The day we became a family of FOUR!

The moment we finally met our son didn't go anything like we pictured. I mean we prepared ourselves for many worse case scenarios, but in our minds we always thought we would at least capture the moment no matter how good or bad on camera, but we didn't even get that chance.
After being in Beijing for less than 24 hours, we boarded our 3 hour flight for Fuzhou, Fujian province. The flight was only slightly delayed and our daughter slept the entire time - it was glorious. Our adoption travel guide met us after we collected our luggage and handed us a package that outlined our schedule for the remainder of our time in Fuzhou. In the back of the package there was more information about our son from the orphanage. At first we thought it was answers to the questions we sent to them at Christmas, but these were different. Likely another family's  questions for their adopted child, but luckily the answers did cover many of the same ones we asked.
We sat and read through this info at the airport McDonalds while our daughter continued to sleep in my husbands arms for about another half hour. We found out we were waiting for another family to land that was also adopting  from Fuzhou. They were an American couple that were using a different adoption agency but would be using the same guide as us for the rest of our week. After only a few minutes of meeting the American family we found out that they started their trip as a family of 9 and by the end of their time in China they would be a family of 11. Yes, you read that correctly. They have 5 biological children (their 15 year old travelled with them and was amazing with the kids, including our daughter), the youngest of which was only 18 months old. They also have 2 adopted children from Atlanta (where they live) with special needs. When we met them they had already picked up their 13 year old adopted daughter earlier that week from a different province. She  was a cheery happy child already calling her parents Mama and Baba (Chinese for Dad). They were going to be meeting their second newly adopted daughter, who was almost 2 years old, when they arrived at our hotel.
Our arrival at the hotel is when everything we planned for changed. The American family's child was already there waiting for them and as they walked in the door they were handed their little girl.  We were trying to figure out what to do while our guide was helping the other family with translation and paperwork for their adoption.  We were trying to figure out what room we were in when two women came through the front doors of the hotel carrying our son. We both knew it was him right away and we both just sort of stood there dumbfounded not knowing what to do, while our daughter repeatedly asked "what are we doing?".
Our guide came back over to us in order to help us finally check in and realized what was going on. The next half an hour was an absolute blur. Our guide walked us over to the lounge area of our hotel lobby and our son was put into my arms immediately. We had no time to get out our camera, any toys, prep our daughter, or even process what was happening. So even though I was having a complete panic attack on the inside, I tried to pretend that everything was fine. Our son cried at first and tried to squirm away from me when he was handed to me. Luckily I have been working out and I was able to contain all 27 lbs of him. My husband tried to go and find our camera and some snacks to made the transition a little bit better, but as soon as he returned with both items they sat him down and asked him to fill out paperwork. Basically he signed temporary agreements making us his guardians until we signed the official paperwork the next day. The whole process took 10 minutes. No questions were answered, no instructions given. The only thing I was told about our son was that the silver bracelet he was wearing was from one of his nannies.
Next we went to finish the check in process and go to our room. And that is when reality hit! We had nothing unpacked and didn't have any food or formula (we anticipated buying these things before he arrived) for him once be became hungry. We basically went into survival mode which is unfortunate because neither of us really got to enjoy the moment.
My husband went with the other father (from Atlanta) and our guide across the highway to get some food and formula. I stayed with our daughter and son and tried to keep them both happy with rice puffs. I tried at one point to put our son in his crib so that I could find the diapers in our luggage to change him. That didn't go over well, he immediately started crying so I carried him around with me from suitcase to suitcase trying to find the things I needed. Besides that moment, he was very quiet and didn't make much noise at all. This was a good thing since the novelty of meeting her new brother had already worn off for our daughter and she was snuggled up watching Beauty and the Beast on the I Pad for the 100th time so she was zero help to me. My husband returned an hour later and we then tried to figure out the water to formula ratio  for his bottle by interpreting the Mandarin instructions on the side of the box. Thank goodness for Google!
After both kids were fed, I changed our son into some pajamas. He was only wearing one pink shoe when he arrived, apparently the other one was lost on the way to see us. He had only 4 long sleeve shirts on and a pair of fleece lined jeans on. Our room was unbearably hot, but even with all of those layers he didn't seem to mind. Fairly quickly after I changed him he basically rolled over on our bed and put his finger in his mouth (he's a finger sucker this one) and fell asleep. He was likely exhausted from the days events but I was completely stunned. Especially since we have never experienced an easier bedtime in our entire lives as parents. Both kids were asleep by 8:30 pm. While the kids slept my husband and I tried to organize our room and grasp the life changing event that happened that day. Our son only woke up once when I tried to move him to his crib but it only lasted a few minutes and he proceeded to sleep all the way to 6 am. Our daughter on the other hand was up at 1:30 am China time thinking it was morning and was ready for breakfast. My husband and I took shifts laying with her and talking to her since we had another full day ahead of us.
So that's it, that was the day we met our son. As crazy as it was I wouldn't change it for anything. It was the day our family finally became complete. A day that we will celebrate and talk about for years to come.

We are HOME!

Well we have been home for over a week now from our trip to China to get our son. This post is just a quick hello to our regular readers who we haven't had a chance to talk to since our return. My goal is to write a post about each day of our trip (or at least the really important ones) so it may take a little time. And now that we are a family of 4, I seem to have even less time than I did before. Weird how that works. All of us are very happy to be home and we are slowly adjusting to the time change and to our change in family structure. Since we have returned, a lot of our time has been filled with paperwork, medical appointments, and most importantly, gaining trust and building a strong attachment with our son. We feel so blessed to have our son home with us. We are so lucky to have been chosen as his family. He seems to be adjusting well to his new surroundings. For the most part he is a happy boy, who is mischievous, and who loves to eat. Our favourite thing to do is to find new ways to make him laugh. His laugh is the most wonderful sound.
Thank you to everyone who followed us on this journey, who kept in touch with us during our trip, who prayed for us, and who have supported us every step of the way. Your love and support has been amazing throughout this entire process. We cannot wait for all of you to meet our son. He is one amazing little person who I am sure you will fall in love with the minute you see him (we may be a bit biased, but wait and see what you think after he smiles at your for the first time).

Happy Spring everyone, talk to you soon...I promise.

Chinese Visas

This is a guest blog post.  I’m the husband that is grateful for my wife that keeps you all up to date with this blog on a regular basis.  She is phenomenal at doing each post and I’m good at proofreading if I’m around when she is about to post it – and that’s all I can take credit for.

I have had the pleasure of doing some of the immigration paperwork as well as the visa applications for our passports.  China is quite strict with accounting for who is coming and going and what is causing this movement. 

The Canadian immigration paperwork is done in two phases.  The first phase was completed almost a year ago (oops – I was supposed to do a guest post on that process).  The short version is that I filled out about 20 pages of online documents filling in all of our personal information from addresses to finances to family details and throughout those documents referred to our son as “unknown child” with ****-**-** as his birthdate.  This was all done with the help of women that has adopted two girls from China and has helped numerous families with this complicated paperwork. 

The second phase of that paperwork will be completed in Beijing during the second week of our trip after all of the official adoption paperwork has been completed.  Fingers crossed that all the immigration paperwork is done properly so that upon our return to the airport in Toronto, the immigration officers will simply say, “Welcome home” to us and “Welcome to Canada” to our son. 

Then there were the Chinese visas for our passports.  As I said, the Chinese government likes to closely monitor who is going in and out of their country.  We were warned that when filling out the application for our visas that we really needed to be meticulous in following the instructions and to be sure to include all the necessary documentation.  Each of our applications was four pages in length and included typical personal information, passport information, place of employment, family information on children, parents and spouse, reason for travel, flight details, hotel information for our stay in China and all the information about the Chinese adoption organization that we are working with. 

The closest visa office is in downtown Toronto (2 hours East of where we live) and because we needed all the specifics of our trip to apply, we really didn’t have the time to mail in our application.  With only three weeks until our trip, I drove the three applications down to the Toronto office.  My appointment was at 9:00am and I made it no problem.  By 10:00am I was finishing the third and final application.  All the supporting documentation was in order and the last thing to check were that the signatures on our applications matched the signatures on our passports.  One of the signatures (I won’t say which one to protect my wife’s identity) didn’t match enough to pass.  “So you won’t accept the applications because those signatures don’t match?” They needed an original document so there wasn’t another option aside from driving home to get another signature and driving back.  My lovely wife met me part way to save me some time to ensure I could make it back to Toronto in time to get it all sorted out.  I realized that day, that I’m not cut out to be in the driving business.  When I got home around 7:00pm, I was ready for bed.   I’m heading back to Toronto in a few days to pick up our passports and that is one of the final things off the list in preparation for our trip – aside from packing. 

ONE MONTH!

In exactly one month we will be flying to China to get our son Emmett Zhen Feng! As a side note, for those of you that don't know, we decided (after a lot of thought) to go with Emmett for his name and will keep his Chinese name as his middle name. That way if he ever wanted to use his Chinese name he could......
So back to leaving in a month, to my husband and I that seems so far away but also so close all at the same time. While we would like to be leaving tomorrow to get him there is still so much we need to do before then. Over the last few weeks I have worked on narrowing down our packing list. I have used the list that our adoption agency provided us along with researching several adoption blogs to see what others who have taken the trip recommend bringing. I have narrowed it down to 5 pages. My husband and I have been on a few trips overseas that require planned packing and Tetris like skills to fit everything in the luggage but this is going to be different. The amount of recommended medicines on our list could take up an entire carry-on, plus we will have two tiny humans with us. We are talking more preventative medicines then when we went to Africa for our honeymoon where we slept in tents and didn't have running water! The main reason for this is because some medicines we may need are either not the same in China, are not available, or are just too expensive. That is where the blog research has come in very handy. Some of the blogs I read even wrote out exactly what they took on the trip and indicated if they would bring it again or leave it at home. Perhaps I will do the same with our packing list when I return from our trip so that it is available for others who might take same the trip in the future.

We have also received our finalized itinerary from Children's Bridge. Seeing on paper what we will be doing each day has made it even more real. I have written out a summary of our trip below.

Beijing:
Sat. Feb 25 - Adoption travel guide will meet us at the airport in Beijing and transfer family to the hotel.
Sun. Feb 26 - Adoption travel guide and driver will meet us at the hotel and bring us back to the Beijing airport for our flight to our sons province Fujian.

Fujian:
Sun. Feb 26 - Provincial adoption travel guide will meet us at the airport in Fuzhou, Fujian Province and bring us to the hotel. We will receive our son on the afternoon of Sunday February 26th.
Mon. Feb 27 - Prov. adoption travel guide will meet us at the hotel and bring us to the provincial adoption centre for registration, notarization and to complete our son's Chinese passport application.
Tues. Feb 28 - Sightseeing in Fuzhou City.
Wed. Mar 1 - Prov. adoption travel guide and driver will pick us up at the hotel for the drive to the orphanage. Visit the orphanage (approx. two hour drive).
Thurs. Mar 2 - Prov. adoption travel guide and driver will bring your notarized adoption paperwork to you at the hotel.
Fri. Mar 3  - Prov. adoption travel guide will pick up your son's Chinese passport and bring it to you at the hotel. Free day in Fuzhou.
Sat. Mar 4 - Prov. adoption travel guide will pick us up and take us to the Fuzhou airport for our flight back to Beijing.

Beijing:
Sat. Mar 4 - Adoption travel guide will meet your family at the Beijing airport and transfer your family to the hotel.
Sun. Mar 5 - Complete paperwork for CIC (Immigration).
Mon. Mar 6 - Medical examination for Emmett. Adoption travel guide will take immigration paperwork to the Canadian Embassy. Visit the Great Wall in the afternoon.
Tues. Mar 7 - Visit Hutong, make dumplings for lunch, acrobat show in the afternoon.
Wed. Mar 9 - Visit the Beijing Zoo (panda house).
Thurs. Mar 9 - One dinner arranged by adoption travel service (Peking duck).
Fri. Mar 10 - Adoption travel guide and driver will pick us up at the hotel and transfer us to the Beijing airport for our flight back to Canada.

So as you can see the first few days of our trip are going to be very busy and very exciting. Fingers crossed everyone will adjust to the time change in a very short amount of time (ha ha). We know the day we receive our son will be a whirlwind (and sadly likely very traumatizing for him). We weren't expecting it to be so soon after we arrived but the more time we have to bond with him before we fly home the better.

While I have been working on the packing list and finding/purchasing the supplies we need my husband has been working on all of the paperwork that needs to be completed. Right now he is working on our VISA applications. Perhaps sometime he can write a bit more about that process (once it is complete and we know that we did everything correctly).

I have also downloaded a few apps for our phones and I Pad that we will use on our trip.  A few translation apps (Pleco Chinese Dictionary), and a learn Chinese app, so that we can communicate with our son and with the local people when our guide is not around. I downloaded a Chinese Kids Songs CD that we can play for him in our hotel or on the plane. Our goal is to learn one of the songs so that we can sing it to him when we meet him. That was an idea I received from one of the blogs I followed. They said that it was the best thing they could have done to help with the beginning stages of bonding with their adopted child.

This weekend marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year. 2017 will be the year of the Rooster. To celebrate we are hosting our families for a traditional (well we are going to try) Chinese meal and festivities. We hope to make this a yearly tradition. So far our daughter has loved seeing the bright red Chinese decorations I have hung throughout our main floor. She is really looking forward to our "big Chinese party" this weekend.

Happy New Year everyone!

Flights are booked!

On the weekend we booked our flights to CHINA! We fly out of Toronto to Beijing  on February 24th and back home with our son on March 10th. We didn't have a lot of choices to make regarding flights etc. as most of those decisions were already made for us. One thing we had to decide was whether or not we wanted to buy a seat for our son for the flight home. Since he will be under the age of two he is not required to have his own seat,  but since the flight will be approximately 13 hours (less than what we originally thought, hooray) we were advised by the adoption agency that we may want to purchase him a seat. The cost to buy him a seat on our flight back from China was more expensive than one of our adult round trip tickets. So we weren't exactly sure what to do. Would he need to be in our arms for the entire flight? Could our daughter and son share a seat for part of the flight (knowing that our daughter  would likely want to be in our lap at some point as well). We looked into booking a flight back to London from Toronto as it has always been recommended to fly as close to home as possible, since your newly adopted child will have never rode in a car seat before. Our compromise was going to be if we could get a flight back to London that we would forget the extra seat from Beijing to Toronto and use the money to pay for the London flight. Unfortunately there are no flights into London on March 10th that would work, so the decision was made for us. As much as it pained us to pay the extra money for a seat on a flight that may not be used we decided we should just bite the bullet and book it. Perhaps the extra seat could provide more room for one of us to sleep and stretch out? Or provide a dumping place for all of the items we will need to keep two children occupied on an overseas flight? I guess we will just have to wait and see.
As a side note all other flights and accommodations while we are in China will be booked by our adoption agency. We should receive a full itinerary of our trip in the coming weeks as everything gets finalized.
Now we need to figure out how we are going to get to and from the airport. Will we drive ourselves and leave a vehicle in Toronto while we are in China so that when we return we can just hop in and go? Will family meet us at the airport to greet us and share some of the drive home? The biggest problem is that we don't know how any of us will be feeling at that point in our journey. Will we be too exhausted to drive? Will the kids sleep on the way home, or will they be wide awake and cranky? How will our son react to being strapped a car seat? We are still working on our return home plan as you can see. The only thing we do know is that once we land in Toronto all we are going to want to do is get HOME to start our lives as a family of four and sleep in our own beds.

While I was writing this blog post we received updated photos of Zhen Feng along with his most recent measurements. It was an unexpected surprise on a Monday and it completely made our day. He is still looking healthy and happy which makes our hearts smile. I haven't stopped looking at the new photos since we received them. I cannot wait until February 24th!

Care Package...and other news.

As promised here is a picture of the care package we sent to our son in China. With the help of the amazing sewing skills of my Mother-in-law we were able to make a felt book that would be able to be rolled up and crammed into the tiny box we were permitted to send.

Our hope is that the package makes it to him, and that his caregivers read him the book so that our faces become a little more familiar to him.

Our 2-4 month wait for the Letter Seeking Confirmation (LSC) ended up taking only 2 weeks to arrive! We were shocked when we received the call from Children's Bridge. When the original LSC arrived at our home we had to sign it and send it back to the agency A.S.A.P. There are two "original" copies of the LSC, one was ours to sign, the other one is for the Provincial Government to sign. Then the two originals are sent back to the China Centre for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) in China. To summarize the LSC, it is a document that requires us to make a decision about adopting our son. Basically we check a box that says "we accept the adoptee mentioned above" and we sign our names.

Now that the LSC has been signed our agency sent us tentative travel dates (while I was writing this blog post our travel dates were actually confirmed) for our trip to China. Our travel dates are February 24 to March 10, 2017. This is so much sooner than we anticipated! We are very happy and excited that all of our waiting will be over in the next couple of months. There is a mountain of paperwork to be done before then and I will continue to keep the blog updated with information as we move through the process.

In the meantime we need to start reading the 14 page document that Children's Bridge sent us called "China Waiting Child Program Travel Guide and Packing List" - cue my anxiety now! Packing for an 18 hour flight with our 3 1/2 year old and then a return flight with our son should be interesting. I am looking forward to every aspect of the journey that lies ahead of us, except those plane rides!

We did find out that two other families will be travelling to China at the same time as us. Although our children are in different provinces  we will be doing a majority of our travel with them. One of the families has already adopted a little girl from China and she is approximately the same age as our daughter. We feel very fortunate to have an experienced family with us during our time in China. Hopefully our daughters will be able to become fast friends during the trip and possibly entertain each other on some of the more boring portions of travel (like the plane ride I mentioned earlier).

Checking off items one by one.

On Wednesday we received an email from our Program Manager at Children's Bridge that our son's China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) online file has been locked and that the CCCWA will now review our match and issue the Letters Seeking Confirmation within the next 2 - 4 months. She did mention in the email that this timeline has been faster for recent families. So fingers crossed it is the same for us. So this puts us at step 17 of the 30 step process that was given to us when we originally started this whole journey over 3 years ago.
Once the letters seeking confirmation have been received back at Children's Bridge (we have to sign  the letters and send them back) the adoption agency will begin to plain our trip to China which means that we will likely travel 6 - 8 weeks after that.
So now that our CCCWA application has been locked we are permitted to send a care package to our son. We were notified that we are not permitted any direct contact between us and the orphanage our son is in until after our adoption has been completed. We were advised to prepare a package that includes the following items:

• A small photo album book that includes photos of our home, his room, photos of us and any close relatives he will meet once he comes to Canada. We were also advised to make a duplicate photo book to bring with us to China in case the care package does not make it to him. I plan to post a photo of the book we create on our blog once it's complete. Right now it is a work in progress.
• A small stuffed toy or lap blanket
• A toddler sized back pack
• A short one page note for his caregivers that will be translated for us

We were instructed that these items need to fit into a small child sized shoe box that weighs no more than 2kgs! We are trying to get all of these things together quickly it might arrive by Christmas (whether he celebrates it or not). We have to first send the package to Children's Bridge in Ottawa and then they will send it to China.

Buying these things and creating this book has been such a joy. It feels amazing to be able to provide something tangible to our son to let him know how much we love him already. I promise to post a photo of the completed package so stay tuned.

Another exciting thing that happened this past week was the Children's Bridge monthly email arrived in our inbox. Guess who's names were in it this time?!

"Warm congratulations are extended to the Palmer family on the referral of their son."

I of course cried happy tears reading those words. After months and months of reading about other families receiving referrals it was finally our turn. I took a screenshot of our names written in the email and I look at it from time to time to remind myself that this is really happening. Our time has come and we couldn't be happier!

Pardon me, we have a son?!

Following our last blog post we had quite a few follow-up calls with our Adoption Agency, Children’s Bridge. We were left feeling very frustrated and confused as to why we weren’t receiving a child referral. Some of our documentation was set to expire in January and we were starting to discuss the changes we could make to potentially broaden the pool of children we could be matched with. Last Wednesday night I had a conversation (or meltdown) with my husband as I felt overwhelmed with frustration. I said that I knew our son was out there waiting for us so why can’t we know who he is?! Following that conversation, we made a list of questions for our agency to ask the next day. On Thursday November 10^th 2016, my husband called and left a message with our Program Manager letting her know that we had a few questions and asked if she could return our call. Later that day, as my husband was about to coach a championship final for his boys volleyball team, he received her call. He was reluctant to answer since he was a bit busy, but he took the call and planned on telling her to call me instead. She said, “We don’t need to worry about answering those questions, as we have matched your family with a little boy”. In complete shock he told her to call me and that he would get the details later. How he went on to coach and win that game with that phone conversation lingering in his head I will never know.

I received a frantic text from my husband that said “Answer your phone when Cathy calls - I guess we don’t need those answers. They have a boy for us, he just turned one”. I of course missed the text and the initial phone call. I got back to my desk and saw that I had a text message and a voicemail. I looked at the text message and panicked. As I started to listen to my voicemail I immediately started to cry. Before I could finish listening to the message our Program Manager was calling me back. I answered the phone and she said “Kathryn, this is a day that you are going to remember for the rest of your life”. The next few minutes on the phone were a blur. I tried to write down absolutely everything she was saying while wiping away tears. She assured me that she would be sending all of this information in an email right after we spoke, but I didn’t want to miss anything. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I hung up the phone and felt like I should pinch myself. Was this really happening. Co-workers gathered at my desk and congratulated me as they could overhear my excitement during the phone call.

I refreshed my email on my phone what feels like 100 times before the email came through, and when I opened it…there he was…our son!

The document we received was 10 pages of background information and medical history on our son and 4 photos. It will likely be the only information we ever receive about his past. Here are some of the details that were included:

Name: Zhen Feng Jiang

DOB: November 6, 2015 (his date of birth was attached to him upon his arrival)

·            He is living at the Baby Care Institute of Jinjiang City in the Fujan Province of China.

·            He has bilateral cleft lip and palate and in April of 2016 had his lip repaired.

·            He has a good appetite (which you can see in the photos as he is a chunky little boy)

·            He is active and has a ready smile

·            He likes to have fun

·            He is a clever child

After we took some time to let the news sink in, we shared the photos with our 3 ½ year old daughter. She thought he looked cute and looked like her Papa (who is my father). When we asked her why she thought that she said it was because he doesn’t have any hair. I don’t think either of us will forget that response. She asked a few other times throughout that night to see his photo and now she has a printed one in a frame beside her bed. She already lovingly refers to him as “my brother”. The next several hours were spent on the phone calling family and friends and filling people in on our amazing news.

The next day we received a package from Children’s Bridge that included the same information we received in the email and some very important documents we needed to fill out with our Adoption Practitioner / Social Worker. These documents needed to be sent back to Children’s Bridge in Ottawa ASAP as they needed to be translated and sent to China within a few days. Our Adoption Practitioner came to see us on Sunday to finalize everything on our end. The most important documentation that we signed that day stated that we were accepting this child as our son. The whole process seemed a bit informal; I feel like there should have been some trumpets and fanfare in the background while we signed but it still felt very special.

In the coming weeks, several different authorities need to sign off on our documentation to make it official. We are hoping that in the New Year we will find out when we will be able to travel to China to bring our son home. The estimate we were given was likely March or April. To most of you that will seem like I long time, but right now we are still enjoying the fact that we finally know who our son is! Something we have been waiting on for a very long time.

For any friends or family members that would like to see a photo of Zhen Feng please email us, we would love to share it with you.

More waiting...

I woke up this morning feeling frustrated, defeated, sad, and a little angry. I have been trying to push down those feelings, but to be honest, it isn't working. This is the email we received from Children's Bridge yesterday.



"I wanted to let you know The Children’s Bridge received two children’s referrals from the CCCWA Online System last evening for two little boys but the special medical needs are not cleft lip and cleft palate. We will anticipate our next set of children’s files in December 2016 and I will also continue to monitor the online system for your family."



December feels like forever away right now and my logical mind keeps telling me that the likelihood of the adoption agency receiving another boy referral at that time is slim but I am trying to have a positive outlook even though it is very hard.



So now we wait some more and change our plans. We called our parents to deliver the news and to let them know that they will be on daycare duty longer than expected since our daughter will be in daycare part-time starting in January (see a previous post about this decision). We change our Christmas card photo plan since we were hoping to use our adoption announcement (we took these photos in July) as our card this year. We look at what this means for my job and my parental leave. We push everything back a little further and hope that we are travelling to China in the Spring of 2017.

A not so exciting update

Since our last update (when we were second on the list) we moved up to being first on the list to receive a children's file from China. Yes this is wonderful news, but ever since we found that out (which I think was mid-summer) we have been waiting for a phone call from the adoption agency. When I say waiting for a phone call I mean I wake up every morning and hope that today is the day. I check my email every hour hoping that we will get some news. So far no boy, no referrals, not really any news to report. When we talked to Children's Bridge about our status on the list they said that they expected the next set of files to arrive at the end of August or beginning of September. So once mid-September hit I emailed the agency just to check in so that I didn't have to receive the monthly update without our names on it.


The email response I received said:
"Thanks so much for your email message. Please call or email anytime. We have not yet received the individual children's referrals yet for September. I will contact your family to let  you know if there is a match for you once we receive and review the referrals. I know the waiting is challenging. Take care and have a good weekend-hope to have some news later this month."


I immediately printed the email response and put it on our fridge. To serve as a daily reminder that our time is coming and to give us some hope that this might still be our month.


So now, here we are, October 4th and late last night we received the monthly update in our email inbox just before we were about to go to bed. We both cringed and opened the email with our fingers crossed. It appeared there were no referrals this month. Sigh of relief. Then frustration set in. I said to my husband, maybe October will be our month. Maybe we will get an amazing gift for our wedding anniversary from China. Wouldn't that be amazing.


Today I received an email from Children's Bridge that said:
"I wanted to give you a quick update. We have not yet received the individual children's files for or WC China Program, and the CCCWA and businesses in China are on holidays for the next 8-10 business days for National Day and Golden Week holiday, and so we will not receive the files until after October 10th. I will keep you posted, and please don't hesitate to call me if you would like to chat."


I wrote back:
"Thank you very much for the update, we really appreciate it. We will try to keep our minds occupied until after October 10th. Our wedding anniversary is the 11th so a really great gift would be some good news. Fingers crossed."


And so we wait some more.............

The waiting game.

Likely everyone reading this post is hoping that we have some good news. Unfortunately, that is not the case. In my last post I mentioned that Children's Bridge sends out a monthly newsletter giving updates on each of the countries they facilitate adoptions from. The last few months I have dreaded receiving the update in our email inbox. The reason for my dread is that I am scared to open the email and read that families have received their child proposal when obviously we have not. The May update arrived and I had mixed emotions when I read that no referrals arrived that month. Deep down I had hoped that meant that there would definitely be referrals in June and that we would receive one. Normally the updates come on the last day of the month or sometimes a few days later so when I came home last night and checked my email I was surprised to see the Children's Bridge update waiting for me. As I opened it I hoped that once again there were no referrals this month since obviously we didn't receive one. Much to my dismay, I read that two families had received their referrals. My heart sank and I fought off tears. As much as you try not to get your hopes up, you obviously do. And after a busy and stressful week it was the last thing I wanted to read. I really tried to be happy for the two families that now have the information they have been waiting for. They have likely been doing the same thing we have every month when the newsletter comes out. But it is very hard in that moment to not be jealous and mad that your name is not printed in that email. So many thoughts go through your head.

Why not us?
I thought we were second on the list?
Were there no boy referrals?
When will the next set of referrals come?
Are we going to have to wait another 2 months?

An amazing friend that I talked to after reading the email said, "It will happen when it's supposed to. Those two children weren't meant for you. And four extra weeks (or however long it ends up being), although agonizing, will seem like a distant memory when you get that file of the child that was meant for your family."
So for right now, I am just repeating that in my head over and over and hoping that the next monthly update has our name printed on it.

Finally an update!

I have been hearing from people a lot lately that they keep checking our blog for updates but that there hasn't been one since February. Unfortunately that is the reality of the adoption process.We have been waiting as anxiously (if not more) for an update too. I promise that we haven't been holding back information from you. This is just part of the process, waiting, waiting, and more waiting.
That is until 3 weeks ago. Both my husband and I received a call (which we both missed) from our adoption agency late one afternoon. I remember being very excited and very scared to listen to the message. Unfortunately it wasn't the news I was hoping for. According to the adoption agency, China had contacted them requesting more information regarding the financial statement we submitted with our application. You might remember that we submitted our application to China in early February so I was disheartened to hear that they were just reviewing our file now. Thankfully after talking to our agency we found out that we had been verbally approved in China, we just needed to send some updated information regarding our finances. Both my husband and I contacted our employers for new letters of employment and changed a few numbers on our statement in order to prove to China that we would have enough money (through a bank loan or otherwise) to cover the adoption and provide a financially good life for our child.
After we submitted the documents I had a lot of questions. Most important was I wanted to know if this put us further behind in the process. Since this was the first we had heard from our agency in a few months we just assumed that everything was on track (up until now). Also, the last set of files that our agency received from China was smaller than usual. Meaning usually they would receive  an average of 4 child proposals at a time. In March when the Children's Bridge newsletter came out we read that they only received 2 child proposals that month.
After a few days of phone tag my husband was able to connect with our adoption agency and get a few answers. For the first time in this entire process we found out exactly where we are on the list! We are currently second on the list. SECOND! Yes this is amazing news! That means that, fingers crossed, we could get a child proposal when the next set of files comes from China (in the next 2-4 months). Now of course there are a few reasons why we may not receive a proposal in the next round but we still celebrated the good news. If the next set of files does not include any boys we would obviously not be eligible for a proposal. Or if there is a boy but he is more than 18 months younger than our daughter we may not be eligible. The adoption agency did say that if the child proposal was for a boy that was only 16 or 17 months younger than our daughter that they could speak to the Ontario Government and see if it could be approved anyway (hopefully it doesn't come to that). So I am remaining cautiously optimistic that sometime between now and July we will receive a child proposal for our little boy in China! When I say cautiously optimistic I mean that until I wrote this post I didn't really let it all sink in. So right now I am a bit of a blubbering idiot.
My hope that is my next post will be some of the best news we have ever received....I will keep you updated.

Happy Chinese New Year

February 8, 2016 ushers in the year of the Red Monkey according to the Chinese Zodiac. Monkeys are considered the tricksters of the Chinese Twelve Animal Signs and this means it is likely to be an exciting and “interesting” year. So Happy Chinese New Year to all of our friends and family.

Although it is technically not the New Year in China, we have already had a fairly eventful beginning to our new year. Due to the unpredictability of our adoption timeline we have recently found it to be difficult to arrange daycare for our 2 1/2 year old daughter. Since we will receive our referral for our son only six months prior to travel and because we have no idea when we will receive our referral we are currently trying to figure out what we can and should do for daycare next year. We adore our current daycare provider and want to keep our daughter (and eventually our son) with her until she goes to school but we likely cannot afford to keep her in daycare full-time while I am off on parental leave. And it is unfair to our daycare provider to pull our child out of full-time daycare mid-year (also she will not allow it). So right now we are trying to predict the future, weigh our options, and try not to freak out. I know it may not seem like this really is an adoption related issue but I am writing about it because it wasn't something that I thought we would even have to worry about. And its adding another layer of things we need to figure out. Luckily we received an email from our adoption agency today that has taken our mind of things...at least temporarily.

The light at the end of the adoption tunnel...today we received the following email from our adoption agency Children's Bridge:

Hi Palmer Family,

I am pleased to let you know we have sent your Waiting Child China dossier by courier to the CCCWA in Beijing today. The CCCWA usually takes 2 weeks to log in your dossier. Once your dossier is logged in, your family will be eligible for the next set of individual children's files form the CCCWA.

Hooray, another step closer! So hopefully that means we can possibly get our referral for our son within the next 5.5 months (when we asked our adoption agency what the average wait time was they said 1-10 months (that is not an average according to my math teacher husband) so we are going to go with 5.5 months). That would mean we could possibly have our son home with us in the next year. So maybe the predictions are true, the year of the monkey may prove to be very interesting.

Delays and learning to deal with them.

During our last post I said that we were hoping we would get back our Ontario Government approval  (Letter of Approval) before Christmas. Unfortunately, we received an email on Christmas eve from our Adoption Practitioner letting us know that the person reviewing our file from the Government wanted clarification on a few things (it ended up being 5 things) from our application. I chose not to read the email until Boxing Day because my initial reaction was frustration and anger. It turns out the items they requested more information on were fairly simple. I did have to go back to my Doctor's office and request that my new Doctor (as my previous Doctor who filled out my medical has since retired) fill out some additional information on my report. Although it was frustrating to receive our application back we know that this will likely be one of many delays that will happen in our adoption journey. It is good to know that adoption applications are looked at very closely, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating. Especially when we were expecting good news before the New Year. We added the information the Government requested to our report and our Adoption Practitioner had our paperwork ready to be sent back to the Children's Bridge (for them to send it back to the Government) for when their offices opened back up after the holidays. And then we waited...again.
Today, after waiting for 2.5 months we finally received our Letter of Approval. Hooray.
The letter basically says that we have been approved to adopt through the Children's Bridge by the Ontario Government and that they agree with our Adoption Practitioners recommendations in our homestudy report. One interesting section of the letter states that once the adoption is finalized, Ontario legislation recognizes the child as a full member of the adopting family and as such the child is treated in the same manner as all other children of legally constructed families. And that, Ontario welcomes the child from China as the legal child of the applicants. We both found it surprising that the Ontario Government would need to tell the Chinese government this information, but I suppose it is just part of the process.
So now that we have received the green light the next steps in the process are as follows:
1. Children's Bridge sends our Letter of Approval and China Application package to be notarized by their Lawyer (this should be completed by next week).
2. Children's Bridge will then send all of the above documents to be authenticated through Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Consulate in Toronto (this will take approximately 3 weeks).
And then we wait some more....

More paperwork!

Remember how in the last blog post I said I would write about the weekend course we had back in October? Well here I am, and now it is December. Oops.
The two day course in October was a mandatory session held by our adoption agency. Although it was a crazy weekend of driving to Newmarket and back twice (we came back to attend a beautiful wedding on the Saturday night), we found the session to be very informative. Most of the information provided to us was specifically related to international adoption which meant that everyone in the room was also adopting internationally. The part of the session that I enjoyed most was how to prepare for your trip. The two people running the session have each adopted two girls from China so the information they provided was very helpful for us. I know that I am providing a very broad overview of the session but I feel like the next part of my post is much more interesting...I hope.

Last week I went to the post office to send a very large package to our adoption agency which included all of our documents needed for our application to China (this is separate from the package we sent to the Ontario Government). When I was preparing the package and asking to purchase the waterproof envelope (because I am crazy like that) I started to get emotional. I felt like I was sending our lives away in this package. This is another huge item to check off of our to do list and it felt amazing to have it done, but also scary to think that the Chinese government would be basing their decision on the stack of papers and photos in the water poof envelope. Just to clarify, I didn't send the package to China, first it goes to our adoption agency where they get notarized copies of everything (but not before they receive a large sum of money, which also made me cry, but for different reasons). Our agency is hoping that they will get back our approval from the Ontario Government before everyone goes on Christmas holidays. So we were in a bit of a rush to get the documents to Children's Bridge in order for them to send it to a lawyer for notarized copies (which apparently can take 3 weeks). Everyone keep your fingers crossed that we receive our approval within the next week or so.

Here is a list of the items that were in the China application package:
Letter of application to adopt
Home Study - the same one that went to the Ontario Government
Guardianship statement - included in our homestudy
Letters of employment
Financial statement
Physical examinations - these were different physical exams than the ones required by the Ontario Government, we were required to get blood tests, they also look at our body mass index
RCMP Interpol Clearances
Local Police Clearances
Marriage Certificates - notarized copies
Birth Certificates - notarized copies
Photocopies of our Passports
4 additional passport photos
Application form of Notarization/Legalization
5 more adoptive applicant reference form letters - thank you to all of those who filled out a second reference form for us
Photos - we had to create a photo collage I guess you could call it but it had very specific requirements. It had to include a photo of the exterior of our home, lifestyle photos, and a 4x8 family photo. We weren't supposed to submit photos with sunglasses or hats on and no photos that included alcohol (duh). The photos had to fit on 8.5 by 11 paper and we could not submit more than 5 sheets of photos.

Yesterday we sent two forms of payment to Children's Bridge. One was a Cheque payable to The Children's Bridge in Trust and the other was a US bank draft payable to the Children's Bridge in Trust. The cheque paid for our balance of agency fees and notarization, visas, authentication and disbursements, coordinators disbursements (which basically means adoption facilitation). The Us bank draft was our fees for the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA). As far as I know we will not have to pay any more money until we travel to China (which gives us a little breathing room). Right now it seems like an impossible amount of money to pay back (I will not hide the fact that we had to get a loan from our bank). But I know in the end it wouldn't matter how much money it was, it will all be worth it in the end. We are one step closer to adopting our little boy. Just typing that makes me start to cry.

And so with that I am going to sign off and wish everyone a Merry Christmas from the Palmer family. You probably will not see any posts on here until the new year unless something really exciting happens. Have a safe and happy holiday everyone.

Adoption Awareness Month

Happy November everyone! Did you know that November is Adoption Awareness Month? The Adoption Council of Ontario website https://www.adoption.on.ca/adoption-awareness-month provides some great ideas on how to celebrate National Adoption Awareness Month, check it out. This month offers us a special opportunity to celebrate, promote, educate, advocate for, and create dialogue about adoption. Please join my family in celebrating adoption this month. Thank you!

Home Study...check.

I promised all of you that I would post about our Home Study process after it was completed. So here I am, keeping my promise. Thank you everyone for being so patient.
Back in July I wrote about all of he paperwork my husband and I had to fill out  in preparation for our Home Study. Most of that paperwork would be submitted along with our Home Study Report to the Ontario Government (Police checks, medicals etc) but the two surveys we filled out (one about our upbringing and family, the other about our relationship) would be the basis of our discussion when we met with our Adoption Practicioner Kim.
Before our first meeting with Kim my husband and I were very nervous. We had talked to her on the phone once and communicated a few times through email so we weren't entirely sure what to expect. We went around the house and scrubbed it from top to bottom and we installed additional childproofing throughout the house as we knew there would be a home inpection. When Kim arrived we were both pleasantly surprised. She was laid back and very friendly which immediately put us both at ease. She stated from the beginning that she thought that the Home Study would be a very straighforward process and since we already have a child living in the home the home inspection would be a breeze. Phew!
Overall we had 4 meetings with Kim in our home. Each of the meetings lasted around 2 hours and consisted of candid conversations about our lives, our history and our future with an adopted child.
Our daughter was present at only one of the meetings and luckily she behaved like an angel. Another Phew! She even offered Kim one of her plastic cupcakes from her play kitchen to eat. :)
I think that the easiest way to tell you about the Home Study is to outline the end result, which is the Home Study Report. This report will be sent to the Ontario Government by the end of this month.

The report is 17 pages long and contains the following information:
Applicant information - our names, address, phone numbers and email addresses
Dates of contact - outlines the dates we were interviewed and where they took place
Further applicant information - including information like my maiden name, our birth dates, religion, education, languages, occupation, racial origin, ethnic origin, and citizenship
Date of our marital partnership - the day we were married
Names of children and birth dates
Medical report information
Motivation - this was a one page report on our motivations to adopt and where we want to adopt from. It outlines the steps we have taken already in the adoption process etc.
Extended famly members - lists our parents, siblings and their spouses and their children as well as where they live.
References - lists the names of our wonderful family and friends that filled out reference forms on our behalf
Criminal Record Check/Child Welfare Check/RCMP Finger Print clearing
Profiles - there is a half page profile for each of us - our hair and eye colour, physcial appearance and fitness level, personality, occupation, character traits, family make-up and extra curricular activities
Family Lifestyle - this outlines our lifestyle and activities we participate in together, it touches on things like childcare for our children, guardianship (if needed), our household routines, and how we discipline our children
Home and comunity - describes our home in detail and how it is decorated (she said tasteful and modern, woo hoo), it also outlines the neighbourhood we live in.
Legal/financial rights and responsibilities - here is a little quote from that section "Applicants have been advised of their duty of honest disclosure and candour along with their ongoing duty to disclose of new event or information, which may require an updated or amended home study."
Historical information- this was a full page report on each of us individually outlining our family make up, our upbringing, and our childhoods.
Personal characteristics - outlines our communication skills individually and how we handle stress etc.
Marital/Domestic Partnership - discusses our relationship from the beginning until now, this was also a full page report.
Children - discussed our daughter and the person she is as a result of our parenting (the cupcake helped in this section)
Extended family relationships - this talks about our relationships with our families together as a couple
Physical/Social environment - outlines our income, home value, RRSPs and savings etc.
General Parenting - discusses our parenting style and techniques we use and will continue to use with our adopted child
Specialized parenting - states that we have completed PRIDE Training and are aware of the challenges that come along with th role of being full-time parents a second time to an adopted child. This was a long report as it talks about challenges with children who are adopted from orphanages and with medical issues etc.
Family Preparation and Training Activities - this was a report on what we learned at PRIDE Training.
Adoption issues - outlines our desire to expand our family through adoption and our willingness to discuss our future as adoptive parents
Psychological evaluation conclusions - outlines things like providing an open atmosphere to our daughter and our adopted child about their history and appreciating that  by adopting from China we will become a bi-racial family etc.
Placement considerations - says YES, we are reccomended to adopt!!!!

Okay so I know that is a lot of information, but I wasnt really sure how else to show you the amount of information that was in the report. I thought about scanning the document and posting it here but it does include information about our parents and siblings and since this isn't a their blog I didn't think that was fair.
Now I can hear most of you asking..okay, so now what?
So now Kim will send this report to our Adoption Agency (Children's Bridge) where they will approve it and then send it to the Ontario Government. Then we wait.....approximately 6-8 weeks to hear if we are approved by the government. Keep your fingers crossed everyone.
While we wait for our approval we have a mandatory two day training course to attend that is put on by our Adoption Agency. The course is this weekend so you can expect another post about it fairly soon.
Talk to you soon.

Don't worry we are still here....

There has been a lot of people who have been asking us about our adoption lately. I started thinking, when was the last time I wrote a blog post? So I took a few minutes today to check. JULY! Oops, sorry everyone. Don't worry I didn't completely forget about our followers, life has just become very busy. Not really busy in the adoption world, but busy with back to school, and sports, and back to daycare etc. I was waiting to finish our home study before I wrote another post so that I could summarize the whole process. I am still going to do that because we only have one more session to go and it is in a couple of weeks. So I apologize for the delay, but I promise the wait will be worth it.

Happy Fall Everyone.

Just the beginning...paperwork.

Summer is here and we are busier than ever with our 2 year old daughter. So, I apologize for the delay in posting this update.
After our PRIDE Training we were in contact with our Adoption Practitioner Kim to set up our first meeting. Once we set up a date for Kim to come and meet us she sent us a very large package of documents to fill out. I know that this is just the first of MANY papers we will have to complete so I tried to keep an open mind as checked off boxes on a variety of surveys. Here is a list of the documents/information we needed to provide to Kim. Keep in mind this is just the documentation required for the Ontario Government. I will have to write another post about the China paperwork.

• References - both of us had to provide; 1 relative, 1 long-time friend, 1 current friend who knows both my husband and I
•  General application form - provided general information about us and our desires for an adopted child
• Release of information forms - Doctors release form, three forms for Kim (Adoption Practitioner) to release information to Children's Bridge, Children's Aid Society, and the Ontario Government
• A memo to adoptive parents - outlined  the roles of our Adoption Practitioner, Children's Bridge, and the Ontario Government
• Financial information - we provided our employment income, monthly disposable income, monthly expenses, and our assets, liabilities and net worth
• A child welfare record check release
• Survey #1 - This survey asked questions about our upbringing. Relationships with our parents, their parenting styles and abilities, their discipline techniques, and personal values. We also checked boxes that described our spouses characteristics and their roles in our relationship. The last section of the survey dealt with our current relationship with our parents and any medical information about our family that would be considered important (depression, drug/alcohol abuse etc) This survey was very intense, it asked a lot of personal questions that were sometimes awkward to answer.
• Survey #2 - The second survey asked questions about my husband and I. Specifically questioning if we have any past criminal records, bankruptcy issues, and drug or alcohol abuse. It also asked if we have received counselling or therapy for a number of issues.
• Medicals - each of us require our doctors to fill out a medical for both the Ontario Government and China.
• Police Checks - we are required to have a local police check as well as a RCMP Interpol Security clearance (for this one we have to be fingerprinted)

And apparently that is just the beginning! It felt very good to send back a majority of the information to Kim. It made me feel like we accomplished one more thing on a very long list of "to do" items. Once I get a little more time I will write about our first meeting (Home Study) with our Adoption Practitioner Kim. Stay tuned...

* I apologize for the lack of excitement in this blog post, unfortunately I feel like a lot of posts in the future may be like this :(

PRIDE Training Day #4 - We did it!!!

It's official (according to the certificate pictured above), we have completed PRIDE Training. Woo hoo!
Our last day was full of useful information and was probably the class we enjoyed the most. We spent most of the morning talking about our SAFE Homestudy Assessment (the next step in our adoption journey). We were able to ask a lot of questions about the process which eased our minds a little bit. Basically, the Homestudy is an assessment of the two of us and our immediate family by our Adoption Practitioner. Sounds intrusive doesn't it. On top of helping us to prepare our documentation to apply for our adoption, our practitioner will be making sure we are ready, willing, and capable of providing a home for an adopted child. Although our house is already equipped with child locks and safety features there will be a lot of other things that she will need to know about us before we can send in our adoption application. There will be reference checks, and physicals, and police checks (apparently my husband will also need one from Australia since he lived there for 7 months, that should be fun) etc. But I promise I will explain this process more once we are actually in the middle of it.
Our afternoon was filled with information on topics that will be important once our little boy is home with us. Topics like how to create a healing and nurturing home and how to use positive adoption language with everyone we come into contact with. I know that positive adoption language will be especially important for us since we will be adopting a child of a different race. We will need to be prepared for difficult questions from family, friends, children, and strangers about our child. It will be something our family will face our entire lives. Hopefully we will answer those questions in a way that all of our children will feel equally loved by their Mom and Dad. Because no matter how our family was made, all of our children will be our own.
Something that really interested me from our discussion on Saturday was creating Life Books for your adopted child. Life Books are a way for children to learn about themselves. They are essentially a photo book about their story on how they came into our lives. I love photo books and always have since I was a child, I think I will really enjoy making one for our boy and I am sure it will also strengthen my connection with him throughout our journey. It is a book that I hope he will refer to and be proud of his entire life.
I feel like I could write this post forever, the information we received in PRIDE Training was so beneficial and important and I'm finding it hard to fit it all into one little post. We are also very excited, we are now one step closer to adopting our child. It is crazy to think that after 4 years of talking about it we are now actually on our way!