It's official... I'm going to China!!!

After much waiting and trying to get answers from our agency, we finally did it! We got our consulate appointment!!! January 19... which also happens to be Dave's grandfather's birthday. Good luck for sure :) So I finally get to say the words I have been waiting to say for nearly 4 years... Ni Hao Baby!

If you read my blog and you'll be in China at the same time (especially Chongqing) please drop me a line!!!

It's 9:07 AM in China

Let the official waiting for our consulate appointment begin!!! Willing the phone to ring or my laptop to "ping" with a new email!!!

To Celia with love!

Travel Approval!!!!!

Today we got those two little letters that we have been waiting for a really, and I mean really long time... TA!!!! In celebration of the moment I am sharing some photos of the boys! The fall foliage one is the one we used for our holiday card this year. I love it!

Looks like I will be flying to China in January! I am very happy to report my friend Angie will be accompanying me. As luck (or fate) would have it, Angie's sister just had a baby and is on maternity leave. Apparently she has taken to motherhood like a fish to water because she has offered to leave her home and husband, fly to Angie's house with her young baby and watch Angie's two girls, ages 7 & 4, for 2 weeks while Angie is in China with me & Celia. Now, Angie's husband will be home too but he will be busy bringing home the bacon.

Back at my ranch, Dave will be staying home earning some bacon too. My dear in-laws will be helping out with our boys in the morning and all three will be in school or at friends in the afternoons. Late afternoons will be covered by our neighbor until Dave gets home from work.

All these people, working in unison to bring our daughter home. Talk about it "taking a village". We are grateful and humbled to have so much love and support.

For all you Notre Dame Fans!

Play like a champion today... and everyday!

Celia's wardrobe

I have been abundantly blessed to have friends that have daughters older than mine, good taste and exceeding generousity. My one friend Peggy gave me 5, count 'em, 5 FULL trash bags full of clothes a couple of years ago. I peeked around one bag and then because they were so big and heavy put them right into storage in our basement. Well once we got matched with Celia I brought them up to check everything out. I would say 80% of the clothes (that's 5 larger trash bags full) were for 18 to 24 mos.!!! The remaining 10% were for 12 mos and under and the other 10% were for 2T - 3T. Cha-ching! I felt like I hit the jack pot! The photos above are just clothes given to me by 2 friends! 95% being from one friend!

With a jam packed closet like this (plus drawers that were full too!) I really couldn't justify doing MUCH shopping because I really had more than enough clothes for her. I mean, the girl has over 60 dresses! That being said, one day a couple weeks ago, I was strolling through the gap and I passed the sales rack with these adorable clothes. And wait, these adorable clothes that were on sale were also being marked down an additional 40%. Plus since it was Tuesday and I had a Gap card I could take off another 10%! So you see I really HAD to indulge just a little bit! Plus I had all three of my boys with me and they were being perfect angels and actually letting me shop! So it really wasn't my fault that I came back with the clothes in the photos below. I had to! And I bought the the cute little hats with flowers on them from a friend because she was selling them and I didn't want to hurt her feelings by not buying something from her ;)

Evan's first penance

Today we celebrated Evan's first penance at church. He looked so handsome and so much like Dave dressed in his dark pants and pinstripe oxford. Despite the fact that I see him every day, I am sometimes taken by surprise by how much he has grown up and is maturing.

When it was his turn for confession we watched as he sat there for a while. I mean a long while. Probably only a couple of minutes but other kids breezed in and breezed out pretty quick. Dave and I sat watching from the pew, wondering if he was suddenly reluctant to share any of his misgivings with the priest or if he was dishing a whole months worth. We asked him about it on the car ride home and apparently he just got a little nervous. Understandably so. So Evan told us the priest just told him to be really nice to his Mom all day. Sage advice if ever I heard any :)

Charmed by my husband!

This charm bracelet has been aching for another little charm for quite some time! Luckily Dave surprised me with another one for Celia! I can't tell you how happy it makes me to hear all that jingling coming from my wrist :) It's the sound of a big happy family!

We made it to Rumor Queen!

For years I have been watching people post their referrals on Rumor Queen! Well our time has finally come! Even though I have been keeping my blog private, I decided to go public just for a bit to see our blog up on RQ's homepage. It felt like seeing our names up in lights on Broadway! Woo-hoo!

Finally an update!

We are thrilled to finally receive an update on Celia! This was no easy task considering how strict they are in her area about giving out information. But thanks to Kelly & Angela at Ladybugs and Love we received an update and photos today! We think she looks absolutely adorable!!!

1. What name does she answer to?
Dan Dan.

2. What is her personality like?
Her personality is like more neutral. She likes to go shopping, to go some
where there are many people. She likes to play with toys.

3. What makes her happy?
When she sees toys or animals she likes.

4. What makes her upset?
When she doesn’t get what she wants or when she is hungry.

5. What are her favorite foods?
Puffed cracker and fruit.

6. Is she in the orphanage or with a foster family?
Foster family.

7. What are her sleeping arrangements?
She goes to bed at 9:00pm and gets up at 8:00am. Takes a nap at 11:30am –
12:30pm.

8.Is she talking and walking?
She can walk by assistance or hold onto sofa. She can say Ba Ba (dad), Ma Ma
(mom), Jie Jie (big sister), Ge Ge (big brother), Na Lai (give it to me,
bring it here), Zou (go), etc.

9. How does she react to strangers?
She is stubborn with strangers.

10. Is she potty trained and if so how will I know when she has to use the
potty?
She is not potty trained. She is wearing diaper.

11. Her updated measurements: height: 78cm; Weight: 10kg; Head: 45cm; Chest:
46cm; Teeth: 12; Foot: 12cm.

Where in the world is Celia Qindan?

Celia is in Chongqing Municipality, specifically Dianjiang SWI. Here is a little bit of info on Chonqing.

Chongqing is a port city with the largest municipal area and population in China. It is situated in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers in southwest China. With an area of 82,400 square kilometers (31, 800 square miles), Chongqing shares borders with the provinces of Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Shaanxi. Besides the Han who form the majority of its total population of 30.9 million, numerous ethnic groups reside in Chongqing, including Yi, Tibetan, Miao, Qiang, You and Tujia.

Since its founding 3,000 years ago, Chongqing has been called Jiangzhou, Yuzhou, and Gongzhou, before getting its present name nearly 800 years ago. Since the Qin Dynasty (221 BC-206 BC), many dynasties have set up administrative institutions that have endowed the city with brilliant cultures. Perched beside the Yangtze, the "Golden River," Chongqing symbolizes Yangtze River civilizations and is the cradle of Bayu culture.

Today, Chongqing is a modern city, China's fourth municipality after Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. Within its borders Chongqing encompasses a wealth of water reserves, mineral resources, dense forests, and abundant flora and fauna. The focal point of the unique Yangtze Three Gorges Dam, Chongqing is a tourist attraction as well as a commercial city.

Chongqing attracts visitors from home and abroad for its cultural heritage and other tourist attractions. The city is the starting point for theYangtze River Cruise, which explores the stunning scenery of the Three Gorges. Other attractions include the Dazu Rock Carvings , valuable works of art carved during the Ninth Century, Gold Buddhist Mountain, a rich repository of diverse animals and plants; and Fishing Town, one of three ancient battlefields in China. Ancient Ci Qi Kou village lures tourists to linger in its streets to buy handicraft souvenirs.

Chongqing is famous for its hot Sichuan cuisine and world-famous hotpot dishes. Street vendors as well as restaurants feature exciting spicy delicacies for the adventurers.

Servicing western China, Chongqing provides convenient water, land, and air transportation. Hundreds of star-ranked hotels provide excellent facilities and services. Chongqing is ready to be the pilot in the Western China Development to usher in more investors and visitors.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered...

She's ours!!! Well, almost :) We got our LOA in yesterdays mail and thankfully Dave came home from his business trip last night. So we signed it last night with our Uncle Sam pen and sent out via fed ex today! Our agency should get it tomorrow and hopefully they will send it out that same day. If you note the CCAA stamp you'll see we actually got approval last friday (on Day 57) but I guess it takes a bit of time to get documents where they need to go.

I also applied for my visa today and started the process to get our power of attorney authenticated. Busy! Busy! Busy!

Thankful!

My friend Amy & I have never met but we have known each other online through our adoption agency connection. She is a kind and wonderful person that has a very big heart for all the children living in orphanages in China. She is hosting a fantastic fundraiser for a very special foster home in China. The Starfish Foster Home is an amazing place! It is run by a South African woman named Amanda that is a teacher by trade and three years ago decided to pick up and start a foster home in China for children with special needs. This is a woman of courage and strength if ever I have seen one. And she is surrounded by the most beautiful and courageous children at the Starfish Foster Home. You can check out her blog and learn more about the special work they are doing for children that have a cleft lip and/or palate.

Amy's fundraiser is a simple one. Simply go to her blog called Lots O' Kidz . Scroll down to the post titled Thankful! and leave a post about something you are thankful for. Amy & her husband will donate a dollar for every post of gratitude to Starfish Foster Home! That's it! Nothing else! She is not gathering email addresses. You can leave it anonymously if you so choose. Its just a celebration of all we have to be thankful for and an understanding that there are those out there that have so little. If nothing else just check out her blog and her beautiful children, two of whom were adopted from China.

Won't you please visit Amy's blog, join in the fun and do something good for someone across the world this holiday season? I did and hope you will too!
Cheers! Cindy

LOA!

We got it this morning on Day 61! The day has been a blur of excited phone calls and emails and planning, planning, planning! In celebration of this moment I am sharing a recent photo of my boys. Our whole family is so excited bring Celia home! China here I come!

Day 60

It has been 60 days since we submitted our Letter of Intent (LOI) to adopt Celia. Someone on RQ's forum told me yesterday that the average wait for LOA in the fall is now 72 days. That's just 12 days away. Here's to not having a Day 80 post! Wish us luck!

Pre-Approval!

Well it took us 41 days to find out but we got the email today that we received pre-approval (PA)! Our official PA date is October 12, 2009! We are thrilled to finally be able to share the photo of our beautiful little Celia!

What's in a name? Part 2

If you read my post about this before you know we did not have a definite name picked out for our daughter prior to being matched with her. We were hoping to see her face and have an epiphany. At the same time we also wanted to give her a name that had sentiment and relevance. We were leaning towards giving her a name with the same first initial as me. Since my real first name is Hyacinth but people only really call me Cindy we were wondering what to pick. An "H" name or a "C" name? It quickly became obvious, based on our preferences, that a "C" name would give us more options. Then there was the meaning of the names. I gotta tell you the "C" names we liked had potential issues. Some of the top contenders meant "blind", "crooked nose" and "white". As prospective adoptive parents to a child with a special need, we needed to be sensitive to the fact that these names might not be a good fit for our daughter depending on what her special need was. But we did find out that the name that meant "blind" was also a derivative name of the patron saint of music and we liked that. So we figured as long as our daughter did not have a visual special need than that name was still in play.

When we got matched I put a post on Rumor Queen asking for help translating our daughter's Chinese name. Luckily a super nice woman that also got matched on the same day as us, from the same orphanage and whose husband also happens to be chinese offered to translate her name for me! I emailed her the characters for our daughter's name. Her chinese name is Jiang Qin Dan. And she told us that Jiang means river; Qin means exuding or emanating; and Dan means Peony! Peony!!!! Her name means Peony and I am Hyacinth!!! If that isn't fortuitous than I don't know what is!!! The sentiment and relevance we were hoping for with her american name was already there in her chinese name. I love it!

Her referral information also mentioned a couple times that she liked music! Horray!

And so it is with great joy and excitement that we announce our daughter's name! It will be Celia Qindan ~ our "C" named, patron saint of music inspired, peony exuding little girl!

This photo was taken by our niece Caroline, aka Cece, and another inspiration for Celia's "C" name. It is a photo of the peonies growing in my SIL's garden. Beautiful!

Seeing their sister for the first time!

The Call - Part 2

So we got the call at 9:55 AM and I could not reach Dave. The next person I wanted to reach was Mommy at The Womble Times. She has been such an amazing friend to me and despite never having met her in person (which I totally plan to change), it feels as if we have know each other for ages. Possibly because adoption years are kinda like dog years!

So Mommy is like my China adoption BFF and the problem was Mommy was all the way around the world in China picking up her sweet Mei Mei! Not really a problem for her as much as me ;) We had actually joked about this happening! A Murphy's Law kind of thing! So I quick sent her an email with the title "Of course you knew this would happen!" Not a 1/2 hour later she emails me back! (Seriously, how did people go through adoptions before the internet and email?!) In the meantime, I was calling my SIL and telling her we got the call. My SIL and niece have been uber-supportive of this whole process and it has been so wonderful to share it with them. My SIL kept saying "I really think this is it! I think she is your baby!" Our niece was in the background and I could hear them oooh and ahhh as they pulled her photo up on their computer. It was fantastic!

In hind sight, I should have known we would get "the call" that day. The stage was set for "the call". First, the Rumor Queen report was that there were few children on the list and so I was completely convinced our wait would continue. My husband was unreachable. My China adoption BFF was in... well... China. And I scheduled my carpets to be cleaned that morning which meant that I would have men here moving around my furniture and obscenely loud vacuum noises in the background. Of course these same men had to shout to each other over the noise and did so in Russian... at least I think it was Russian? This in turn triggers obscenely loud noises by my dog that is mad about the vacuum and men shouting in a foreign language. And finally my 2 youngest boys sitting next to each other with their Nintendo DS's turned on full volume and shouting to each other over the rest of the noise.

Now the stage is set... Cue skype call from Mommy from The Womble Times! Picture me holding my laptop in the corner of my living room and her huddle over hers in the darkness of her hotel room in China. She is whispering because Mei Mei is asleep in the room, "Can you hear me?" and I am screaming over the cacophony of my house "Yes! Can you hear me?!" Mommy whispers to me "I think you found your baby!" And I am thinking, you know that, I know that, my SIL and niece know that... if only Dave knew it too! I guess this is one those cases where the husband is the last to know! LOL!

We are still on cloud 9!

PS In this photo are Dave and the beautiful pale blue hydrangeas he brought home in celebration of our adorable daughter!!! Plus a balloon that is hard to read but says "It's a girl!". He has promised to bring our daughter hydrangeas every year on this anniversary - September 17! What a guy!!! Next one is Evan and Ryan with the flowers and ballon.

"The Call"

There were many points over the course of these past three years that I thought we might never have this moment but we did! Finally! We got "the call"!

It was Thursday, September 17, 2009. I had been stalking Rumor Queen all week long for news on the upcoming shared list. I had heard the shared list had come out the night before but that there weren't many children on it so I begrudgingly resigned myself to the fact that we were going to have to wait at least another month. When the phone rang at 9:55 AM with one of our directors name on the caller ID, I immediately thought to myself 'Don't get excited. This isn't it. She just has a question.' I calmly answered the phone. We had the usual 'how are you's'. And then she calmly said "Listen I may have a potential referral for you." I listened somewhat in shock as she described our future daughter!

Moments earlier, before we had gotten "the call", I had called Dave at work to ask him something. Only I didn't call his direct line at his desk. I accidently called his cell phone. He answered in hurried hushed tones and reminded me that he was in a very important, all day, off-site, can't-be-interrupted, meeting for work. I felt bad and apologized. And when he hung up, he turned off the ringer on his cell, something he never ever does! But it was that kind of meeting and of course it makes for a more interesting story for our daughter to hear one day :)

So when I got "the call" I figured this was "an emergency" and one more call to Dave on his cell would be forgiven but his ringer was off. I tried emailing and texting him too but rightfully so he wasn't paying any attention to his phone. I left voice mails, emails and texts and then spent my time pouring through our daughters paperwork. In that time I was falling in love! All the while Dave was oblivious to the fact that he just got a new daughter!

Here is what her paperwork told me. Her name is Jiang Qin Dan and she is in the Dianjiang SWI in Chongqing Municipality. She was born on July 30, 2008. She was found when she was 1 day old and is currently 13 months old. She is described as extroverted with a ready smile. She is a deep sleeper and is fond of playing with toys. Her referral picture is adorable and there is something about her expression that reminds me so much of our second son Ryan when he was younger. And although I can't quite articulate it, there is something about her that feels so familiar. It's a wonderful feeling!

And finally sometime after lunch I got a text from Dave with one word written in it. "Awesome". LOL! Awesome to say the least! Poor guy did not have access to a computer all day. He raced home around 4 PM and made a bee-line straight to his lap top. When he was done reading her file (with me hovering behind him), he swiveled his chair around with a big smile on his face. I asked him what he thought and he said he thought we found our daughter! I said that is what I had been thinking all day! We called right then and accepted her file!

Stepping back and being completely honest, for as much as I wanted to get "the call", I know there was a part of me that was fearful of it too. I can be neurotic and a bit of an over-analyzer to the point of making myself crazy at times. I worried that we would get the call and then I would spend the next few months secretly terrified of what the future held for us. In fact, I pretty much prepared myself for months of varying degrees of uncertainty and inner turmoil. But this was no ordinary day and I can honestly and shockingly say that I not only had so much excitement in my heart but I had peace too. And the inner peace was truly the best part. I look at her referral photo and it all feels right. I feel so much love in my heart for her and Dave and I feel blessed beyond belief. After all the waiting, all the uncertainty, all the tears and then to hear my husband repeatedly say "I can't believe how lucky we are" over and over just fills my heart with peace.