Beijing Part 2

Linh was such a trooper at the Great Wall of China climbing up so many stairs in 95 degree temperatures. One of the other Holt families brought their 6 year old daughter and the two girls became friends instantly when we met in the hotel lobby and they climbed the Wall together. I think they kept each other motivated. At dinner that night Linh was falling asleep at the table. John had to carry her back to the hotel.

Day 2 in Beijing also included lots of walking in 95 degree temperatures, but way less stairs. We went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Both were impressive and both were super crowded. We used our Mandarin phrase Bu Yao over and over to the countless vendors.

Linh and I went to dinner with some of the other families that night. John was so exhausted he didn't make it to dinner. He even skipped the trip to the night market where one of our fellow travelers ate scorpion. I didn't get to the night market either- before our meal was served, Linh fell asleep on my lap. Poor kid. I had to carry her back to the hotel. So glad we went to a restaurant very close to hotel.

 

 

Breakfast buffet at hotel-                                                                             

 

Yes, that is a waffle with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and Linh is sprinkling extra sugar on top.  And no, this is not what I make Linh for breakfast at home. Only in China. 

We arrived in Beijing!

There were three other Holt families on our flight from Detroit to Beijing. It was so nice to start our trip surrounded by others about to meet their new children. The 13 hour flight was long, but I was so relieved we were able to find a direct flight from Michigan. Linh slept the last 4 hours and I tried to sleep a couple of hours. John slept quite a bit of the flight.  I had really forgotten how awful airplane food is and there were at least three meals served. Glad I had a bag of snack food.

When we arrived it was Thursday afternoon in Beijing. By the time we found our luggage and guide, and then drove the 90 minutes to the Peace Novotel Hotel it was after 5pm (China time) which was 5am Michigan time. Linh and John went for dinner with the other families. I could not keep my eyes open so I stayed at the hotel and slept. I knew I would not have a problem sleeping through the night even though I went to bed at 6pm.  I was still tired when the alarm went off at 4:30 the next morning.  But we had to get to the breakfast buffet and be ready to leave the hotel by 8am to drive the Great Wall of China with a number of other families. The Great Wall is amazing. Parts of it are very steep but John and Linh managed to reach four towers. I can't say the same for me. But I went as far as I could.

The day we arrived in Beijing we asked if it was foggy that day, but the guide indicated it was smog. The day we went to the Great Wall the sun broke through the smog - which our guide said had not happened much in July.

 

 

                                            

We're going to China!!

The flights are booked. Hotels and in country arrangements are nearly final. In two and a half weeks, we will be in China. Our Article 5 was finally issued 6/7 after a painfully long wait. We were expecting 2 to 3 weeks to wait. I know delays are to be expected in the adoption process and we have been truly fortunate that all other steps/approvals were received very fast. So I should not complain. But it was a tough wait. Then a week ago, Holt emailed us very late Friday afternoon to let us know Travel Approval had arrived. I didn't even see my email until Saturday morning. It was a fantastic way to start my Saturday!

This week in addition to the travel arrangements, we have been starting to put a plan together of what and how we will accomplish all that is needed to be done. I know - it seems like we have had so much time to prepare, but there are always things that can't be done until you have confirmed dates. So now I have my packing list. I have my to buy list. I have my to do before travel list. I have a honey do list for John. I have a work list. I have a list of things to do when we return home. I have a master list to keep all my lists organized. I think I may need to create a spreadsheet of what needs to be accomplished.  It might be more efficient.

The best part is when most of my lists have been crossed off - because then we get to meet Gigi!!

 

Visas arrived!

Tuesday our passports arrived via overnight mail with our Chinese visas! We are set to go to China! Now we just need a couple more approvals.

We continue to wait for our Article 5 to be issued by the US Consulate. Originally we expected to wait 2 to 3 weeks. It as been more than twice that long. However, the email with our NVC was not received by the Consulate and had to be resent. Then the offices were unexpectedly closed for a few days in May. Hopefully 6/7 we will receive word Article 5 has been issued. This means that my hopeful plan of flying to China on 7/4 is not going to happen. Now I'm hoping we are in the 7/18 travel group.

The process was moving quickly until this step. And I know realistically that we will be traveling this summer. I really should not complain but the wait is just getting hard. I am ready to go and bring our little girl home.

NVC

What does that mean?? That means we received a letter from the National Visa Center. The letter indicates National Visa Center received our I800 and our case has been forwarded to the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China. One step closer to our little sweetie! Now we are finishing our visa applications and will send applications out this week to the courier. It will probably take a couple of weeks to get our passports back with the proper Visa attached. In the meantime we wait a few weeks for the next approval which will be Article 5. Then a few more weeks for travel approval. Then we travel to China! Back in January it sounded like so many approvals, but now we only have two more. Amazing! I am so thankful the process has been moving fast since we saw our little cutie for the first time.   

I spoke with our agency today and it sounds as though travel in July is likely. Wow! We have a lot to prepare in our house in the next couple of months. The office/playroom will become a bedroom again. I will post some pictures once we have it ready.

The latest update indicates cutie can feed herself with a spoon and she can put on short pants.  She is already an independent little girl! Have I commented lately on how Holt is fantastic! We have received so many photos, videos, and information/updates on our little girl. We are very grateful to have this information. 

Here are a few recent pictures that came along with the update. Look at how long her hair is. She certainly looks happy on the motor bike. I'm still trying to convince myself that the helmet was only removed to take the photo.

What a surprise!

Back in January, I wrote out a list of approvals we needed before we could travel to meet our new little sweetie. I also wrote down some estimated time frames each approval generally takes. Our Letter of Intent was sent 1/31/2013. I estimated our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) to be about the middle of April and travel sometime between July and September. After LOA, there is I800, Article 5, and travel approval

When I saw I missed a call from Holt this afternoon I thought perhaps they were looking for all of the paperwork that I was planning on going throught this past weekend. Turns out Holt was calling to tell me that they received our LOA! I could not believe how fast that arrived! Holt commented on how quick it arrived too.

Tonight I finished most of that paperwork that I was supposed to work on over the weekend. We will have a couple of papers notarized tomorrow, then we can send to Holt. Our LOA arrives tomorrow and I will work on the next step regarding I800.

The surprisingly fast turnaround means that travel may be sooner than I expected. We may actually travel as early as 3 months from now!! I can not believe it!! We may be in China in the middle of summer! Yay!

We received the call!!!

We still can not believe it! On January 24th, the call came! Our beautiful little girl is waiting for us in Wuhan City, China. She is 23 months old, walking and talking and totally adorable.

We have been told by Holt to plan to wait 6-9 months before this family of 3 can travel to China to become our family of 4.

Here is our sweet little girl-

 

 

The Next Journey

It has been a long time since I posted - life has been so amazing and busy with Linh. I finally decided to revisit the blog so that I can record this new chapter in our lives.  I just checked Holt's website, and its official. Our dossier was officially logged into China on 10/11/2012. Yes, that's right, we are adopting a child from China. We are very excited. Linh is looking forward to being a big sister.  We applied a year ago to the China Child of Promise program with Holt. It took a while to compile our paperwork for homestudy. Mostly because the holidays were right after we applied. Then the dossier was a bit more involved. We had one document rejected by the Chinese consulate, which meant that we had to go back to my doctor for a new notarized letter, have it state certified and then sent again to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago. And we had to hire a courier to bring two documents to the Chinese Embassy in New York. Those were John's birth certificate and my employment letter. My employment letter also needed county certification after the notarization and before state certification. I am so relieved to have the dossier completed.  

I do know that every step was so worth it. A year from now, I will probably have forgotten how frustrated I was when I received the call that our document was rejected. Maybe. Maybe not. But a year from now, maybe we will be preparing to travel to bring Linh's little sister home.   Or maybe Linh's little sister will already be home.

It was March 9, 2009

Six months ago today we met this tiny little angel for the first time.

She has brought us so much joy- more than John and I ever even imagined. Linh is such a sweet and happy girl. She is the best gift in the world.

Look at her today. Our sweet little baby is now an adorable toddler.

So soon?

I know its amazing. A second post in 2 days. I was looking through some more pictures of Linh to bring to work and found some more cute ones to share. Ok, who am I kidding? They are all cute. However, it would take a lot of computer time to upload all 663 pics to the blog, so since I'm filtering through, I picked some particularly adorable pics. I'm also working on uploading a cute video, but so far I'm having technical difficulties. Be warned, I may have ANOTHER post later in the week if we are able to work through the technical problems.

Until then, enjoy-

Isn't she the cutest duck you've ever seen?

The best sound - her laughing

Sweet Linh

Linh and Rudi

Good friends - Linh kissing Rudi

End of July already

Wow! Time flies. Linh is doing wonderful. I feel like I say it all the time- but she really is so much fun!

Here are some pics from the 4th of July weekend.

Playing at the park with Daddy-

Hanging out at the CityFest -














So this is a Slip N Slide-

Has it really been 3 months?

It seems like yesterday that we stepped thru the doors at Metro airport carrying our very exhausted little girl. Yet Thursday marked 3 months home. During this time Linh has become very comfortable in her home and even more comfortable with us. It seems as though she has always been here. She is such a happy and fun little girl.

In the past 3 months- she has become much steadier on her feet. She has settled into a good sleep routine. She is comfortable with Rudi and Chico- she even gives them kisses and helps to put the food in their bowls. She has grown taller and at 20 months old, her size 12 month pants are finally starting to look a bit short. Sometimes she will let us know if she doesn't want to wear a particular shirt. Who knew it would start so young? She also likes to try on my shoes and walk around the house. Her bangs are growing and she is finally willing to allow me to put her hair back in tiny pony tails. She is comfortable taking baths, however washing her hair is still not a favorite of hers. She went swimming for the first time on Father's Day in her kiddie pool and really seemed to enjoy it. She likes to brush her teeth. Whenever she sees us brush- she wants to brush too. She is now going to school 3 days a week and brings home art projects everyday. Painting is a favorite. She is "talking" all the time. She understands a good amount of what we say and she says many words that are understandable- mama, dada, ball, cup, cat, car, bowl, bubbles, go, gogurt, cookie, cheers, hi, bye bye, Emma, and no. Some of the words are pronounced clearer than others but we can recognize them all. A couple of weeks ago "no" was her favorite word all weekend. Thankfully, I think Emma is her favorite word now. Emma is her cousin that she saw the last two weekends. She generally drinks out of a sippy cup now except for her bedtime bottles. She uses spoons and forks- sometimes it means putting the food on her spoon/fork with her fingers and then putting in her mouth. That is amusing to watch. She made it through her first long car ride- a 3 hour (each way)trip to see my sister. Hopefully next time there will be less construction. Thank goodness Grammie was with us to help Linh get through the last 2 hours home. She hugs with and without us asking. She gives John and I kisses with or without us asking. She laughs a lot and it is the sweetest sound! Six teeth have popped through since we have been home and she got through it like a champ.

Certificate of Citizenship

Today we received Linh's certificate of citizenship. This is the legal document which states that Linh became a citizen of the United States the day we landed in the U.S.A. Yay!

Linh is doing well after being home for 4 1/2 weeks. She has been sleeping thru the night the last couple of weeks. It took some time for her to get over the jet lag and then adjusting to her new environment. She takes 2 hour naps without any problem. She eats most foods but she does not seem to care for the American child standard mac & cheese, or cupcakes. We are not disappointed that those are foods she dislikes- I would rather her continue to like her fruits and vegetables. She has gained 1 1/2 pounds since she has been home, so we're definitely feeding her enough. She is perfectly comfortable at our house. She says mama (not always, but I hear it), dada, wow, ow, and yum. She understands quite a bit of what we are saying and she babbles a lot. We play music in the house a lot of the day- she loves to dance to it. Her attention span has grown a bit and I am usually able to read a very, very short book to her without her flipping thru to look at the pictures. She has started to scribble with crayons. She is trying very hard to use a spoon and fork. About 90% of the time, she manages to bring the fork/spoon to her mouth with the food still on it. The other 10% lands somewhere else :) This is a huge improvement since we have been home. We still need to work on scooping up the food with the utensil. Some foods are obviously easier (yogurt and applesauce) but she'll get there eventually. I'm not in a hurry, but she gets upset if she doesn't get to feed herself some of the meal.
Overall, I think she is doing fantastic. We are so happy! Her hugs and now sometimes her kisses (only to mommy) are so sweet. She has such an easy going personality.

Here are some pics-
Easter Sunday- she was so anxious to get at the basket of eggs at Grammie's















At home Easter Saturday -















Not sure why but kids love to swiffer- so I
tried it with Linh and she swiffered the entire
house.















Playing inside one cold Michigan day in April-















Practicing eating breakfast on her own-

We are home!

We arrived home Wednesday afternoon after nearly 28 hours of travel. We left our hotel at 8:30pm Tuesday (Hanoi time) for one last taxi ride to the airport. Our first flight was 4 hours (from Hanoi to Seoul). Linh cried almost the entire first hour of the flight. Thankfully flight was not full and we were able to spread out in to a couple of row. We were finally able to get Linh to sleep and placed her on a couple of seats. She was still sleeping when the plane landed. During our 5 hour layover in Korea, Linh slept another 2 1/2 hours at the gate. John and I tried to rest because we knew we were in for a 12 1/2 hour flight with a sleepy 17 month old. Overall she did good on the flight. We sat in the bulkhead seats with a bassinet. We did not have a seat for Linh - after a lot of debating we decided against the extra seat. Since she was under 2 we were not required to buy a seat for her. As it turned out, the bassinet was a better way to go for us. The first flight Linh was sprawled out over 2 seats, so even if we had purchased one for the long flight she would have been squished. She was able to stretch out somewhat in the bassinet and sleep. Only her little feet were hanging over the sides. It was adorable. She was awake the first 3 hours and played and ate a lot of Cheerios. Then she fell asleep and we placed her into bassinet. John and I quietly clapped our hands. The sweet woman across the aisle also clapped her hands. Linh slept 3 hours during which time we tried to sleep. Then she was up another 3 hours, then she slept the last 3 1/2 hours of the flight. She barely cried- we worked to keep her occupied with toys, bottles, walking around, books, crayons - anything we could think of for her. We were so relieved to hear the captain announce we were preparing to land in Chicago. Once in Chicago, we went thru the immigration process. We submitted the paperwork that we had guarded since receiving at the US Embassy in Vietnam. The immigration officer looked it over then congratulated us and indicated that Linh's Certificate of Citizenship would arrive in the mail. She is now a U.S. citizen. We then picked up our luggage and went thru customs. We rechecked luggage and then went to gate to wait for the 45 minute flight to Detroit. We met a couple at the gate that had been on our flight from Korea. They told us that Linh did very good on the long flight. It was nice to hear that other passengers noticed. We finally boarded our final flight. Linh was immediately taken by the man next to me. He was very friendly and entertained Linh. He has 3 young grandchildren and was perfectly happy to sit next to a squirmy child. He was full of questions about Linh and Vietnam in 2009. He served in the airforce during the Vietnam War and was stationed for 7 months in Saigon (nka Ho Chi Minh). He helped to get her to sleep the last 20 minutes of flight. Thank you kind man!


After 28 hours of travel, then sitting in a car seat for the first time in her life during rush hour traffic through downtown Detroit, touring her new home, being greeted with hugs and kisses by family, what else could a 17 month little girl do but fall asleep on mommy's lap while sitting at the table?

We're heading home

Today is our last day in Hanoi. In fact, we leave in 9 short hours. Our bags are packed. Our little girl is napping. We have our paperwork ready. We will miss Vietnam but are anxious to come home.

Yesterday we went shopping in Old Quarter and then to Fanny's for ice cream before heading to another bookstore for a cookbook (for me) and a Vietnam architecture book (for John of course). After the rave reviews of the Vine, we decided to try it for dinner. The food was delicious and the service was wonderful. Linh had a high chair and the waitstaff brought her some toys. John and I tried to hurry up our meal before Linh became fussy- but it never happened- she was so quiet the entire meal. I think she enjoyed the music.

We went to Halong Bay on Sunday with another Holt family. They headed home this morning. Hope your flights are uneventful Ben and Elizabeth! The boatride was very nice and the bay was beautiful. I will post some pics when we get home tomorrow.

Another humid day in Hanoi

It is humid during the summer in Michigan but I think it is more humid here. Or maybe its because we are walking around carrying a 20 pound little girl. On average, John is taking 3 showers a day. Mostly because he is the one carrying Linh in the Baby Bjorn.

This morning John, Linh and I went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. We had to take turns going in because Linh was too little. So John went first while me and Linh sat on the steps with about 5 or 6 men who talked to us. They were very friendly. Unfortunately my Vietnamese has not improved much since our drive from the airport 13 days ago. I know they asked our names and I told them. And I told them I was American and that Linh's father is American (they asked about her bo).

We had pizza from Jaspas for lunch. I never expected that I would be eating so much pizza in Vietnam. (I am not complaining) Then off to the U.S. Embassy. We had our interview and then were told to come back about one hour later to pick up visa. The woman interviewer did say that Linh looked like a very happy little girl and she was glad to see that. We walked down the street to a cafe and had some soft drinks and a hot sandwich of butter and sugar. Then we went back at 4pm and picked up Linh's passport with the visa in it. Yay! We can bring Linh home! Looks like we are staying until Tuesday as originally planned. No available flights from Seoul to Chicago.

Here are some pics-

Linh finishing breakfast.

Sound asleep Linh. Do the pj's look familiar Laura? Thanks cousin Emma.

Hanging out on the boat waiting for lunch.

Playing in the room with Daddy.

Happy Wednesday!

Today a second Holt family left for home. We are so happy for you Sheri and David! It has been such a fun week! I am so glad our travel overlapped.

We picked up Linh's passport today! Yay. One step closer to coming home. We also went back to the clinic for her health check. She did good. We saw the French doctor again and I think it helped to see a familiar face. Tomorrow is visa interview! Looking forward to that appointment!


Here are some random pics:

Linh posing with some police cadets at Ho Chi Minh museum


Me and Linh in front of Uncle Ho statue
Splashing in the water at a "park" by the lake.

The 4 moms and kids. Boy it is hard to get little kids to smile at the same time and look towards the camera.

Linh playing Supergirl one afternoon. I wish I could post the video of her laughing. It is adorable.