Please Pray

(Post below taken from Suzanne's blog, www.joiningthejourney.blogspot.com)

Tesney and Greg Davis are trying to adopt a little boy from Russia who has Downs Syndrome. His name is Kirill. The judge said no, that he would be better off in an institution for the rest of his life b/c of his "medical condition". She called him socially unadaptable. Is satan at work or what?!?!

As we all know, special needs children are typically not cared for in orphanages. The caretakers do well to take care of the "normal" children. You throw an extra "need" to be cared for at them and they feel overwhelmed. These children ARE the FORGOTTEN ones. IF they can get the chance to receive love and the medical care that is needed, they will flourish...satan knows this.

Here is the link to her blog which tells their story. They are appealing the decision, but things do not look good. They are asking for everyone to spread the word (especially to politicians, celebrities, news media, etc... anyone that can help get the word out so that the judge will be pressured to reverse this decision.)

Most of all PLEASE PRAY for this PRECIOUS little boy and the children like him who await their court dates, facing the same judge.

Our Eyes Opened

www.oureyesopened.blogspot.com

"Once our eyes are opened, we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows what we know, and holds us responsible to act." Prov. 24:12

March Well Baby Check!

We received our March Well Baby Check! Yippee! Here are his latest stats!

Date of WBC- March 22, 2011

-height- 27.6 inches (February WBC: 26.8 inches) So he has grown almost an inch since last month! :)

-weight- 17.86 pounds (February WBC: 17.8 pounds) He hasn't gained any wait since last month.

-he has 4 teeth on the top and 4 on the bottom

-he rolls over and has good sitting balance

-he is creeping (I guess this means he is kind of pre-crawling:)

-he reaches out to grab objects

-transfers objects from hand to hand

-rakes at a raisin

-picks up a raisin with pincher movement of forefinger and thumb

-prefers foster mother

-responds to the sound of his name

-plays peek-a-boo

-says single syllables and imitates speech sounds

Some Things You Only Get to Do Once

Some things you only get to do once...like become a mom for the first time. (Of course if we eventually adopt again or have biological children, those memories will be just as sweet, but different.) I am trying to enjoy every moment with Raleigh as we prepare to bring our son home. Lazy Saturday mornings listening to worship music and drinking coffee. Afternoons reading together sitting on the back porch enjoying the sunshine. Weeknights cooking dinner and watching American Idol and HGTV. I really want to enjoy every moment. I know these months with Raleigh, just the two of us, are precious and I want to cherish every moment of it. I know that in my head.

But sometimes my heart tells me differently. I pray for a miracle. Big miracles. I pray that our I-600 is approved quickly. I pray that we receive EP quickly. I pray that our son is home by his first birthday on June 26th.

You only become a mom for the first time once, and I want to enjoy all of it. I am trying to find the perfect balance. Loving and embracing the time with Raleigh, just us. Dreaming of what it will be like when there are three of us at home, instead of two. Knowing and trusting that God is in control of it all. He was in control in the spring of 2008 when He put adoption on our hearts. He was in control in February of 2009 when we made the quota. He was in control as we waited 18 months and 18 days for our referral. He is in control now.

People ask us a lot if we know when our son will be home. The answer is that we really have no idea. There are several things that have to happen on the US side and on the Korea side. For some families, the steps seem to move very quickly. For some families, the wait between each step is longer.

Raleigh is my rock and always reminds me that God gets the glory and is in control. I want to glorify Him by waiting with grace. Lord, grant me patience as we wait for each next step of the process.

Thank you Lord for the feeling of being a mom for the first time...pure joy as we dream of kissing his cute, chubby cheeks....praying over the picture of our sweet son...praying that he will come to know the Lord at an early age....dreaming of one day praying over him instead of just his picture.

I'm not really sure what this post was about, but I know this is a special season of life. Trying to cherish the time at home with Raleigh while also desperately wanting our son home.

Care Package Post #2

I posted about the items we got for our little guy, but I never got a chance to share what we found for the foster family. Our son's foster parents are in their late 60's. We had some ideas in mind, but went to the mall with open minds. :)

Luckily, I found exactly what I wanted for great prices.
For the foster mom, we found a Coach wristlet. It was on sale at Dillard's for less than $30.00, so we really did not spend too much on it.
It is still cold in Korea, so I thought they might appreciate some new chapstick. The foster parents also have 2 grown children (in their 30's) and I'm not sure if they live at home or not. If they do live at home, this gift could easily be for them instead of the foster parents.
I know it may seem strange, but apparently vitamins are really popular gifts for foster parents. The tag you see on the top of the bottle is how I labeled all of the gifts. Each item was labeled with our son's name and case number. I tried to make the labels as "cute" as possible. I cut circles out of brown/tan paper and wrote the information in black sharpie. Then I used a hole punch to make a hole and I attached the tags to the items with natural colored ribbon.
We got the foster dad socks. We were originally planning to buy him a nice tie. However, we found out that he is retired. Although it is typical for Koreans to often dress very nicely, we just were not sure if he would wear a tie a lot since he is retired. We found socks that we liked so we sent those instead. Raleigh loves argyle socks. I think fun socks are appropriate for any age bracket.
So... we sent vitamins, socks, chapstick, and a wristlet. We also wrote a letter to the foster family thanking them for taking care of our son. We had it translated into Korean. There is a sweet girl on one of the adoption forums that offers translation services. She translated our letter very quickly. I wrote the same note (in English of course) in a card and then folded the printed Korean version and placed it in the card.
Here is a final look at our care package. Raleigh is a master at packing!! He claims it is from all his "border trips" when he was a child. He grew up in Mexico City and each summer they would drive to the United States to spend summers with his grandparents. All of that packing as a child stuck with him! We fit everything except the vitamins into two gallon size baggies.

We hope our son's foster parents know that the items were chosen with love.

Reflection on Learning to Read

I spend a lot of my time (Monday-Friday) helping children learn to read. As a kindergarten teacher, I take my responsibility very seriously and give 110% to my students because I know they need to leave my classroom in May with a really strong foundation in reading in order to be successful in first grade. We obviously start by learning individual sounds and then put those sounds together in various combinations to make words. As with any new skill, some children learn to read relatively quickly and it is quite challenging for some.

By this point in the school year, we are in the home stretch. Just about 9 1/2 weeks left until the students leave my classroom. Everyday is an opportunity for learning new reading strategies.

Well....to the point of this post. Tonight I received a translated letter that we wrote to our son's foster parents. When I opened the translation, I saw the beautiful Korean (hangul) writing, but the individual characters had no meaning to me. I could not isolate sounds or put sounds together to make words. Instead of reading a letter that conveyed meaning, I saw horizontal lines, vertical lines, ovals, etc. No matter how long I looked at the letter, I would never be able to read it.

Hmmm...I started thinking. For children that struggle to learn to read, this must be how they feel.

Don't get wrong, I have taken courses that simulate dyslexia and other reading disabilities, but for some reason seeing the Korean letter really hit home for me.

Then, it was time for me to finish labeling all of the items we are sending in our care package. Although we were told we could just write the English spelling of his name (Si-won) I decided that I also wanted to write it in Korean.

As I was writing his name on multiple items, I had to concentrate so hard on each handwriting stroke. First a slightly diagonal swoop. Then another diagonal line. Next a vertical line. I was purely copying exactly what I saw, but I didn't know which lines represented which sounds.

This was another ah ha moment for me.

For students that are having difficulty learning to read, copying words from the board is such a tedious task. And having to come up with sentences to write independently is even harder. I've always known this to be true, but experiencing this tonight was a good reminder for me.

As I enter into the final weeks of the school year, I am going to empathize more with my students that need a little extra help.

Lord, please grant me wisdom as I plan lessons that will engage my students and make them eager to learn. Help me have an extra dose of patience when I feel like I have exhausted every "trick in the book" and a student is still struggling to learn a new concept.

Learning to read opens so many opportunities. I love seeing the look on a child's face when he realizes he has learned to read. I am thankful that tonight I was reminded what it feels like to want to read something, but not be able to.

Legals and I-600

Today Raleigh and I completed our next steps in the adoption process to bring our little treasure home! (We really are trying to decide a name....we have it narrowed down to two names. :)

Our fingerprints expired in the middle of February, so these needed to be re-done. We mailed our application to be re-fingerprinted Saturday, February 26th. This Monday (March 7) we received our invitation to be fingerprinted. Our appointment was scheduled for March 17th, but we decided to try our luck and see if they would take us early. So I took a 1/2 day off of work, and we went to the office in Atlanta. It is very formal there, as in you have to follow all of the "rules." The front door remains locked, and you have to wait until someone sees you and lets you in. Well today in Atlanta it was pouring down rain. The man saw us standing there, and let us stand in the rain until he was ready to let us in. Oh well! It is a memory! Once we got inside, they didn't give us any trouble about coming a few days early. We were in and out within an hour! Yippee!!

Next, we went to our agency's office to file the I-600. Raleigh and I tried to fill it out at home, but we had too many questions. So we sat down with someone from our agency and filled it out. She actually had a "sample" so it was pretty easy once we had the sample in front of us. The I-600 is a form that classifies as orphan as an immediate family member. Wow! Even though there has been a lot of paperwork throughout this whole process (and we know that there is still a lot more coming) for some reason this document really made me think.

How monumental... from orphan to immediate family member! He is our child and we are his family!

I hesitate to even guess how long it will take for our I-600 to be approved. It seems like some people wait about a month for approval and some people have to wait much longer.

So...we are in our next phase of waiting. Come on I-600 approval! :)

Raleigh laughed when I asked him to take a picture of me and LaWanda, but I want to celebrate each milestone! So here we are with our legals and with our completed I-600. :)

Care Package

We have been working on our first care package for our sweet little guy. (we are still deciding on a name...but I will share that as soon as we have decided:)

We are able to send a few things for our cutie and his foster parents. We are still finishing the gifts for his foster family, so I will save that for another post. Here is what we have for our son.

According to our last well baby check, he is 17.8 pounds and 26.8 inches long. We debated about sizes, but we decided to get 12-18 months. I would rather the clothes be a little big instead of too small.

Baby socks! Cute!

A little hoodie....It's still pretty cold in Korea, so we thought this item would transition well from Winter into Spring. (This was on clearance at GAP.)

A simple gray t-shirt. We got this because Raleigh loves to wear jeans and a gray t-shirt on Saturdays. We figure our little one needed a gray t-shirt too. Like father, like son. :)

Baby jeans (These were on sale too)

Here is a picture of the outfit all together.

A soft little dog from Pottery Barn Kids. This was on clearance for $3.00. Yay for a sale!

A cute little "cell phone." When you press the numbers, it plays music. Each number plays a different song.

A soft photo album. The pages are filled with pictures of me and Raleigh. We have heard to only include pictures of immediate family so that he will start to become familiar with our faces. This photo album was one of the first things we bought while we were waiting on our referral, so it is really special to finally be able to send it to Korea!

This is a book we got many months ago at a Korean bookstore. The book is written in English and Korean and it is the story of the 10 Commandments.