Stolen Thoughts about our China-USA girl(s)...

I found this on one of my Yahoo groups and it summed up how I felt as we stood at our US Consulate appt in Guangzhou a little over a year ago. I remember Doug's thoughts about all the children as he looked around. I remember fighting back tears as we stood and swore to always love and care for Ally as she became a citizen of the US. It was not very fancy as "ceremonies" go, but here is what this other mom said (she is, I'm guessing on a plane coming home with her son)...

It really hadn't hit me, all that we had done and been through until this afternoon when I stood in the US Consulate Office with my right hand raised and said the oath that made Jacob a US citizen...as I looked around the crowded room filled with about 100 babies and new parents I thought to myself, all of these children were abandoned... some in boxes, some in trash cans, some in malls, mine in a hospital clinic...and many of their counterparts did not make it...but these children, all dressed in their clean pressed red, white and blue outfits will get on a plane tomorrow bound for a place where they can become anything from a homemaker to a brain surgeon to a teacher...it was overwhelming to stand there and soak that in.

Often it is easy for us to forget all that we have here in our country! I think the next time I stand in that room for Alaina, I will have much more of a deep understanding of what is actually happening!!!

Learning More about China!

We are enjoying the Travel Channel's feature country this week -- CHINA! Lots of talk about the food, traffic, and architecture/history. It's very fun to see some of the sites we saw! It is really making me excited about going back. This next time we will be in southern China the entire trip, and since it will likely be winter, that is a good thing. We are not planning another tour of Beijing, but may spend a few days/nights in either Hong Kong or Shanghai.

I looked at several blogs of families that are currently in China (don't know any of them) and got suddenly excited about going back! I hope we hear some good news soon. We hope to cross paths with the Straights in Guangzhou since our paperwork will be in China fairly close together!

A Better Look

Here are the only pics we have of Alaina. Obviously, they were taken the same day. I just love that she is smiling!

Crazy Running Around

That is just what we have been doing recently! We got a call from our agency that 3 of our docs had been "rejected" at the federal level. The docs had been notorized and certified but by the time they made it to DC, the notaries commissions had expired; however, their commissions were valid when they notarized the docs. Ridiculous, right? So, today, Lauren and I hiked down to the county courthouse and then downtown to the Sec of State to have these 3 docs re-notorized, re-certified, and re-state-sealed! They are on their way back to the courier in DC. This was a frustrating set back and I'm not really sure what the ramifications will be with the adoption. So our dossier will not make it to China before our fingerprints expire (Mon and Tues). Our agency assures me (I know, I know) that this will not jeopardize the adoption or us getting Alaina. I'm still a bit unsure, but can't really do much more than jump thru the hoops put in front of us! So, that is what I'm doing!

We enjoyed some company recently, too. The Burkes came over to celebrate our "gotcha day" anniversary. Amanda got a pic of Zi and Ally on the pool steps, so I'll post it once she sends it my way. We also had Frannie's family over for dinner and swimming. It was about one year ago that we first met Frannie in China! I hope these kids can stay life-long friends!



Sara is spending some long days at high school band! Hard to believe! She is enjoying it, but comes home very tired each night!

There SHE is!

If you hadn't noticed, take a look in the 4th circle at the top of our blog! That is the "soon to be" Alaina! She is currently in Kunming, Yunnan Province in SW China. Her name is Wu Xu Hui, but we don't have a translation of what her name means. I am so happy that she is smiling! We have 2 pics of her (taken same day) and that may be all we ever have of her time in China. From what we hear, the director of the orphanage (which oversees the Foster Care system) doesn't provide any photos for the adoptive families. So, for now, this is all we know of our 4th daughter (wow, just saying that phrase is a lot to process!). We think she is just as cute as can be - hope we see that smile soon!



Alaina's province (Yunnan) in RED.

Ally's province (Shaanxi) in GREEN.

Guongdong (guangzhou) where the US Consulate is - in YELLOW.

Humpty Dumpty

Ally made great strides with her swimming lessons while I was gone to FL! She loves to do "humpty dumpty" where she sits on the wall and "falls" in to us while holding our fingers. She will then go under, let go and kick! We grab her and she comes up and isn't choking! Daddy got her some little goggles and those seem to have made such a difference. Once we started looking at her eyes, it only makes sense. The ridge above her eye-lids are pretty much non-existent (they don't fold over like ours - which helps to divert the water from her forehead). So, now she LOVES to go under and can do it by herself for a few seconds. We are keeping her in the pool everyday so she can really get comfy with this! Yeah Ally! You must be a swimmer in our family!

Ally's Pictures

FINALLY, Ally had some professional pics made! And guess who took the initiative to get them done? Her DADDY! Yeah! This was my surprise upon returning from Florida for my company meetings. Aren't they beautiful? Sara and Lauren and Daddy (with Ally's help, I'm sure) framed the one of her with the pink animals and put it in the hallway with Sara and Lauren's (also with pink animals, but both done at about 1 year old). I missed it the first few times I walked past, but Sara made it pretty obvious and when I saw it, I couldn't believe it! What a nice surprise and welcome home for me!

Another thing that daddy did while I was OOT, was to take all of our adoption documents for Alaina down to the Sec of State in ATL for certification. Then he sent them on to Wash DC for authentication. Once authenticated and returned to our agency in Wash State, we will be ready to send the dossier to China (DTC)!

One Year of ALLY!

Lucy is gone to Key West, Florida with work. (rough life) She did have to spend the entire day in the airport on Sunday. She was to leave at noon but ended up having several flights cancelled before leaving at midnight. So I am here with all 3 girls celebrating our first full year with Ally. Its hard to believe it has been a year. The time has flown by, but I also have a difficult time remembering our family without her.
The following is the cake that Sara, Lauren and I made for Ally's one year Gotcha Day Anniversary. It is a cake with the China flag on top and the American flag on the bottom. I think we did a pretty good job. Ace of Cakes we are not, but for a few novices, not too bad.


We plan to head to Chuckie Cheese for lunch today. (just the 4 of us) I found a coupon and figured Ally would enjoy it. She has not been yet. We had to miss Madison's birthday party there.

Lately Ally has been talking quite a bit. We love to try to get her to say "Air Freshener". Her version is something like "Air Fuh-Fuh-Fur." She really can repeat or say anything she wants. Some words are easier to understand than others.

Ally is taking swim lessons with Ms. Debbie. She enjoys everything but going under the water. She also has claimed our swimming pool as Ally's Pool. When we tell her we are going to Ms. Debbie's she trys to bargain into going to Ally's pool instead. Ally says she will go under "5 times" but when we get down to the pool she usually negotiates down to "2 times".
Ally also likes to negotiate M&M's. She gets M&M's as a reward for using the potty. Two M&M's is the reward for a successful trip but she usually trys for 5. "I want Fie!"

This has been an amazing year. I know a lot of people just don't get this, (adoption) and I guess it took me a long time to "get it" as well. I am so thankful to all of the people who had a part in changing my mind about adoption. After 7 years of talking Lucy out of this, it finally hit me. I remember sitting in my office watching Sheryl's gotcha day video. I had tears in my eyes and it suddenly ALL made sense. Up until then all of the reasons for not wanting to adopt were about me. My plan for how I wanted my life to play out. I would ask Lucy "Why would I want to pay for another college education/wedding?" Lucy would ask God: "Why did you put this longing to adopt in my heart and not in my husbands'?" Wow what a change God made in my heart! I knew while we were in China that we would be back soon to go through this again.

I remember one night while we were waiting for Ally, I looked over at Lucy with disgust. I would get frustrated with her because she read all of these blogs and it just seemed to make the wait longer. She was crying from reading someones gotcha day post. I asked her "This is not going to be a one-time thing, is it?" I believe she answered that she would be happy with one, but I think she answered that way for my benefit. Happy first year as a Harkness, Ally, We love you and can't wait to bring your sister home as well.

Has it really been a YEAR?

Yep - this time last July, we were all 4 sitting on a HUGE plane on our way to China. It is amazing to think back to that day when Randi picked us up at 4'ish AM and we headed to the airport... only to find that our flight to NJ had been cancelled! What a wonderful experience we were about to have -- getting our little Ally. If you want to take a glance back (I have been re-reading Ally's blog for a while now), here is a LINK. Once you get to the "old" blog, you can go to the July link to read more about our trip, if you like!

We have been running as usual. We had a great July 4th with our buddies, the Millers, in Indy. We stayed in a cool hotel that literally had old train cars converted into rooms. The kids thought that was really neat! They were able to run from car to car to "visit". We enjoyed lots of eating and just spending time together and laughing a lot (we always do that well). It is pretty amazing how long we have known one another (since the 1990, when we met at FBC in Conyers -- they weren't even married yet!). Now we have 7 kids between us. Chad said it best when he wrote on their blog... "Who would have ever thought years ago when it was just the four of us that we would be asking for a reservation for 11 in 2008?!?" We did chuckle a few times at some of the looks we got -- as if to say, "those people have too many kids"! Luckily ALL of our kids get along so well and have fun together! What a blessing it was to celebrate our country's freedom with such great friends! And especially nice with our new little Americans!

A Little about our Girl, Alaina

This is from her original profile that we first saw back in April...

Female
DOB - January 20, 2003

She is docile and sensible, she can help her foster grandma with some housework,
such as selecting vegetables and shelling bean pods. She does things carefully and
earnestly, and she cares about family members and shares with them. She can express her thoughts and needs clearly and coherently. She can handle many problems with existing knowledge and experience. She has fairly independent thoughts, and strong imitating ability. She has good memory, can remember all the children's songs and poems ever taught. She loves to study, she is earnest when teaching her writing and counting, she has strong curiosity, likes to ask "why" when meeting problems. She is interested in discovering new things, she cares about changes of people and things around.

Home Study (Version 1) Done!

One more step -- we are going to pick up our notorized Home Study tomorrow AM at HOPE! Yeah. It took much longer than I expected, but it's done. With out PA now here, we are officially "on the clock" to get everything done. China is giving the kids on Alaina's WC list 3 months to complete paperwork once the PA arrives. We have another deadline as well -- our dossier has to be in China by late July because that is when our fingerprints expire. Yes, we will have to get them done (under the new 800A requirements), but these existing ones will get us in for now! We also need our new HS to be Hague compliant - which requires a certificate. That will hopefully come in the next week or so...

I'm also told that I can soon post Alaina's picture! So, stay tuned to see her cute little smile in the top circle!!!! I can't send a package yet, but that will come soon. From what I have heard from the Yahoo group for her province, the director of the orphanage that runs the foster care system does not share the care packages with the children until a day or so before the parents arrive. I do hate to hear that, because it also sounds like they do not prepare the children for adoption or their new families. With Alaina being almost 6 by the time we travel, she is old enough to understand at least a little of what is going to happen to her. I just wish they would talk to her about it. I hate it that she is going to likely be blind-sided by us -- and we certainly can't explain anything to her!