Last Full Day in Zhengzhou

After a much needed day off yesterday, we went to a park here in the city this morning with our guide Danielle and her almost-two-year-old son, Patrick. It was a beautiful day to be outside, even though it was almost 90 degrees when we got outside. As we'd suspected, Jonathan hasn't done much walking around outside, and that showed today. He tired out after about half an hour of walking, and the combination of being physically tired, hot, and somewhat overstimulated by the sights and sounds of the park resulted in a handful of tantrums and meltdowns in our last 15-20 minutes outside. Even after just three days with us, though, he's responding better when we tell him he can't respond like that. When he starts flailing about, we sometimes have to restrain his arms and legs, and where this just increased his frustration earlier in the week, it now helps him calm down and come back to himself.

 

We ate a lunch of instant noodle bowls back in our hotel room, and he LOVED the noodles, so much so that he ate more than Kristie did. Thankfully, even before lunch was ready, he had calmed down from the morning's activity. He spent some time sitting off by himself, playing with toys and spinning bottle tops, coins, and whatever else he can find to spin. We're learning that he occasionally needs some time to himself to cope following a period of intense (at least for him) activity. The good news is that he hasn't yet gotten completely lost in his own world; he wants to make sure we're still nearby, even if he's not ready for us to interact directly with him. Life with him is all about balance, and yesterday and today have been really good for us all as we try to figure out how our life together is going to work.

Given the hard times he had at nap time and bed time yesterday (not nearly as bad as on Monday, but still difficult), we were a little apprehensive heading into his nap today. We didn't know whether the morning's activity would have tired him out so much that he'd just fall asleep or have upset him so that he wouldn't want to sleep. It turns out, neither was the case. He was definitely tired from the morning, but not to the point that he collapsed into bed. He had returned to playing with some toys after lunch, and when I picked him up to change his diaper and settle him into bed, he didn't resist at all. In fact, he was sound asleep within about 15 minutes, and he slept peacefully and contentedly for over two hours.

We're just about to head out for dinner again tonight. Our bags are mostly packed for tomorrow's flight to Guangzhou, where we'll begin the last week of our stay here. We don't know how he'll handle the airport or the flight, so we'd appreciate your prayers for that. We can't thank God enough for this little guy, and we hope he'll be able to keep things together tomorrow.

Greg

My thoughts

Greg posted yesterday and filled everyone in on our time here in China. I am so thankful that he did. I really wanted to update the blog, but was too tired to do anything. I have had a terrible time with jet-lag this trip, and I have barely managed to do the essential things. Last night, I finally got some sleep, and I am feeling more like myself now.

As Greg shared, Jonathan really is an incredible kid. When he isn't overstimulated, he is the sweetest, happiest little guy you can imagine. He will entertain himself for long, LONG periods of time. Greg and I are working hard to find the balance between lettting him have the space to process all the changes that have taken place in his world, but also encouraging him to interact with us. All in all, he is doing better than we had ever dared to hope.

I have spent a lot of time over the past few days thinking about the incredible power and goodness of God. When Greg and I started Jonathan's adoption, we knew that we did not have the power to do anything on our own. We did not have the money for the adoption, and we did not have the time for elaborate fund raising activities. We prayed that if God wanted us to bring this child home, He would make it happen. I mentioned in a early post that Jonathan's middle name is Zechariah, and that our banner verse for his adoption was from the book of Zechariah. "Not by might or by power, but by my spirt says the Lord." We knew that was the only way that Jonathan's adoption would be possible. Many times during the adoption process, I wondered if Jonathan was really going to come home. We hit several challenges that I didn't think we would be able to overcome. And yet her we are. I'm typing this from a hotel room in China while my new son takes his nap. God has done this, and it is almost too wonderful for us to believe. I hope that everyone who has been following our story has seen the mighty power of our God, and the deep love that He has for His children. We are humbled and honored to be used by God in this way, and are more thankful to Him for our new son than we will ever be able to express. Please join us in thanking and praising Him for His mighty work.

We could still use your prayers in many ways. Please pray that God will help us overcome the remainder of our jet-lag. Mine has been severe, and Greg's has been moderate. We both seem to be through the worst of it now, but are not back to normal yet. Pray for Jonathan. He is doing so well that it is easy to forget how difficult these last few days have been for him. Pray for us on Friday as we fly down to Guangzhou. I expect the flight to be scary for Jonathan, so please pray that God will give him peace and enable us to comfort him.

Now a Family of 10!

(I started writing this on Tuesday the 14th, but it was after midnight here in China before I finished. For the sake of continuity, I wrote the whole post as though it were Tuesday.)

Let me rewind and pick up where Kristie left off in her last update. Our luggage did arrive at our hotel Sunday evening, which helped us relax a lot. It would've been better for it not to have been lost in the first place, but at least everything we packed is here, including all of Jonathan's things. Neither of us slept great Sunday night, but we both got several hours of deep sleep, setting us up well to meet our new boy.

Yesterday morning we arrived at the Civil Affairs office, expecting Jonathan would be there waiting for us. Unfortunately, his orphanage is so far away (a 4-hour drive!) that he didn't get there until we'd been waiting for well over an hour. By that point, the room was sheer chaos. There are 21 other families—including 16 families from one agency moving around in one large group—here adopting from this province this week. It's so good to see so many kids coming home to their forever families, but putting those families in one room to meet their new children at the same time sure made things interesting. A few of the kids had near total meltdowns when they were handed off to their new parents. Others ran around the room with superhuman toddler energy, while others were quite calm in spite of everything going on around them. We wanted so badly to tell the parents of the screaming children that this was a good thing, that it likely means they're already lamenting the loss of their former caregivers, that they can form meaningful attachments with people, and that even though the near-term is going to be very hard, there's great hope that they'll start forging a strong bond before too long. But all we could do was sit there and pray for them as we waited for Jonathan to arrive. As we played out our meeting with him in our minds, we pictured him either being completely indifferent to us or stubbornly refusing to have anything to do with us. Well, we were wrong. When they carried him in through the door and brought him over to us, he walked right over to me and started interacting with Kristie. He didn't cry or show any emotion when the orphanage worker handed him over to us, and that suggests to us that he didn't actually have strong connection with anyone at the orphanage. He seems to have been more dependent on his routine than anybody specific, but more on that later.

 

One of the advantages of being the only family from our agency here this week is that we can move around a bit more nimbly. We left the Civil Affairs office not 15 minutes after getting Jonathan, and our guide came back to our hotel room with us to fill out some paperwork in preparation for today. Boy, are we glad she did! (Again, more on that later. Spoilers!)

After she left, we fed Jonathan some lunch and got ready to put him down for his nap. That's when he had his meltdown. He was completely fine with the idea of us playing with him, feeding him, even taking him to a strange new place, but he really didn't like the thought of sleeping in this strange place. When we laid him down in his bed, he cried so hard and fought to get out of bed. He never once tried to hurt either of us, though. His thrashing and fighing were all in an attempt to get away; he never struck us. In the end, after about 15 minutes of crying tears of fear and sadness, he gave in and fell asleep. We thought he'd wake up scared all over again, but he was surprisingly calm when he awoke a couple of hours later. Our plan was to walk down to the local Walmart to pick up a handful of things, get some dinner at Pizza Hut, and get back in time for a quick bath before bed. When it came time for us to put him in the stroller, he had another, smaller meltdown. He did NOT want to be in there, poor guy. Eventually he accepted being in the stroller, but only as long as he could hold onto Kristie's hand while we walked. So we set off to find Walmart, and by the time we got there, he was comfortable sitting in the stroller even without holding her hand. I think he wanted to make sure we weren't going anywhere, and especially Kristie; we have another Mommy's boy on our hands here, to be sure! We got to Pizza Hut expecting him to love the food there—he's a great eater—but he ended up eating almost nothing. There was just a little too much noise and commotion in there, and combined with the emotional upheaval from earlier in the afternoon, it proved too much for him. He did drink some wather, though, which is good because he seems slightly dehydrated. He has the oddest drinking motion we've ever seen. Every time we offer him a drink of water, he eagerly accepts, but he just opens his mouth wide and tries to tip the cup to pour water in his mouth. He won't close his lips around the rim of the cup, no matter what we try. We've tried straw cups and sippy cups and several other things—Kristie came prepared with multiple drinking options—but he will only try to drink out of a regular, open cup. He ends up spilling almost half of his drink on himself because he won't use his lips to help contain the fluid. So strange, and we wonder how on earth they were getting him to drink at the orphanage. But, at least he's taking in some fluids now; that gives us something to work with here.

 

 

When we got back to the hotel room, it was time for his bath. Past adoption experience taught us to be prepared for the worst, but he surprised us again. He didn't fight us when we took his clothes off or when we put him in the water. He was nervous, though, and at first would only stand in the bath tub. So funny! I helpedu support him while Kristie washed him, and after a few minutes we had him sit down. He didn't resist at all, although he wouldn't let go of the handles on the sides of the tub. He has very weak core muscles and sits with his back rounded pretty badly, so I think he didn't feel quite stable sitting in the tub. He did, however, release his grip with one hand a couple of times to splash in the water with me. He laughed a lot but could only bring himself to participate a couple of times. This was so much better than either Isabelle's or Hallie's first baths that we counted this as a major victory and moved on to bed time, which we expected to be hard. It was. We tucked him in and he cried and twisted for a lot longer than he had at nap time. Finally, he tired himself out and fell asleep. He woke up distressed two more times before midnight, and only after that did he fall into a deep sleep for the rest of the night. Kristie didn't sleep much at all, so we're hoping and praying everyone will sleep more peacefully the rest of the week.

This morning we had to go back to Civil Affairs to finish some paperwork. We arrived before any of the other families, but it wasn't long before the others started trickling in. Jonathan did really well as we waited there, and the variety of toys Kristie packed for him made it possible to get him through this morning. After about an hour of waiting, though, he couldn't take anymore. So Kristie took him outside to get out of the cacophony, but of course, that was about 30 seconds before we were finally called over to sign the forms for the day. Another 5-10 minutes of waiting, and we were out the door. Jonathan calmed down considerably while we were in the van, but unfortunately, we were a long way from done. Our next stop was the notary's office. This is not a notary as you'd imagine back in the States. It's actually an office building where certain official documents are prepared and signed. Similar idea; very different implementation. Again, Jonathan did well as we sat at the desk in one of the offices, but as soon as two other families showed up to wait in the same room, he starting falling to pieces all over again, poor guy. Thankfully, this stop didn't take as long as the one at Civil Affairs, and this was our last stop for the morning. We got back to the hotel and ate a quick lunch (so glad there's a Subway just across the street from the hotel!) before having to head back out for some more paperwork in the afternoon. Poor Jonathan! When he finished lunch, he actually crawled up into his bed to try and take a nap. What a change from yesterday! He was NOT happy when we told him that he couldn't go to sleep because we had to leave again. He'd already had way more than enough by this point, and he cried when we picked him up to walk out the door.

Thankfully, the afternoon errands went by quickly enough, at least for the most part. The first stop was to have his passport photo taken, and when we got there, we were surprised to run into Michael, who was our guide in Guangzhou when we were here adopting Isabelle & Hallie! It was so good to see him again and to catch up a bit on how he's doing. We never expected to run into him here, of all places, but there you have it. Once again, Jonathan started out handling himself very well. He was very good for his passport photo, but while we were waiting to sign the last couple of documents after that, he got a little antsy. Before things got any worse, we signed the papers and were on to our last stop of the day: the police station, where we applied for his passport. Here they had to take yet another photo, this time of the three of us together. The woman there was using a webcam to get the picture, and after several minutes of fighting with the computer, had us move to another computer station to try again. After what seemed like an eternity that was probably more like 6-8 minutes—if you've ever tried to get a child, and especially a newly adopted special-needs child, to look directly at a camera for any length of time, you'll know why it felt like an eternity—they finally got a satisfactory picture and let us go. That was the end of our errands today, and he was so very happy to be back in our hotel room at the end of it all. I found Finding Nemo on TV and let that play while he wandered around the room, exploring things and unwinding from the day. He ate a great dinner, took another good bath (no standing this time), and then went right to sleep tonight. No crying, no fighting, just peaceful sleep. It might be the case that he was so worn out from the day that he didn't have anything left to cause a scene at that point, but I don't think that's what happened. It seems to us that he's already deriving comfort from being with us, and he's already learning what his routine is like here. He really seemed like he wanted to fall asleep, and to fall asleep here in the room with us.

Even though the day was long and hard, Jonathan is now officially our son! The adoption decree was handed to us at Civil Affairs this morning, and his adoption is now complete! We're officially a family of 10, and all that's left now is to finish all the paperwork necessary to allow him to leave China and enter the US. In just over a week, we'll be boarding a plane to come back home, and we can't wait for us all to be together under the same roof!

Greg

Safe in China

Well everyone, thanks for your prayers. We did make it safely to China, and we are getting settled in our beautiful hotel. We have had a few challenges along the way, but we also have a lot to be thankful for. 

A good friend from church took us to the airport on Friday afternoon, and we flew from CVG to LAX. Then we had a six hour layover in LA. I was a little concerned about how we would fill that time, but it turned out to be really nice. We found a little pizza restaurant, and had a really relaxed evening. By the time we boarded the plane, it was nearly 3 am Cincinnati time, and we were both exhausted. One of the things that I am most thankful for is that I actually slept on the plane. I never, ever sleep on planes, but I slept for about six hours this time. Some of it was deep sleep, and some of it was lighter dozing, but it still helped me to feel more relaxed and refreshed than I have ever on an international flight before. Thank you very much to the people who were praying specifically about this for me. Please pray about the return trip too! 

Our plane landed late in China, and we were only supposed to have a two hour layover to begin with, so Greg and I knew we would have to hurry to catch our plane. Unfortunately, the lines were all very long, and very slow, and that airport is HUGE. We ran a good bit of the distance, but still arrived just a few minutes after they closed the gate. The airlines did get us on another flight just a few hours later, and they even managed to get us seats that were side by side. So now we are in Zhengzhou, but our luggage didn't make it. We are not sure if it was lost because we switched flights, or if it would have gotten lost any way, but NONE of our checked bags made it to Zhengzhou with us. Please be praying about that. The workers at the airport seemed very confident that they would be able to get them to us this afternoon or evening. I really, really hope that is the case!!

We meet Jonathan tomorrow. I have many thoughts and feelings about that, and I want to share them, but I think I am too tired to get them down in a coherent form tonight. I will try to do that tomorrow if I have time to blog. A lot of that will depend on how he adjusts to us.

TA and Travel Dates!

It has been nearly a month since I posted, and things have been very busy here for us.

Both Isabelle and Hallie are healing well, and their casts are off. Hallie already had her two week follow-up appointment, and the doctors said that she looks great. She doesn't need any therapy (YAY!!), and is back to normal now. Isabelle got her cast of yesterday. She is stiff and sore, but we expect that to improve quickly now. 

 No more casts!!!

Several people even sent gifts to help us with the cost of the girls' medical bills, and that was a huge answer to prayer. Thank you very much!

Now, the news about Jonathan -- we got our travel approval from China, and we will leave on June 10th!!  We are very excited and very nervous at the same time. We will meet him on June 13th, and complete his adoption on June 14th.

We also have very good news about our fund-raising. Our friends' Jogging for Jonathan fundraiser raised just about $2000, and several other donations have come in as well. Some other friends of ours recently contacted us and told us that they will be making a very large donation around the beginning of June. Thanks to these gifts, we are only $5000 short of the funds that we need now! We can't believe it! Just a few weeks ago, we still needed $19,000, and it all seemed impossible. Now we are only $5000 away. Please pray that God will provide the rest of the money that we need, and that He will help us be ready to fly to China four weeks from today. There is a lot that still needs to happen in that time!

Amazing Friends!!

One of the things that we have always been thankful for during our adoption journey is that we have amazing friends and community support. We have shared before some of the ways that they have taken care of us during our adoption journeys, and we will never be able to express how much we appreciate them.

Three of our friends from church are supporting us in a new and wonderful way, and I am excited to share it. Sarah, Jamie, and Megan are all running races in two weeks, and they have decided to dedicate these races to Jonathan. They have set up a gofundme page and are asking people to sponsor their races to benefit Jonathan's adoption. https://www.gofundme.com/joggingforjonathan

I am always impressed by runners to begin with. I can't even run a full mile, so the idea of running 13 or 26 miles is just more than I can imagine. These are three very special women, and I thank God for allowing me to be friends with them. I admire them and treasure their friendship.

Thank you to all three of you, and to everyone who is supporting you as you run for our son, Jonathan.

Good news, prayer request, and another broken bone

No, I'm not kidding. We really do have another broken bone. Our kids were upstairs playing "swimming pool" today, and when Matthias pretended to do a cannon ball, he landed right on Isabelle's leg. She cried pretty hard, but I assumed she was just scared. I held her for a few minutes, and she seemed fine, so I left the room. A little bit later, Greg told her to use the bathroom, and as soon as she stood on it, she burst into tears again. It turns out that she broke the bone in her lower leg, and she will now be in a cast for four weeks. I guess having one child in a cast just wasn't enough. :-) We keep trying to remind ourselves that it could be a lot worse, and at least our girls are home with us so that we can care for them during this time. It just seems unreal.

The good news is that we got our Article 5. Yay! The next step will be our travel letter from China, and that should come in about a week.

And that brings us to the prayer request. As you know from our last update, we are still about $19,000 short of the money we need. We really do believe that God is going to provide all that we need, but we don't have any idea when or how. Once we get the travel letter, we will have a three month window in which we can travel to China to bring Jonathan home. From what we understand, we can travel as early or late as we want in that window, but we have to choose dates very soon after we get the travel letter. For Jonathan's sake, we want to travel as early as possible. But we feel like we can't choose an early date when we don't have the funds yet. Please continue to pray that God will provide for us soon and that we will have peace while we wait. But in addition to those things, we need you to pray that God will give us wisdom. We are willing to follow wherever He leads, and we are willing to travel as early or late as He wants us to. But we don't have any idea how to know what He wants, and we need His help to discern His will. We know that He delights to give wisdom to His children when they ask, so please join us in asking for that now.