And then there were 7....

We are home and are now a family of 7!
Our final days in China were busy...Consulate appointments, the Zoo (Safari in Kenya has ruined zoos for us), a dinner cruise (sounds a little more glamorous that it was: there were definitely chicken feet and shrimp complete with heads, legs, and eyeballs on the buffet), and Shamain Island, a beautiful place for shopping and strolling.

At the zoo (ok, a little creepy)

In front of the US Consulate in Guangzhou

Hungry!?

Lovin some dinner

Cruisin (notice the selfie taking in the background!)

Ivey did really well with all the activity.
Then, it was time to go home. We were dreading the 3 flights home, but so anxious to be there! We were in a race against the clock for both our layovers, battling picking up luggage, re-checking it (twice), long lines, security checks, miscommunication between airlines and even a lack of a seat for Ivey that we had paid for (long story). But, we eventually did make it by the skin of our teeth. (we were also with another family and their 3 kids, who we lost at one point and then saw running onto the plane right before the door closed!)
Ivey did pretty well overall, although she only slept about 2-3 hours of a 24 hour travel day!
We arrived at the airport to a vibrant welcome home crew that were so anxious to meet our girl!

Two Kunming cuties!

So, how is the transition going now that we are home, you ask?
Overall, pretty well! Our main issue is sleep, which we expected. Ivey is still trying to get used to the time change and wakes up many times a night crying, wanting to be held, etc. We are working through that, but we are TIRED.
The boys are loving her, more so than I even expected! They want to be in her face all the time, feed her puffs all the livelong day, and carry her around. She only tolerates so much of this, but she does like them too!

Puff feeding time

We are working hard on bonding with her, which involves elements that are different than you might employ with your biological children. We are trying to stay home a lot, getting her used to our house as her home. Eric and I spend a lot of time carrying her around, and aren't letting anyone else hold her for the near future, or feed her, change her, etc. To her, we are just another pair of caregivers that she seems to like, but nothing in her little life has shown her that we are here to stay. So this will take time and a lot of effort to make her understand that this is her FOREVER FAMILY, we aren't going anywhere. So please don't be offended if we don't let you hold her or give her things, it's really an important step in bonding.
Overall, she is a pleasant, spunky little girl. She loves Puffs, Chinese noodles, dumping things out of their container, ripping paper, being thrown up in the air and her first taste of ice cream. She hates baths and riding in a car seat.
We can't wait for you to get to know her, Mitchell #7!

China is Funny.

The adoption process is long.  First there is all the paperwork, background checks, fingerprints, home studies etc. that have to get done.  Then there is the waiting.  Finally, after almost a year we were able to travel to the complete opposite side of the world to pick up Ivey.  However, just like the rest of the adoption process, picking her up is not exactly a grab and go.  In order to complete the whole process, we are spending almost two weeks in China visiting various government buildings to complete the scavenger hunt that is the final adoption process.   There has been a lot of free time allowing us to take in China's culture and document as much as possible for our educational purposes.  

There have been a lot of very interesting and practical things we have learned.  However, we have been able to note some of China's idiosyncrasies and things that make us say, "Oh, that is funny.  Get a picture."  Here are a few funny observations, and pictures. 

1.  Never did I realize what it would actually look like to be in a country that contains 1 BILLION people (1/7th of the worlds population).  The city we are in now, Guangzhou, has 17 million people...and it is the third largest city behind Beijing and Shanghai.  Putting this in perspective, New York City has 8.4 million, and Chicago has 2.7 million.  Everywhere we go there are people.  LOTS of people.  It feels similar to what it's like after a football or basketball game is over and people are spilling into the streets.  That is a routine Tuesday afternoon on every street.  

2.  Chinese people love selfies and selfie sticks.  Here is a representation of what I saw in 5 minutes waking around.  I photobombed more than one.  

3.  Seventeen million people means a lot of weddings.  Strolling around a park one day we saw no less than four couples in wedding attire getting their pictures taken.  (Chinese weddings don't include picture time...this is done on a different day altogether.)

4.  There aren't many obese Chinese.  However, things may change if they are drawn to McDonald's by this advertisement.  Two hotdogs on top of two all beef patties.  I had chest pains just looking at it.

5.  The infrastructure of roads in the city is amazing.  The normal city streets are what you would expect from city driving, but they also built a second level above it all (about eye level with the fourth floor of all the city buildings) for more traffic.  Busy traffic makes tiny cars like this a great option.  However, if everyone keeps eating the McWeenie burger, no one will be able to fit inside.

6.  Staying at a nice hotel that caters to many cultures presents lots of options for breakfast.  Here is my (Eric's) breakfast one morning.  Waffles with chocolate and peanut butter sauce, fried egg, sushi, and a piece of duck.  Hey, who can turn down sushi, even if it is 7am.

7.  One night we went out to dinner...to a Mexican restaurant.  As good American's, we needed some variety and something different than noodles and rice and strange spices.  The menu was cracking us up...as it had random pictures of wrestlers (WWF type) on every page.  Maybe they were sending subliminal messages of "You WANT a piece of THIS??  Bring it!!" The food, surprisingly, was great!!

8.  Having lived in Kenya, we know what it is like to see stray dogs in the city.  While African stray dogs are mangy mutts, the stray dogs here are the same type most people in the US have as cute little house pets.

9.  Not sure what to say about this one.  However, notice all the people in the background.  See point #1.  

10.  I'm no history buff, but I remember something about the spice trade long ago and many rare and exotic spices coming from the East.  Erin and I are pretty sure that over the course of time we Westerners sifted through all the spices and picked out the ones we liked.  Only those spices are a part of our current diet.  Eating at local restaurants in China has allowed us to "experience" some of the spices that didn't make the cut.  Erin's favorite is the tiny seed that when bitten into unexpectedly erupts the flavor of bathroom potpourri into your mouth.

11.  In all the parks we would see people doing synchronized dancing, badminton practice, Tai-Chi, etc.  It was kinda like a public exercise class.  Erin even jumped in to this one and tried to follow along.

More to come, as we still have two days left with 17 million of our closest neighbors.  

Orphanage Visit

Tuesday was not much to talk about, we went to Civil Affairs in the morning and signed papers, got Ivey’s passport photos taken and were soo, soo tired. It was a bit of a rough day. The most interesting part of the day was when we went to a “real” Chinese restaurant for dinner. Our guide, Susan, had recommended a few things, so we got the dumplings at her recommendation, which were great, but deviated by ordering what “looked like” sesame chicken from the picture. It was actually fried chicken grisel, mainly, chicken feet ground up and breaded!!! It was awful and after choking down a few bites I gave up and ate plain rice. Live and learn!

Tuesday night we slept a lot better and Wednesday proved to be a good day. Wednesday was Orphanage visit day. Again, it’s hard not to have expectations going into this. Our good friends had just been to this exact orphanage a month before to pick up their son, so I felt like I had a bit of an understanding of what we would see from their pictures and descriptions.

We arrived and were surprised that it was in the middle of the city.  Somehow we both had Kenyan/Ethiopian orphanages in our mind, which tended to be in the country. This complex is very large, many buildings. It is very, very clean and well taken care of. It is bright and colorful with lots of toys and playground equipment. BUT IT IS NO PLACE FOR A CHILD TO GROW UP. And that was the thought that kept running through my mind. No child deserves to grow up in an institution, no matter how well they are cared for.

Toddler Play Room

 

We were able to see all of the different age rooms, multiple of which Ivey lived/played in. We were able to meet nannies that recognized her and wanted to hold her, take pictures of her. We saw pictures of her up on the walls (the walls in the hallways were decorated with pictures of the kids from the orphanage, very cute). One nanny in particular was so excited to see her and grabbed her from me to go feed her Congee one last time.

These are the cribs in the baby room.

Special Nanny

 

It was so great to see that people knew and cared about her. They kept telling us how beautiful she was (we agree!). But my favorite part honestly, was getting to touch and smile at the children we saw there. At one point in the baby room there was a little boy who was crying really hard and everyone was busy. I was able to rock this little boy in his bouncy seat, holding his hands and telling him over and over, “Jesus Loves YOU!”.

There weren’t as many children as you might think in this large facility. We only saw maybe 45. That is because Kunming only keeps children at the orphanage until they are 9 months old and then they go to Foster Care. That was Ivey’s story. For some reason, the identity of the foster families are kept very secret, they won’t let us meet them or know much about them. Of all the people we got to meet, I wish we could have met them and thanked them for taking care of our girl for the last 5 months.

The last notable thing is that Kunming is one of the few orphanages that has a “Life Box” outside its gates. It looks like a small shack with a bed/box inside that you can leave your baby in if you want to abandon it and ring a bell that alerts someone inside and then you can run away. This way you don’t have to leave your baby in a park or a ditch. What was most interesting to me was what it said on the outside (in Chinese of course). It said something to the effect of, “Think hard about what you are about to do. It is much better that your child grows up with a mommy. Remember, when you are old, if your family abandons you, what goes around comes around”. Wow.

This is the Life Box

 

It will be a day that is not soon forgotten in our minds.

Gotcha Day

Wow. It’s hard to go into something with no expectations. They informed us during training about almost any possibility under the sun of what your child will be like, how he/she will react to you, worst case scenarios, etc. etc. But yet, they say, go in with no expectations. That was really hard, but we tried! That being said, this is how it went down.

We left the hotel a little early in an effort to get to Civil Affairs (read: an apartment that China rents because they don’t want a bunch of crying babies in the real government building) before the kids got there. We were with another couple on their way to adopt a precious 13 year old boy. We wove through Kunming traffic, which doesn’t quite compare to Nairobi traffic, but we did have a few near misses, saw lots of people transporting large items on bicycles and almost hit many people on scooters. Basically, we felt right at home :)

Despite our best efforts, we arrived and walked in to the room and there she was! We were prepared for this though, so had the video camera running and BAM, just like that, we have a daughter. It’s a strange, strange feeling to look at someone who is a year old and she is your child, and yet you know nothing about her. She didn’t cry at all, which is not what we anticipated (ok, ok, so much for no expectations, I know) but just stared at us, solemnly. After a bit she seemed to warm up and became very, very wiggly, wanting to climb up us as we were holding her, bend backwards, look around, grab at things, etc. She didn’t want to be put down though, which I took as a good sign. We endured a very small room with 4 families and their newly adopted ones (one 13 year old, one 11 year old and a 5 year old), many nannies, Civil Affairs workers, our guide and a partridge in a pear tree (just kidding, they don’t celebrate Christmas here), signing paperwork, getting our photo taken and asking questions about Ivey that no one really seemed to know the answers to. After about an hour we were able to leave, drove to “Wal-Mart” (it really is Wal-Mart but my Wal-Mart at home doesn’t sell chicken feet or live crabs in bulk) to buy formula and diapers. We had to carry Ivey through the store b/c we hadn’t brought the baby carrier and she fell asleep in daddy’s arms J.

First picture together!

 

We had to walk back to the hotel because there was nowhere for our driver to park, so we trekked through Kunming and arrived back unscathed, fed Ivey some Congee (a rice porridge), got some dinner, gave her a bath (hated), a bottle (liked) and she drifted off to dream land. She is now sleeping peacefully next to me while Eric and I are wide awake (Yep, its 3 am Gotta love jet lag!).

 

We shall see what tomorrow holds. We are thankful. We are bone tired. We are blessed.  

Welcome to China!

We have arrived!
We got off to an anti-climactic start to our trip on Friday when we arrived at our gate in Grand Rapids only to be informed that our plane had mechanical problems and would not be arriving until right when our connecting flight in Detroit was supposed to be leaving! There were no other flights that night so we had to go back home and try again on Sat. morning! At least we got one more night with our crazies at home!

Ready to go!

The flights were ok, the main flight, 14 hours, L-O-N-G. I haven't watched many movies/shows over the past few years...well, I made up for that by watching like 11 straight hours. Yep, don't try to commit any cyber crime around me, I just watched 27 episodes of CSI:cyber, I know all the tricks now! I also somehow chose 3 incredibly sad movies, leaving me ready to GET OFF THIS PLANE. We were basically zombies by the time we got to our last flight, from Beijing to Kunming. We were able to sleep most of the flight, other than when the man next to me spilled his entire cup of Pepsi on me and the fragrant smell of fish (the meal served at what felt to us like 8 am. I'll pass....)

Right before what we'll call "The Pepsi Incident"

I tried to get Eric to give me a ride, but I didn't fit.

 

 Our guide, Susan, was there to meet us. She is very sweet, very upbeat, happy and talkative. She said we look way to young to have 4 kids, that we look more like students. I like this lady!  The hotel is very nice, and I (Erin) was able to sleep for 7 hours. Eric got about 4 and will soon be napping before we meet our girl at 3:00 local time!! We were able to eat breakfast and take a walk around the city. Kunming is a large city of about 7 million people with a lot of big buildings. We even stopped and watched morning exercise in the park and I joined in a dance class!
Pics and more info to come!!
 

She's missin the party....

Today, our baby girl turns one. One year old. I have had 4 babies turn one. And they have each had a party, balloons, gifts, their own special cake, hugs, kisses, pictures, LOVE.
Today, half-way across the world, our baby girl turns one. Will anyone even acknowledge this? Will there be a cake? A hug? A "Happy birthday" (or the Chinese equivalent, of course)?
It's killin' me. I want to be with her on this super special, momentous day. I want to have cake, hang streamers, sing Stol Lat, give kisses. Of course we will still do this here, in her honor (people, do you think I would miss the chance to have a party!?), but it won't be the same.
But, thank you Jesus, this should be the very last birthday that she celebrates without this crazy crew. Whether she wants it or not, she's movin' into Birthday Central. There will be many years to make up for what we can't have right now.
Our hope, if things stay on track, is to travel to get Miss Ivey in November. We're two tiny steps away from getting on that plane.
It seems fitting that we got our last update on her yesterday. The last info we will know about her until we meet face to face. She is 18 lbs., 29 inches, totally bald and has 4 teeth! Here is the last picture we'll get until we see her ourselves.

She likes soccer! She'll fit right in!

 

I hope they send her in those rockin pink shoes!

 

Please keep us in your prayers as we wait our final weeks, as we travel to China, as we leave the boys with my parents, as we seek to bond and attach with our girl.

Happy birthday, Ivey Christina!

We're comin', girl! 

LOA!

 

What is LOA you ask? 

 

Lettuce Olive Appetizers? Limp Octopus Arms? Little Old Aunts?

NO! It is Letter of Acceptance from China!
We are LOA and officially matched with Ivey. China agrees, she is ours!
Now....8-10 weeks to travel! (well, LOA was actually September 4th, so technically from then)
Is this really happening? By jove, it is!
Praise the Lord with us.
We are still in the paper chase of trying to get everything filled out and submitted and blah, blah blah. Not my favorite part.
This is my favorite part:

Look at those shoes!

They get brought back to the orphanage for updates, so this picture is at the orphanage. She will be 11 months old on the 17th of September.

 

We found recently that she has been in a foster home since July. This took us by surprise as we had not be told this. We assumed she was still in the orphanage.  It is mixed news, for a foster home will provide more individual attention for sure. That is great. But it is one more set of caregivers and one more potential obstacle to bonding. But we pray with hope that Ivey will be able to bond and adjust just fine.

 

Keep praying!! We can't wait to have a picture of us WITH her!