Adoption Update: First Ruling!

Good news – we have just received word that the court has issued the first part of our final decree in our adoption case! Our agency estimates that we can pick up our son in late August or early September – the sooner the better! We’ll hear more specifics in the next week or so, I hope. As you can imagine, we are thrilled about this news! God is so good!

Care Package #2 On Its Way

I mailed our second care package to our agency today. This package includes a soft photo cube and a little one-piece outfit. It’s hard to know whether any of the clothing I send is the right size, but I figure the orphanage can use it for other children if it’s too small for our child. I hope the photo cube will help our little guy get familiar with our faces, so when we come to pick him up we won’t be complete strangers. This care package should be shipped by our agency to the orphanage at the end of this month.

Care Package #2

Adoption Update: Travel Vaccines

Dave and I went on Monday to get our travel vaccinations. I had to get three shots, while Dave had to get four – Ouch! Our daughter told us she was proud of us for not crying when we received our shots .  We’re now one step closer to being ready to travel. I think our paperwork has been in Taiwan for 2-3 weeks. Unless there is a problem or a judge asks for additional information, we probably will not hear any updates on the court process until there is a ruling from the judge.

In other adoption news, we’re excited once again to see a family come together through adoption. Sweet little Milana met her parents, Sara and Donnie, for the first time on Tuesday in Taiwan. Sara has been such a wonderful, encouraging friend throughout our adoption journey. It’s been a long journey for their family to reach this point and we are praying for them all as they welcome Milana into their family. Be sure and check out their new family photos on their blog. 

Frosty for Father’s Day (June 20-21)

Go to Wendy’s this weekend and treat your dad to a Frosty. This weekend, June 20-21, is the third annual “Father’s Day Frosty Weekend” . For every Frosty sold, Wendy’s will donate 50 cents to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (DFTA). The DTFA helps find permanent, loving homes for 150,000 children waiting in foster care. More information is available on the Frosty website.

Wendy's Frosty

Taiwan and adoption news

Two articles in the Taiwan media this week may interest some of you. . .

The first article, from Taiwan Review, discusses the impact the economy is having on children and the perception of adoption. Here is an excerpt:

“Harold Li is afraid that, if the economic situation continues to worsen, another issue will become more serious: abandoned children. According to Li, Taiwan saw an annual average of approximately 500 abandoned children and adolescents in the past six years. At the start of this year, the CWLF was receiving around one call per day from parents willing to give up their children and asking for information about their adoption. Li says that since the Lunar New Year celebrations at the end of January, the foundation has been receiving around two such calls per day…

“For Li, however, the attitude of many Taiwanese towards adoption is problematic. “Usually adoption is a secret in our society,” he says. This explains why the chance for a child to be adopted over the age of 3 is quite slim because it is easier for older children to realize that their adoptive parents are not their biological parents. In addition, the adopted child has to be completely healthy and look acceptable. Some couples refuse to adopt children with a dark complexion or whose parents were laborers in Taiwan from Southeast Asia, Li says. In comparison, the CWLF coordinator says, Western people who adopt a child are more likely to ignore age or other factors unwelcomed by Taiwanese. Then again, he also speaks considerately of the latter. “It’s already costly to raise a healthy child today, not to mention a physically handicapped one,” he says.

“For years the CWLF has been trying to educate Taiwanese about adoption and in 2005, the organization coordinated a visit of nine teenagers originally from Taiwan, who had been adopted by Dutch parents more than 10 years earlier. All of the young people had been abandoned as children and most were born with physical impairments. “These children came back to see their place of birth. On the other hand, we wanted Taiwan’s society to learn from those foreign parents. They adopt children of different races and are willing to take care of imperfect babies,” Li says.” – Read the full article at the Taiwan Review, June 1, 2009

The second article features a 7-year-old girl with Down Syndrome who is coming home to live with her new forever family in Massachusetts.  How wonderful for this little girl and her new family – you can read her story at eTaiwan News.

Adoption Update: Orphanage Approval!

We are happy and excited to announce we have received orphanage approval to adopt a precious baby boy from Taiwan! I had announced our referral on our blog, but then took the post down as we waited for official word that we could proceed with this adoption. We hope to have our documents back in Taiwan shortly, where they will be submitted to court for a judge to review and rule on our adoption application.

As we have waited, I have written a few posts for our blog that I chose to keep private. If you are interested in reading them, I have now posted them publicly:

• Referral News: It’s a Boy!
• Care Package #1 On Its Way
• Nice People You Meet Along the Way

The care package we mailed to our agency in April will be sent to the orphanage next week. We will put another one together to send in June.

Nice People You Meet Along the Way

I went to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s (SOC) office today to have our contracts and documents authenticated for Taiwan. (Authentication is the next step once a document is notarized – the state verifies the notary’s commission is valid and puts a big gold seal and a cover letter on each document.) Everything went smoothly until I found out our home study could not be authenticated – seems the notary did not put her seal on the home study. Fortunately the notary was in her office. I made it over there and back to the SOC office in about an hour.

When I realized the problem with the notary stamp, I returned to the parking garage and mentioned to the attendant that I was going to have to return because of a paperwork snafu. The parking attendant asked me how long it would be before I would return – I told him it would be about an hour and he said he would let me come back in on the same ticket. He marked down the time I left and told me to ask for the ticket came back. Well, I thought that was nice but did not realize how helpful that would be until I returned and saw a sign out front that said “Sorry – Garage FULL”. I drove in anyway and found the same attendant – he said to drive on in and he double-parked my car.  That was a huge relief – I was already so stressed, I was happy to not have to drive around looking for parking. When we bring our son home, I’ll have to be sure and send that parking attendant a baby announcement. . .I am sure he does not realize what a blessing he was to me today!

Life: Imagine the Potential

Check out this new pro-adoption ad from Catholicvote.org – I have heard that it is slated to air during the season finale of American Idol.

HT: Rainbow Kids Weekly eNewsletter

Virginia family adopts 4-year-old Taiwanese boy

Margaret Weddle, left, and her husband L. Garrett Weddle smile while their adopted son “Joe” flings his arms in enthusiasm during a media event yesterday in Taipei City. (CNA - From the China Post)

Two news articles in Taiwan this week feature a Virginia couple who have just adopted an adorable 4-year-old boy from Chung Yi, an orphanage in Taipei. I noticed in one of the photos that the little boy is already sporting a Virginia Tech t-shirt. It’s always fun to read about families coming together through adoption – congratulations and Happy Mother’s Day! The links below will take you to the two articles:

China Post: U.S. couple adopts Taiwanese as 1st child

eTaiwan News: U.S. parents hail adopted Taiwanese son as gift from God

HT: Cramber’s Taiwan Baby

‘A Well-Trained Mind’: Professional Storyteller Jim Weiss

We just returned from two days at a conference hosted by the authors of The Well-Trained Mind, a book about classical education at home. This week the authors, Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise, are releasing the latest edition of the book and celebrating its 10^th year in publication. I now have a better understanding of how the three stages of classical education fit together, as well as where my focus needs to be during the early years of teaching our children.

The biggest surprise at the conference, though, was meeting professional storyteller Jim Weiss. He was scheduled to host three or four of the sessions and I had not heard of him or his company, Greathall Productions. I had thought we could just skip his sessions if we needed a break or if we were bored – but his skill of telling classic stories and engaging his listeners was absolutely amazing. We bought three of his CD’s and we have played the first one for our daughter – I wasn’t sure whether it would have the same effect for her, since we were watching him act out the stories. But she laughed and seemed to enjoy the story as he altered his voice to match the characters in the story of The Tortoise and the Hare.

Jim Weiss has one of the most calming voices I have ever heard. His recordings are not meant to replace parent-child storytime. I think we will probably use his CD’s in the car as well as at bedtime, after our regular bedtime routine. His CD’s have sold in countries all over the world – all of the recordings are in English, but apparently the recordings sell well overseas because they are helpful in teaching English. I am looking forward to hearing more of the stories on his other CD’s.