhile, we have family in town (cousins!) and Lexie got sick with a summer virus so we were just barely making it from day to day!! We also knew there was a baby girl in China waiting for an answer for her forever family.

During the week I prayed to God that He would help us through the decision making process. I could tell I was exhausted, worried, excited, and on edge, all at the same time.  At one point Matt said "Thanks Rob Bell, we are here....the Holy Spirit has moved us to places that are new...and we are uncomfortable!!", LOL.  Within 8 hours though, we had 2 medical reviews and we both knew we wanted to move forward with adopting Chun Xiao.   For the first time in my adult life, I could literally feel God within me and it immediately calmed my anxiety, amazing!!  Now we move from praying for ourselves to praying for our daughter and that she feels the peace of the Holy Spirit as she waits to join her forever family.  We have peace in knowing that "all will be well"!

Matt and I formally sent in our Letter of Intent (LOI) for the baby girl this morning. We are over the moon excited!!  We cannot share pictures or complete details of our daughter until we have pre-approval from China (hopefully in a week or two).  See updated timeline information to the right as well for those of you interested in what comes next in the process. We WILL have a name for her when we share pictures as well, so stay tuned!!

Thank you everyone who prayed for us and supported us this week. We are SO blessed with amazing family and friends. We are so looking forward to bringing our daughter home to meet all of you!!

.

LID

We found out today that China has confirmed our Locked In Date - 6/8/2011. For all of the non adoption followers, that means we now have all of application paperwork to China and are formally eligible for a match in this month's referral cycle.

When is that next release cycle? For now, all we know is that the release is NOT this evening but could be anytime later this week or potentially next monday.  My guess is it will be the 27th, next Monday, given that it has been on Mondays for the past 6  mos. That said, while we could get matched next Monday, it could also take a few months...each month the number of kiddos on the list is different so it's really out of our hands!

When we do recieve and accept a referral, we will have to send our letter of intent to adopt the child to China within 72 hours. So its a quick process!!  From there, there is a 4-6 mos wait time (additional paperwork in the US and in China) until we travel to pick her up.

Until then, Matt and I are trying to relax and start preparing for our daughters arrival. Starting with....the name.  I know, its a shock. For Alexis, we didn't select her name until the very last hour of checkout at the hospital (she was 3 days old). I didn't realize at the time but my poor family had to tell people for days "I have a grandaughter, but just not sure her name yet!".  We are hoping to do better this time...we'll see how it goes though.  As many of you know, Matt and I have a hard time with indecision. We have been known to purchase and return things to Home Depot multiple times (aka the shovel and level incidents).  So, if it takes us two hours and two trips to Home Depot to pick out a shovel, imagine what it will be like for the naming discussion. :-)  If you have creative name suggestions, post them here.  We may not use them but if we do, hey, you will feel very lucky.

More to come!

Christy

My Hubbys 21st Birthday

Matt was in basic training on his 21st birthday, poor guy.  The story goes that his drill instructor let him off base with an 8 hour pass but he had to be back at midnight....not much you can do on your 21st birthday when you have to report back to Ft. Benning at midnight, sober.

Anyway, Matt wanted to celebrate so went with a few buddies to a tattoo parlor -- you know the kind that are just off of an army base, kind of shady, but super exciting for a 20 year old guy.  Anyway, Matt was convinced by this tattoo artist to get a tattoo of the below symbol enclosed inside of a compass (it's kind of hard to describe and Matt refused to let me get a picture of it!).

In case you don't get the two pictures together (I sure didn't at first) -- it is his "Spirit of direction". Anyway, I have spent the last 11 years making fun of this tattoo and telling him that it probably didn't mean Spirit at all but, instead, meant something ridiculous like "I am a looser".  I have also mentioned, more than once, how I think said Tattoo should be removed (I mean, come on, we don't want Lexie thinking Tattoos are ok, right?!).  Well, low and behold, his tattoo artist was an honest guy -- Matt has a tattoo on his arm that means spirit of direction.

What this means now is that I have no chance of getting the tattoo removed. In fact, Matt is now insisting it is a sign...that his spirit has been pointing him to our daughter in China this entire time. Hmm....Not sure if I buy it, BUT it is one of the most romantic things we have going right now so I am gonna to roll with it. :-)

On an adoption update -- we think China will release a new list of referrals on either Monday 6/20 or 6/27. We are hoping for 6/27 so that we have a better chance of our paperwork being confirmed in China by then.  We will know for sure if a release is coming the Thursday before hand.

More to come over the next week or two, keep your fingers crossed the paperwork got there safely!