Finding Info

We received a packet from our agency last weekend with some information about when and how Willow was found. As we knew earlier, she was found on the day following her birth and placed with a loving and experienced foster family on the very day she was found. We believe that she is in a good, loving home and is having all of her needs well taken care of, which makes our wait to travel to meet her more bearable. We have seen a photo of Willow with a woman whom we believe is probably her foster mom and both of them look very happy and very bonded to one another. We are so grateful that Lin Ru has been so lovingly and expertly cared for since her birth.

As for the circumstances of her finding, she was found on the hospital steps in the town where she lives, warmly wrapped against the autumn chill. She was a good, healthy weight (3 kg., or 6.6 lbs.) and likely did not show any medical problems, as she did not stay even a day in the hospital on whose stairs she was left before she was brought to the social welfare institute, whose director immediately found and placed Willow into her wonderful foster home.

In the finding report it was noted that everybody who meets and knows Willow loves her, and we can already see why. She is described as a healthy, active, curious and social child who eats and sleeps well and likes to laugh.

Updated Growth Info

We received an email from our agency today with some updated info and pix of Willow Lin. She’s standing! And has four more teeth, for a total of eight!

Here’s some additional info, as of Oct. 10, 2007, when Willow was almost exactly 11 months old:

* She is now 2.5 feet tall (a little over 30″) and weighs almost 21 lbs.

* Her head circumference has grown to 17.32″ from 16.7″ and chest circumference has grown from 16.6″ to 17.13″ since the end of July

* Her adorable feet are now about 4.3″ long

* She is standing but not yet walking

* She sleeps in her own crib

* Her favorite foods are egg and fruit

* She has a good appetite

* She is extroverted

* She plays well with others

* She likes to go out into the neighborhood and people watch

* She is very bonded with her foster mother

* She apparently likes to dig holes into walls

That’s all we know for now. We’re still waiting for Willow’s finding report to find its way to us. But we did hear this morning that our I-171H, which will allow us to bring Willow back to the States on a special visa, is in the mail and on its way (finally) to us.

We sent Willow’s updated report and new pix to our international adoption physician, Nancy Curtis, who responded: “[Willow]  appears to have been very well taken care of. Her developmental milestones are normal for age. She is very cute, and the pictures support her excellent developmental report. Her weight centile in October was about 60th percentile on the US chart, length was 90th percentile, and head circumference was about 30th. I certainly hope she is able to join your family very soon.”

As do we!

Looking Forward to Traveling

Gong and I just had a travel-related conference call with some people in the travel department at our agency and some other traveling parents. While nothing at all is set in stone, it looks as though we may leave for China sometime between the 7th and 15th of November. Most adoption trips our agency arranges last approximately 15 days. Below is a “typical” itinerary (this one is not at all specific to our trip):

Day 1 Leave the U.S. for Hong Kong. (Other possible entrance airports include Beijing or Guangzhou, depending on a number of factors determined by the CCAI Travel Team.)

Day 2 Arrive in Hong Kong.

Day 3 Guided Hong Kong city tour (optional).

Day 4 Fly From Hong Kong to the capital city of your child’s province. (In our case, this will be Wuhan.)

Day 5 Receive your child at the Provincial Registration Office or hotel. Sign the Guardianship Paperwork.

Day 6 Adoption Registration and Notarization appointment at the Provincial Civil Affairs Office.

Day 7 Wait for adoption paperwork to be completed for the next few days.

Day 8-9 Optional half-day city tours of local points of interest.

Day 10 Receive registration certificate, notarized paperwork, and child’s passport.
Fly from the provincial capital (Wuhan) to Guangzhou.

Day 11 Sunday (usually) – rest, shopping, and tour.

Day 12 Physical exam and visa photo for your child for Consulate appointment.

Day 13 CCAI Representative delivers visa packets to the U.S. Consulate Adoption Unit.

Day 14 Group goes to the U.S. Consulate to take the oath at 4pm and receive your child’s visa.

Day 15 Leave Guangzhou for Hong Kong, then leave Hong Kong for the U.S.

Other important things we learned on the call: Willow will be traveling on her Chinese name (Lin Ru) and so we will have to book her flights in that name; she will be issued an IR3 Visa while in China in order to travel back to the United States; she will receive a Certificate of Citizenship sometime after we return home, even though only one of us (Gong) is American; and that the gifts we will be offering to various adoption-related officials in China must be standardized (e.g., baseball caps, sports jerseys, hand creams, ties, scarves, etc.).

We noticed that many of our traveling companions have Cantonese accents and so we will probably have lots of help with regard to understanding the local language, customs and restaurant menus!

“A good baby!”

According to Dr. Nancy Curtis of the International Adoption Clinic at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, CA, Willow Lin is “a good baby.” Dr. Curtis looked over her growth information and plotted her stats on various charts and, while Willow’s head circumference is only in the 10 to 25th percentile for her age (all other growth stats for Willow are in the 50 to 75th percentile, according to Dr. Curtis), Dr. Curtis did not seem to think this was a cause for worry. She told us that it’s quite rare that she sees referral photos of smiling babies, which bodes well for Willow’s development.

Re: head circumference. Dr. Curtis said that these measurements are often wrong (she said it’s difficult to take this measurement correctly) and that it may well be that Willow has a flat area in the back of her head, particularly on one side, which might account for her head circumference measuring a little small.  She pointed out that one of Willow’s ears juts out a little more pronouncedly than the other, indicating the possibility of a flat area of the head behind that ear, perhaps from repeatedly lying in her bed facing the same direction.

Thanks to Mark Hom, another adoptive parent, for suggesting we consult with Dr. Curtis. If anyone’s interested in learning more about Dr. Curtis and the International Adoption Clinic in Oakland, here are a couple of links:

http://www.childrenshospitaloakland.org/healthcare/depts/iac_overview.asp

http://www.childrenshospitaloakland.org/healthcare/depts/iac_about.asp 

A new photo!

One of the blessings of this process has been the warm wishes we have received from so many people, those whom we know and those whom we do not (yet!). Among the well-wishers have been several folks who have also adopted children from Xiaogan City, Xiaonan District SWI in Hubei Province. We are going to meet a family with an adorable Hubei girl who live in our area next weekend and we have been in touch with several other families who live in different states.

Mary Rodin, a Xiaogan mom who lives in Florida, wrote to tell me that she thought she had a photo of our Willow. The Xiaonan District Social Welfare Institute (orphanage) is a rather small one. Most (if not all) of the babies in its care are in foster homes, but the orphanage (which Mary visited this past June) displays a wall of photos of the babies and children whose care it oversees. Included in the array is a photo of  little Willow.

The photo Mary sent us of our Lin Ru shows her in what appears to be a rather blissful state, bundled in a cute red cuddly jacket. Mary’s daughter Sophie MeiXu is in the row above Willow, swaddled in blue bunting.

We are smitten with this little girl. Can you tell?

Our agency finally called!

The very first photo we saw of Willow, sent by CCAI, our adoption agency, by email on Tuesday, October 2, 2007.

After a very long wait, we were abundantly rewarded on Tuesday, October 2, with a referral from China of a 10.5-month old girl named Lin Ru (forest girl!). We will be naming her Willow Lin. She was born on November 12, 2006, and was abandoned the following day.

On the very day she was found she was placed with a foster family, where we believe she has lived since. She is in Xiaogan City, Xiaonan District, Hubei Province, an area in China’s central interior, above Hunan and surrounded by Chongqing, Shaanxi, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi and Guizhou. (The Yangtze River runs through it.) The capital city of Hubei Province is Wuhan, where we will likely be staying for some part of our trip. (Here’s a good map of China’s provinces.)

We believe she is in good health and is in a normal place on the various growth charts we have consulted but will have an international adoption doctor look over her medical and behavioral report and offer us a consultation. We don’t yet know when we will travel or what our itinerary will be, but hope to be in China in November. How wonderful it would be to be with her on her first birthday.

Other things we know about Willow (taken from a medical and behavioral report conducted when she was 8.5 months old):

* she likes noodles, wontons, soymilk and porridge for breakfast, and soft rice, mashed vegetables, steamed eggs, minced fish and meat, and all kinds of stewed foods for lunch and dinner

* for snacks she likes crumbled crackers and cakes

* before bed and at midnight she likes to have some rice cereal

* her favorite activity is playing outdoors

* her favorite toy is “all toys”

* she sits alone quite steadily, holds her head while lying on her stomach, rolls from supine to prone by herself, tears paper (!), moves toys from hand to hand, stands while holding onto a support, grasps toys nearby, and uses her thumbs and index fingers deftly

* she laughs out loud, distinguishes between acquaintances and strangers, knows her name, and turns when called

* she likes listening to music

* she responds to the facial expressions of adults

* she is active, restless, quick in reaction time, fond of playing with toys, and likes to play games

* she is neither obstinate nor impatient!

* she is a deep sleeper (yeah!!)

* she has very cute feet