It's Official!!!

Life has been crazy-cray over here: painting, shopping, freaking out over the 10,000 tiny things I forgot to put on my list (like, um, toothbrushes for the boys).  BUT...I had to take a minute to share that WE HAVE PLANE TICKETS TO CH*NA!!!

We got confirmation of our Consulate Appointment last night (woohoo!), so I was able to book tickets this morning.  Living 2,000 miles away from my family, I have booked plenty of plane tickets.  But, I have to tell you, I think I almost puked about seven times while I was making our reservations this morning.  It didn't help that I had to book three separate reservations through three separate means (four roundtrips with real money, one child-in-seat one way with miles, one child-on-lap one way over the phone).  Stress.ful.

 We had an awesome friend donate miles for Li'l Man's one-way ticket home.  (We love you, world-traveling friend.)  Li'l Man's one way cost almost exactly the same as an adult roundtrip ticket, so getting it for free was huge.  (And, riddle me this, why does a child's roundtrip ticket cost less than a child's one way?  Yup, Li'l Miss totally got a cheaper ticket than Li'l Man.) 

So, let the countdown begin: 26 days until we get on that plane (if I spelled all our names correctly on the reservations, that is ;).

Almost There

I just had to take a moment to make sure everyone knows that it is officially October.  We meet our boys next month.  I have to say that again because I can't shout at the top of my lungs on a keyboard.  We meet our boys next month.  I honestly can't believe it.

At this point, a week after Travel Approval, we should have our hotels booked and a flight to Ch*na on the calendar.  Unfortunately, we ran into a little bump last week.  (A bump?  In this process?  No way!  I can say that with a smile at this point.  Seriously.  I'm smiling.)  In order to schedule our appointment with the U.S. Consulate in Ch*na (which is the last tiny step after getting TA and before booking plane tickets), a family has to have current fingerprints for U.S. Immigration.  We have been fingerprinted before.  In fact, we've been fingerprinted twice.  (If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember our last way-too-early trip to be fingerprinted.)

Fingerprints for Immigration expire after 15 months.  Ours expired last Monday.  Yup, that'd be the exact day we got our Travel Approval.  No fingerprints = No Consulate appointment.

Thankfully, we'd already scheduled a new fingerprint appointment for last Wednesday.  We'd been told that the two-day lapse would be no big deal.  Because, you know, most people don't get their Travel Approval on one of the two days in fifteen months that their fingerprints are expired.  (Insert dripping sarcasm here.)  Oh, just wait, this bump gets even more interesting.

We went to our fingerprint appointment on Wednesday.  After our appointment, our fingerprint results had to be sent to our Immigration Officer who then had to send our renewed Immigration approval to the U.S. Consulate in Ch*na and our U.S. adoption agency.  With that new approval in hand, our agency would be able to request our appointment at the Consulate in Ch*na.  (That last tiny step I mentioned above.)

(If you're confused at this point, it's totally okay.  I'm feeling confused, and I've been trying to explain this to people all week.)

I got an email today saying that our Officer had received our fingerprint results and forwarded our approval along to the appropriate parties.  Good news...except for one little thing.  Ch*na is celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival.  So the Consulate where we need to schedule that ever-so-important appointment?  Yup, it's closed until Thursday or Friday.  Oh yeah, and they're also closed for Columbus Day on Monday.

I'm still smiling.  Really.

As much as the OCD planner in me wants to have tickets bought and hotels booked, I can live in the uncertainty a little longer.  Because we've come so, so far.  And we're almost there.  (And, amazingly, plane tickets have actually gone down $100 since the last time I checked.)  Regardless of whether we receive our appointment date this Friday or next, we are still going to Ch*na next month.

And I'm pretty stinkin' excited.

WE GOT TA!!!

See, I knew I was alphabetizing my cookbooks for a reason. :)

Ch*na, here we come!

There's Something Wrong with Me

There is something very wrong with me.  I suddenly have an obsessive compulsion to clean and organize EV.RY.THING.  We're talking a baseboard-scrubbing, attic-emptying, bookshelf-alphabetizing obsession.  Ir's not normal.

I spent last night sequestered in Li'l Miss's new closet.  (Do you know how long it takes to organize a closet?  Pretty much forever.)  It looks like someone puked fall clothes all over my upstairs bedrooms, and I have a stack of paint chips about a foot high sitting on the kitchen counter.  Because, you know, it's absolutely necessary to repaint your entire house before adopting a child.  (That last sentence was 100% serious.)

I think my nesting instinct has kicked into overdrive, and it's a little scary.  But, it also means that we're finally getting close.  Close to getting on a plane.  Close to flying across the ocean.  Close to holding our boys.  According to my countdown, we're headed to Ch*na in 43 days.  November 6 can't get here soon enough.  (Well, as long as I have time to clean out my crisper first, that is.)

Today is Day 10 of our wait for TA (Travel Approval).  TA is pretty much the Golden Ticket in the Ch*na adoption process.  PA is pretty amazing, LOA/LSC is exciting, but TA is the shining light at the end of the paperwork jungle.  Someone on our timeline got TA on Friday.  We are that close.  (If you call my phone this week and I answer in a breathless/crazy-excited voice, it just means I thought you were the adoption agency.  On that note, maybe you should all avoid calling me this week.  Every time the phone rings, I just want to reorganize a dresser drawer or something.)

Alright, gotta' run.  My neverending to-do list is calling my name.

Li'l Party Man

I have to start this post with a huge I love you to my amazing friend Erin.  She hangs out with Li'l Miss every other Tuesday so I can have five hours of grown-up time.  

Five hours. All. By. Myself.

I know; Erin totally rocks. 

Right now I'm sitting in a certain no-so-healthy restaurant alone.  Just me.  Well, me and my $1 sweet tea...because I'm addicted.  It's not so bad to have a six-month summertime addiction, right?  (And I know I just told you which not-so-healthy restaurant I've chosen to patronize today.  Pretend you didn't notice.  K?)

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind.  I think I've waved to my husband once or twice as we passed in the driveway; do those count as date nights?  And I actually went four days without checking my email.  Seriously.  That can happen when you have a 1997 phone that doesn't get email or talk to you or other cool things like that.  (I could go on a little rampage here about the fact that one member of our family has a phone that does cool things like that, but I won't.  Dropping it.  Letting it go.  Really.)  

I have a ton of half-written posts swirling around in my brain that I will get written and shared soon.  But today I just had to share some surprise pictures of Li'l Man.  A sweet mama I met on FB sent me eight (yes, eight!) pictures of our cutie boy at her daughter's birthday party.  She totally made my day and pretty much tripled my picture collection.

Here's our boy.  (He's in the bottom left corner, rocking the adorable overalls.)

I love this one.  I swear I've seen his dad look at dessert in the exact same way.

Aaaaahhhh, he uses a fork.  

(Yes, I'm for real excited about this.  But I missed Aaaaahhhh, he smiled! and Aaaaahhhh, he rolled over! and Aaaaahhhh, he took his first step! so I've got to do something with all my mama pride.)

 

And he's looking at the cake again.

 Here's a great shot of the "orphanage 'do".  Definite make-over happening when this boy gets home.

 

So there's our Li'l Party Man.  We are going to have some fun at our house when he gets a cake all to himself next April.  I absolutely can't wait.

Reader, beware: This is a happy post, but I'm about to get mildly depressing.

 

I have to confess that the rows upon rows of cribs are possibly my least favorite thing about any orphanage picture ever.  (I HATE YOU, bedtime assembly line.)  If you missed the crib metropolis, please go back and look.

 I almost cried once looking at a picture of empty beds in Alex's orphanage in Eastern Europe.  There were little outfits laid out at the foot of each bed.  There were no kids in the picture, but it shattered me.  

Bedtime is not meant to be an assembly line.  Kids should not sleep in rows.  These little ones need mamas and daddies and bedtime stories and kisses and monster-chasing and nightlights and 57 that's-really-the-last-one sips of water.  

Think about it.

My Li'l A

Last spring I met a boy.  And I fell in love.

I couldn't stop thinking about his sweet face, his big eyes, and his God-love-em goofy ears.  I thought about him when I woke up and when I couldn't fall asleep at night.  I let his name roll off my tongue and imagined what it would feel like to wrap him up in my arms.  I came so close to that actually happening that I started to let myself taste the hope that he was going to be mine.  Forever.

Want to meet him?   

Here he is: my Li'l A.

(You're in love too, right?  I totally get it.  How could those blue eyes not slay you?)

 Li'l A was born in Eastern Europe to a woman who was HIV+.  She might have been very sick or addicted to drugs or living in prostitution; I don't know.  For some reason she decided that she couldn't take care of her new baby.  

So Li'l A went to live in an orphanage.

Li'l A learned to walk without his mama holding his hand.  He said his first words without his papa cheering him on.  Was he loved?  I hope so.  But what I know is that he didn't have what every child needs: a family.

As he grew, his caretakers discovered that Li'l A was one of the approximately 35% of children born to mothers with HIV who develop the virus themselves.  (This is only true for mothers who do not take antiretroviral medication.  If his mother had been on the proper medication, there is only a 1-2% chance that Li'l A would have contracted the virus.  No, not a 12% chance - a one to two percent chance.)  Had he been healthy, Li'l A would have quickly been adopted by a family in his home country.  But, because he was HIV+, he was overlooked for domestic adoption.  

International adoption became Li'l A's best chance for a family  Adoptive parents who traveled to his orphanage did what they could to find his mama and papa.  One mom wrote a blog post advocating for his adoption; another fell in love with him herself and took tons of adorable pictures.  Li'l A's photo and bio were shared on at least one major photolisting.  

So why didn't someone come to get this sweetie?  While I can't answer that with 100% certainty, I know some of the reasons Li'l A might have been left waiting.  

-He has HIV.  That diagnosis is a big deal and sounds scary to many people.  (If it sounds scary to you, please take a minute to read this.)  

-He shows some signs of having been exposed to alcohol in the womb.  

-He's a boy, and statistics show that 70-90% of adoptive parents request a girl.

As I "got to know" Li'l A, all the things on this list started to matter less and less.  When I looked at him, I saw a little boy who liked cookies...

...made silly faces...

..and looked beyond adorable with his hat on backwards.

I saw a child who needed a family.

Even now, almost a year since our dream to adopt from Eastern Europe died, I can't write this post without crying. If you've recently started reading my blog, you might not know that when our paperwork arrived in EE last summer it missed the deadline for a law change by two days.  That change made children under five with HIV ineligible for international adoption.

My Li'l A will be four-and-a-half at the beginning of next month.  In April he'll turn five.  Of course, in my mind for the past year, I've seen us there for his fifth birthday.  I've pictured the oh-so-painful rollercoaster ride of last summer fading into a distant memory.  I've ever so hesitantly imagined the chaos that would be our life with four kiddos five and under.  And, my husband would tell you, I've pretty much told him started dropping hints that maybe he should be imagining that life too.

Last month I stopped imagining.

Last month we found out that Li'l A had been moved from his babyhouse and taken to a new orphanage.  Children in this orphanage are not available for international adoption.  Ever.

Is he loved?  I hope so.  But what I know is that he still doesn't have a family, and he's not coming home in April.

Why am I sharing this story?

Because my Li'l A is a real person.  His name is Sasha (short for Alexander).  He's four years old.  He doesn't have a mom.  He doesn't have a dad.  He doesn't have a grandma or a grandpa or a big brother or a little sister or a crazy uncle Max.

"There are 15 million children in this world who have lost both of their parents."

 That's a statistic.

Sasha is a child.  A person.  A little boy without a family.

There are 14,999,999 more children like him.

I challenge you to look into the eyes of a child waiting for a family.  Look beyond the list of potentially scary diagnoses that someone might have attached to that child.  See them as a little person who desperately needs someone to fall in love with them.  A little person without a mommy or a daddy.  A little person who, like my Li'l A, might not have many more days or months or years to wait.

Am I telling you to make a rash decision?  Absolutely not.  I'm asking you to put big blue eyes and God-love-em ears on a statistic that might just sound like a statistic to you.  I'm asking you to stop thinking about 15 million and start thinking about 1.

Yes, falling in love with my Li'l A broke my heart into a million pieces.  But I wouldn't have it any other way.  I don't want my heart to be unbroken.

In fact, I want his story to break your heart too.

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"No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing 

because he could only do a little."

-Edmund Burke

Li'l Man's Front Teeth

While I know in my mind that my 28-month-old son should have teeth...

... actually seeing them peeking out from behind his upper lip melts. my. heart.

A big shout out to my friend Deb for finding this photo somewhere in the Blogosphere.  

She pretty much rocks.