My Kid Circus

I am so happy looking at this pile.  Each piece of paper there represents a good amount of labor.  For each one I had to apply for official copies, have them notarized, take them to the county to certify that the notary was in fact a notary, and then take them to the Secretary of State to have them seal them.  Each one was time in line, time waiting and waiting.  Now I can look at these documents and feel that we are that much closer to our little girl.

We are now waiting for our clearance from U.S. immigration.  After we have that piece of paper, I will go through the same sealing process.  Then ALL of these papers have to go to the Chinese Consolate to be authenticated.When that happens, our “dossier” goes to China, and we celebrate!!!

Ever since we have seen that sweet face, the waiting has been hard.  We all talk about her all the time, and can’t wait until she is here with us!

We are getting closer on a name.  I will keep you posted!!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband!! 🙂

Thank you so much to everyone who has read my blog, and left us feedback.  We have LOVED all of the name suggestions, and have been so thankful for all of the words of support.

I promised more information about Min Han.  Since she is currently one of my very favorite subjects to talk about, I am thrilled to do this. 🙂

On the day after I returned from London (1/18), I got a phone call.  Jeff stayed in London a day longer than I did, so I was missing him terribly. 🙂  Anyway, the phone rang and the words that I heard when I answered were, “Are you sitting down?”.  I immediately went into overdrive saying, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness”.  Of course, it was about 5:00 in the afternoon, which all of you parents out there know is not exactly a good time to get peace and quiet from the kids while you have a phone call.  I ran to turn on the television, threw the kid some snacks, anything I could think of to get them to give me a quiet minute. 🙂  The wonderful woman that I was talking to was so patient, telling me to take my time getting to a quiet location.  The 2 minutes that it probably took me to get the kids settled felt like an hour, I wanted to hear what she said so badly.

She then said, “I have a little princess that I would like to tell you about”.  My whole body was shaking as I wrote down the information that she gave me.  She told me that Pu Min Han was 10 months old, and had been born in Puyang City in China.  (Since she is an abandoned child, this is where her surname “Pu” comes from).  She then told me that Min Han had a heart condition, but that she didn’t know much more about it (More about this on my next blog).

She asked me if I was interested, and I knew that “interested” was definitely an understatement. I was overjoyed, and spent the next 10 minutes glued to my computer waiting for her to send pictures of our girl. Then I sat staring at those pictures as the minutes ticked by until I could pick my husband up from the airport and share with him the wonderful news.

Honestly, this was not the order that I wanted things to happen.  I wanted to have all of my paperwork in China before we got a referral in order to minimize the wait to get to our child.  I knew the wait would seem excruciating if we had a face to look at every day.  Well, this is the way it worked out anyway.  I hate that our wait is going to be several months, but I look at her face and it just feels right.  She is our daughter, and my childrens’ sister, and we will do the excruciating wait for her.  I am just praying that our wait for her is much more difficult than her wait for us will be.  I pray that she is loved and cared for, and having joy in her days until we can bring her home.

Here are some slightly younger pictures of Min Han:

I have been waiting and waiting to be able to write this post.  We now know our new daughter!!!

This is Pu Min Han.  She lives in the Henan province in China, and we are totally in love with her.

Today we received our “Pre Approval” from China to adopt Min Han.  I had to wait for this approval to share this wonderful news publicly, but it has been so hard!

Now, please do me a favor.  I love to hear people say that they have read my blog.  If you are one of my wonderful readers, PLEASE leave me a comment and tell me what you think we should name her.  No promises here, but we are really open to some ideas. 🙂

More details to come on how this all happened!!  Meanwhile, please pray for our girl!  (And leave me a name! 🙂 )

Sometimes I’m not really sure where the time goes.  I have been wanting to blog for a while now, and something or someone always seems to distract me…

Anyway, random updates.  London was wonderful!!!  We had such a great time touring around, and celebrating our 10th Anniversary.  We really had a great time together, and it reminded me that there are some things to look forward to when my kids grow up and leave me. 🙂

The boys are doing well.  They both seem to be having some speech articulation issues.  I’m not really too worried about it, but it seems like now is the time to get an official assessment.  We will see what happens there.

K is something else.  She still has almost 2 months until she turns 2, but I think she has mentally already gone there.  I didn’t really face “terrible twos” too badly with my boys. This girl, however, has absolute definite opinions, and she is ready to FIGHT!  I’m so thankful that she appears to be going down the “strong woman” track, but can I just say that it is exhuasting?!

The adoption is coming along.  We finished gathering all of our paperwork, and completed our Homestudy.  Our Social Worker came to have dinner at our house one night.  My kids were really exhausted, and ate quietly for the first little while of our dinner.  It was kind of eerie.  Right about when she asked me what I bribed them with, they started showing their true colors.  I had 2 children chasing each other under the table, I think all 3 refusing to eat what I made, and one child complaining about everything under the sun.  Oh, and then one bumped another one, resulting in a lot of screaming, and eventually led to a time out for child number one.  I just had to say, “Yes, dinnertime is crazy.  Still, we have an extra chair, and we want to fill it!”. We passed our homestudy, so I guess it was all okay. 🙂

It looks like things are going to move faster on this front than we ever could have imagined.  Stay tuned!!!

A couple of weeks ago, my husband found out that he had the chance to go to London.  We had been trying to figure out some sort of special trip that the two of us could take together for our 10th wedding anniverary since last June, so we decided that this could be our trip!

I am not a great traveler.  For one thing, I HATE flying.  As in: I shake, tremble, feel sick to my stomach, and cry.  I’m basically petrified. Yeah, I’m a joy to be with.

For another thing, I truly hate leaving my circus.  Sure, days can be long sometimes, and there are days that I long to sit down for more than 2 minutes, but at the end of the day, there is truly no where that I would rather be.  I love knowing that my little ones are safe and sound where I can love on them whenever I want to.

I had a hard time leaving, knowing that I would be so far away.  Here I am, checking on them already during our layover.

My sweet Z was absolutely awesome telling me goodbye.  He hugged me and hugged me, and told me that he would miss me so much.  Then he said, “Mommy, don’t worry.  You are going to have a great time, and everything is going to be fine!”.  How did he get so smart? 🙂  D was busy playing as I was getting ready to leave, and Z yells at him, “D, you give Mommy hugs right now.  It isn’t all about you!”.  🙂  That gave me some much needed laughs as I made my way out of the door.

So, anyway, we made it here.  I am missing my 3 kiddos, but happy to be spending some time with the love of my life.  After all, I have him to thank for the joy I have in my life every day.  This is my first time in Europe, and there is no one that I would rather be with.