Posts from Our China Trip

For those of you who stumbled on our little blog, here are the posts from our trip as we adopted Judd in 2011. Or just click on the banner on the right side of the page.

• Travel Approval (we're going to China)
• Beijing/Great Wall
• Gotcha (meeting Judder)
• Adopting Judd (formal paper signing)
• Tale of Two Cities (Beijing and Hohhot)
• Finding Judd's Past (orphanage and where Judd was found)
• Hot Pot (last day in Hohhot)
• In Guangzhou
• One Week (our first week with Judd)
• By the Numbers (our week in Guangzhou)
• CA (Consulate Appointment)
• Guangzhou (random thoughts) 
• Flying Out 
• Grateful (first post from home) 
• 14 Memories (highlights and lowlights from our trip) 

And if you are interested, here is Why I'm adopting (by Anne) and Why I'm Adopting (by Chris). There is other stuff to look at well, but we're not posting much any more. Thanks for stopping by.

it's a match

Tuesday we woke up to see an email containing pictures and medical information about a thirteen month old with cleft lip and palate. Our adoption workers matched us with him overnight. He is in foster care in remote northern China, called Inner Mongolia. I’m already making plans to nickname him Genghis Khan. Sounds manly, huh? His home is a land of rolling grassy hills, snow covered sand dunes, and a never-ending blue sky. It’s hard to comprehend that I’ll be going there in a matter of months. Even harder to comprehend my son lives there.

He was abandoned at a shopping mall and now lives in foster care. They think his birthday is October 9, 2009, but you can never be sure with orphans. For some reason his lip hasn’t been fixed, according to his outdated medical information. It says that he didn’t meet the requirements to get his lip fixed, which is hard to understand why that is the case. A cleft palate makes eating and drinking difficult (not surprising it’s hard to eat with a hole in the roof of your mouth) so he is somewhat underweight. But the three doctors we’ve had look over the info feel that it’s not a big deal because it seems he is developing normally otherwise. If they aren’t concerned, then neither are we. So we have agreed to adopt this little boy.

It was strange meeting a child through two awkwardly translated medical forms and three obligatory pictures. He’s still a cute guy. His eyes are like two big brown cups of coffee. Beautiful eyes. Unforgettable eyes. People keep telling us how sweet he looks. And he does look sweet. But it’s also hard not to project your feelings of sadness onto this little boy whose parents abandoned him because (for a reason we’ll never know) they felt unable to help his condition. I sat with one son on my lap, looking at pictures of another son we’ve never met. It is a strange emotion. It’s hard not to feel detached from it all, like you’re reading a case study of a distant person. It's because he is a distant person in a distant land, but he’s also my son who I want on my lap just as badly. Lord willing, he will be in a matter of a few months.

So today we know who our boy is. We are so excited. We will post pictures and more information sometime. We want to make sure all is final before we do, and we hope to get updated medical information and pictures from the CCAA. Our next step is to complete our LOI (Letter of Intent/plan for care). Then we’ll crisscross the Pacific with FedEx'ed paperwork for a few months and hopefully be going to get him in early spring 2011.

Thanks for all the comments, prayers, and wishes of congrats. We are humbled at the kindness of our former pediatrician, doctors we barely know, adoption workers who work on their days off, friends calling and texting daily, and our family. We are thankful.