My Kid Circus

Hannah Min.  That will be Min Han’s new name.  🙂 We had a few factors that helped us decide this.  1) My mom dreamed of our little girl named “Hannah Min”.  I liked that.  2)  “Hannah Min” incorporates her entire Chinese name, just changing the order.  Doing this, I feel like she is able to maintain something that she was given in China.  Adopted children lose so much of their history, so I want her to easily see where her name was derived.  3)  Many people suggested we name her “Grace”.  We do love that name, but it is already Miss K’s middle name.  But guess what?  “Hannah” MEANS “grace”! 🙂  In the Chinese culture, the meaning of a name is extremely important.  Although for my other children I did not give more than a passing thought to what their names meant, in this case I did want her name to have a strong meaning.  It doesn’t get much better than grace!

Z has accepted the name Hannah, although says that he still wants to call her “Min”.  Fine by me!

This is how it went with D, however;

Me: “D, what do you think about the name, “Hannah?”

D:  After a deep, thoughtful pause; “Ummm, good. I’m going to call her Lindsey”.  Well, there you go.  She will be a child with many names.

I was fortunate enough to be directed to a blog written by a college student who worked in several of the Henan orphanages last summer.  I knew she visited Hannah’s orphanage shortly after she got there, so I asked her if she perhaps met her.  She was so friendly and informative, and sent me a picture that she thinks is her.  We think so too. 🙂  What a gift to have a picture that predates the ones that we have been given from our agency!

Here it is.  Obviously, she is the one without the cleft lip.  (Lower right , holding the wash cloth).  Many of the children up for adoption in China have cleft lip and palate; something so easily corrected here in the United States that we rarely even notice it…

Can’t wait to get that girl in my arms!!!

A few days ago, our sweet girl turned 2.  In many ways it is hard to believe that she is no longer a baby, but in so many other ways, she is so absolutely 2!  This girl keeps me going all the time.  For example, there are things that I want to do during the day such as; change her diaper, put her in her car seat, feed her dinner, etc., that she really would just rather not do.  Her favorite thing to do at these times is coyly wave at me while singing, “Bye bye, Mommy!”.  Then she does her best to hide from me.  That may sound funny and cute, but let me tell you, when you are already running late, and it is the 20th time she has done it in that day, it is NOT cute! 🙂

She wears me out, but I am truly thrilled that she has strong thoughts and opinions that she freely makes known.  That is absolutely what I want her to do.  And she has her pretty darn cute times too.  Just last week  she surprised me with this sentence; “I’m so happy to see you, Mommy!”.  Oh, my heart.  I love that girl!

Happy Birthday, sweet girl!!

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Right about now (9 p.m. on the 16th), it is mid-morning in China, on our baby’s first birthday.  I have so many emotions thinking about her special day.  I wonder if she has loving caregivers who will celebrate her today.  I wonder if she will get to have a first bite of cake.  I wonder what big milestones I have already missed in this first year of her life.  And I wonder if there is a mother across the globe who is mourning her loss, thinking about the child that for some reason she had to abandon one year ago.

Most of all, I wonder what this day will feel like a year from now.  I’m excited to think about our family celebrating all together.  I imagine that by this time next year it will be hard to remember a time before she joined our family.  That is an encouraging thought for me right now when sometimes the wait seems endless.

I want her to know someday that although we weren’t there for her first year, her first birthday; we were already loving her, and longing for the day that she would be with us.

This is the first care package that we sent.  It had a blanket, an outfit, a pair of shamrock pajamas for our St. Patrick’s Day girl, a rattle, a toy phone that we recorded a message on, a hat, some chocolates for her nannies, some disposable cameras for the nannies to take pictures of her, and a photo album with pictures of our family.  I have no guarantee that she will get this package, but I hope so!

Today has ended up being an amazing day.  This afternoon, we got our fingerprint appointments from U.S. Immigration.  This is really the last thing that we have to DO at this point in the process (besides wait…).  I was pretty happy about this this afternoon.

Then, we got an AMAZING update about our girl (we are calling her Min for now 🙂 ).

As I write this, I am realizing that I need to back track a minute.  I know I said briefly that she has a heart condition, but I never fully explained that.  The reports that we were given with her initial file stated that she had “Tetrology of Fallot”.  This is a Complex Congenital Heart Defect, and involved four different malfunctions in the heart.  Obviously, this was scary news.  When we initially reviewed her file, we consulted with several different Pediatric Cardiologists who explained the terminology, and gave us their best assessment of her situation.  They all agree that although her situation was serious, she would be a good surgical candidate.  The one problem?  They all thought she needed the surgery NOW.  They said that 10 months old would be an optimal time for the surgery.  When I explained that I didn’t have control over that part of the equation, knowing that it could be at least 6 months before we would have her, they all just encouraged me to get her to a doctor as soon as possible.

We had to carefully discuss and consider what her situation meant, and would mean to our family.  What we decided was that she was the child who was brought to us.  We already loved her, and we knew we would do everything humanly possible to get her here as quickly as possible so we could get her the medical care that she needed.

The waiting has been especially hard knowing that she has needed the surgery.  Every day that has passed, I have thought about it being another day that could be causing damage to her little heart and lungs.  I wrote heartfelt letters to U.S. Immigration and my agency begging them to expedite the process so we could get her the surgery.

Tonight I got an amazing e-mail that told me that Min actually had her surgery in December.  That means that she had her surgery weeks before we even first got the call about her.  Although it breaks my heart that this baby had to spend 5 WEEKS in the hospital without parents there to hold her hand, her reports say that she is doing well, and describe her as “healthy” .  This just feels like an absolute miracle.

I am so beyond thankful for this wonderful and amazing news.  We already love this girl, and we have been prepared to advocate for her and to get this surgery for her, but knowing that she did not have to wait for us is an unbelievable relief.

And to top it all off, we got these wonderful pictures today.  She looks so happy.  And healthy.  We are saying great prayers of thanks tonight!!