Our Story

Three years ago on the evening of December 19, 2009, Brandon and I decided to take the plunge and submit our application for adopting a child through Gladney.  Never could we have foreseen the twists and turns that would lead us to today...only 15 days away from heading half way around the world to Shanghai, China to meet our new little girl, MeiLin June Waldeck.  Words cannot even begin to express the mix of emotions we are feeling right now - excited, anxious, joyous, nervous, cautious, blessed... 

About our Adoption Journey

Most little girls dream of having a baby of their own and during high school, spend weekends babysitting little kiddos.  I never fell into that camp and questioned whether I even wanted a child at all.  It wasn't until my nephew, William Foyt, was born that I began to get a feeling that there was more to life than just work, church, and tennis.  :)  This may sound strange, but in the 4th grade, I read a newspaper article about how a scientist had calculated that Earth had reached its biological limit.  The Earth no longer provided enough food each day to feed all of the humans and animals on the planet - even if we had the best supply chain in place.  Thus, each day humans and animals starve to death.  The impact of that article has stayed with me to this day.  With how much I love and spoil our adopted dog, Holly, I can't even imagine how much I can love and spoil an adopted child!  And if her room is any indication...



I wasn't sure how Brandon would react when I brought up the notion of adopting a child.  He was on board immediately, which isn't quite what I had expected!  After talking through it for a few weeks, we finally sat down and filled out an application through Gladney.  They were great about helping us to choose the right adoption path for our family; Domestic, International, New Beginnings and then helping us further narrow down the country, Fully Healthy/Special Needs, age range, etc. as it is a complex matrix of price, visits to the country, restrictions/requirements for each country, etc.  When it was all said and done, we settled on adopting a little girl ranging from 6-months to 4-years-old from the Chinese Special Needs program.
Normally the wait time is an average of 18 months but we ended up hitting a delay in almost every step of the process:

Delay #1 - Moving (8 months)
We purchased Brandon's Grandmother's (June Hendrickson) home gutted, and remodeled it.  The Home Study has to be completed in the home, in the condition it will be in when the child comes home.  On a positive note, it was early on in our process so at least we didn't have to redo a bunch of paperwork and/or repay for the Home Study midway through the process.

Delay #2 - Medicine (9 months)
Apparently, there is a ban list of medicine’s that China doesn't allow an adoptive parent to use within 2 years of adopting a child.  During the final check of our paperwork after the first delay, it was discovered in November 2010 that Brandon had taken one of those medicines for a month (it didn't end up working) so we would have to postpone the process for 9 months.  UGH!

Delay #3 - A Baby! (2 months)
During our home study on March 6th, 2012, our social worker appeared at our front door appearing alarmingly pregnant.  Sure enough, she went into labor early and wasn't able to complete our home study paperwork until she returned from maternity leave two months later.

I was only able to get through delay after delay by telling myself that these were planned by God to ensure we were matched with the perfect little girl for our family.

I am not going to lie, the waiting was so difficult at times.  I was walking through JcPenny a year ago, saw a pink leopard blanket, broke down in tears, ran to the cashier, and purchased it while bawling my eyes out.  A site that must have been!  Then there was the pink and brown monkey blanket in the window of a quilt shop in downtown Mountain View, AK back in May.  I HAD to have it.  When Brandon was checking out, he found out that it was handmade by the owner of the quilt shop, which made it that much more special.  (Apparently, I have a connection between blankets and adoption of a child?!?)

And I am downplaying the role of paperwork in this process.  Gladney sure seems to have this down to a science.  If they were to lay out all of the paperwork and steps in the adoption process up front, NO ONE would ever agree to adopt a child.  At first, I just assumed it was because other people aren't as anal and organized like me.  THIS IS NOT THE CASE!  So much so that Brandon actually ended up owning this process - he was really a trooper; I love you, babe!  We cannot even begin to explain how much is involved; miles of paperwork, doctors’ appointments, multiple trips for fingerprinting at various government agencies, requests of certified documents, trips to the courthouse, the sending of documents to three different agencies for further certifications, references, etc.  Gladney is smart, they break it into steps.  First, you fill out a mountain of paperwork and processes only to be told that was "Step 1".  Then there is a second mountain of paperwork and processes only to be told that was "Step 2".  After Mountain, I mean, Step 3 is complete you think you are done!  But then they surprise you.  After you are matched with your child, there is Step #4 to be completed!  (Oh no!  I hope I didn't just give away Gladney's secret to any adoptive-parents-to-be!)

But now all of the paperwork is completed and (hopefully, fingers crossed, and knock on wood) the delays are behind us, and we are about to embark on a trip of a lifetime to bring home our MeiLin!

MeiLin

Our little girl was found on 2/15/2011 in the Xu Hui District of Shanghai, China with a piece of paper indicating she was abandoned.  The doctors estimated her date of birth to be February 14, 2011 and she was named Ya Lin Jiang following her admission to the hospital.  The examination revealed she had a congenital cleft palate (the back of her soft and hard palate was split up to the uvula  - for my doctor/nurse friends!) and patent foramen ovale (congenital heart disease).  The cleft palate was repaired by the government in Nov 2011 and the heart condition has self-healed itself by the time of the surgery.

She will be 23 months when we pick her up this month.  We know that she is standing but not sure if she is walking yet.  I am selfishly hoping she isn't walking yet so we can watch her take her first steps!  I am so anxious to find out more about our little girl.  Is she outgoing/shy, athletic/artistic, funny/serious?  Such a joy it will be to uncover who she is over the coming months.

Our Trip

Our adventure begins bright at early when our flight leaves from DFW early morning on Thursday, January 17th.  We connect through O'Hare in Chicago and then begin the last leg of our 19 hour journey to Shanghai.  I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.  After hoarding miles by applying for multiple credit card offers and purchases over the past five years, we were able to purchase 2 First Class tickets to Shanghai and 3 First Class tickets home for only $997.14.  My co-worker Mark Greene is cringing right now - he couldn't believe I would bring a child into First Class.  But I blame it on another co-worker, Zoe Thompson, who has adopted 3 little kiddos, and said that is the only way to go!  So I am apologizing now to my fellow passengers!  We will arrive two days early to work around the airline mileage restrictions, but that will give us time to recover from jet lag and do a little site seeing! 

Our "Gotcha Day" is Monday, January 21st - that is when we get to meet MeiLin for the first time and she will stay with us for the remainder of our trip!  We stay in Shanghai through Friday, January 25 to complete the Chinese paperwork and then head to Guangzhou, China for the last leg of our trip to complete the US portion of the paperwork.  Then on Tuesday, January 29, we receive our "Adoption Decree" which finalizes our adoption making MeiLin ours forever and ever!  We return home to DFW on Wednesday, January 30; I can't imagine the exhaustion we will face!

To any home burglars reading this blog:
I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but we have a tenant who lives with us full-time.  He is a trooper who was forced to go through the same background checks, doctor's appointments, fingerprints, and home study that we were subjected to.  So our home will be occupied throughout the duration of our trip...  (This is sad, but you can't be too careful when personal information is posted on the Internet!)

Meeting MeiLin

We know everyone will want to meet MeiLin right away, but we will need to settle in with her when we first get back home.  I can't imagine how traumatizing this will be for our little girl.  She is leaving everything and everyone she has ever known to fly halfway across the world to live with strangers that look different, talk different, and smell different.  She is afraid of stuffed animals because they don't have them in the orphanages (they can't be sanitized for use in an institution) so we can't anticipate how overwhelming everything will be for her.  Just seeing our home and her room can be a scary experience.  So we will be hibernating for a while and will need to feel out how she is acclimating to her new life.  Once she is ready, we plan to have a come-and-go party to introduce the newest member of our family!

On a personal note...

Our hearts go out to the families and children caught in the Russian adoption ban.  We can't help but think about families on our same time line who just learned that they are no longer going to pick up their child in 15 days; that could have been us...and we can't even begin to imagine what they are going through.  The true victims are the children who are being deprived of a loving home.