Last time we did the Great Wall (with Anna in Dec 2014) it was near freezing and Mutianyu was empty. Today it was hot, humid, and busy. But we were grateful for the cloud cover and for the old friend who drove us there. We climbed and sweated and had a great time. It wasn't long before the boys got the same question. 

Chinese parents or grandparents would ask some form of "Take picture together?" as they signaled to their kid. After the fifth picture with a Chinese stranger, Samuel exclaimed: "I feel like a celebrity here." Curly blond hair and blue eyes sometimes generates that response in the Middle Kingdom. 

After the Wall, we drove around the Olympic village. Then it was the Beijing Acrobats. Hard to believe my first trip to both the Great Wall and Chaoyang Theater was 20 years ago as a student at Texas A&M.

Monica made it safely to Xi'an from SFO. We will train there tomorrow afternoon after touring the Forbidden City in the morning. 

Sunday is the day we're all waiting for. Gotcha Day!

Today we trained from Shanghai to Nanjing to Beijing. It's been a long, wonderful, and exhausting day. Jonathan had some nice observations.

"China is the most phone-using-est place I've ever been too." Where ever we went--subways, trains, and train stations--everyone around us had their heads buried in their iPhones.

The size of the Shanghai Hongqiao and Nanjing South train stations amazed the boys too. Jonathan laughed: "People say everything is bigger in Texas but things are really bigger here!" He just confirmed. It's true. These train stations are huge.

As we trained to Beijing, the nice man next to Jonathan offered to swap seats with Samuel, who was across the aisle. The boys needed some separation time so we declined. Our friendly Chinese seat neighbor proceeded to smack down some KFC. It was loud and painful to listen to. Then he took out a massive bag of sunflower seeds. Crack, smack, spit; crack, smack, spit; crack, smack, spit. So it went for 500 or more sunflower seeds. I finally had enough and put on my noise-cancelling headphones. Jonathan only got reprieve from the sunflower smacking when he fell asleep. It must have lasted at least an hour.

​Oh China; we love you.

 (Shanghai mesmerized Jonathan and Samuel today. We began the day with breakfast on the 58th(!) floor of our hotel. The views were stunning. We could even make out the city's three tallest buildings: Shanghai Tower (middle; 2,073'), Shanghai World Financial Center (left; 1,614'), and the JinMao Tower (right; 1,255'). Standing under them in PuDong made the scale of these buildings and their construction even more impressive.

Our humor of the day came in Zhongshan Gongyuan. We chatted with the same top-spinner that we met with Anna in December 2014. He did his tricks for us and let Samuel try. To top it off, he got the top spinning on a 15 foot pole that he held in his mouth. Monica asked if I got more of his life story--Humans of New York style. I didn't. Opps.

The highlight of the day, though, was spending time with wonderful old friends: having lunch in their place, playing with their girls, and experiencing Chinese tea. The boys kept saying, "They are sooo nice." Yes, they are.

I asked Jonathan what he thought of Shanghai. "It's like New York City," he said, "except Chinese people are everywhere."

Tomorrow we train to Nanjing and then Beijing. So thankful these boys get to experience this wonderful place.

There are several magic letters when it comes to international adoption: LiD, LoA, TA. [Oh and these letters vary by country and by agency. The picture above does a pretty good job of explaining the various steps.]

Log-in date (LiD) happens when your file is complete and officially logged in. Later comes the much anticipated letter of approval (LoA) when the Chinese adoption authorities approve your paperwork. Lastly comes the . . . . travel approval (TA).

Our TA came on July 5. So we are getting Eliza Joy this week!

Chris flies to Shanghai today with Jonathan and Samuel. Monica follows later this week. She will meet the boys in Xi'an. Then. . . Sunday, July 24, is GOTCHA day.

Many posts and pictures will follow this week.

Lydia turns 4 on July 30. But we will be in China then (more on that tomorrow) so we told her that today was her birthday and carried on accordingly. We decorated the house and enjoyed a big family breakfast. Per our custom we went around the table and everyone told Lydia what they appreciated about her. I'm not sure she understood everything being said but she had a big smile on her face. She certainly knew that she was the center of attention and we were saying nice things about her.

We got the house ready. An inflatable water slide arrived. Big and wet and fast. This thing was amazing. Friends and presents arrived. Everyone had a blast. Hard to believe how wonderful these 18 months have been with her. The birthday party got us thinking about love.

Adoption has done many things for our family. One of those things is changing our conception of love. We used to imagine love as a static thing like you have 100 points of love that you have to dole out to your children. Two kids means each kid gets 50 points (or more like one kid gets 80 points on one day and 20 on another.) This view of love is wrong.

Adoption is teaching us that love is dynamic. With each new child love grows and changes. In many ways it is like a bottomless well. As your family grows, you simply get a bigger cup to dip into that well. Adding kids via birth or adoption doesn't mean you have less love for your other kids. 

​Love changes and grows as your family changes and grows.

​I (Monica) have avoided watching the video again until yesterday. It’s sat at the bottom of my desktop screen since January. An employee from our agency took it during her visit to Eliza’s orphanage. I haven’t wanted to be reminded of her shuffling steps as she tries to keep too-big-shoes on her weak feet. Or of her sad, shy stare at the stranger behind the camera as she ends her walk back from the toy shelf. That day the group of strangers told her she was getting a family. They gave her presents from her ‘mama and baba’ as she tried to bravely hold it together. I know she was so confused.  All these things are for me? From my baba and mama? Who? Where are they? And now I fear that she’s asking, ‘Have they forgotten about me?’ If she only knew! We talk about her all the time. We pray for her all the time. Does she know that she has 3 big brothers who will fight over who gets to carry her if she gets tired?  Or that her big sister is dying to teach her how to play with dolls or to braid hair? Or that her mommy and daddy can speak Mandarin and will probably be able to understand her (most of the time)? Or that her little sister actually thinks she’s prepared to share her toys? Not sure how that part of the plan will work out, though.
 
This waiting is eating me up. I know the waits are expected- I even have a spreadsheet to predict average wait times at each step of this painfully slow process. But they aren’t ‘normal.’  It’s just not normal to know who your child is (or will soon be), have pictures, even videos, but to be on opposite sides of the planet.  Families weren’t designed to function this way. A painful redemption will start as soon as we meet her, but until then, I’m swallowed by the anticipation and the work-less waiting. I’ve pre-prepped all the paperwork that I can. I know exactly what I will do the day I get the phone call about our approval. Until then, we pray and try to stay focused on the crazy life we already have.
 
Band tryouts, soccer games, birthday parties, end of school parties, field trips that were all rescheduled to the same week because of flooding in April, concerts, ARD meetings.  I should be very busy.  But the underlying waiting distracts me and pulls me away from being fully present anywhere. Two days ago I surrendered to the distraction of Eliza and made her something. A mouse to fit inside an Altoid tin bed. The poor skinny mouse has been falsely accused of being a frog or even a lizard, but I know she’s a mouse and that Eliza will love her. I needed to drop everything and focus on something for just her, even for just 2 hours, because she’s already a part of our lives.
 
We’ve redone the girls’ room in a many phase project which started in December. I’ve painted her bed and set aside bins for her clothes in the closet. I’ve nested like a good mama should.  Now I just need her.  So that we can start showing her what a family is and what it means to have a mommy and a daddy.  She’s never known that. She’s never known the kind of love that comes from a family. A love that cries when she cries; a love that’s tolerant of slip ups and failures; a love that forgives; a love that also fails to stifle the giggles when rudeness pops out gastrically at the dinner table.
 
I pray that her heart will be ready to be loved, even though it may take time. She looks so wary, so cautious, so tender. I pray that her observant eyes will see how we love each other, and that her heart will learn to trust us. And I pray that we can start loving her in person soon. I know God’s timing is always best. I know I need to trust His plan. But I also know that he doesn’t delight in orphans being in orphanages. He desires to set them in families. He delights in giving her a future.

No one else had asked for file. So, we got it. Questions and doubts filled our minds.

She was almost 5 then, with potential mobility issues. She has repaired spina bifida and also some issues with her left foot.  When we saw some outdated videos of her, we were concerned. Can she handle the stairs in our house? What about her mental development, etc? We entered into a season of prayer and research. We sent off a list of questions and requests for video footage to the orphanage, and gave God a prayerful list of what we needed him to do. That sounds awful, but I needed to be reassured that God was calling us into this decision, not just a cute picture or the potential guilt of turning away her file. We asked God to provide a financial gift that could serve as a sign of gifts to come- we need him to provide for the expenses. We also asked for encouragement and more information, about her specifically and about spina bifida in general (our oldest has hydrocephalus so we aren’t clueless, but it’s still a new condition for our family). 
 
God already had all his answers planned out. That Sunday we ‘ran into’ some old friends who had adopted a child with spina bifida a few years ago. I had totally forgotten. Chatting with them was such a great encouragement and also very informative. The next day we received notice of a special donation. So God had done 2 out of 3 things we had asked. Then on Tuesday I got an email from our adoption agency with answers from the orphanage. (I also heard later that her orphanage isn’t known for quick or even thorough responses, so we are truly grateful for the Lord’s hand in that situation.)
 
They also sent video footage of her walking and playing and climbing up and down stairs. When I saw her in the video, I wept. She was being asked to walk and climb, the very things that have surely been a challenge to her. (Even a source of mocking, perhaps?)  Did she feel like she had to perform for us in order to win our approval? She was so cooperative and quiet in the videos that I think she trusts the woman who filmed her.  But how long will it take her to trust us?
 
God had answered so clearly that we couldn’t refuse. After seeing her in the videos, Chris and I both knew that she’s our daughter. 
 
We have updated our home study (finally, yay!) and now we are waiting on fingerprinting for the USCIS part of the process. Since our dossier paperwork is already translated and approved in China, we are hoping and praying we’ll be able to travel in May or June.
 
[Because we aren’t supposed to post photos before we have official approval, this post is sort of incomplete without her picture. But I think it’s ok to give you a glimpse. This is the bottom quarter of Eliza Joy’s face. I hope she likes actual dogs, not just toy ones. We are looking forward to making her smile!]  

My thoughts have been difficult to corral lately.  I’ve been wanting to write a post about our family’s current adoption, but I’m so scatterbrained!  I’m busy with our kids and home and, frankly, I don’t take time to think very often.  I have never liked being reflective or introspective. Chris does enough of that for both of us.  Part of the reason I avoid being reflective is that lately I get very emotional, especially if I’m thinking about family and adoption in particular.  Perhaps it’s because my heart has been stretched and changed through our adoptions of our 2 girls. 
 
I had a great conversation with my little sister about this issue a few weeks ago when she came to visit. She and her husband and 3 sons welcomed a Chinese princess into their family this summer. It was the kind of conversation where you complete each others sentences because you think exactly the same way, and need to draw the words to a quick conclusion because the thoughts and implications are so deep you might get stuck.  We were discussing the fact that we both feel like such light weights in the adoption world. 

​Amidst the stories of families who sacrificially welcome in children with profound medical and developmental issues, our adopted children are far easier to care for.  But, even though our adoptions are ‘easier,’ we don’t think these other families are more spiritual or on the other hand crazier.  We just know, that like us, their hearts have been stretched by adoption.  “Like the Grinch who Stole Christmas!,” we exclaimed at the same time.  Our hearts have been stretched and challenged like never before.  Mothering and loving biological children was (and is) a profound experience, but loving our adopted children has taught me a new depth of God’s love for me. It’s stretched my love to grow into these girls’ hearts who’ve been entrusted to us. We chose them even though they had no choice.  They’ve come to us through repeated loss and trauma, and we’re privileged with the responsibility of helping them through those layers of loss.  My heart feels much deeper compassion after adopting than I ever did before.  Adoption has changed me.
 
All this change and stretching makes our current state not a huge shock to me.  We are adopting again! 
 
We thought we might be adopting 2 when we adopted Lydia, and were wisely advised to take it one at a time for attachment purposes. During Lydia’s long adjustment to sleep, we totally shelved the conversation.  After she settled in and made progress in communication and sleep over the summer, our family fell into a comfortable routine.  That’s when I saw the picture.  A sweet (and very cheeky) little girl who was being advocated by our adoption agency.  With Lydia’s adoption, we would be able to reuse the bulk of the paperwork to adopt another child requested within 12 months.  God had given us a smooth week of healthy kids, little homework, and even a date (which is when I showed Chris her picture.)  “Why not?” was his response.  Just ask for her file but I bet other people will be asking, too.
 
More details about what happened next when we post again tomorrow. . .

Chris loves new year's resolutions (he has 24 of them for 2016); Monica hates them (why bother? will anything actually change). But both of us resolved to return to our blog, which we enjoyed in December 2014/January 2015. We hope to blog once or twice a week: on adoption, travel, books/culture, or theology. So, here we go for 2016. We begin with an update on Lydia, whom we adopted on December 23, 2014, from Guizhou, China.

Lydia has lived up the the nickname of "Spicy Peanut." A few months ago one of her brothers, who shall remain nameless, threatened to take back a stuffed animal that he had given (loaned?) to her. Her little legs raced into the room and she promptly punched him in the crotch. Keeled over in pain and anger, everything in him wanted to retaliate. But he dared not punch his cute, three-year-old sister. He resisted, that time.

To say Lydia has fully acclimated to our family is a generous understatement. It seems like she owns our family, at least in her own mind. She certainly owns our hearts. Each day is quite the adventure with our "Spicy Peanut."

Throughout each day, we are unsure which version of Lydia we will get: the happy, sweet version or the grumpy, "don't you dare touch me" version.  Both versions show that our daughter feels safe and secure in our family. We try to rejoice (and often laugh) during her tantrums, knowing that she is a three-year-old with a strong personality.  Her speech has improved and her frustration at not being understood has diminished. We still chuckle that her c and k sounds are pronounced as a t. She loves her stuffed "titty tat".  

Lydia loves to play outside, especially riding her micro scooter. Her balance astounds us as she leans into her turns and screeches to a halt before reaching the end of our driveway.  I foresee a birthday in the not-so distant future when she requests a skateboard or stunt bike.  

She also loves her ABCD's (I mean, we can't leave D out, can we?).  She always has the need to practice singing the ABC song while at the grocery store.  "I do it myself!" she yells after I've joined her once. She does ABCD twice, then skips to QRSTUV,  and finishes with a double grand finale of WXYZ. Such fun to watch her learn.

​Some family adoption news is coming. . . so stay posted to our blog.