Latest Update

Well, as many of you know, there's nothing new to report. We ended up not going forward with the domestic adoption and have decided to wait it out for China ... at least until our paperwork expires. When that time comes, we'll sit down and take a good hard look at where we're at in our life and see if we're going forward or if we're going to accept the fact that we will not have children.

There is a small glimmer .... about 2 or 3 weeks ago, I did receive an email from CHSFS advising that the CCAA had changed the way it matched waiting families with waiting children (known as WIC children). Typically, these children have some sort of medical issue. It could be something like a heart murmur or cleft pallet to something more serious like CP or something else. It has been brought to my attention that there are some older children, mostly boys, who have "aged out" and are perfectly healthy. For example, there's one little boy who is 4 years old but has never been adopted because everyone wants a little girl. Well, at this point in my life, I would consider a child like this.

The reason we have not gone forward with the process, which, by the way, would only take about 5-6 months, is that we're moving. Bob may be getting transferred to the Raleigh office with his job. We thought long and hard about this. We've decided to wait until I graduate from school (hopefully by the end of this year) and we're settled on where we'll be living. We thought it would be hard enough to uproot a child from the only home he knows (aka an orphanage or foster home) and bring him to a new country where no one speaks the same language as him, with parents he doesn't know and settle him in a home that will probably be changing in a short time.

Once we're settled, we'll regroup and figure out where we're going to go. Until that time, we'll just leave our paperwork sitting at the CCAA.

Hope everyone is well.

Love,
Faith

Domestic Adoption?

Well, I just got off the phone with our attorney once again and she's convinced me that a domestic adoption is in our future and within our reach ~~ once again. She's been extremely patient with us, answering our questions without hesitation, and offering her advice on everything. We were very luck to find her and are thankful to have her in our corner.

So, what do we do now? Well, before I do anything, I have to sit and have another conversation with Bob to see if we want to go ahead with this, which I'm fairly sure he'll agree to. Once I've cleared that hurdle, I'll go ahead and start creating our "Parent Profile". This is the short letter that will get posted on various websites for potential birthparents to read. Hopefully, someone will read our letter and decide we are the family they want to raise their child.

Nina (our lawyer) always makes me hopeful that this can happen; however, there are no guarantees, which I'm well aware of. She told me a story of a new couple that put their letter out there about 3 months ago, and they've already been chosen by a woman located in Pennsylvania who is 14 weeks pregnant. Nina says she hopes we could be so lucky.

In other news ....

We haven't heard anything more on the China adoption. We're waiting for all the dust to settle (literally) to see how the earthquake is going to affect anything. We've been told that the "one child" policy has been lifted so I'm not sure where that will leave us. Only time will tell.

Shania is doing well. We were out to see Dr. Lachhar about a week ago and he was happy with how her surgery went. He told us to start exercising her to build up that muscle in her hip again. We've been trying to walk her every night a little bit to do this. Hopefully, we can move our bed back into the bedroom where it belongs within a few weeks! My back will be ever so thankful!

There's nothing new to report on the school front. I did test out of one academic class and passed so that's one less thing to worry about. I applied for a Trainee Court Reporter position and have been asked to come in for an interview. If this works out, I can start getting some experience under my belt before I even leave school.

I have to say that Bob is a wonderful man. He's taken on the responsibility of supporting our little family while I concentrate on school. We've been living on his salary alone since early January. I don't know how he does it with all the bills that keep getting thrown at us but I am so thankful that he's putting up with this situation. My hope is to be able to repay him once I become an official reporter, or shall I say a freelance reporter (which is what I really want to do).

That about wraps it up for now. If anything new develops, I'll certainly let everyone know.

Be well and enjoy the heat!!!

Until next time, I'm signing off.

F

Popping In To Say Hello

Well, it’s been a while sine I’ve posted anything here, so I figured I’d pop in to update the site. Unfortunately, there’s not much to update.

According to CHSFS, the wait continues to be another 3 or 4 years in addition to the 2 years that we’ve been waiting already. I thought we were coming up on 3 years but I just checked and our original application was sent to CHSFS on July 25, 2006.

We did have to go get our fingerprints done again ~~ oh what fun that was. Now I’m waiting for the updated I-171H. Thankfully, we got this update for free. Next time we have to update it, we’re going to have to pay for it. However, I’m hoping that with all the people switching to the WIC or special needs program, we won’t have to wait 3 or 4 years like they’re telling us.

It’s been 3 months since Shania’s hip/knee surgery. She’s doing really well. We were in about 2 weeks ago for an x-ray and they said she was healed up and everything looked great. We still have to go out on the leash and can’t run yet but hopefully that will all end soon.

As of yesterday (Wednesday, May 21), I FINALLY passed all my 180 tests and am now officially in the 200 class! YAY!!! This is the final speed class. I’m also taking the CAT class this semester to learn how to use my software. My plan is to test out of the vocabulary class and hopefully the medical terminology class. Once all that is done, I can graduate! HIP HIP HORRAY.

We celebrated Kyla’s 4th birthday a few weeks ago. She’s such a great kid with a fantastic personality. She had a birthday party with all her little friends from school and the family. It was a great party and everyone had a great time.

This weekend, Haley and Kevin are coming down to visit. I think Uncle Bob is going to take Kevin camping ~~ even if it ends up being in our backyard! I’m planning to meet Audra to go out to breakfast with the girls (Kyla, Keira, and Haley) tomorrow.

Well, the rains are here yet again and it’s getting real dark out so I better go and shut down the computer for a while. If anything changes or comes up, I’ll pop back online to let you know.

Happy Memorial Day!
Faith

Update on Life

It's been a month since Shania's surgery. She is doing extremely well -- according to her doctors. Right now, she's laying on the bed sleeping and snoring! Yes, she's a snorer!

Life's been interesting for the past month. Living in one room in the house is hard. Essentially, the only times I leave the living room are to either eat lunch/dinner or to go to the bathroom. Otherwise, I sit here with the laptop and, at times, my steno machine.

Both Bob and I are sore from having to climb out of bed everyday. Since we moved our bed mattress into the living room, it's just laying on the floor. Our "old bodies" are not accustomed to having to climb off the floor so much. Not only do we sleep on the bed but these days, it's acting as our "couch" as well, so if you're not sitting at the hightop eating or in the rocker surfing, you're on the bed.

Shania's incisions are healing very nicely. Thankfully, we didn't have a problem with infections and she was really good about not licking them. The incision on her knee is completely healed -- the scab has fallen off and you can hardly see it. The one on her hip still has some scabs on it but it also looks very good. And I'm happy to say that her hair is starting to grow back. At first, though, it looked as if she were dirty in spots but once you look close, you can see it's her hair growing back. It'll be a while before her skin is covered but we're well on our way!

She's also starting to feel more like herself. This is evident when we go outside. She wants so badly to run to catch the squirrel on the fence or the bird in the tree. We went outside yesterday morning and I didn't notice the squirrel on the fence, but Shania did. Luckily, I was quick enough to grab the leash otherwise we would have been chasing the squirrel!

She's also trying to run around in the house -- we've added more blue tiles to the floor in the kitchen so she has more room. When she gets excited, rather than walk (as we all know) Shania runs. Trying to get her to calm down is hard but we manage.

As for other life updates, there really aren't many. I've finally passed all my 160 tests, so that's progress in school. I also got a 100 on my first test in Legal Procedures. There's nothing new on the adoption front. It's time to start updating our USCIS paperwork. I'll work on that tomorrow probably.

We're also looking into possibly doing a "Plan B" domestic adoption. What I mean by Plan B is rather than spending all that money (which we don't have because of China) to use an agency, we'll try to get the word out that we're looking to adopt through a mailing campaign and/or posting something on the internet. We haven't really done anything with this yet so we'll see what happens.

Well, I guess that's about all for now.

Faith