Overflowing

I wrote this post yesterday afternoon, but I didn't have a WiFi connection in the airport. We are now in Beijing, and our jet-lagged selves are ready to crash. We had a fun evening walking around a pedestrian mall and eating some yummy food. Tomorrow afternoon we'll take the bullet train to Li'l Bean's city. I'll post more from there.

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Our travel day is finally here! We are in Chicago, waiting to board our flight to Beijing. It’s crazy to think we’re just three days away from meeting our Li’l Bean.

As I think about the journey that has brought us to this point, the word that keeps coming to my mind is “overflowing”. I am truly overflowing with so many emotions.

I’m overflowing with excitement. I’m about to fly across the world with the man I love to meet our fourth child. Jeremy and I get to experience a different culture and see a little bit more of our amazing world together. In just hours, I’m going to eat real steamed dumplings (my pseudo-pregnancy craving)! How crazy exciting is that?!?

I’m overflowing with joy: joy that God has touched a place of brokenness in our hearts. There are days when I am simply amazed that my empty arms have been filled with three – and very soon four – beautiful children.  Something I once thought impossible, He has made possible in an incredible way. I am blessed beyond measure.

I’m overflowing with thankfulness. Guys, I don’t even have words for this one. What can I possibly write to describe friends taking our kids at the drop of a hat, strangers giving generously of their finances to support our adoption, people I haven’t seen in years telling me they are praying for our family, over $19,000 being given to our adoption fund (through grants and personal gifts) in less than three months? I’m so thankful, humbled, and amazed.

I’m overflowing with awe. When we started our process at the beginning of January, we committed to moving as quickly as possible to get our Bean home for cardiac care. In my mind, that meant staying on top of paperwork and encouraging our agency to push for quick approvals. Jeremy and I joked that May 7 would be the perfect day to leave, but we honestly thought it would be the end of June before we could travel. Through the support of some amazing FB mamas who have done this crazy expediting thing before and our agency’s willingness to advocate for our family, here we are: sitting in an airport on May 7. Our sweet Bean will be sitting in the Amazing Dr. S’s office on May 21. (This is the Amazing Dr. S who chatted with me on his cell phone for half an hour the other evening and is coming in on his week off to see Bean. He pretty much deserves his own blog post. And I’m guessing he’ll probably get one sometime soon.)

So, we’re getting on a plane in 90 minutes. And, while I’m excited about the fact that we’re traveling alone (yay, babymoon!), we are absolutely not alone on this adventure. To those of you who have prayed for our family, left notes of encouragement on FB, asked if you could help with our kids at home, given of your finances, poured concrete at Ms. Sherrill’s house, shared your adoption expertise, listened to me vent share for hours about our adoption process, you are appreciated. What you might have thought was a small gesture has been a huge blessing to our family.

Thank you for doing this crazy thing called adoption with us.

Let The Countdown (Officially) Begin!

I was laying in bed staring at my alarm early this morning. Not because it was going off, but because that's what you do when you've booked tickets and packed for Ch*na, but you're missing one last super important document: you know, the one that allows you to travel to get your daughter.

So, this morning before my alarm ever went off, I tiptoed downstairs to check my email. At 5:56am, I got an email from our travel coordinator in Ch*na saying that our Travel Approval has been issued!!! We're (officially) going to Ch*na on Thursday!

I'll share more details about our trip schedule later, but you have to know that we're leaving in three days and we meet L'il Bean on Mother's Day! Six days until we hold our girl! So. Stinkin. Excited.

What are the odds I will actually sleep tonight? :)

The Wild Ride Continues

I just wanted to share a quick update on our progress. We got through two of the three steps we were hoping to complete this week. Our Immigration paperwork (a.k.a. Article 5) has been delivered to the CCCWA (the Ch*nese government's adoption department). Now are officially waiting on Travel Approval - just one last piece of paper!

We are still hoping to travel next week for several reasons, the biggest one being Li'l Bean's need to get home for medical care. We found some amazing prices on flights Tuesday morning - they were the cheapest I've seen them for our dates in the past few months of looking - so we went ahead and booked tickets for next week! We should be on a plane to Ch*na next Thursday at this time. AAAAHHHHH!!!

I made Li'l Bean's first appointment with her cardiologist yesterday. We were able to get into our first choice doctor (the Amazing Dr. S) the day after we get home.  Her doctor is actually only on call that week, but he agreed to come in to see Bean. I'm so thankful!

Please keep us in your prayers as we get ready to go. Packing for Ch*na while planning for our kids to be home with Grandma and wondering when that last piece of paperwork will show up is just a bit much for my li'l planner heart. In the midst of the crazy, I am incredibly grateful for the provision I've witnessed, the doors that have opened, and the friends and family who have surrounded us with love and support.

Let the wild ride continue!

Crazy, Crazy News!

I'm sorry I've been MIA the past couple of weeks. Our life has suddenly turned into a whirlwind. Remember the graphic I shared in my last post? This one?

When I shared this picture on April 7, we were on Step #7: waiting not-so-patiently for Ch*na to issue our LOA. In the last two-and-a-half weeks, we have zoomed through Steps 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. If all goes well, Step #13 should happen tonight while we sleep. That means we should be waiting for approval to travel this week. We are hoping and praying that we can be on a plane May 7.

I can't tell you how ecstatic we are that we will be meeting our Li'l Bean in May!!! There's a good chance she will spend her second birthday at home. But, all this crazy flying along has meant the last couple of weeks have been a blur of paperwork, hours on hold with government offices, shopping, packing, and laying awake at night thinking about whether to pack footie pjs or nightgowns for Bean. (Can you believe Jeremy stays up thinking about crazy things like that?!?)

Although I have struggled to come up for air in the past two weeks, I cannot adequately express the deep sense of support and encouragement that has surrounded us during this time. It truly feels like a giant team of our family and friends is sharing in our excitement as they partner with us - through prayer, through finances, through encouraging words - to bring Bean home. We have friends who have watched our kids at a moment's notice, friends who have generously given of their finances, friends who have shared their Gymbucks to make sure Bean has the cutest wardrobe ever. I can't find the words to thank any of them enough. 

In the middle of the whirlwind that has been April, we were able to complete our Both Hands Project. We had 51 people show up to give their Saturday serving Ms. Sherrill. We were blown away (and I think she was, too)! The video below was put together by one of our team members. He did an awesome job recapping the project in just three minutes. Please take a minute to check it out if you haven't already.

As of yesterday, our friends, family, and complete strangers have donated over $10,000 to our adoption through our Both Hands account. I don't even know what to say after typing that. We are humbled, overwhelmed, and so incredibly thankful. When we accepted Li'l Bean's file at the end of December, we committed to moving as quickly as possible to get her home. Now, less than four months later, we look back amazed at the way God has provided. Many, many of you have been part of that provision. Thank you. Thanks for being part of Bean's story. Thanks for loving our family in a big way.

So...what's coming next? We need to get past Steps 13, 14, and 15 before we can book our trip. We're hoping all three of those things happen this week. There's a holiday in Ch*na on Friday, so we're praying they decide to get all the files off their desks before their long weekend, and they issue our Travel Approval later this week. If that happens, we're planning to travel May 7-20. We'll be home just in time for Bean's birthday.

That's our crazy news. We're over-the-moon excited, amazed, and only slightly freaked out at the way things have come together. I will keep you updated on our progress this week, but right now I need to go pack some baby girl jammies.

Where We Go From Here

I've had several people ask about the next steps in our adoption process, so I'm going to try to explain where we're headed. The part we've done so far is pretty easy to understand: collect lots and lots of papers, get lots and lots of stamps/seals on them, and send them to Ch*na. What's coming next is a little more complicated. (And I currently have a nasty cold that has turned my brain into complete mush. So, be warned, there is a fair chance this post might be totally incomprehensible.)

Some really talented adoptive parent created a graphic to help explain the process of adopting from Ch*na. I'm a big fan of visual aids. so here you go...

Steps #1-7 are what we've done so far: collecting lots of papers (home study, immigration approval, etc.) and sending them to Ch*na. We did Step #7 (sending our dossier to Ch*na a.k.a. DTC) on February 27. Step #8 is usually the longest (or one of the longest) steps in the whole adoption process. Now that our big stack of papers is in Ch*na, it's up to them to translate everything, review it, and issue our official approval to adopt (called an LOA/Letter of Acceptance or LSC/Letter Seeking Confirmation).

Thankfully, our agency is still working hard to keep our case moving along.  They actually sent someone into the adoption office in B*ijing last night to check on our paperwork. I'm hoping this means we'll see some movement soon! 

After we receive our LOA, the steps get really tricky. If you want the short version, we're basically waiting on U.S Immigration to process our case and send Bean's visa to Ch*na. At that point, Ch*na can issue our approval to travel. This process usually takes about 8 weeks, but an expedite can be done in as little as 10 days (although 2-4 weeks is more likely). If you're up for the long and detailed explanation, keep reading.

We'll send a copy of our LOA to U.S. Immigration (Step #9) where it will be processed by the amazing Officer B. Because our case is considered a medical expedite we'll be able to email the LOA to Officer B, and our approval should only take a day or two. Some of you are probably thinking, approval from U.S. Immigration? I thought you already did that step? And, you're absolutely right. We received our initial immigration approval in February. That step approved us to adopt any child from Ch*na who fits the parameters of our home study in regard to age, gender, needs, etc. This step approves us specifically to adopt Li'l Bean.

Once we're approved, our file will go to the National Visa Center in New Hampshire. They will send Li'l Bean's visa to the U.S. Embassy in Gu*ngzhou, Ch*na where we will pick it up during our trip (Step #10). They will also "cable" us (Step #11). This means we'll receive a PDF via email that says they have processed our case. We'll email this PDF to our adoption agency (Step #12). (Notice I just knocked off three steps in about 24 hours. Woot!)

Step #13 is completely outside the comprehension of my stuffed-up brain. It's called Article 5 Drop-Off and Pick-Up. It involves a representative of our agency dropping off a packet of documents to the U.S. Embassy in Gu*ngzhou. Usually this packet is picked up ten business days later, but expedites are often processed in 24 hours. After our Article 5 Pick-Up, our agency representative delivers our packet of documents to the Chin*se adoption entity in B*ijing (Step #14).

After all this emailing and cabling and dropping off and picking up, the ball is back in Ch*na's court. The next step (#15) happens when the Ch*nese adoption entity issues our Travel Approval (TA). This usually happens 1-2 weeks after Article 5 Pick-Up. Once our agency has our TA, they can schedule our Consulate Appointment (CA). This is our final appointment during our trip to Ch*na. Once it is planned, we can work backward to figure out the dates for our trip and book our plane tickets and hotels (Step #16). WOOHOO!

So...we're just a few simple nine crazy steps away from hopping on a jet plane. We're still planning to travel sometime in June, although we could conceivably go in May if our LOA comes soon. In the meantime, we're working hard on our Both Hands project, trying to convince our kids to go back to school after spring break, and nesting like crazy.

In other  - much less complicated - news, we found out yesterday that we were given another grant toward our adoption! :)

A Project (and a Name) for Bean

Before I spill the beans on our daughter's name, I want to share something else that has us very excited. (I know...making you wait is mean. Go ahead and scroll down for the big announcement, but come back here when you're done. The rest of this post is pretty cool, too. Promise!)

We've been accepted to do a really unique project to help bring Li'l Bean Home. It's called a Both Hands Project because it allows us, and a team of our friends and family, to reach one hand out to help a widow in need and one hand out to bring an orphan - our sweet Li'l Bean - home forever. This concept is taken from James 1:27, and we think it's pretty awesome.

On April 18, our Both Hands Team will help us serve a widow in our community. Before the project, our team will be working to find sponsors for our day of service. Donations are tax deductible, and 100% of any funds donated go directly to bringing our sweet girl home. (It's similar to golf-a-thon or a 5K to raise money for a specific cause; except, instead of golfing or running, we'll be serving.) Sound exciting? You can keep reading to learn more or click here to check out our project page.

OUR PROJECT

The widow we'll be serving is Mrs. Sherrill Boggs. Mrs. Boggs lost her husband of 62 years in a tragic car accident last December. She was seriously injured in the accident and had to spend a month in rehab. Now Mrs. Boggs spends most of her time at home.

Mrs. Boggs' late husband, Frank, was full of life. He loved to sing to anyone and everyone. Friends at the local YMCA tell me they remember him coming in and making up songs for people as they worked out. Frank's death has obviously left a big hole in Sherrill's life. 

Frank helped build the Boggs' house of 50+ years. This will be Mrs. Boggs' first spring without him, so our team will helping Mrs. Boggs with her spring cleaning and yard projects. We'll be washing windows, emptying gutters, and collecting sticks. We're also excited to tear out two large evergreen bushes to make room for a flowerbed and an outside sitting area. (Mrs. Boggs loves to read, so we can just imagine her sitting in the sunshine with a good book.) In addition, our team will be installing a railing along Mrs. Boggs' sidewalk and replacing her front door handle and deadbolt.

LI'L BEAN
As I mentioned above, 100% of any funds donated to our team will help bring our daughter home from Ch*na. Most of you have already been introduced to our Li'l Bean. (If you haven't, you can meet her here.) Our sweet girl has Tetralogy of Fallot, a combination of four heart defects. This condition is usually repaired in infancy, but our Bean has not yet had surgery. Because of this (and because we absolutely can't wait to meet her), we are working hard to get her home as quickly as possible.

ADOPTION COSTS

Our adoption will cost between $25,000 and $30,000. Expediting because of Bean's heart condition has considerably shortened the time we have to come up with these funds. It looks like our adoption - start to finish - will only take 5-6 months. Thankfully, we are three months into our process and have already been able to cover almost half of our expenses and fees. 

Looking ahead, we have a $6,000 fee due when Ch*na approves our paperwork (hopefully within the next few weeks), and then we have travel and in-country fees (these include airplane tickets, legal fees in Ch*na, hotels, travel in country, meals, trains in country, etc.). Our agency allows us to book our own travel, and we work very hard to be frugal in our planning; however, we are still expecting that these fees will total over $7,000. We're hoping that our Both Hands Project will help us raise the $13,000 - $15,000 we have left to fund our adoption.

WANT TO HELP?

We would be thrilled and humbled if you'd consider being part of our Both Hands project. There are several ways you can help. Check them out below!

Serve with Us - If you're a local friend, we'd love to have you serve with us on the 18th! The more team members we have, the more we can accomplish for Mrs. Boggs. If you're interested in joining our work day, please comment on this post or contact me via FB, text, or email.

Sponsor Our Team - Any financial gift, big or small, gets us closer to bringing our daughter home. If you'd like to sponsor our team, click here for donation information. There are directions for giving online or through the mail. All donations are tax deductible.

Support Us - We are in need of supplies for our work day. If you would like to provide one of the following items, please let me know. 
-Door handle with deadbolt
-Mulch
-Outdoor dining set or reading chairs

Share Our Project - Please help us spread the word about our project. Feel free to share the link to this post via email or on Facebook or Twitter (or some other social media that I'm too old to know about).  You are also welcome to just share our family project page with a short post. (Perhaps something like, "Please take a minute to check out the project our friends, Jeremy and Tonya Wike, are doing to bring their daughter home from Ch*na!") The more people hear about our project, the more likely we are to get the support we need to bring Bean home!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post and to consider how you might be a part of our Both Hands Project. We are truly excited to bless Mrs. Boggs in a big way, and we have already felt incredibly supported in the planning stages of our project. Please know that your prayers, encouraging words, and financial gifts are genuinely appreciated. We can't wait to tell Bean how many people played a part in her adoption story!

Now the part you've been waiting for...yes, we have finally decided on an English name for our Li'l Bean. This is a pretty earth-shattering event at our house. We usually name our kids right about the time we meet them (or even slightly after). Jeremy and I completely shocked our very straight-laced Ch*nese guide when she asked for Li'l Dude's name on the day we met him, and we told her we hadn't decided yet. 

I wish I could say we hold off on naming our kids because we want to meet them and see if the name fits or because we have too many good options and can't make a decision, but that's not the case. We are just the worst baby namers ever. This is how naming conversations usually go at our house...

ME: How about Lily? It's sweet and feminine.

JEREMY: It sounds like lilypad - you know, like a green plant with a frog on it.

ME: Okay, what do you think of Harper?

JEREMY: Everyone would totally think "harpoon". You don't want bearded men and whales to be what comes to mind when people think of our daughter, do you?

ME (only rolling my eyes a little): Hhhhmmmm...I'm sure everyone born in the early 1900's would totally think that, hon. Well, our other kids have really classic names; how about Nora?

JEREMY: Riiiight, I can hear the kids in her class now, "Nora's a bore-a!"

(There are times when I'm glad I didn't know my husband in elementary school. ;)

Thankfully, the name wars debates are over. We've decided to go with a classic first name (that we borrowed from my grandma) and a Christmas-y middle name (since we got Bean's file on Christmas Day). The name we've chosen is Evelyn Joy. We'll call her Evie (EH-VEE) or Evie Joy. Now if our paperwork would just move along so I could kiss those sweet chubby cheeks!

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..." 
-James 1:27

Mommy's Li'l Meltdown

My baby boy turned four on Friday. And I had an amazing birthday post planned. I really did. It was sweet and meaningful with just the right amount of silly. (It was even going to be written on Li'l Dude's birthday, instead of the Tuesday after.) I totally had it half composed in my head, all ready to be whipped together during naptime. (I love you, naptime.)

Then, I had a complete and utter mommy meltdown. It was bad. Like hiccuping, ugly sob hysteria bad.

Before I tell this story, I have something to confess: I'm not the greatest with messes. Growing up, I was a hardcore tomboy with an uber laid-back mom who let me splash in mud and swim in creeks and get covered in pine tree sap every. single. day. And I loved that. I so want to be my mom in that regard, but I'm just not. (I have other serious character flaws, too. I never, ever, ever floss. And I cannot for the life of me remember to bring my reusable grocery bags with me into the store. It's awful, I know. Just call me the environment destroyer.)

I love it when my kids go outside and get dirty. I love it when they let their imaginations run away with them, and they turn the playroom into a castle/fairyland/football stadium. I love watching them roll in the mud stomp around in their rain boots and build block towers and make cookies from scratch. It's the aftermath that makes me twitch.

(On that note, there are some movies I used to enjoy that I cannot handle now that I'm a mom. Home Alone? Seriously, the slime on those basement steps is never coming off. Ever. Beethoven? How can people laugh at the thought of a muddy Saint Bernard romping through a living room? It kinda' makes me nauseous. Then there's that scene in Marly and Me when puppy Marly gets scared of the thunderstorm. And eats the garage. Puke.)

With that being said, I try to stretch myself and give my kids space to get muddy and play in the dishwater and - you should be proud of me for this one - use the Play-doh ice cream maker thing that spits tiny Play-doh "sprinkles" all over the house. Earlier this month, I was at a really awesome retreat for adoptive moms. In one of the sessions, the presenter suggested trying these fun water beads for sensory play. So, in a little attempt at getting outside my box, I ordered some.

Water beads start out as tiny colored balls, about the size of the head of a pin. (If you look really closely - and have x-ray vision - you can read that this little bag contains about 30,000 beads.)

After soaking in water for 6-8 hours, they swell into squishy grape-sized spheres. They're way fun to scoop and pour and smush. (Please ignore my blurry pics. My new budget-friendly smartphone is not quite up-to-par in the camera department.)

I thought the water beads would be just right for a special birthday activity. (One of my other obsessive tendencies is getting way stressed out over special days being really extra special.) So, Thursday night I pulled out the nifty little bag of 30,000 water beads and dumped 5,000 or so into a dish basin full of water. The kids were way excited and kept checking on them to see how quickly they were growing.

Friday morning, the beads were ready. All three kids dug right in. We basically had to drag Li'l Miss away from them to go to school. After a quick trip to the Y, I got the boys all set up to play with the beads. I put three bowls on the floor so there was no chance of spillage and tossed in a few scoops and spoons for extra sensory play fun.

Then I...erm...remember, hindsight is 20/20...I went upstairs to shower.

And my sweet Li'l Man did this.

My lame phone camera cannot even begin to capture the disaster that was my dining room floor. And my living room. And my kitchen. And pretty much everywhere in my downstairs that a small, squishy, grape-sized sphere could roll after being dumped from a tub.

It. Was. Awful. And that spot in the middle where you can actually see a circle of floor? That's where my two little guys were dancing on the water beads. So, although it looks clean, it's actually covered in a thick layer of smashed-water-bead slime.

For about 58 seconds, I really and truly had no idea what to do. Li'l Man piped right up and admitted he had put all the beads in one bowl and poured them out. (I was a teeny bit mad at him at that point.) Well, I thought, natural consequences are always a good thing. He dumped them out; he'll clean them up.

So, I went all in and told Li'l Man this was his clean-up job. He had decided it would be fun to dump 5,000 tiny orbs in the middle of mommy's dining room, he was going to chase down the 4,900 that weren't ground into the floor and put them back in the bowl.

Before I tell you what happened next, I promise I wasn't totally hardcore on this consequence thing. I tried dividing the floor into sections so he could finish one at a time. I tried holding the dust pan so Li'l Man could sweep the beads up. I tried giving my little guy a smaller bowl so he could collect a few beads at a time. 

Nothing worked.

Not only did nothing work, my Li'l Man got an attitude. He was half-heartedly shoving beads in his hand one at a time. After about four beads, he'd go to pick up a fifth one and drop the first four. Then he'd take a little handful or cupful of beads and drop them into the dish basin from about two feet up. Squishy little orbs bounce, dude. Needless to say, there weren't too many water beads actually getting picked up.

This mama who hates messes was trying to supervise a clean-up failure in the middle of a huge disaster for five r-e-a-l-l-y long hours. It was a special day. Oh-so super special.

We finally took a break for school pick-up. Once Li'l Miss got home, she and Li'l Dude jumped in to help with the clean-up efforts. Somehow the mess started to disappear pretty quickly with six little hands grabbing beads.

About 4:00pm, most of the beads that hadn't been smashed into the floor were back in the tub. I was mess. Li'l Man was a mess. I never wanted to see another water bead ever.

Li'l Miss and Li'l Dude still thought the evil little colored orbs were pretty cool. While Li'l Man went to cool off his room and Mommy tried really hard to pretend her feet weren't sticking to bead goo on the floor, they took the big dish tub of beads and set it on a stool to keep playing.

I survived five hours of mess. That's something, right?

But then Li'l Miss knocked the tub off the stool. I'm so not kidding right now. And I lost my mind. (Insert hiccuping, ugly sob hysteria.) Even those of you who aren't ridiculously OCD can't blame me at this point, right?

So, there was no perfectly-worded birthday post. There was just surviving. And trying to calm down enough to breathe while telling Daddy that heneededtocomehomerightthatsecond. 

Thankfully, it's pretty easy to make my Li'l Dude feel special. He got the brownies with blue frosting he'd requested and the card that he wished for and even a wiggle car that was a total surprise.  In the end, I'm pretty sure the birthday boy thought his day was special after all.

Happy (slightly-belated) birthday to my jeep-driving, heart-melting, basket-shooting, dragon-slaying four year old. Words can't say how much I love you, Li'l Dude. (And to prove it, I might even let you play with water beads Play-doh tomorrow.)