Thursday, August 16, 2007
Another (small) step forward...
It was very exciting to see that Jiang Ting's picture has been removed from the Special Needs wait list! Can't help but feel that it's one more confirmation that she will soon be home with us. It's so exciting to see everything moving forward. All we can do now is stare at her pictures. We can't wait to hold her in our arms!!
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
A visit to a school possibility...
We went and visited the Metro Deaf School in St. Paul yesterday. We were VERY impressed with the technology they used and overall very impressed with the school. Most of the instructors are deaf themselves and hold very high teaching degrees. The class sizes are very small which should help a little deaf Chinese girl feel more comfortable. We were put to ease knowing there are options out there to help her learn besides just us. It can be more than a little overwhelming to think we need to do it all alone. The Metro Deaf School has been around since 1992 and was the second charter school in the nation to open it's doors. It's still the only deaf charter school in Minnesota. Families with deaf children have moved to Minnesota just to bring their kids there. It goes up to 8th grade, so maybe we can start homeschooling her then or there are other deaf school options at that point for high school.
I'm looking at curriculum options for the boys to teach them some ASL. I was surprised to find some very good resources. Much to the boys' chagrin, school will be starting very soon!
I'm looking at curriculum options for the boys to teach them some ASL. I was surprised to find some very good resources. Much to the boys' chagrin, school will be starting very soon!
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Half Way to Approval!
Our home study went very well and we are now officially approved to adopt Jiang Ting on this side of the globe! Now we wait for our Referral Approval (RA) from China. It just means that China has approved us to adopt her. This could take 2-4 months. Could we have her by Christmas?! That would be awesome. Next Tuesday on August 14th we are meeting with the Director at the Metro Deaf School in St. Paul. We'll be discussing what programs they have to offer. We homeschool our boys and the thought of putting her in a school setting gives us pause...apparently we have a lot more digging to do to see if we can possibly do this from home.
I (Shelly) started learning some ASL online. There is a great online course that teaches you conversation, words, fingerspelling, and numbers. Plus there's a glossary and some info on deaf culture. We'll be learning this together and so far it's been fun showing the boys the different signs to go with what they are communicating. They enjoy it too.
I want to show pictures of Jiang Ting but I think I should wait until we get our RA. But as soon as that happens she'll be posted! We were told at that point we can send her photo's, small gifts, and even letters! Mike works with a guy from China who can translate our letters for her. God is so good!
I (Shelly) started learning some ASL online. There is a great online course that teaches you conversation, words, fingerspelling, and numbers. Plus there's a glossary and some info on deaf culture. We'll be learning this together and so far it's been fun showing the boys the different signs to go with what they are communicating. They enjoy it too.
I want to show pictures of Jiang Ting but I think I should wait until we get our RA. But as soon as that happens she'll be posted! We were told at that point we can send her photo's, small gifts, and even letters! Mike works with a guy from China who can translate our letters for her. God is so good!
Sunday, August 5, 2007
About us...
Right now our family consists of Mike (dad), Shelly (mom), Jayde (16), Sage (9), and Isaiah (7). We have 3 dogs, Lacy (our whippet), Happy (our Italian Greyhound), and Armani (our 2nd Italian Greyhound), and two cats Enoch and Joey. Oh, I almost forgot our two little hermit crabs Sage and Isaiah got for their birthday last June.
We are excited to be in process of adopting a sweet girl by the name of Jiang Ting from China. She is 11 years old and is deaf. When we started the adoption process in June of 2006, we thought we were going to be bringing home a little girl of toddler years by Christmas 2007. By the time all the paperchasing was done it was December 4th, 2006. Why does that take so long? We weren't logged in from China until January 4th, 2007. At this point the wait time increased from 12 months to 15 months. We thought...bummer, but we could wait the extra 3 months. By the next month the wait increased to 18 months...okay now we're up to 6 months longer, but we thought...okay...guess we wait. Then in April it was up to 20 months and still increasing...this is not okay anymore! That's when the thoughts came. Why in the world are we waiting for the "perfect" little baby when there are sooo many children in China waiting for a home RIGHT now? We have had 3 healthy beautiful boys, why not adopt a child who has been waiting for a loving home. So we filled out an application for a special needs child. Apparently with the longer wait more and more families are filling out special needs applications. Then we were told that we probably would receive a healthy referral before a Special Needs Referral. What??? That did not make sense to us in the least. So we wait...
Meanwhile, there is this sweet girl Shelly keeps going back to on the wait list of our adoption agency. She looks at her picture and thinks "could I be your mama?" She's deaf and we don't have any experience with the deaf culture or ASL or anything. Shelly's Uncle, who was deaf, died when she was young and didn't get to know him very well. We had to find out if we should even be thinking of adopting her since we might be looked at as inadequate anyway :). On July 18th, we contacted the Special Needs Coordinator and asked her if we could even be considered to be her forever family. She said that we didn't need experience with deaf children or know ASL to adopt her! What great news! Now we needed to pray, talk to our boys, pray, talk to the rest of our family, and pray. As we suspected, some family members were not as receptive to the idea of an older deaf child. But the majority believed because we are a solid, loving family we could be exactly what she needs. And many were brought to tears when they looked at her picture and read the information about her. Most importantly our three boys are VERY excited about the prospect of having a sister (even if she is older than our younger two!).
Tomorrow we meet with our social worker to see if she can approve us for our prospective daughter. We are looking forward to talking with her and discussing some thoughts and ideas that we haven't thought about yet.
Today we spent the day at the furniture store buying a new bedroom set for her and a bigger kitchen table to fit all of us. We are so excited to be on this wonderful journey. Even though our plans were different when this process started, we couldn't be more thrilled as to where it's heading! We can't help but believe that she will fit perfectly in our family because there are things that seem to just...fit. Her birthday is June 25th. Sage's birthday is June 21st and Isaiah's birthday is June 23rd. So that makes the birth years 96, 98 and 00. The June birthdays are 21, 23, and 25. Pretty cool if you ask us! Shelly has been wanting to adopt since she was pregnant with Sage 9 years ago. Couldn't figure out why when she hadn't even had the baby yet, but she just had to check into what it takes to adopt even back then. Crazy thing is this is the exact time that our little China doll was being abandoned at the age of 2. Timing didn't work out for us to start the adoption process until last summer, which leads us to where we are right now. Can't wait to see what the future holds!
...more to come...
We are excited to be in process of adopting a sweet girl by the name of Jiang Ting from China. She is 11 years old and is deaf. When we started the adoption process in June of 2006, we thought we were going to be bringing home a little girl of toddler years by Christmas 2007. By the time all the paperchasing was done it was December 4th, 2006. Why does that take so long? We weren't logged in from China until January 4th, 2007. At this point the wait time increased from 12 months to 15 months. We thought...bummer, but we could wait the extra 3 months. By the next month the wait increased to 18 months...okay now we're up to 6 months longer, but we thought...okay...guess we wait. Then in April it was up to 20 months and still increasing...this is not okay anymore! That's when the thoughts came. Why in the world are we waiting for the "perfect" little baby when there are sooo many children in China waiting for a home RIGHT now? We have had 3 healthy beautiful boys, why not adopt a child who has been waiting for a loving home. So we filled out an application for a special needs child. Apparently with the longer wait more and more families are filling out special needs applications. Then we were told that we probably would receive a healthy referral before a Special Needs Referral. What??? That did not make sense to us in the least. So we wait...
Meanwhile, there is this sweet girl Shelly keeps going back to on the wait list of our adoption agency. She looks at her picture and thinks "could I be your mama?" She's deaf and we don't have any experience with the deaf culture or ASL or anything. Shelly's Uncle, who was deaf, died when she was young and didn't get to know him very well. We had to find out if we should even be thinking of adopting her since we might be looked at as inadequate anyway :). On July 18th, we contacted the Special Needs Coordinator and asked her if we could even be considered to be her forever family. She said that we didn't need experience with deaf children or know ASL to adopt her! What great news! Now we needed to pray, talk to our boys, pray, talk to the rest of our family, and pray. As we suspected, some family members were not as receptive to the idea of an older deaf child. But the majority believed because we are a solid, loving family we could be exactly what she needs. And many were brought to tears when they looked at her picture and read the information about her. Most importantly our three boys are VERY excited about the prospect of having a sister (even if she is older than our younger two!).
Tomorrow we meet with our social worker to see if she can approve us for our prospective daughter. We are looking forward to talking with her and discussing some thoughts and ideas that we haven't thought about yet.
Today we spent the day at the furniture store buying a new bedroom set for her and a bigger kitchen table to fit all of us. We are so excited to be on this wonderful journey. Even though our plans were different when this process started, we couldn't be more thrilled as to where it's heading! We can't help but believe that she will fit perfectly in our family because there are things that seem to just...fit. Her birthday is June 25th. Sage's birthday is June 21st and Isaiah's birthday is June 23rd. So that makes the birth years 96, 98 and 00. The June birthdays are 21, 23, and 25. Pretty cool if you ask us! Shelly has been wanting to adopt since she was pregnant with Sage 9 years ago. Couldn't figure out why when she hadn't even had the baby yet, but she just had to check into what it takes to adopt even back then. Crazy thing is this is the exact time that our little China doll was being abandoned at the age of 2. Timing didn't work out for us to start the adoption process until last summer, which leads us to where we are right now. Can't wait to see what the future holds!
...more to come...
Welcome to our blog site!
We are just getting started on our journey that began June of 2006! We are adopting and we invite you to join in our journey! Thank you for checking our blog site and stay tuned for more updates...
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