San Fran!

Hi Emma again! Were leaving for Dallas in ... well, its an hour or less! Tessa's asleep and everyone in the airport is so tired they're quiet :) Its just a matter of time in'till she sees her real home ( at least for now.) talk to you again when were not in an airport!

We made it to Taiwan!!!!

Can't post much now but wanted to let everyone know we made it to Taiwan in one piece! It was a loooong trip but we're surprisingly in pretty good shape. Can't post now but will post pictures of our L.A. leg and our first venture out into Taipei.

Big brother & the tattoo mom

NO news to report :( We're hoping to get new update photos of TJ next week and possibly (pretty please) word of a hearing date. In the meantime, I've been furiously working on getting her room together. My mom did an AWESOME job on the crib skirt and I found a great seamstress to put together her crib quilt and twin size quilt for her big girl bed. It's really looking precious!!! I'm also almost done paiting her room - 13 ft. ceilings - what was I thinking!!!! I don't want to post photos until everything is done but I can tell you my idea of theming the room around vintage, shabby handkerchiefs is coming out better than I'd imagined... :)

Also, I decided to tinker around with the blog. I've been trying to install a counter to see how many people are popping by but apparently blogger didn't like any of the ones I tried to install. Well, I found a great alternative. The map ---------------> over there is a counter AND it tracks the location of my visitors. Nifty huh? I suspect my map will not be as exciting as some the more prolific bloggers out there but it'll still be fun to see where everyone's from. The only bummer is it requires several days of data before it will generate the map :(

As an aside, if anyone out there has any advice on how to handle this I could use some help. Here's the situation: So I pick up Emma from Day Camp today & ask her the usual questions about her day. Usually I hear cute stories about what they did, etc. But today she tells me she got in a fight with "Shelby." It appears "Shelby" told Emma she no longer wanted to be friends because she knows "Your mom doesn't like my mom!" I ask Emma if I've EVER said anything about Shelby's mom & she says "No! I told her you NEVER said anything about her mom. But she says I'm lying and doesn't want to be my friend."

Now for the nitty gritty of this story. Okay, this lady is definitely not your typical suburban soccer mom. Her arms covered from wrist to shoulder in tattoos (I don't mean neat artistic stuff either - they're rather crude and almost "home made" looking), she has eyebrow, nose and lip piercings, wears concert T-Shirts circa 1980-1985 and drives an old Firebird. To make things more interesting, we often hear about this little girl's daddy (the parents are not separated or divorced) who works away from home for months at a time and can only see his daughter for two or three days every several months. Of course, we've never seen this man. In fact, we've ONLY seen her mother with a YOUNG woman (early 20s) and they are always holding hands. I had assumed she had an older daughter but the little girl says she is her mommy's friend.

Now.. I AM NOT a judgemental person. Anyone who grew up with me remembers the crowd I hung with and our rather interesting clothes and hair colors. I have made small talk with this woman on numerous occasions. We've joked with one another about our kids' funny behaviour, waved as we left the parking lot, etc. I have NEVER given this woman any reason to be upset with me in any way. So unless I'm completely socially inept, I'm pretty sure this isn't coming from the mom... it's coming from the kid. I'm thinking this kid is insecure about her mom and is telling other kids these things to see if anyone will fess up & admit the girl's mom's a bit freaky.

So, what do I do??? Tell Emma to tell the little girl AGAIN that I do not dislike her mommy? Do I tell the little girl I do not dislike her mommy? Do I tell the teacher? Do I tell the mom, "Sweetie, I'm sure you're a great mom and a genuinely nice person but you *really* do look like you could be running a meth lab or maybe a chop shop down the county road. Your daughter is clearly insecure about your appearance and it is affecting her friendships." Do I ignore it and hope it will go away? I have to do something because Emma had a situation at another day camp earlier this Summer with a kid making stuff up & being catty (a genuine bully/brat) - and we ended up moving her to a new camp because of this kid. Emma takes these things very personally and does not understand why someone would lie just to hurt someone's feelings.

Arrgh!!!

That was fast!!

We got an email from our caseworker Wednesday (7/11) that our case has been logged into the court system in Taiwan!!! That means our dossier made it halfway around in the world and into the courts in less than a week!!! Now we wait to get a hearing date. That could take anywhere from 3 weeks to 2 months. After the hearing we'll wait for the Civil Ruling (first ruling) and then the Final Ruling. The whole process takes 3 - 7 months. It all depends on the judge, his schedule and getting everyone to court that needs to be there (lawyers, birthfamily, etc.). Let's just hope they'll keep up the fast pace!

We also got updated measurements on TJ... she has gained 4 pounds and grown 2 inches since birth. That makes her 11 pounds and 22 inches long. Seems tiny but she's bigger than Emma was at her age. How funny would it be if TJ is the "tall" one in our height-challenged family???

Tessa Jane

Hello all! Welcome to our blog! We're not really the blogging types but due to popular demand (from family and lots of other PAP's /potential adoptive parents/) we've caved in and put ourselves out there on the world wide web... eeek!

So I'm sure you saw the picture and video of Tessa Jane. Cutie huh? But I know you're all wondering how we got here. I'm going to put a timeline on the blog soon but in the meantime I can tell you we've been extremely lucky! Bear with me, this story will take some time.

We decided to adopt a child in July (2006) and began researching our options. After looking at several International programs we decided on China... we have a niece adopted from China and thought that our daughter (all the children available for adoption in China are girls) would feel more comfortable in her own skin if she had a relative/friend/cousin who had the same kind of background, the same dark hair, the same eyes. And, our niece came to her parents only 9 months after they got their documents to China!

We signed with an adoption agency and began the "paperchase." We collected every document you can imagine to prove we are who we are and that we are upstanding citizens. We had several meetings with our social worker and, after we were deemed OK, we received a favorable home study (the social worker put together a 10 page document explaining that we would be good parents). All we have to do now is send our documentation to the FBI (Homeland Security), get fingerprinted and get that official document that says we're not harboring terrorists or printing some underground newspaper in Afghanistan.

Now we find out China has changed their regulations and the wait will be at least 18 months and rumors say 3 years. We CANNOT wait that long so we look into other programs.

Lucky, lucky, lucky (did I say lucky?) for us we found a brand new program adopting babies from Taiwan! We were placed on the waiting list within a month or two of the progam's existence! We feel very fortunate to be among the first 10 or so families from our agency to get this opportunity!!!

There you have it in a (big) nutshell! Tessa is now in a nursery (hospital) environment but will be moved to a foster family soon. We hope to bring her home next Fall... it all depends on the Judge in Taiwan. In the meantime, I'll post update photos of her (we should get new photos every four weeks or so) and when we travel this will be the place to see it all come down!!!

Now go look at that video!!! Honestly, don't you just want to scoop her up????