Home 4 Months

Home Depot Saturday morning project

The update: We have adjusted to being a family of 6 and are doing great!  We are super busy with Bryce, Elise and Benjamin playing soccer/softball/baseball and going to all of the practices and games.  Olivia is doing fantastic.  She has jumped right in and has learned to throw, catch, and hit the ball or shoot hoops outside!!  She loves to do this almost every day!  She is so much more comfortable and is responding more to others.  She still loves to be with her siblings but she also enjoys being with her cousins who live across the street. She loves our dog, Shelby, as well as our cousin's dog, Millie.   Her food issues are so much better.  She has even started to like pizza!  She is such a precious and fun little girl.  She is doing amazingly great with learning the language!  We have "Olivia school" daily and she has learned the alphabet (upper and lower case) including sounds, shapes, colors, numbers, etc.  Nanette is trying to get her ready for Kindergarten, which she will officially start in August.  She is so proud of how well she is doing!! =) Her teacher in China did a great job because she already knew how to use the scissors, glue, most of her numbers, and colors!  There is still so much to learn and we still have some issues but overall she is doing fantastic.

Vogel State Park in Georgia (highly recommend)

Cousins enjoying a pretty day

She is getting to have so many firsts!  During Spring Break, we went camping in north Georgia.  We enjoyed camping, campfires, hiking, and fun family time!  She loved it.

Fire Hazard!

We can tell that she is forgetting her Chinese language, despite some efforts to help her maintain it.  We have lots of Chinese friends that speak to her in Chinese, but she does not speak to them yet…  We listen to Chinese music and have some videos as well… =).

First time climbing up a tree--she was "very scared"

 It is not always rosy and she still has some issues that we are lovingly working through.  The hardest and most frustrating thing is she totally shuts down when she is hurt or upset, so it is hard to determine what is wrong! That being said, I totally am amazed at how she has handled and adapted to all the changes in her life.  She has been through so much in such a short 5 years!

Climbing wall in Birmingham

Some walked and some scooted across the bridge

We had a great opportunity at a local orphan care conference to personally meet with "JT", the man that founded the Both Hands Organization to facilitate fundraising for adoptions through serving a widow. We were able to meet him and his wife and introduce them to our entire family. What a special experience for JT to meet Olivia because Both Hands helped us bring her home! It was great for us and hopefully encouraging to him to see the "fruit" that comes from this great ministry.  You can look through our blog and see our "Both Hands" project from May 2013 to raise money for our 2nd adoption.

JT from Both Hands…please consider supporting them!

(http://www.bothhandsfoundation.org)

What a Blessing

The whole crew!

I get overwhelmed at how incredible our God is!  How He knits families together in such unique yet perfect ways is astounding to me.  During the waiting period, we prayed fervently for Olivia before we even knew her.  When we received her referral, we just knew that she was ours with complete and absolute peace.  Yet, we did not know what a blessing God had in store for us.  She has officially been with our family 7 weeks today and we have been home for 6 weeks.  Olivia is adjusting well, is a happy child and has us laughing a lot.  She loves to have fun and loves to play with any family member that is available.  She actually reciprocated one of my hugs on Christmas (the best present ever!!), and she now gives both Scott and I hugs and tells us that she loves us as well.  She was doing this to the kids long before us parents…  When she is comfortable (on her own turf), she has such a sweet and fun personality that is laughing most of the time, but when we are out in public or meeting people, she totally shuts down and becomes “stoic”.  I am sure this will improve with time as well.

 Very happy at home!

Some artwork.

Olivia is learning more English words every day and speaks one to two words at a time.  She is gradually starting to express herself with words versus us asking questions until she nods her head yes.  She sometimes mimics us, which causes much laughter!  She touches my heart and brings tears to my eyes to hear our sweet little girl thank the Lord for every family member by name in our prayer time!!  How sweet that must sound to Jesus!

Olivia is sleeping well but snores as loud as Scott! Unbelievable!!  So Elise has had some difficulty adjusting to her roommate.  Elise told us that she woke Olivia up, trying to turn her over to get her to stop snoring.  When Elise told Olivia that she was snoring, Olivia said “Me??” with surprise and laughter.

First Christmas!

Olivia’s is still very picky with foods but she is getting better with this as well.  She is at least trying new things like her first peanut butter sandwich and sliced ham today.  She still loves noodles and rice and could eat this at every meal if we let her.  Her food issue could have been related to her 19, yes 19, cavities!  We have addressed her bottom teeth already, which consisted of 4 crowns, 3 root canals, 2 fillings, and 1 extraction.  We have her uppers to go.  She is one brave kiddo with the way she handles doctors, shots, blood draws, dentist appointments, etc.   It will be nice when we have all these things behind us!

So in conclusion, we have come a LONG way from Nov. 25.  Olivia has had a huge turn around and is very happy.  I will close with how she closes her day in bed, “See you in the good morning!”

First time on the bike!

Home 10 days--December 15, 2013

Not sure what she was trying to write, but it looks important!

We have now been home for about 10 days and are getting settled into Central time and our usual routines of school and work.  It was a little rough the first few days that Nanette was home alone with Olivia, as she likely had not been alone for quite some time.  At the orphanage, there are kids everywhere all the time!   Everyday we are learning more about each other.  Consider Olivia’s perspective—she has arrived in a new country where everything is different: food tastes different, things smell different, everything looks different, the language sounds different…there are very few things here that are familiar to her.  Thankfully, she is very comfortable around us, or should I say the other kids.  She definitely likes the other kids more than us right now, but I suppose that is to be expected.  However, we are making progress and she has come to expect us to take care of her needs: bath, food, clothes, etc. 

We arrived home on a Wednesday and she literally did not leave the house until Monday.  Since then, we have taken her out to the store, to pick the other kids up from school, and a few other places.  We had a breakthrough when she wanted to go with Scott to drop Bryce off at basketball practices.  We’re not sure if she wanted to go with Scott or Bryce, but either way it was a good sign.  We have also learned that she fits right in with the other females in the house—in that she is NOT a morning person!  She usually wakes up a little groggy and takes some time to get warmed up to everyone.  However, the flip side is at night, she is usually in a good mood and likes to have fun.  Overall, we are making progress albeit slow. 

To address some of the common questions we get:

1.  Language—she is learning English and seems to understand a lot of basic things that we ask her.  We do not get a lot of words spoken back to us, but she does say our names, the dog’s name, and she is saying some other words here and there. Interestingly, a good friend gave us a DVD with some children’s songs all in Chinese and she seems to love it—smiling, singing, and laughing.  However, she doesn’t sing when we look at her…if we leave the room or ignore her, she will sing away.

2.   Sleep—she and Elise share a room and they are both doing well. We had a rough first 4-5 days, but she has settled into a routine and is now sleeping in her own bed, through the night without any issues. 

3.  Eating—she is very picky about what she eats and could probably eat ramen noodles 3 times/day.  However, we are trying to get her on some healthy food so we are limiting the ramen noodles to once/day!  Olivia will eat fruit and we have some Chinese snacks like seaweed and fish flavored crackers, so these can tie her over while we find other foods. We have been encouraged that she is starting eat more protein.  Nanette made some congee (rice porridge) and she does like this with some meat or tofu.  She is slowly getting accustomed to the food.  For comparison, when we were in China and eating their food all the time, our kids really didn’t care for it and wanted “American” food by about the 3^rd or 4^th day.  So we have tried to make foods that she likes, add tons of salt, and hopefully that makes her feel more comfortable!

Very sweet girl, however, she won't do this if she knows we're filming.

Reflections--Friday, Dec. 6, 2013

Well, we have returned home for two days.  All the kids did great on the trip home.  It took a total of 27 hours traveling and the kids did actually sleep some on the long flight!  It was so fun to see and hear Olivia’s excited squeals when she had the window seat on one of the flights!  Bryce, Elise and Benjamin have returned to school and they are actually ahead of their class because they did all of the work that the teachers sent them in China.  This is a blessing so they can be with Olivia when they return home from school and not have to do homework!

Olivia has had some regression since we returned home, which was expected.  This is yet another change for her.  She may have thought that the hotel in China was our home and now we are in a new place.  In summary of our experience, she progressed so much in China.  She went from kicking and screaming to no tears the last 2 days in China!  She has such a sweet spirit and a fun personality.  I know that she will be fine in a few weeks!  On Thursday morning when the other kids went to school, she cried some soft silent tears because it was the first time our family has not been all together and it may have been the first time she was alone.  Guess mom is not as much fun!! =) She did perk up after lunch and saw some smiles and laughter!  She was so excited when the kids returned from school!  It warms my heart to see her so happy!

With this to say, we had a very LONG night last night.  She was awake from about 12-4 am crying hard off and on.  The positive thing is that she clung to me and allowed me to comfort her some….  While we were pacing the room, I had some reflections and some silent tears as well.  It is heart wrenching to see her hurting so badly.  It is not supposed to be this way.  She should NOT be having to experience this.  She should be with her biological parents.  God’s original plan did not intend for there to be orphans…for kids to be abandoned!  It is because of sin, our sweet Olivia is hurting so badly right now.  We are so excited and blessed to have her in our family and God ordained her life to be with us, but when God created the world, there was no sin, there were no orphans.  This situation so closely resembles our relationship with God.  When He created the world, it was perfect and we were in one relationship with the Lord. (Gen 1:31) It was because of sin, that relationship was broken.  Without Christ, we are all orphans!  Sin separates us from our Heavenly Father. Praise the Lord that HE has conquered sin and restored our relationship with Himself through Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection.  His death has covered our sins and restored and reunited our relationship w/ our Heavenly Father!  (Rom 5: 8-11)  We are all His adopted children (John 14: 18-21) when we have this relationship with Christ.  (Rom 8: 15-17)  Just as our relationship with God was broken, Olivia’s relationship was broken from her bio parents, but she now has been restored to a family with loving parents.  I am so thankful that we have a loving God that restores relationships with Himself as well as for the adopted child.  Please pray for God to heal Olivia’s heart and give her peace and comfort during these next few days/ weeks.  We love her so much, and God is the ultimate comforter and healer!

A better day

Today was our best day yet with Olivia. I won't lie, it has been hard. She has cried a lot and rarely let's Scott even touch her, except to brush her teeth, put her shoes on, and blow dry her hair. We have heard many similar adoption stories and know this will change once we get on our "home field".  We'll let the pictures describe our day.

Visiting a park in Guangzhou 

 Feeding the fish at the hotel

Beautiful! 

 4, what have we done?

 Finally, the playful side.

 Having fun with Elise

Zhuhai—November 29, 2013

Imagine the day, you are a three year old little girl, driving down a beautiful road with one of your parents.  The road is known to the locals as “Lover’s Road” because it is so beautiful and scenic.  However, for this little girl, it will not be a fun time because you will be left behind.  That’s right, abandoned.   That’s part of the story for our little girl and unfortunately, the story for so many orphans around the world.  For whatever reason, the parents find themselves in a situation where they believe their child will be better off with strangers than with them.  Who knows why people do this, but in every situation it is tragic.  However, God can use these situations to do great things.  Take the biblical story of Joseph…his brothers tried to get rid of him because they didn’t like him, but God made him ruler of Egypt.  And he told his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Gen 50:20).  We don’t know the reason why Olivia’s biological parents dropped her off at the pier, but we know that God has another plan for her life. 

Today we had the opportunity to visit both her finding location and her orphanage.  The orphanage looked very nice on the inside: bright colors, lots of kids’ art hanging on the walls, smiling faces of the workers.  It actually looked like any elementary school in Birmingham.  However, the truth is that these kids live without parents that give them lots of love.  No one to teach them about Jesus or right from wrong or that they can do anything in this life.  So, even though these pictures look bright and wonderful, it’s not a wonderful place.  170 kids live there, but now it’s 169!  I tried to be sensitive and did not post any of their faces.

 The track

 Playground

 A little unsure of what to do.

 Artwork

 More artwork

 A teacher that really cares for Olivia

Olivia's room.

To those of you that have been praying for Olivia to handle the day well…she did. She was very quiet (but it seems that is her personality) and took a little time to warm up to her old friends.  She seemed to be very well liked by her classmates and the teachers were so happy to see her.  One was very sad to see her go, but she knows that she is going to a better place…a family.  She shared a room with 11 other girls and right next door were 12 boys.  The beds were lined up next to each other and were basically a pad on top of plywood, not very comfortable, but all they know.  It was sad for us because Olivia told her caregivers that she has been cold with us, but she wouldn’t put on all the clothes that we tried to put on her.  So while we were there, they put another pair of pants on her, 2 layers.  They told us “she is very skinny, so she needs 2 layers on her legs”.  When we left, you could tell she was sad, but she didn’t cry and went willingly, holding Nanette’s hand.  What a praise!

Overall, the day went very well and was not as emotional as we thought it would be, while at the orphanage.   The orphanage workers and teachers have done a good job of preparing Olivia for us and they know that families are the best place for children.  It was a little sad to see the faces of so many other orphans, but maybe God will place them in a family soon.

Upon return to the hotel, she became very upset and cried hard for about 2 hours with nothing to console her, not even the typical walks around the hotel. However, she did cling to Nanette and sobbed on her shoulder.  We believe that she held it together all day and finally lost it to grieve the reality that she was not returning to her familiar friends and what she knows as “home”.  God was again gracious and ended the night with smiles and laughter.  We know that this is very hard for her and will love her through this trying time of change.  This picture so reminds us of how God handles us in our times of grief.  He is always there to comfort us and allows us to cling to Him.  He will never leave us in both the good and trying times of our lives.  His love for us is the only way that we can pour out our love for Olivia, and we KNOW that His love is everlasting!

We had the opportunity to have lunch with one of Scott's friends.  A long story but they met on a trip to another part of China in 2011.  Olivia is smiling!