It's a GIRL!!!!!

Last Tuesday, August 17th, the stork landed in Orlando, Florida. We knew that CCAA should be adding more children to the shared list soon and were hoping that we could receive "The Call", but we were trying not to get our hopes up. Last month anytime the phone rang we risked bodily injury as we raced to answer the phone. This time we were more cautious, but when the call came through and "Holt Adoption Agency" was listed on my caller ID I forgot all about caution as I raced from the room where my team (the group of teachers in my hall) was meeting to pick up a better reception. I heard the most wonderful words, "We believe we found a child that will be a good match for your family." As we prepared our dossier to send to China we were told that we would probably be matched with a boy because many families are only open to adopting little girls. I was SHOCKED when Masha said, "We have a little girl."





"A girl?" I said, it didn't really make sense.





"Yes, is that ok?"





"Of course it is!" I assured her.





Liu Rong Jie was born on March 18, 2009 and is now 17 months old. She is presently residing in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province in southeastern China. She was born with VSD (Ventricular Septal Defect) which is a mild heart condition. She received surgery to repair her VSD last October and is doing well. We believe her family chose adoption for her because they were not able to care for her medical needs. I can't imagine the heartache they went through, when they left her after caring for her for five months. This past Sunday at church I prayed for her family, that they would know peace and know that she has been treated for her heart condition and that she has now been matched with a loving family and will grow up knowing love.

We have been told that the wait to travel can be anywhere from four to nine months. We are praying fervently that we will be able to travel in four months. That would mean that our sweet baby will be home by the end of the year. Here is the much anticipated photo of our new daughter.

We will name our beautiful daughter Aryn Rachel Liu-Rong. As we paperchased we prayed for a name. We wanted a name that was strong and a name that had a beautiful meaning. We wanted the name to be a blessing for all of the wonderful things we hope life will hold. It was difficult to find a name because sometimes we would love the way a name sounded, but when we researched the meaning of a name, we were not impressed. We agreed upon the name Aaron for three reasons. First we wanted to honor Craig and his middle name is Aaron, secondly we liked that God chose to build the royal priesthood through the tribe of Levi and that Aaron was the first high priest, lastly we chose the name Aaron because it means "mountain of strength", "exalted", or "strong." We agreed that we would also like to use the name for a girl, but we didn't want to go with the traditional Erin which means "Ireland" and though I can't find the meaning myself I have heard also means "girl." So I have become what I thought I would never become. I have become one of "those" mothers who takes a boy's name and modifies it for her daughter. I'm shaking my head at the irony of it all. The name Rachel drew us in a few times in a few different ways and we were pretty sure we would not use it until we received a confirmation that it should be a part of her name. Rachel means "ewe" a female lamb. After thinking about the symbolizm and the way Jesus always says He is our sheppard and cares for our needs and how he would leave the 99 to go search for the 1, we had to use the name. We can't imagine not haveing Rachel as part of her name now.

When Aryn was found last August she was taken to the hosptial to be treated. She was named by the doctor attending her and we felt that we should keep part of her Chinese name just like we had kept part of Isaac's Chinese name. We didn't want to use her entire name because Aryn Rachel LiuRongJie Stopyra is a mouthful so we chose the names that seemed to flow with the rest of her name. So we are keeping Liu-Rong as her middle name. From my research, which could be wrong because it all depends upon the Chinese symbol used for her name and I'm not sure I looked at the right symbols as I looked online. We believe Liu means "willow" and I think that is beautiful, I love willows and my middle name means a meadow and I think a willow would look lovely in the meadow. I think it fits nicely. Rong means many things, but "honor" is a part of many definitions, "high honor" is my favorite that I have found. Rong can also mean, "flourish" and we hope she does flourish with our love. It can also mean "harmonious", "glory" or "to hold." I would like to incorporate Jie, but I don't want to make her name so long. I am really torn. Perhaps we will include it. The doctor who named her chose beautiful names. Jie means "One who rises above the rest" or "prominent" and "successful." Maybe well end up with LiuRong-Jie. I don't know!!!!

Getting Ready for the 1st Day of School

We are thrilled that Isaac qualified for the Pre-K VE (varying exceptionalities) class for speech and language this year. He will be attending Pershing Elementary for a half day in the morning session. On Thursday we went to meet his teacher and she is simply AMAZING! We are very excited about this new year. Tonight we went to Target to buy school supplies on his list. Grandma bought a Thomas the Train backpack a few weeks ago because Isaac continues to L-O-V-E Thomas and all choo-choos. We were afraid that if we waited to buy the Thomas backpack that the stores would be sold out. School starts Monday morning and Isaac will ride the school bus to and from school. In the morning they will pick him up at Aunt Wendy's house and in the afternoon they will bring him back where he will eat lunch, nap, and continue to have wonderful relationships with his Auntie, cousins, and the other adorable kids in her home day-care. We are so blessed to have Aunt Wendy as his primary care giver while Mama and Daddy are working. God is so good to us.

Speak Up for "SAY"

The super big toy company Mattel is sueing a minor small business over the use of the word "say." It is preposturous that something like this could make it into the court systems and onto a judges docket when their are real issues in the world. SuperDuper is a small publisher that makes speech products and other things for children with special needs. We use some of their products with Isaac and I believe that his speech therapist gets some of her things from this company as well. We have been told about this small business from different speech therapists and when he was tested to qualify for the speech program with the public school system.



I am so unbelievably upset that Mattel thinks they have a trademark on the word "say." Are they for real!? Seriously?! I mean we say things all day, the word say is a major word for a speech therapist, I can't imagine them going through a session without using the word "say" as part of the session. Now Mattel wants them to change the name of some of their materials or to pay them (Mattel) millions of dollars for using the word "say." What #$@#$#@%% I don't know how many characters I put there, but it would suffice for whatever mean word you could think to use in place of them. Since this is a public blog I don't want the public to think poorly of my use of the English language or to be sued by some crazy person who thinks they have the rights of all bad language. Whatever.

SO WHAT CAN YOU DO??? Contact Mattel and tell them to have the courts to vacate the judgment against Super Duper, and then tell them to leave this special needs company alone. Follow this link for various contact information.

Even if your child has not used the SuperDuper products there is a chance that someone you know and love does or has in the past. Thank you for taking the time to read this and to consider helping.

Patience

I think we all struggle with being patient. Nobody really likes to wait. I find it ironic that my favorite flower in the world is the daisy. Did you know that the daisy symbolizes patience? I didn't until I began collecting quilt squares to make a 100 wishes quilt, or bai jia bei, for my babies that I knew would be coming home from China. I joined a quilting exchange and we were doing a fruit of the spirit swap. I somehow got patience... Anyways, since patience has never been my strongest gifting of the spirit I decided to research ways that patience can be symbolized as I searched for a fabric to encompass this fruit. I was amazed to discover that the daisy represented patience. When I see a daisy now, I am reminded to be patient, though sometimes it is easier than others.




I absolutely loved the Music Machine as a little girl and well, I loved this song about a little snail who got into trouble for his lack of patience. I know that God has a plan for my life. I know that His timing is perfect, and that there is a time for everything under heaven according to the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. I now am in the time of waiting. Today the wait seemed long, I know it really hasn't been in the big scheme of things in the adoption world, but to me today it felt long and I remembered this song from my youth. I decided to go and look for it on YouTube because everything can be found on YouTube. The song made me laugh, it helped me relax and to sit back and allow God to work things out in His timing. It's funny, this song now reminds me of another, but I'm not going to stop and search for it right now, the song is "He's Still Working On Me" and I guess that is true because He is still working on me to help me learn patience. I guess the good thing is that I am learning some of my lessons, I just keep needing refresher courses as I progress to the next level.

What's so special about special needs?

I just love my son and can not even begin to imagine what our lives would be like without him. I shake my head and imagine the loss my life would have if we had not opened our hearts to a special needs child. All children are special, what makes mine more so, or less so, I guess depending upon one's point of view. I just read the most amazing post from Malinda on her Adoption Talk blog you should stop by and check it out. She attended a talk by Amy Elderidge of Love Without Boundaries where Amy spoke about the changing face of adoption in China and how fewer and fewer non-special needs (NSN) children are being abandoned and how many more children are being born with special needs. Be sure to read her post and the comments below, especially Amy's comments. She commented on the blog after Malinda wrote and added some more great information.

It's a LID miracle!

I never imagined that our LID (log in date) would come four days after our dossier was sent to China. Of all places we had just arrived at the Magic Kingdom and Isaac and I had just finished getting our picture taken with Tigger and Pooh when I got a text message from Craig saying that he had heard from the agency regarding our LID. WHAT!? That is simply AMAZING!!!! We are so thrilled that we received a log in date in such a short amount of time. In 2006 when we began our journey to adopt Isaac our dossier left for China on August 4, 2006 and it wasn't logged in until August 30th. That was a wait of 26 days until log in. I can't believe it is even possible for the time between the two to be a mere 4 days. It is possible that we could have a match close to the two year anniversary for when we found Isaac. How cool?After we got home from the Magic Kingdom I thought it would be a good idea to go to our favorite Chinese restaurant to celebrate our LID. They are always asking when we'll go back to adopt another child and tonight we were able to tell them that our paperwork has been logged into China's system so we are one step closer. My cookie read, "An unexpected event will bring you riches." I was like, "Yes! Riches in love and family!!!" Isaac's cookie read, "An acquaintance of the past will affect you in the near future." Maybe our new addition will be from the Dongguan CWI just like Isaac. Wouldn't it be totally awesome if we adopted one of the cuties that melted my heart when we visited his orphanage on October 17, 2008? I knew at that minute (maybe before) that I would be back in China to adopt another child.

Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart." We are trusting the LORD to lead us to the child that He has chosen to be a part of our family. Please pray that our agency will have the wisdom of the LORD as they look for our child. We know that God lead Erin from Harrah's AIM when she found Isaac on the shared list in July of 2008. We are trusting Him to lead those from our new adoption agency as they search for our new child.

The Documents Are On Their Way to China

Last night at 8:30 our time, 5:30 their time our adoption agency called to let us know that our dossier was "perfect" and that it was on its way to China with the other families whose dossiers had also been approved this week. We are very excited!! Ellen said that the documents should arrive at the Holt Beijing office early next week and that they will hand deliver it to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) where it will be logged into the Chinese system. According to the new rules once we are logged into the system Holt can begin looking on the shared list for our new son or daughter.

The shared list is a special list created by the CCAA where they place children with special needs that all adoption agencies have access to. In the past the CCAA would send designated lists to the various adoption agencies and the agency was charged with finding adoptive families for the children that the CCAA sent to them. If a child was not matched with a family after a period of time his/her file was sent back to the CCAA. Their file would be sent to a few more adoption agencies and after a while if a child's file was not requested by families a child could be deemed unadoptable. This is quite sad because perhaps the family meant to adopt that child didn't find the correct adoption agency or the agency wasn't willing to request a waiver if their family was too large. For whatever reason many children went without families to call their own. This new shared list isn't without fault, but all the agencies are able to look on the list and advocate for the children. Many parents wish that CCAA had allowed the designated lists to continue with the shared list. Many families have started adoptions only after finding their child on the designated list, families that may have not pursued an adoption if they had not found their child on the designated list and had their child looking back at them. We can pray that the shared list helps things move along and find more homes for children, but it is different and like anything else isn't perfect. However imperfect the system it worked perfectly for us when we found Isaac on the shared list in July of 2008. We are so excited that as we approach the two year anniversary of finding Isaac we could be celebrating that we have been matched with our new child.This is a picture of the outside of Isaac's orphanage in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, China. Part of me hopes that our new child is here and that he/she will share a common thread with Isaac, however we aren't requesting the agency look for a child from Dongguan because God knows where our child is and we don't want to miss out on His perfect match for our family because we tried to manipulate things. We think that we might be matched with a brother because many, many families are hoping for a daughter. After praying about whether or not to request a particular gender we felt that if we were pregnant we would be thrilled with whichever gender He gave us so now we are like minded in adoption. We would love a daughter. We would love a son. We know that this new child will be deeply loved. However, we know that over 75% of families adopting request to adopt a daughter, so the odds are pretty good that we will adopt another son. Why the preference for a daughter when adopting? I don't know. Many speculate that mothers drive the majority of adoptions and perhaps after having a biological son they want a daughter, or if they can only have one child mothers desire to have that special mother-daughter relationship. Of course, with China we hear about the preference for boys so many people adopting from China show that girls are treasured and valuable by requesting to adopt a daughter. However children relinquished by their parents in China are almost equally boy and girl when it comes to children with "special needs." Unlike us they don't have insurance or government subsidies (Medicaid, etc...) to help with the cost of treating a child. Regardless of what you think of our present situation regarding the medical arena, we can agree that we are blessed. We were able to get surgery to correct Isaac's cleft palate by an awesome surgeon. We are able to get speech therapy so that he develops clear speech. We could not afford any of this without insurance and I wonder, with similar circumstances available to the birth families of my children, would I be a mother? I don't know if medical care were easily accessible if Isaac's mother could have raised him and loved him or if, as a show of her deep love she chose to leave him and prayed that a family would come along that could give him what she could not. These days I am thinking more about his birth mother and the birth mother of my new child more than I have in a while, and I pray for these women. I pray that God will comfort them with a knowing that their children are deeply loved by a family and that their needs are being met. I pray that they will come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ so that one day we can be reunited in Heaven.

Getting Closer!

Last week we received our documents back after they were authenticated at the Chinese Consulate. Here is a picture of me and Isaac as we prepared to head to FedEx to mail our package with our completed dossier to Holt International Adoption Agency in Eugene, Oregon on Friday.

It's pretty amazing that we are preparing to bring another member into the family. When we were in the process to adopt Isaac I didn't understand the hearts of others who already had children at home. I thought, "they already have children, how can they possibly understand what it's like to want the paperwork to hurry up already. At least they have a child to hold while my arms are empty." Now I get it, it is because they had a child to hold and love on that they were that much more impatient for everything to work out. They knew what they were missing out on, while I could only imagine. I'm not really saying this right, in some respects it is easier this time. When I feel a need to hug a little guy I can find Isaac and hug him close and tell him how much I love him. On the other hand, I worry about our new addition and wonder what things are like on the other side of the world as he/she waits for us to get there. I am amazed at how God orchestrates everything so perfectly. How our paperwork will need to be in China at the same time our child's paperwork is prepared. I know that He really does work all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28) We lean on God and believe Proverbs 3:6 "In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path."

So, here we are at the beginning, no not really a beginning, we have been working so hard to gather paperwork and get doctor appointments and everything since December 2009 to have this be the beginning. Here we are at a new step in our journey. Love's Journey that will bring us closer to becoming the family that He has in mind for us. Please keep us in prayer as we get closer to finding our child and traveling to meet the newest member of the Stopyra family.

Roller Coaster fun at the Magic Kingdom

On Friday we went to the Magic Kingdom with Zoe and rode our first roller coaster, Goofy's Barnstormer.This is fun!Again!!!

Swimming Lessons

Although it is not "official" summer is most definately here. The temperatures soar into the 90s with a heat index up into the 100s. Today as we walked out to the car on our way to swimming lessons Isaac said, "Mama, Hot!" I laughed agreeing with him and said, "Yes, and it would be even hotter if we weren't headed to the pool. We are so lucky that we get to play in the nice water when it is HOT outside." Of course this probably went over his little head, but I laughed because it sounded like something my grandparents might have said... So we should have taken swimming lessons last summer, but we could never get them into our schedule, so this summer we are making our schedule fit the swim schedule because my boy is part fish.Here we are getting ready for our first lesson. This is the very same pool where Mama took swimming lessons when she was a little girl.Finally Miss Susie comes out to the pool and we are ready to begin. On our first day of lessons only one other child was in our class. (I believe some parents forgot that they had started because a second child showed up on day two. I wonder if more children will show up as the week progresses?) The first thing she did was introduce herself and ask the children about rules that are good to have when we are around a pool so that we can be safe.After safety rules they took a tour around the pool and noted the different depths. Miss Susie explained that even the shallow end was over their heads.Finally it is time to get in the water!!! Yeah!!! We practiced kicking and blowing bubbles. We also practiced with a noodle that helped keep his hips afloat so that he could swim. Here he is practicing at the wall. Look at me go!

DAY 2On the second day I didn't get as many pictures, but I still got a few. He had a great time and is really enjoying the lessons. He even showed everyone what he is learning at swim school.