Update on Taite

a not very happy Taite

Over the weekend we were pretty fortunate enough to receive the last several updates on Taite from New Day Foster home. Well when I opened them up they were all in Chinese. Thank goodness for such wonderful people we have met on the advocate for waiting children in China yahoo group because I put a post up and low and behold we had several people offering to translate for us. Two people came through and translated our updates that we received on Taite that dated back to last June when she was only 6 months old.

We learned a lot about our baby girl. One thing is that she is still a bit quiet. I am sure she will get over this soon since she'll be in a loud family. Overall she does like to play and especially likes puzzles. She also was referred to as the most beautiful baby in the orphanage in her March 2012 update (of course we also think so). Taite loves to be read to. As the caregiver read to her she was trying to mimic and read along. I think this is amazing. I am an avid reader and have always read to the girls at night before they went to bed so this is great that someone is already doing this for her. We are also happy to see that when she started crawling she was using her right arm. See Taite has a right arm that is considered paralyzed so this was awesome to see that she is using her arm. We are just so much in love with our little girl and cannot wait to get her home.

Ohio

Hi have been so preoccupied with baby Taite that I am behind on a typical post from taking a trip. Two weeks ago for spring break I packed up the kids and took them to Ohio. Yes! I am a brave one to take five kids alone. Keith had work and with family vacations and the impending adoption we thought it would be best if I go solo to Ohio. There were two reasons for the trip' one being taking the big kids to see their grandma and for the little ones and myself to visit with our friends Jamie, Chloe, Wesleigh, Lilly, Abel, and Frank.

I have to say that amazingly all 5 kids were pretty well behaved in the car. That was monumental because you would expect that 5 kids would totally drive me crazy trapped in a car for several hours. We dropped off Heather, Logan, and Zach for a few day visit with their grandma and they were able to visit their foster mom and their aunt while visiting. The little ones and myself headed up to Cleveland.

We had an awesome time visiting with the Sereikas. They are such wonderful people and we love spending time with them. Too bad we live so far apart and we only get to get together every once in a while. We had a great visit to the natural history museum, science museum, and a totally awesome market while we visited our friends. We also went to a great Ethiopian restaurant whiel there. I was shocked because Delylah typically has not enjoyed Ethiopian food and she chowed down that night.

The kids also had a lot of fun and it was wonderful seeing them together with their friends. It is amazing that Lennah and Lilly were once in an orphanage in Vietnam together and Abel and Delylah were once together thousands of miles away at an orphanage in Ethiopia. Abel was so amazing he even remembered when I came to the orphanage to get Delylah and he was playing in the car I was brought to the orphanage in. I am so thankful for the friendship and bond that has forged between our two families and I love that our kids can grow up and maintain these special bonds.

We officially have PA

First photos we have of Taite

Taite Annabelle

Our most recent photos of Taite

Taite
Lennah

After 2 and a half weeks of torture or so it seemed we officially have Pre-approval for our baby girl. We had a little hiccup with our agency last week but they got it in gear and got our approval. This means we have exactly 6 months to get our dossier to China. We have already started our homestudy and that will take several weeks to finish, them file for our I-800a, and then off to our agency our dossier will be. Yeahhhhh! On that note we are proud to introduce our daughter Taite Annabelle born on December 16, 2010 in Hohhot City, China. We are thrilled and I will have to do the comparison shots of her and Lennah but we find their younger pictures to have a lot of similarities. Here is our girl.

Some people

I guess I just need to vent. I am so tired of people saying rude comments about people who adopt several children. I get them from people at work and all sorts of other who knows what to call them. Yes when we started out our journey several years ago we wanted to grow a family. We struggled through infertility but knew whether children happened biologically or not I always wanted to adopt one child from China. I was not sure at the time why this was on my heart but of course I knew it was God's way of saying you are open to adoption so who cares if you don't have a biological connection to a child. Anyway yes Lennah came to be because we wanted to parent a baby desperately. I didn't think so much about the plight of orphans at the time because our goal was parenting.
It wasn't until Delylah that it changed and became more than parenting. Reading her story that a woman thousands of miles away could not keep her because of dire poverty. I am not sure if she knew that the orphanage that Delylah would go to had dirt type floors, dirty bottles piled up in a basin, or that she would suffer through a diaper rash so bad that she screamed when she was changed. She probably just wanted her baby safe and fed. I can't imagine what she struggled with making that heart wrenching decision. I also cannot imagine what Delylah endured her first few months with people running an orphanage on such little resources and I am thankful that she won't remember the pain she was in when she got a diaper change.
For us our goals for our family changed. We added 3 more at one time. Children who grew up with little hope. Yes even here in America there are children are struggling with abuse, neglect, and numerous other issues. I also cannot truly envision what it was like for our older 3 growing up with littl guidance, little nourishment, and little emotional support on a daily basis. Hopefully they will heal and be able to fully love themselves and not feel less than loveable because someone else could not love them the right way when they were little.
Again our goals for our family changed and here comes another child. I guess my vent begins here. We do what our hearts lead us to. Some of us are led in different directions than others and that is ok. When asked about donating to one cause today that I supported already this year monetarily I received some rude comments.
So here is a close transcipt of my conversation

Me- Do I still owe money on my pledge for your cause?

Co-worker- No I checked but you can still put that check towards it.

Me- I replied that I gave my pladge for XXX amount of dollars. Right now we are strapping the belt for the adoption ( Again I gave a fair amount of money over several months to their benefit).

Co-worker- why do you keep adopting kids.

Me- when there aren't 147 million orphans in the world.

Co-worker- you can't save them all.

Me- No I can't but I know there will be one less.

People need to champion for their causes and without support cancer research, orphans, battered women and numerous other vital organizations would fail to exist and humanity would suffer.But to me you need to give where you feel led. I pledged a specific amount to that charity because I know on a montly basis we support a few that we feel led by God to give to. I was just angered by his comment and it was not the first one I received at work. I am also amazed because today's comment and another one I received several weeks ago were from Christians. I am a proud Christian but comments like this give us a bad rap. God tells us to support the orphans and widows. We are doing what he commanded. You might not have to support it financially because of course it is not where someone feels led but on an emotional level, as a fellow Christian, you should be supportive because it is what God tells us to do.
Sorry I just felt the need to vent.

Just Waiting

Well we have a lot of waiting taking place right now. We have to wait to get pre-approval from China on the little one. Hopefully it won't take too long but because we asked for a medical update it may take a bit longer. So our agency told us to be patient. Definitely hard to do once you have a photo that already has your heart. Our little girl does have a limb issue and her right arm does not work properly. We just want to make sure that she is doing ok since her medical report was several months old.
We are also waiting on a trip to Ohio. I am going to be taking the big kids for a visit to their grandmother next week. It is definitely a worrisome time because who knows how they will feel about coming back. I can only imagine how hard it is to be away from them for a while; going back for awhile and then have to leave them again. Hopefully they will be ok. While I am in Ohio the little ones and myself will be visiting our friends the Sereikas. We have missed them deeply and have not seen them in quite sometime so it will be a wonderful reunion.
Lastly we are waiting for the end of the school year. Hooray. Only 39 more school days. Of course I am super excited because I too am home for summer break.
Lennah also had some fun this weekend at Zubin's birthday party. Unfortunately Delylah was sick and couldn't go but Lennah had a blast at catch air. It is a definitely a fun place for the little ones and will have to be a place we hit up again.

Yeah! We are putting in a letter of intent

Today we received a profile on a little girl and we accepted her. We will be putting in a letter of intent to be her family. Yeah! We are so excited. She is so beautiful and looks so much like Lennah when she was a baby it is uncanny. It was as if she was meant to be ours. It is going to take a while to bring her home since we now have to move our butts on getting our paperwork done but we knew it was the right decision.She is 15 months old and in inner Mongolia in the city of Hohhot. We have already fallen in love. She is so adorable but now we need to come to an agreement on a name. Hopefully we will decide soon. I cannot wait to post a photo apparently I am not supposed to until we receive PA so hopefully photos will be here soon.

Fundraiser

As everyone knows we have officially started the process to adopt little Paulsen #6 from China. Each adoption we have completed comes with incurred costs and sometimes they are a large expense. So we have decided to fund raise to help off set some of the expense. So please check out our store at www.adoptionbug.com/babypaulsen and check out our shirts that we are selling. Every little bit helps and they shirts are super cool.

Officially Accepted

Yesterday I received an awesome email. Our application was officially accepted by the new agency and so our journey officially began. We still have a lot to do before we can get everything done and over to China. Before we can even finish our homestudy we still need the big kids all finished up; which thankfully is not far away at all. We are meeting with our lawyer next week and then they file the papers with the court. Hopefully our county will get us a court date within 4-6 weeks. I know for Delylah's readoption we waited 8 weeks; which of course would stink because we cannot finalize our homestudy for our China doption without the big kids finalization. Well all is in God's hands anyway and he knows who our daughter will be. Yes we are asking for another girl. It will be crazy with another girl in the house but we are excited. Now if we could agree on some names that would be good. The kids have their opinions, daddy has his, and I just like too many names to pick just one.

Application in

We have been busy with everything on the homefront but yesterday we officially mailed in our application. We kicked around several agencies and it just drove me nuts trying to decide. I spoke with quite a few and had it narrowed down but we made a choice and hopefully it was the right one for us. We also sent in our stuff to start the homestudy. We can't conclude the homestudy until the big kids are officially signed and sealed which is still a few weeks away but we are all ready to go. I figure even with that hold up we should hopefully have a dossier in China within 6 months. YEAH we are making headway.

Decisions Decisions

We are still waiting for our final court date for the big kiddos. While I am passing time I have been searching and looking over agencies to begin our China journey left and right. Wow looking at all of them could be so frustrating. Who does what, who will work with us with 5 kids already, who does not charge outrageous agency fees? Finally it seems that we are settling on an agency we are being drawn towards. Now we just need to have the big kids finished up so we can start the paper chase. Hopefully Paulding County won't fail us once our lawyer files the petition and we will have a quick court date for Heather, Logan, and Zach.
It is hard to believe that I am now truly getting excited about a new child because I was really taken back by Keith's desire for another child when he approached me with it. I know I always had a desire for another opportunity to raise another baby but I figured we were pretty full with 5 and was ruling the idea out in my mind. It is crazy how in such a short time we have managed to become a family of 2 to a family of 7 and then heading into becoming a family of 8. God works in mysterious ways. Geesh who would think when you think your opportunity to become a parent may not exist and then you are just flooded with the opportunity. I am blessed beyond belief.