Our Christmas cutie!

We just celebrated...

a birthday!

Since Bella loves playing with her duckies during bath time, we decided to do a ducky-themed birthday party.  "Duck" was also one of her first words which she doesn't really say, but rather prefers to yell.

We had snacks.

We made a "pond" in our living room, which Bella and the other little guests absolutely loved.

We let her try her chocolate cake, but she wasn't super interested.  Therefore, she didn't get as messy as I'd hoped.  

This day was a quackin' good time!

December pictures

I had a late night and she had an early morning.  This little nap after her first bottle was such a gift!

Making her laugh is something we both LOVE to do!  Even though you can't see it, she's giggling.

Likely our only Christmas with her, we're living it up...and documenting everything.  :)

Trusting in His Timing

It’s a theme of ours really.  Our timing is NOT God’s timing.  To us, He seems to moving way too slowly.  We’re exhausted and we’re ready to have our daughters, our permanent, legal children in our arms and to move forward with our lives.  We don’t know how the next six months will unfold, but here are a few things we’re muddling over lately…

1.        Bella has yet to be matched with a family.  We’re not exactly sure why.  It’s possible that it takes a while for all the documents to be translated into English to be sent to a family.  The government will let the orphanage know when she’s been matched and then they’ll let us know.  We have no idea when this could be.  Weeks?  Months?  Half a year?  Only He knows.
2.       We had to say no to our last referral.  So this means again we are waiting to discover who our children will be, waiting to be matched with the ones we’ll adopt.  Only He knows who these precious ones will be.
3.       The timing of how one and two will collide is just in His hands.  It’s possible we’ll adopt our children first.  Just one of them?  Both of them?  Only He knows.  It’s possible we’ll be able to bring them back here for a time and we’ll be parenting three.  It’s possible we’ll need to head back to the States with them before Bella’s future family comes.  And then what?  She needs to stay here.  Where will she go?  It’s possible she’ll be matched first and then we’ll have an empty home again for a time.  There’s just so much we don’t know.  Only He knows.

For someone who likes decisions, likes closure, likes to be in control, all of this is an extremely uncomfortable position to be in.  Yet I know it is good for my soul.  Trusting in the One who holds me and my future, and holds all these babies and their futures in the palm of His loving hands…that’s right where I need to be.

pressing on in hope

a view from a park in our city

While we are trying to cherish every day with our little Bella, the truth is, we will not be adopting her.  We will be adopting other children.  We’re in the midst of figuring out who these other children are, and it’s an agonizing process.

I’m not sure how it works in other countries, but let me share a bit about how the referral/matching process happens in Chinese adoptions of children with special needs.

At the magical time when we’ve completed enough paperwork (usually it’s close to the time our dossier gets to China), we start receiving referrals from our agency.  A referral means that a child’s file has been pulled off of these general lists by our agency.  No other agency or family can now choose this child.  The agency sends the file to us.  The file includes a few pictures and medical information and a very general summary of the child’s development and daily life.

When we receive this file we are given about 36 hours to think, pray, do research on this child’s condition, contact doctors and other specialists for their opinions and make a decision.  If we say yes, there is paperwork to gather and a written statement about why we want to adopt this child and our plan for her care.  If we say no, her file goes back to our agency and then to another family or back to that general list altogether. 

We have received three referrals.  We’ve had to say “no” twice.  We remind ourselves that doesn’t mean these two sweeties spend the rest of their days in the orphanage.  It just means we’re not the right forever family for them, someone else is.  Because we live in a place that is rather remote, medical care here is limited.  We want what is best for these children and for them to receive the best possible care.  We’ve had to acknowledge that our home may not be what is best.  Therefore, we need to adopt children with minor, correctable special needs.  Making a decision about what is minor and correctable is not as easy as it sounds.  We have agonized over each referral.

Currently, we’ve said a tentative yes.  We need more information to make our decision.  And the information is coming VERY slowly.  The file we were sent was very outdated, nine months has passed since the medical information they sent us.  So, we are anxiously awaiting current information.  We’ve been waiting almost a month. 

Pray that we get more information in the next couple days.  And pray that we are able to wholeheartedly say yes.  We really want to say yes.

A Dilemma

It’s an age old question really…when a child is supposed to be sleeping and she starts crying do you go in and comfort her or do you let her cry a bit?  It’s a question Mark and I are facing daily and nightly.  When Bella was first home, the answer to the question was easy…we'd go comfort her.  We’d seen her lying in a bed in the orphanage wailing and no one going to her because it was supposed to be nap time.  It broke my heart.  I’m not an orphanage worker, I’m a mommy, and I wanted my little girl to know that I am here for her.  So I responded to her cries.

But now she’s been with us longer than she’s been anywhere else, and we’re fairly certain of her confidence in us as her mommy and daddy.  She lets us know her needs and we respond to them.  She prefers us to others (and sometimes prefers me over Mark).  We’ve set a pattern that we respond to her every cry.  So now, even when I know she’s tired, she doesn’t want to just lie in her bed and go to sleep.  If she’s still awake, she will cry until we go in to comfort her.  She wants to be rocked and snuggled to sleep. The trouble is, now she won't go to sleep on her own. 

Books I know I agree with and parents I respect who are following these books’ advice would tell me, “Erika, you’re going to make yourself crazy exhausted if you keep this up.  And you’re teaching your child that she is the center of everything as you bend to her every whim.”  Well, the crazy exhaustion is setting in.  And I definitely don’t want my children thinking they are the center of my universe…they’re not, Jesus is. 

But what do I do?  What do I do when my beautiful little girl just wants her mommy to snuggle her for a little while before she falls asleep?  Tonight I timed it.  It took a whole 12 minutes for me to get her from crying to sleeping.  Months from now, when she’s no longer with us, won’t I wish I’d spent those twelve minutes and more snuggling with her?  The nights she is wide awake from 2:30-3:30am and won’t lie in bed without wailing are absolutely draining.  We’re taking turns and sometimes we just rock her for a long time and sometimes she ends up in bed with us.  I would love to know how to get her sleeping through the night again, but I also want to cherish every snuggle.