CDC allows Harper to come home

Good News - the adopted daughter left behind in China has been allowed to come back to the United States. She is apparently home. Washington Post and NPR have been covering the story and there are some updates coming tomorrow (Thursday, August 27). Not many details yet, but I think the newsmedia began to show the State Department pointing fingers at the CDC and vice versa. The TB rule by the CDC still stands, though. But Harper is home.

Another Family's Sad Situation ! Please help

There is a family who recently travelled to China to adopt their 4 year old daughter. While getting her medicals in GZ, she tested positive for TB which is not contagious, and she has been treated for during the last two months. CDC is forcing the family to leave the child behind until the TB clears up, which I guess is six months. If their child was born in China, the CDC would allow her to enter the US. The sad thing this is a rule that was just enacted on July 1st and had the family travelled a month ago, this rule would not apply. So you know its messed up. I am not sure what is going to happen to the child, I think someone said on Rumor Queen website that the daughter, Harper (named after the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird") is going to stay with an American family living in GZ. This whole situation took the family unawares, and of course, this now could happen to any one who is adopting from China. Why the CDC is not allowing the non-contaigious child to travel - even by private plane - there are plenty of child organizations that could arrange for private transport, we have no idea. The State department, who can overturn this ruling, appears to be standing idly by, as well as the news media which is more preoccupied by a stupid bumpy ride on a plane for Demi and Aston than this situation. I didn't watch the farewell video, apparently it is too sad, but it is linked to the website of the parents. The International Adoption community is pretty upset by this, as well as should most Americans. Someone needs to send Bill Clinton to clean up this mess.

The family just updated their blog a few hours ago....

The Scruggs are home without Harper, but confirmed she is indeed with a family. They will be in touch with her daily. They are imploring people to sign the petition, contact news media and spread the word to family and friends. There is an organized effort to overturn this ruling. They have an interview with the Washington Post tomorrow. Please click on the links below.


The family's name is Scruggs. I still can't believe this isn't a "story" with the news media.
http://jayscruggs.livejournal.com

(be sure to check the date for the latest update)
Discussion:
http://chinaadopttalk.com

A petition to sign.
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/build-families-not-barriers.html

New York! New York!

We went to New York City in June for a wedding in Central Park.   New York was fabulous, the  ceremony was great, the bride and groom perfect, families were wonderful.  We saw the Natural History Museum, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, and ate like royalty. Really, is there any bad food in The City? I think not.   Gracie had a great time and this is a photo of Gracie and Daddy at the wedding.   It rained all the day before, and the day of the wedding, of course, we had perfect weather.   The wedding party and guests then boarded a big double decker tour bus and we toured the bride and groom's neighborhood and then made our way through times square and then to the reception.  Gracie sat on top with everyone else, napping the entire time, leaving her refreshed and rested to party like only a toddler can at a wedding  BTW,  We took Virgin air round trip, and even though we were on the plane for 7 1/2 hours on the way back,  due to weather delays, Gracie was great, sleeping alot of the time and enjoying playing games on Mommy's ipod, which disappeared (on purpose) after we got back. The pilot was terrific, announcing every time we would move an inch on the runway, then shutting the engines off so we can dash away to the loo and pee.    

Speaking of which, we have been potty trained. Ta dah!

Laguna Beach and San Juan Capistrano

Vacations. We went to Laguna back in the beginning of March. It was cool, but great. We had a chance to visit San Juan Capistrano and David took this picture of Gracie looking at the Mission Bells.

Ciao China, Hello Wait

Call us crazy, and yep, we are old (and grumpy), but what the heck, we might be DTC for Second Daughter on Friday. ("DTC") means "Dossier to China", which means in a few weeks we will get a "Log In Date" (LID) which will be our "official date" for starting the wait. BUT WAIT, you say, Isn't it about a hundred year wait now for adorable Chinese daughters these days? Yes, we are gambling on a wait of around 2 or 3 years. The best we can say is that we are getting in line, and we have plenty of time to come to our senses and, well, simply not renew paperwork and back out. But we'd rather be in line and having this discussion, rather than deciding we do want to adopt, only for it to be totally out of the question. Our DTC "freezes" our ages, So for China, I will always be 40...something.

Everyone has says, "Well, it should be easier now, right?" Wrong! It has even gotten more complicated. There's some new rules, and since our homestudy "expires" each year, we have to start all over. Seems strange when we went with the same agencies, huh? We went back to our old agency, because, hey, we love our social worker and she had been in touch with us for Gracies China reports, and she had the complicated requirements for Homestudy for China down cold.

Here is a very abbreviated version of What You Have to Do for A Homestudy: First of all, pat yourself on the back for never going to jail, or getting a DUI, or going on drugs, and for staying out of trouble during your teen years, because all of it has to be confessed during your background checks during this process. If you don't have any of these troubles in your past, and you are patient and a high tolerance for waiting, you can expect to have ultimate approval of your homestudy, so it all starts by getting fingerprinted. Then you submit request for background clearance in 8 states between us. We then sent and submitted new birth certificates. (China requires "new" birth certificates, issued within the last six months) Got Police letters. Notarized. 25 or so questionnaire, completed separately from each of us, making sure we haven't remarried anyone else, or committed crimes or started down the road to tranquilizers and booze, which you well deserve after all this.... 2 sets of financial statements- one for each agency - local and China. Both Notarized. Copies of 2 years of tax returns. Marriage Certificate. Employment letters. Notarized. Power of attorney forms. 10 hours of Online study and plus 4 test of parenting classes. Copies of everything, passports, insurance cards,social security cards. Medical check up (Notarzied) Letter of application to China --this changed from last time, we had to add wording and delete other things we had included last time (notarized) . Authorization for background checks. Power of attorney forms. Passport photos to include in the Dossier. (Mine was so bad, it drew a gasp if despair from a friend of mine -- my other picture for Gracie was really bad too -- it has no bearing on the lovely daughter outcome, since I think the folks in China matching office use it to measure eye distance and face shape anyway) . Guardianship forms in case you kick the bucket. Submit 5 names for letters of reference. Basically, you are working on two sets of documents. One is for the State Homestudy so we use a local homestudy agency. The other is for China Only agency. Once the local agency gets all your paperwork, you get a home visit and they write up your homestudy. Only then you can proceed to step #2.

On to step #2: Everything put together in a packet, with a new set of immigration forms--similar but different from a few years ago --and gets sent to a new immigration agency in Chicago (not local, which is good, because I think I burned my good will bridges by nagging the local office here last time). Then you wait for a few weeks, you get a couple of official looking letters from the government inviting you to get fingerprinted again for CIS in a few weeks. So we went down to CIS fingerprinting, said hello to some of the staff who fingerprinted us a few times before, went to breakfast, and then we waited, about 25 more days, and the lovely form 797H or something, comes from the government, basically granting you permission to adopt a child from China, then this and another pile of docs go to your China agency. (This part was alot quicker than last time - which took around 3 months to complete). China Only agency then sends the whole dossier and get it "authenicated", to make sure your notary (yes Notary) is in good standing and hasn't committed any crimes, and then the Chinese consulate then puts a bunch of stamps on it, (not sure what they are looking for there) and off it goes to China. Where it sits. By the way, you actually never see your China Dossier in its total packaged completed form. Actually, never see your Homestudy either (according to the laws of this state), unless your China Only agency, which is in a different state, shows it to you.

Hang on, it gets better: In China, your dossier stands in line and basically you don't have to update that - except your immigration papers expire every 18 months, but the fingerprints expire in 15 months and the State homestudy expires each YEAR. So while your dossier sits in China, you have to keep the US paperwork alive and current. So, since the wait gets so long, expirations get all mixed up and you are renewing stuff all the time. Because you do need a current approved homestudy to get that immigration paper for your child. And while you wait, you pay; in this state - the homestudy has to be renewed at a cost of over a thousand dollars or so each year. (Yikes!) And every year, you have to re-do, well, everything. Fingerprints, physicals, employment letters, police check.

This summary is really a very brief summary, skipping some of the hassle involved, but here's a sample of a typical ordeal of getting paperwork: When David went to his employer's HR office to get the same letter he got twice before, the new clerk said they did not provide those letters and insisted that they simply will not issue the letter according to the specifications needed by the State. David had to get several people involved and had to make a phone call to this--clerk--saying, that if the letter isn't written, he won't be able to adopt, and after two wrong versions, he finally got the letter we needed for the Dossier and Homestudy. This took a week to get. The clerk was very annoyed by the whole process. Wait until he finds out he needs to do this letter for us, every year while our Dossier is in China. By the way, we started this process around November 1st, when our application was sent to China Only agency and no matter how fast you are, it takes around 7 or 8 months to complete.

But as you can see, our Gracie was well worth it. And, when we got to China, everything went great. So we will keep our expectations low and pain tolerance high, and see if we can wait long enough for daughter 2. So the fun begins (again).

Flying Kites and Stats Update

Last weekend, between windstorms, we went out to the local elementary school and tried out Gracie's new kite. She loved it for about 5 minutes then wanted to play on the playground, so off we went. Gracie is 23 pounds now, and I believe she has grown 4.25 inches since last March, based on the markings we are making on the back of the bathroom door each month. She is in 2T size, which are too big around the waist and just starting to get a little short on her. But summer is coming, so that won't matter. She is almost a size 6 shoe. She eats everything, favoring mostly plain pasta, cheese and chicken, but she also loves olives and radishes, and of course, fruit. She has Cherrios or Rice Krispies each morning. She has a great imagination, always re-creating episodes of Ni-Hao -Ka Lan, looking for imaginary lady bugs or having a lantern festival. She also likes to "fix" things and just got out of a phase where she would build a car of pillows and have to stop to fix the wheels. She love motorcycles and loves to point them out when we are in a car. "Look Mom a MOTORCYCLE!" She is very "in" to Thomas the Tank Engine and knows all the characters. She can count to twenty, knows her alphabet, likes to draw, paint and climb. Today, she had her "ballerina shoes" inherited from her cousin Shaylin and was going through all the "Ballerina Girl" moves. She sleeps through the night, mostly, in her little toddler bed. Her "must have at all times" items are "Purse" (a feather purse that we got from Target - this is #2, and I bought #3 and #4 just this weekend) and "Pandy" - who was a stuffed bear who was also a backpack, before it had a "strap-ectamy" to remove his harness, now he's just a panda with a zipper. She'll not be happy with this report when she is a teenager, but she still has small bottle of milk in the rocking chair before she sleeps, where I do have to read about 5 books, usually concluding with "Whistle for Willie", which I have now memorized, which comes in handy since at this point I do shut the light off, although Gracie insists I show her the pictures. Potty Training, is still somewhat away, although we have had some successes. She knows exactly what to do it and why, but it doesn't matter to her, she is too busy.

Beach Trip Number 4 since June

We have been to the beach 4 times since June - we went in July, January and again in March. No, we don't live at the beach, we have to drive a few hundred miles, but I think its worth it. This photo is from January, and not to rub it in, but it was 80 degrees down in Southern California. No swimming of course, but we did get our feet wet and play in the sand. We watched the inauguration (everyone was freezing in DC) and put on our shorts to play in sand before getting on the freeway. We went again last week, this time for several days, and did nothing except eat, go for walks and play. It wasn't 80 degrees but still nice enough to play in the sand.

Gracie talks up a storm, and now entertains us with a strange bit of language here and there, which may be chinese, more likely picked up from Ni-Hao Ki-Lan, than anything she remembers, I suspect. She talks quite a bit, loves to use big words, (Mom, this is delicious!), so she can share her strong opinions with us, including her one on using a potty. (but Mom, I don't have to use the potty, I use diapers!) We are a long way from that toddler milestone.

Birthday Cake

Making Birthday Cakes is so much fun, but darn it, you can't eat them NOW!

The Best Part About Christmas

The food was great, and the company divine, and wow, that's a bunch of presents...but nothing beats jumping on Poppa and Gramma's bed with cousin Josh while the party goes on in the next room.

Christmas 2008

At Play - November 2008

Lian had her birthday party and Gracie was way interested in the play house -- not interested in the "bouncy house". She also ate cake, and played Twister, by jumping on the colors when they were called out. She loves "big sister" Lian, and Lian likes to play Tea Party and has been giving Gracie a few pointers. A few days ago, we caught Gracie having a full blown tea party with her doll--please note absence of her stuffed posse: "Bear" "Bunny" and "Slipper" .

CHINA - FLASHBACK

It's been a year.

We have our Gracie, she is so wonderful. This blog is dedicated to her and our experience becoming adopted parents and that's it. But I do want to mention although this has been a wonderful year, its been sad too. David lost his dear sweet sister Louise. Unexpectedly. She died of an infection after her operation for cancer during the Spring. And just last month, the lovely Rose Ann, my wonderful mother-in-law suddenly died of the cancer she had been fighting for two years. She was at home, suddenly didn't feel well, and passed away after they got her to the hospital. We got the word at the airport, headed to our flight to Oklahoma, for a planned visit. Thank you dear friends and family for all your love and support.

So, a year ago tonight, we were headed to the airport on our way to China to get our little girl. We talk about our trip to China alot, and so I decided I would write down some things that were not in the blog, so I don't forget them. Jan and Pat drove us to the airport, and we were so excited. We used the International terminal and we were helped a great deal by one particular lady at the Korean Airlines counter, who was there when we returned. (And who also we ran into 3 months later while traveling back to Oklahoma--she was so thrilled to see Gracie!)
While we were waiting I purchased some cosmetics at the duty free shop, to have a gift on hand for whoever in China, and so
I can see sort of how the duty free purchases went. When we boarded our Korean Airlines flight, the whole crew was lined up on each side on the entry way, in a welcoming sort of way, and as we we stepped out the door of the airport, the nice lady from the duty free shop was there to hand us our purchases. Then as we turned our way back toward the door of the plane, the nice folks from U.S, homeland security swooped in around the guy ahead of me and hearded him off to the side and began to ask him lots of questions. Never did find out of he made it to the plane. The cosmetics made it to China, but got lifted out of my suitcase between Beijing and Nanchang.

Anyway, we loved Korean Airlines. I loved the big plane that didn't feel like we were taking off when we did. I loved the fact that there was only one non-Asian on the plane beside us. I thought it was so cool the Japanese man in the seat next to David said he loved coming to Las Vegas, because it was cheap and they could eat lots of steak. He was really interested in what we where trying to tell him, and he said he could read a little Chinese, so I handed him the card I had put together, which had an explanation in Chinese of what were were doing, and Gracie's picture on the other (These came in really handy during the trip, by the way). I thought the food was great, we had the famous Bibipmap noodles (which came with an instruction sheet and your own mini-tube of hot sauce) but I did get a bit of heartburn afterward and I was glad I brought peppermint tea. I packed 'way too much on the flight there, but I could say I was prepared. The travel blanket I threw in at the last minute turned out to be very handy in China and at airports, we never used it on the airplane, which was warm, even more than warm, but I liked it. I had heard the Asian carriers keep the planes warm, and they were right, and it is way better than the freezing. I still wonder why they made everyone keep the shades on the windows pulled down. I tried not to think how close we were flying to Russia as we made our way across the Alaska.

The Seoul airport was really neat, and we were very hungry and not sleepy because we were so jazzed to be there. We looked at all five places named "Welly" at the airport, and tired to narrow our choices a bit, as all she selections were very Korean and it took a while to figure out something to eat, which turned out to be a sandwich with egg and all sorts of stuff on it, like bean sprouts. The young girl at the cashier booth (you ordered at the cashier and paid there) had an electronic board with current currency rates, and the job probably paid minimium wage, but she had to have some proficiency in like six languages, English, Japanese, Russian, you name it. It was around 6am when we were there, and the staff who worked at the restuarant was also eating, several in a booth, joking and eating noodles. I wonder if I could ever eat noodles so well with chopsticks.

Halloween - Sneak Preview

Last Halloween, we were in China and we had Gracie for 2 days. During the day, we went to Wal-mart and Gracie had on her "boo" T-shirt and her pumpkin socks. To celebrate, we ate pizza on cardboard boxes in the foyer of the hotel with our group while the kids played. One year later, for this Halloween, Dad will take the day off. We are planning to whoop it up for Halloween with Gracie who will wear this adorable Minnie Mouse Costume we bought at Disneyland. Too cute.

Happy Birthday Gracie !

This was our "first" birthday with Gracie. She is two! We had a big party on Saturday with lots of relatives and friends in attendance. We had balloons, sandwiches, Mickey Mouse Cake and ice cream. We tried to keep with the number one rule of 2 year old parties: keep it short. We got done in 2 hours and 22 minutes, brief enough so everyone, especially the parents, left happy. Gracie got tons of fabulous gifts. Mom got a nap! Thank you everyone!

One Year Ago -- Referral Date

Happy Anniversary! A year ago was our referral date, and we were sent this photo of our little Gong Ya Qi. Our lives changed forever. She is approximately 9 months old in this photo. Our lives haven't been the same since!

SUMMER 2008

Early this month, we made another trip to California to visit family. Gracie enjoyed playing with her cousins, who love reading as much as she does. They also played on the swing and jumped on the bed. Gracie, as usual, made off with a motherlode of clothes and toys. She also discovered "Multigrain" Cherrios from Aunt Carol. These are her new favorites and eats a few bowls of these every morning. No wonder she is now over 20 lbs. She also had her first Carousel ride with "Poppa" in the Mall-- riding on a Dragon.

Gracie loves her pool, and anything having to do with water. She is also sleeping entirely through the night, except for an occassional "whahh" that is the cue for her parents to change her wet diaper, and is back to sleep in moments. She is almost two and not quite terrible, with "no" being a favorite word, but this morning, for about 4 hours, everything was "Yes, Mommy". She's was probably trying to warm Mommy up to the idea of giving her a popsicle at 9am. She talks all the time, loves the movie "Singing in the Rain" and gets up and dances and sings along with Gene Kelly. She can count to 10, knows some letters ("W" is a favorite) and sometimes recognizes colors.

Vacations are FUN!

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Originally uploaded by mc10672

OK, this wasn't a set up. We were packing to leave and I turned around and Gracie had tucked herself in my suitcase, along with her tea set. We snapped off a few pictures. Then she wouldn't get out.

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Originally uploaded by mc10672

Before I became a parent, I thought this was stupid. Now I think its the greatest invention in the world. Gracie calls it her "Monkey On the Back". It's a backpack for the kid, and a leash (that's the tail) for Mom. Like I said, the worlds greatest invention.

July 2008

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Originally uploaded by mc10672

Disneyland? Newport Beach? Barstow? Yep, we did it all, all because Mommy had to go to convention in Anaheim. We took an impromptu trip to Newport Beach, where we caught the late afternoon sun, and ate Italian on the beach. Wonderful. We also visited Disneyland--the real one. Some observations after being to Newport Beach and Disneyland for the first time in 25 years. Beach: There's less beach. And for us desert rats--cool but wonderful. (Note we are the only ones bundled up in the photo--it was in the the 70's--burr!) Disneyland--still wonderful, still spankin' clean, and Space Mountain was just as fun as when I was 25 years old. We think Gracie had fun too--she got to go on Pirates, Safari Adventure, Peter Pan ride, those cute floating boats near the tea cups, and the carousel. Service, food, rooms--everything was great. Mostly because we brought along our own Gracie support team--"Tasha" the Au Pair for a weekend, Mary, the back up Mom, Godmother Jan, and Dad (who flew in Sunday) and drove back with us on Tuesday. The convention was fine too. No complaints really, except I'd recommend that the music blaring in Downtown Disney be turned down a bit, and make sure that the salesclerks remove the security dye thing before leaving the Disney store and the state of California.

Happy Fathers Day!

Happy Fathers Day! Gracie, Daddy and Gramy, just last week, in Oklahoma.