Snowbound

A noodle joint in Guangzhou where TJ told the waitresses: "No vegetables."

This morning TJ greeted the day singing -- a wordless version of the "Barney" theme song that Meimei has been singing to him in her own Chinese rendition. He came into Mom and Dad's room to play, and soon he and the sisters were playing Frisbee with a plastic plate and taking down unanchored objects. I put an end to that, after which he and Meimei tried to play catch with a 10-lb. medicine ball. These kids definitely need to be outside.
TJ's English is progressing from his first  sentence, "I want cookie." He can ask for noodles and ask his sisters if they want to play. He can say "please" and "thank you" when he thinks of it and has started calling his hero Spongebob by his English name. Tonight we read "Goodnight Moon" twice, and he loved it as much as Jiejie had as a baby. He repeated as many words as he could of that book and "Green Eggs and Ham" and a picture book of fruit.
Jiejie is picking up a few Chinese words and phrases in her efforts to talk to TJ and to help him. This morning, however, she confided to me that she missed our family "the way it used to be." Of course this may be no different than her somewhat less subtle protestations against the arrival of Meimei, most notably a sheet of paper shoved under the door that said, "NO BABY."
To compound the cabin fever, the snow removal guy failed to show up. He said the transmission died in his truck, so, barring an unexpected thaw, we probably aren't straying too far from home tomorrow, either.

Viruses and Blizzards and Tantrums, Oh My!

Sorry for the lack of posts and photos. Some photos are trapped in our phones. And then there is the matter of time. Mommy spent at least three hours rubbing Jiejie's tummy today before she spewed the prunes we had fed her. She got the tummy thing a day after TJ and Meimei did. TJ is taking his antibiotics for his sinus infection, but Mommy and Daddy haven't been to the doctor yet for their own sniffles. There are Bendaroos underfoot and heaps of tiny parts to various toys that have migrated around the house since Christmas morning. There is little chance of escaping, however, as the snow is piling up outside, and the wind is roaring around the house and whooshing down the flue.

This was TJ's first snow. We managed to get him bundled up and let the kids go out for a few minutes (before Clare got sick). He stood at the door repeating "Wow! Wow!" He told us that snow tastes like ice cream (he had already seen "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" at the hotel in China). He really enjoyed those few icy minutes, but the rest of the day was not such fun for him. He did not want to brush his teeth, and spent a long time crying and arguing about it in Chinese. He did not like the noodles I made him because they had eggs in them (he always eats noodles with eggs in them), because I did not drain the soup out and because they were a different color than Meimei's. (She likes hers with "panda sauce," which  think is actually oyster sauce with a panda on the label.)  He doesn't want to sleep in his room. The girls don't want to sleep in their rooms. Five people is too many for our bed, and we promised the social worker we would end the co-sleeping before TJ came. We had made great strides toward ending it, but two weeks in China with a choice of a king bed or two twins reinforced old habits, and now we are fighting the battle of the beds again with a bunch of jet-lagged, tummy-troubled kids. Daddy picked up TJ and carried him to his bed after he fell asleep, but TJ awoke and began a tearful debate on the floor of the upstairs hall. He said he is afraid to sleep in his room, he wants to sleep with the mom and dad he turns his back to when he deigns to address them. We know that none of this is unusual for a child adopted at TJ's age, and that he will test us and challenge us and try to keep us from loving him. He's working very hard at it. We have to work just as hard to convince him that we will keep loving him no matter what.

The Unreliable Narrator

TJ is watching the Tom and Jerry "Nutcracker" for the third time. Jiejie and Meimei  zonked out on the sofa a while ago. We were expecting Daddy at 7:30, but so far he's a no-show. Looks like that Christmas tree will go undecorated one more night. TJ's long-lashed eyelids are fluttering closed, too. We have been communicating a little better when no one is around to translate. When one of our Mandarin-speaking helpers is here, TJ is overflowing with questions. We have put a few questions to him as well. Today he complained about the bacon, eggs and pancakes on his plate but ate bananas and grapes. I asked him, through Haley, what he used to eat for breakfast in China. "Mei you," he said. Nothing.
Earlier, I patted his head, which was close-cropped when we met him but is starting to grow out. "Do you want to be a long-haired boy?" I asked. Yuanfang translated the question. "Only girls have long hair," was his reply. We had been told, however, that he hated haircuts and after the last one had bemoaned his lost hair and asked that it be returned. "Oh," I said "I thought you hated haircuts." Sure enough, he agreed that he does. At bath time he had a tantrum over hair-washing. It seems that in China no one has to wash their hair. He was assured that in the U.S. the hair-washing customs were far different.
Yesterday he cried for some treat he had been denied. "Did China Mama give you a treat every time you cried?" Haley asked him for me. "China Mama never gave me anything," he said of his foster mom. "She was no good." Hmm. I wonder what he's telling people about me.

Straight on Till Morning

It's 2:38 and everyone's awake. Not exactly the super-regular schedule recommended in the books for kids like TJ.  We had a midnight breakfast to make up for the dinner everyone slept through in piles on the sofas. The teeth have been brushed, TJ's with great opposition. He refused to put on pajamas. He is clutching a bag of cough drops like a kid in a Ricola commercial, acting out another ownership/control issue, and having a mini-tantrum downstairs with Daddy. I want to sleep. Meimei wants to watch "Kipper," Jiejie wants Meimei to sleep over in her new bunk beds.

Note for morning: look up ownership/control/hoarding and review chapter on how to set up a rigid schedule.

Home at Last

We're baaaaacckkkk! We arrived home last night and the kids and I were awake at 4:45 a.m. They are now sated after waffles and fruit salad and watching Spongebob (or baobao, if you're TJ). He seems very happy and comfortable at home even though we have only been here about 7 hours (is that possible?). This morning TJ let me hug him, told me he loved me and beamed as he played with his sisters. He's working on whistling and marveling at the toys and books, although he seems to have a very short attention span for being read to. We'll have to trot out the flash cards later today. We also need to buy a Christmas tree, drag the disabled laptop to the Apple store and prepare for TJ's birthday on Dec. 21, but we need to do all of this in as quiet and low key a way as possible. TJ definitely feels most confident in a home environment without too much stimulation (or in a plane, with blanket, slippers and headphones,  but that's another story!).
For most kids adopted internationally, becoming a citizen is easy under current law: just walk through immigration, hand over the famous brown envelope, and poof! you're a citizen (oops, TJ just landed on his bottom on the keyboard!), but for us it was a bit of a trial. We had told TJ through Yuanfang about the strict rules for behavior on the plane. He relinquished all the bottles of Gatorade he had hoarded in his backpack. He was terrific from the hotel in Hong Kong to the Airport Express train to the plane to Taipei to the long-haul flight to Newark. Then the meltdown. He sat on the floor in the fast-moving immigration line, annoying the people behind us, clutching the water bottle we bought him in Taipei, wearing his jaunty baseball cap. Lots of helpful Chinese people tried to talk him into standing up. He told them all that Mama would not let him drink his water. Finally someone translated. But he did not really want the water. Finally. I began to pick him up and carry him from stop to stop in the lines. (Daddy hurt his elbow and is trying to keep carrying big kids to a minimum). TJ is a bit of a load for me, especially when I have a backpack and carry-on to contend with, so I half-dragged him from place to place to get through immigration. While we were waiting for our papers to be processed, several people asked if everything was OK. Finally a woman who worked for the airline we had taken came and yelled at me telling me I was mistreating my child. I felt such shame and helplessness. She had no idea of the situation, but she kept repeating, "This is not how to treat a child!" And I, like the child abuser caught  in public, told her in equally loud tones that it was none of her business. I have a new understanding of the poeple whose public parenting styles I have frowned on in the past.  Maybe they were just doing the best they could to safely move their child from one pace to another. (I am wincing now at my holier-than-thou attitude toward the woman in the "Wo Ai Ni, Mommy" documentary  who pressed on with the flash cards to teach her daughter English, even when her daughter, the same age as TJ, cried and rebelled and asked why her mom could not learn Chinese instead. It is going to be a day by day effort to equip TJ with what he needs to survive and feel safe and then to succeed. We'll need a lot of help. The woman at the airport continued to follow us around. Instead of carrying or frogmarchin TJ through customs, we sat on the floor of the airport while TJ wailed and the girls began to whine for home. Tianjun wanted Yuanfang, but she had gone through a line for noncitizens and was waiting on another floor. Yuanfang, Ping and Haley have been great, but we may have too much expert help, and perhaps we are allowing TJ to rely on them rather than on his parents. Like the classic unattached child, he prefers any stranger to us and does not trust anything we (or Ping or Yuanfang or Haley) tell him, and checks it with several sources, good preparation for journalism or detective work, but first we need to get over the hurdle of school.

It's great to be home with the literal obstacle of travel  behind us. Now the real work (and fun) begins.

Wired

Sorry about the lack of communication. I’m happy to say the difficulties are only technical. One lost video camera, one lost Eye-Fi card, one fried hard drive (the one that had the VPN connection that allowed us to access the blog and Facebook). We’re back up thanks to helpers at home.


It’s another chilly, rainy night in Guangzhou. TJ spent most of the big group dinner sitting on the floor of the restaurant pouting. Not screaming, however. At least not for long. He has made huge behavioral strides each day and seems to be learning that tantrums will not earn him rewards. His problems, at least what we have seen, seem to be superficial, an emotionally undeveloped little boy acting out. His negativity, his professed hatred of learning, his boasts that he will never go to school, are all belied by his actions, his delight at Starfall.com and Super Why.

Tonight, wrapped in the huge white hotel robes and wearing the disposable slippers, TJ and Jiejie slurped huge cups o’ noodles before bath time. He let Mama hug and kiss him and made prolonged eye contact. Hooray! I don’t think these are the last of our issues by any means, but I am feeling confident that all will be well in the long run.

The Reluctant Rider

This morning TJ did not eat much breakfast. We had to coax, then nearly carry him onto the bus to the park at Baiyuan Mountain. Once we arrived at the gardens, he took lots of photos but wasn't himself, and then, back on the bus, he vomited without telling anyone. Poor kid. During a big, dim sum lunch, which he devoured with surprising alacrity, we borrowed a motion sickness patch from the family of his best buddy, who also hates the bus and taxi and, essentially any means of locomotion. Although this was the first time we had seen symptoms of car sickness in TJ, perhaps the patch will be an answer to at least one aspect of his worries.


At the park, he smiled for pictures, enjoyed the waterfalls and raced with Jiejie, but he also chose to stand in one spot for 20 minutes of the hour we had to explore. On the way out, he screamed and stomped when we did not buy him the most expensive bubbles, telling the vendor the set we got him did not work. When we got back to the hotel, we invited his buddy for a play date. All was well until the buddy left and he and  I took a promised walk to the pool. We never made it. Instead we had a 30-minute tantrum in the lobby of the health spa, much to the distress of the staff.
 TJ tried to pry open the elevator doors, then planted himself in front of them, screaming all the while in Chinese, "Why can't I see my friend? Why? Why?" A difficult question to answer. His friend's father had said they might meet us at the little playground past the pool, but we never got that far. We spent the time sitting on the cold mosaic floor, TJ crying, Mama coaxing, telling TJ how much I loved him, and repeating my other three comforting phrases in Mandarin.
We have never felt the language gap so keenly.

The amazing Ayi Susan, the local representative of our agency, came to the rescue again last night and this afternoon. She has been helping us to prepare TJ for each day's events by talking to him the night before about what's to come. She must never get any sleep.  She has suggested, very gently, that we be more direct in our parenting and that our reliance on our Chinese au pairs and Chinese friend, Ping,  to translate, did not really put us at an advantage. TJ might have understood more of the words, but (oops! stuck in italic) he was engaging with the person talking instead of with Mom and Dad. We are following her advice, and little by little it seems to be changing the course of our bus.

Holy Popcorn, Batman!

No matter how prepared you may think you are, no matter how many books you have read or parenting classes you have taken, you are never really prepared. Especially when it comes to children. TJ has zigzagged from joyful little boy to raging, screaming ... um ... well, he Chinese word he uses for himself, and I hesitate to repeat it here, is "monster" or "ghost."

His latest tantrums were at a noodle restaurant, where he made loud demands of the staff, and at a small grocery store, we he sat down in front of the ice cream freezer (wearing his Batman suit again) curled up into a ball and wailed for 40 minutes when we told him "yi ge bing chi lin" (one ice cream) per day was sufficient.

His behaviors are not unusual for a child who is afraid, confused and unused to family living. When our friend Ping, who is traveling with us for part of the trip, asked him to share with his sisters, he told her he did  not understand the word.

Daddy and I are being very patient, and so are Jiejie and Meimei, but last night's screaming in the store got them scared. No lure, including that ice cream would  get him off the floor.

We're getting used to the reproving stares of Chinese people. I'm finally understanding that it's not that they think we are cruel to our kids but rather that we are too soft. Finally a brawny Canadian came in with his Chinese wife. He suggested that Daddy pick up the 50-pounder and haul him back to the hotel. "Show him who's boss," he said, and gave us his business card with a photo of a much younger man promising a variety of seminars on such topics as Global Crisis Management. And so Daddy took his advice, peeled the wailing masked Batman from the floor, slung him over his shoulder and carried him out and back toward the hotel, drawing approving smiles from Chinese passersby and a lollipop from a woman who stood by to watch the drama. Daddy put TJ down for a momentary rest. He tried to bolt. When grabbed him and he flung himself down on the streetcorner. The girls have never seen their gentle dad behave quite so aggressively. I took them back to the hotel and Daddy followed behind with his kicking screaming superhero. who threw off his shoes and socks on the way. Haley, our new au pair, who had spent the day trying to soothe TJ and reason with him, was with us. She calmly collected his belongings. Thank heaven for her psychology degree!

Once we were back in the room, we called Susan, the local representative of our adoption agency. She came to visit and had a long talk with TJ. Susan is a cheerful, energetic Chinese mom of an adopted child. She is a pretty good guide, but a truly gifted Pied Piper.  She knelt to his level and told hm how much we loved him no matter what, that we were his forever family, the same things we had been telling him ourselves and through  Ping and Haley. She pantomimed a lot of the conversation. He was enraptured. She asked him to try to be quieter, and when he felt frustrated or wanted to scream or thought we did not understand, he could call Ayi Susan. We showed him how to dial her room on the hotel phone. Most amazingly, TJ did not talk back to Susan or tell her hated her or even try to use his considerable talents as a debater to argue with her or call her a liar. She was gentle and kind throughout, talking to TJ as if to a baby. When she was through, she told us one of his friends who lived in a foster home near his and who is physically much smaller and mentally exceptionally imaginative, has been telling him some stories. That he will get shots at the doctor that will kill him, and other charming ideas. Apparently this tiny little lad used to beat him up. Susan is going to try to get us more info on his history to see if that helps. More to come ....

Gaoxing!

The Boy Who Never Smiled

TJ could not believe the gingerbread house was really all made of cookies and candy.

In the handful of photos of TJ we received before we met him, there was not even a hint of a smile. Since Monday we have seen hundreds of smiles, 8-year-old boy smiles showing new front teeth growing in, top and bottom, and just as many tears, some of them surely crocodile tears, but tears nonetheless. And some very loud protestations, most in public places, and a few tantrums, sitting down in the middle of the Guangzhou Women's and Children's Wear Mart, standing up in cab and leaning out the open window, refusing to get on the bus because it frightened him. He told us, in Chinese, that he doesn't want to learn English, he doesn't want to go to school and he doesn't want to eat vegetables. I expect the vegetable ban may be the hardest to crack. He also said he was not a good boy but a monster.

The biggest smiles of the day came when he reconnected with a buddy, a child whose foster family lived next door to TJ's. On Wednesday he had denied knowing Max and even said he hated him. Today, they had a joyful reunion at the waterfall behind the hotel, took off their shoes and socks and plunged their feet into the icy koi pond. Max, who is a year younger, told TJ it was OK to dangle his feet in the water because the koi had only one tooth. TJ replied that one tooth was plenty.

TJ is kind and sweet, always telling us how pretty and cute his sisters are. Meimei is now Xiao Meimei (little younger sister) and Jiejie is now Da Meimei (big younger sister, which may be a promotion of sorts).

At the clothing market we pretty much failed to do any of the tasks we set out to accomplish. We did, however, end up scoring a very hip Batman outfit with hood and mask and two Supergirl dresses, a couple of pairs of pants for TJ, who will only wear sweats, an odd sort of running suit purchased because of the action figure attached, and two frothy party dresses for the girls.  For the rest of the day, TJ was Batman, complete with mask, even at dinner. He conceded to take the mask off for bed tonight.

A grandfatherly merchant, minding his tiny grandson, offered the children balloons while we were shopping. After a lively game of balloon volleyball, TJ kept his balloon firmly under his arm, until we got out the door. The wind snatched it from his grasp, and the balloon bobbed along as TJ vainly chased it, right to the curb of an insanely busy street. We managed to grab him just in time, although we had to hold him tightly for a long while until the balloon was out of sight. "Stop" is the word I forgot to put on my list of essential Chinese vocabulary.

Tonight, after Meimei's nosebleed (in her new party dress) and Jiejie's orange juice regurgitation (Max and TJ were competing to see who could drink a huge glass of orange juice the fastest, and Jiejie beat them both) the girls were asleep and TJ was in bed with Meimei's Leapster Explorer. "One, two, three," I heard him say. "Go!" In my halting Mandarin 101 Chinese, I told him again that I loved him and blew him a kiss. He blew one back. We held hands for a moment, then we played the snoring game, making outrageously loud, whistling snoring noises, then bursting into laughter. Soon, he was asleep, and in a minute, I will be too.

We Are Five

Tianjun and sisters were playing on Mac Photo Booth just a few hours after our meeting. The first few minutes were rather tough. We peeked behind the curtain after all the other kids had come out. Our lad was crying and the orphanage workers were pulling him by both arms.

 Angry Birds on Mommy's iPhone saved the day.  He is a terribly smart lad who at nearly 8 has had absolutely no schooling. We have peeled several layers of sweaters and sweatshirts in this 70-degree heat.

Outlets

Up in the Air

We are settled in for the first leg of our flight on our favorite airline, EVA. Our first stop is Palin Country, a suburb of the former Soviet Union; then Taipei, followed by Hong Kong. The girls have goodie bags with a little doll, cards and some activity books. The smell of dumplings is wafting through the cabin. At least we are hoping it’s dumplings. The dumplings might be for first class only, and we’ll have to settle for wasabi peanuts. Meimei is watching Spongebob. Jiejie is taking the Moron Test on one of the iPods. I think I’ll hook up the headphones and listen to the phrases we are learning to speak to TJ.  11 p.m. ET

One more flight, Taipei to Hong Kong. Meimei is sleeping; Jiejie and I are playing 20 questions. Daddy is reading a Jack Reacher book. Jiejie has discovered beef is ok if you pick out the vegetables and then mix it with rice (we’ll take our nutrition victories where we can get them). We’ll spend the day getting acclimated and sleep over on Lantau Island. We’ve been traveling for 22 hours now, and could use a shower and a bed. On Sunday we’ll take the train to Guangzhou, or perhaps the high-speed ferry. But we’ll be back to Hong Kong for three days before we go home. 

Ready for Takeoff

Jetless Lag

It's way too late to be less than half packed, to have the Christmas and Hanukkah presents piled in the hall in the boxes they were delivered in. There are phone messages left unanswered, laundry not yet washed, and a couple of suitcases missing. We still have not mastered those simple and reassuring Mandarin phrases we have been practicing or rounded up one more set of passport-size photos, or dug up all the books and swimsuits and entertainments for the plane or bought enough little-boy clothes. The Jibbigo translation, most expensive app purchased so far, butchers our English let alone our attempts to see if it can recognize us speaking Chinese. When Meimei tried to say "Wo ai ni," or "I love you," into the microphone, her words were translated as "national security." No, we are not prepared, but we are so ready.

How Do You Say 'Dude' in Chinese?

November 30, 2010

Dear TJ,

It is very late Monday night -– actually very early Tuesday morning – here. In China it is already Tuesday afternoon, and you have probably already had your lunch.

I am up late arranging for our hotel rooms on our way home to the United States with you. We will stop in Hong Kong, a very exciting place, for three nights before we get on the airplane to come home.

Our whole forever family – you, your two sisters, your father and me and Yuanfang, your babysitter – will all take the train together from China to Hong Kong. While we are there we will go for a boat ride; we may also spend a day at Disneyland if everyone is in the mood. We’ll walk through the markets, see the ocean and go swimming in the hotel pool. It will be a little vacation before we bring you to your new home in New Jersey, a log but exciting plane ride up high over the clouds.

We are all so excited about meeting you. Your youngest sister kisses your picture on my computer and tells you that she misses you. We have a lot of love we have been saving up in the months we have been waiting to bring you home.

In two days we get on the plane to come and meet you! We are getting your room ready for you. Right now it’s painted a dark purple, but you and Dad might decide you want to liven that up with some stripes or even paint over it in a new color. On the bed is a sleeping bag/bedspread that is white with silver stars. Your initials, ZTW (for Zane Tianjun Winston) are there, in black letters. Will we call you TJ? Or Tianjun? Or Zane? Or just our superhero?

That will be up to you!

OK, dude. We are counting the hours until we see you and trying to learn a little Mandarin to help us to communicate with you. Whatever you need or want, please ask Daddy or me. We are here to help you and take care of you.

Love from your forever family

Letters to TJ

Some letters to Tianjun over our months of waiting for him, translated by Yuanfang Liu, Ping Zhou and Liwen He.

Dear Tianjun,

Our whole family will be getting on an airplane late on the night of Dec. 2 to begin our flight to you. We’ll leave from New Jersey and fly to Alaska, and then on to Hong Kong. We will spend the night there and then take a train to China, to Guangzhou, and move into our hotel.

On Monday, Dec. 6, we will meet you in a big office where lots of other children, many of them friends from the Guangzhou Social Welfare Institute, will be meeting their new forever families.

Don’t worry. There may be things you don’t understand, but there will be many friends and family members to help explain. There will be lots of laughter and tears and photos and video cameras at the moment that we meet. Then we’ll all get on a bus and g back to the hotel. That’s when the fun will begin. You’ll get to play with your sisters and get to know Mom and Dad and your babysitters, who are from China and can help you to understand anything that might be confusing.

In a few days we will begin packing our suitcases to travel. We have already started packing a bag for you, but we are waiting until we get your new measurements to see how tall you are and how much you weigh so we know what size clothes to buy to fill your suitcase.

We’ll stay in China for a few weeks, and make a trip to Hong Kong on the way home. We will all get on the plane Dec. 20 to come to your new home, Te next day, Dec. 21, is you birthday: one more celebration for you.  The day after that we will go to visit your new school, then school vacation begins and we will be hanging out and home with a fire in the fireplace, or playing in the snow or decorating our Christmas tree. We also celebrate Hanukkah in our home, and perhaps we will extend our celebration to the hotel.

We’re counting the days until we see you.

Love,

Mom, Dad and your sisters

Dear Tianjun,

In just two weeks we will fly from the United States to China to bring you home. We will meet you on Dec. 6, a Monday. Your sisters and Mama and Dad will be there, along with your babysitters, two young women from China who help us to take care of you and who live in our home.

We have bought you a backpack with some toys and games in it and some new clothes and new pajamas and a swimsuit. At home, we have a new soccer ball and goal to play with in the back yard. We think you must really like soccer because in the pictures we have of you, you are wearing soccer shirts.

Next week we will celebrate an autumn holiday in our country. It’s called Thanksgiving. It is a day of giving thanks and cooking a feast to share with family.  We try to cook foods from the recent harvest, as the Native Americans and first foreign settlers did when they celebrated the first Thanksgiving. The meat of the day is a big turkey (like a super big chicken) stuffed with savory bread and meat and herbs. After dinner we take a rest, watch sports on TV or play games and then eat some pie made from pumpkin or apple or berries. Maybe you have had pie or seen it on TV. It’s a sweet treat eaten after a meal. We call  that dessert.

On Thanksgiving we will think of you as we do a hundred times a day. We are thankful to have the opportunity to make you our son. And in only a few days that will happen.

With all our love

 * * *

Dear Tianjun,

Tomorrow night we will be enjoying the lovely full moon of the Autumn Moon Festival. It’s a very special day for us. Three years ago we were in Guangzhou for moon festival. That was when we brought home your little sister Davyn Jiying, who is now four years old.

Imagine, we were in the same city with you,  and we did not know that someday you would be our son. Our family bought lanterns with candles inside and carried them around Shamian island.

Two years ago on Moon Festival night, we looked out the window after we came inside, and wondered if there was another child for us out there under the moon.

By last September, we had seen your picture and fallen in love with you. At that moon festival, we were hoping that we would be allowed to adopt you and bring you home to be our big boy.

Now, we are only about 10 weeks from traveling to Guangzhou to meet you. Soon, you will join your friends at the Guangzhou Social Welfare Institute for a few weeks before we arrive in China. Several American families will travel at the same time and meet their new sons and daughters from the Guangzhou SWI on the same day in December. Then the fun will begin! You will play with your sisters, move with us to the hotel, buy some new clothes and shoes and toys, go swimming in the pool if it’s warm enough.

We are counting the days. I cannot wait to hold you in my arms.

Tonight we went to visit the school you will attend when you come home. We spoke with the teachers there who explained how children for whom English is a second language are taught in our schools, partly in a class with children your age and part of the time with a language helper.

We asked the teacher how we could prepare you for your new school. She said to have you start to learn the letters of the English alphabet and the sounds they make. Perhaps your foster family can help you find the English alphabet? I can write it here for you,  so you can copy the letters!

Warm wishes to your foster family for taking care of you and reading you these letters and preparing you for the changes that are coming in your life. Soon the great adventure will begin.

Love,

Mama (Helen)

A a B b C c D d E e F f G g H h I I J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q R r S s T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z

(the english alphabet is above. The large letters are the upper case letter and the small ones beside them are called lower case.

You can practice the letters and your Chinese name, Tianjun; your English nickname TJ (pronounced tee jay) and your English name, Zane.

  * * *

Dear Tianjun,

It’s August now, and we expect to travel to meet you in December, just four months from now. We cannot wait to bring you to your new home. In December, we may have snow in our part of the United States. Have you seen snow before? It’s great fun. You can make snowballs or build bricks of snow and make a fortress or roll balls of snow and stack them to make a snowman.

December is also the month we celebrate some fun holidays, the most exciting of which is Christmas.

At Christmas time we put a big evergreen tree in our house and decorate it with lights and ornaments. We buy gifts for family members and put them under the tree. On Christmas morning we open the gifts and celebrate the holiday. At Christmas children get a vacation from school for several days.

We are so excited that you will be part of the family in time for the Christmas holiday.

For now, it’s still summer and your sisters have one more month before they return to school. In a few weeks we will travel to the seashore in North Carolina for a week of fun at the beach. We will stay in an apartment right on the ocean, build sand castles and walk on the sand, collect seashells, swim in the pool and eat fish and shrimp. Next summer, you too will be able to go to the beach.

Mama is working some extra days at her newspaper job between now and when we bring you home so that I can take a few weeks off work to be with you and your sisters on your school vacation and to help you get started at your new school and make sure you feel safe and comfortable there. The whole family will come to China to bring you home. In January you will start attending the school that Clare Fu Shan goes to. You will start learning English, which is the language that is spoken in the United States.

We also have Mandarin-speaking members of our household. Yuanfang Liu is a Chinese student who lives with us and helps to care for the girls. She speaks Mandarin and will help you understand. After we come home, Liwen He will join our family to help Yuanfang Liu. She lives in Guangzhou like you do.

Tianjun, we are thinking of you always and hope you and your foster family are well. Our hearts are full of excitement at the idea of adopting you, and your new Baba cannot wait to meet his new son and take him to a baseball game.

With all our love,

Mama, Baba and your sisters

*  *  *

July 17, 2010

Dear Tianjun,

I hope you are getting my letters.  We have no way of knowing that, but we are sending them to help prepare you for your new life.

Today we were looking at your picture. At work, I showed it to my friends. Each time I see you, I imagine you living in our home, being the son to your father and me and being a brother to your two sisters.

 Below is a picture of the family at a wedding party last week for your Aunt Sophia and Uncle Pete. We flew in an airplane from New Jersey to Indiana in the middle of the country, the place where I grew up. While we were there we slept in a hotel that had a swimming pool. We went swimming every day and ate a lot of ice cream because it was very hot. You have a grandma and aunties there who cannot wait to meet you.

When we come to China to bring you home, we will all stay in a hotel. If you like, we will go swimming. Your sisters will come to make you feel more at home. We’ll all have an exciting adventure together as we become a forever family.

If you ever get worried or wonder what is going to happen when you are adopted and become our son, please remember that we love you. It is our job to keep you safe and happy and to give you what you need: books, toys, healthy food, fresh air, exercise, a good school. We will teach you English, and you will go to school with your sister Clare FuShan.

Tonight we celebrated my birthday. It was great fun. My favorite gift was a pair of binoculars. We ate Chinese food. We will celebrate your birthday too, with balloons and a cake with candles.

Sending you love  and hugs and kisses from your father and sisters, I am your forever mom,

July 17, 2010

Dear Tianjun,

I hope you are getting my letters.  We have no way of knowing that, but we are sending them to help prepare you for your new life.

Today we were looking at your picture. At work, I showed it to my friends. Each time I see you, I imagine you living in our home, being the son to your father and me and being a brother to your two sisters.

 Below is a picture of the family at a wedding party last week for your Aunt Sophia and Uncle Pete. We flew in an airplane from New Jersey to Indiana in the middle of the country, the place where I grew up. While we were there we slept in a hotel that had a swimming pool. We went swimming every day and ate a lot of ice cream because it was very hot. You have a grandma and aunties there who cannot wait to meet you.

When we come to China to bring you home, we will all stay in a hotel. If you like, we will go swimming. Your sisters will come to make you feel more at home. We’ll all have an exciting adventure together as we become a forever family.

If you ever get worried or wonder what is going to happen when you are adopted and become our son, please remember that we love you. It is our job to keep you safe and happy and to give you what you need: books, toys, healthy food, fresh air, exercise, a good school. We will teach you English, and you will go to school with your sister Clare FuShan.

Tonight we celebrated my birthday. It was great fun. My favorite gift was a pair of binoculars. We ate Chinese food. We will celebrate your birthday too, with balloons and a cake with candles.

Sending you love  and hugs and kisses from your father and sisters, I am your forever mom, * * *

Dear Tianjun,

Hello. We are so happy that you will be joining our family within a few months. All of us have been waiting for you for a very long time with love in our hearts. We will be your parents forever, and our daughters will be your sisters forever. That means we will love you forever, no matter what. That is our promise to you.

Let us tell you a little bit about our family.

Mama’s name is Helen. She works at a newspaper. She likes to laugh and sing and read books and work in the garden. Baba’s name is Craig. He works at a sports magazine. He likes to play with his children, watch sports on TV, take his children out to the park to play or to get some ice cream for a treat. You will be our son, and we will share these activities with you.

Your first sister is Clare Fu Shan, who is 7 years old, just like you, and goes to school, loves to read and is studying ballet and art in after-school classes. Clare once lived in a Social Welfare Institute in China like you did. We traveled to China to bring her home when she was a baby. She is very smart and pretty, and she will help you learn about life here. Shan Shan loves cats. We have four cats for pets: Joyce, Luna, Sluggo and Philbert.

Your second sister is Davyn Jiying. She will be 4 years old in September. She goes to preschool and likes to play spots. Her favorite animal is a dog. Yingying has been looking at your picture since we learned you wanted a home, and she has loved you for months already. She is a very loving and compassionate child with a sweet voice. She loves to hug and kiss the family. Davyn was born in China like you were. She lived for her first year in a foster home like you do now. We traveled to China to bring her home in 2007 when she was 1 year old.

Both girls love to play outdoors, dig for worms, go to the playground, swim at the local pool and look at books. They also like to watch cartoons on the big TV.

Two Chinese students live in our house as well. They help us to care for our children. Ping and Yuanfang are their names, and they will help to care for you, too. They speak Mandarin, so you should be able to understand them. Mama is trying to learn Mandarin too, but she is learning very slowly. Please study your Mandarin so we can understand you with the help of Yuanfang and Ping. We speak another language, English, which you will learn quickly In the meantime, watch any American TV that you can!

We live in the United States, far from China, and will travel by airplane to meet you in Guangzhou and bring you to your new home. Just think, you will soon get to ride on an airplane like the ones you see flying overhead! Look up to the sky next time you see one, sweet son, and imagine that we are on our way to you. We will be there just as soon as we can.

When we get home, we will play and learn, go to school, make friends, teach you English, get you a bicycle and a soccer ball and a baseball and bat. We will get you a warm coat and hat and gloves for the snowy winter days.

We live in a big house with a yard and trees on a pretty street close to New York City.  You will live in the house and have your own bedroom, play in the playroom, and eat in the dining room. We will try to cook your favorite foods and introduce you to some new ones.

We hope that someone will take the time to read this letter to you over and over until you begin to know us. Keep it under your pillow and dream of us!

We are grateful to your foster parents for taking care of you for two years and to the staff at the Guangzhou Social Welfare Institute for caring for you in the past. We are grateful to China for allowing you to become our son.

With all our love,

Mama and Baba

Mother Tongues

One of our worries is that we won't be able to communicate with TJ. In the videos above, conducted during a camp that brought together older children, adoption agency personnel and Chinese orphanage officials, TJ was interviewed. Although he understood Mandarin, probably from television and possibly from school, if indeed he attends school, he does not seem to speak Mandarin. Nor does he speak Cantonese. Our agency said he spoke a dialect. Which dialect is the question. If we can find out, perhaps we can learn some phrases to make things easier when we meet him. We thought we were covered, with Mandarin-speaking au pairs and Mommy's painful to listen to but fun attempts to learn Mandarin in classes at work. But it looks like language will be another challenge.

I asked our agency, but I am afraid I have been a bit of a pest, and they suggested that perhaps we wait a few months before we submit further questions. In the meantime, if anyone recognizes this dialect, let me know! Xiexie!

Going Faster, Like a Roller Coaster

The summer is racing by, and in a few months we hope to be in China. Gravity is pulling us closer to the day we meet. The closer we get, the faster we move.  It's a journey we are trying to explain in the letters we are writing to you and mailing to the orphanage. We wrote you another  this week, trying to explain a bit more about what will happen when we meet, who will be there, where we will go, how we will get there.

I hope you are getting our letters and photos and that your foster parents are reading them to you, especially now.

In the last week there was a family who disrupted their adoption of a girl from your orphanage when she became violent and tried to run away several times after a few days of perfect behavior. The well-mannered girl they met was hiding the frightened core, which seems pretty natural to me. A mourning, uncomprehending child seems to be what we should be prepared for.  A fight or flight reaction to a threatening situation -- two scary grown-ups trying to take her away from everything she has ever known -- surely seems reasonable.

Thanks to the Internet, the family's decision, and the tearing of their hearts, was heard on several list-servs. The mom wrote about her heartbreak and about the weeping of the Chinese officials and guides. How much did the orphanage know about her behavior and prior circumstances? How much did the child know about what was happening to her? Was she mentally ill as the parents claimed? How can parents leave a child behind? And how can they protect their younger children at home from violent behavior?

Online, the reactions were vastly different depending on the frame of reference of the person responding. There was a debate about whether parents who relied on religion and God to guide them were more likely to disrupt because they were not taking responsibility but rather believing that a higher power was making their decisions for them. There were battle-hardened parents who had stood beside  extremely troubled children, seen their goodness, and devoted their lives to making a safe and secure world for them. Others who had disrupted stood up as well to tell their stories. And some parents reached out to each other to try to pool their resources into some kind of superblog information bank meant for adoptive parents only and not for their in-laws or their children to read. A fascinating idea.

We want to be prepared to give you all you need, and continue to give your sisters all they need, and to do it wisely, with fun and without fear, if there is such a thing as parenting without fear, without feeling your insides float up as you plummet down the steep slope of this ride.

While We're Waiting

We celebrated the 4th of July, the nation's birthday, with a day of swimming, playing outdoors and watching fireworks at a baseball stadium. Bet you'd love to go to a game there. Do you like baseball? Have you been to game? We can't wait to find out what your favorite sport is.
It has been exceptionally hot here this weekend. In our garden the tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, beans and cucumbers (and the flowers and herbs, too) have been very dry and thirsty. But hot weather here does not compare to the weather in Guangzhou.

We are LID!

On June 25, 2010, our dossier, the huge pile of paperwork we have been amassing for 9 months, was logged in in China, another milestone on our way to you, TJ. Time to post an itinerary here, and some of your new photos.

What to Expect When You're Adopting

View Larger Map


What are we getting into adopting an older child with absolutely no knowledge of how he came to be, first in an orphanage  and then in a foster home with parents he does not particularly like? He's likely to bear some emotional and possibly physical scars from ordeals we can only guess at.

We have some information to go on, but how reliable it may be is anybody's guess.

The orphanage has provided health and growth reports and information about his eating and elimination habits. We had that information about our daughters, too. It proved to be, if not untrue, then at least out of date. In any event, it's more useful to have that information for an infant who is unable to communicate its needs articulately.

We have a finding report that indicates he was abandoned at the age of 3. That alone is hard to fathom,  both for  a parent and from the point of view of a child. Our girls, abandoned when they were no more than a few weeks old,  (or so we were told) must have been terrified to be alone, perhaps in the dark, maybe in a crate or box, crying for a mother they had only known for a few days. I know that early horrors have left their marks on them, as much as I wish otherwise. Someone found them and after police checks they were delivered to the nearest Social Welfare Institute, as China calls the places where children and sometimes the elderly are cared for by the state. Or so we were told. It's likely the stories were more complicated, and it's possible they involved wrongdoing beyond crimes of the heart.

Why does it seem more frightening and horrible to have been abandoned at TJ's age? What circumstances could have led his birth parents to turn him out -- or leave him in a crowd, or take money from a stranger for their son? How desperate were they after knowing the child, watching his personality develop? How must it have been for him to stand on a corner or in a park or the street, crying in fear or waiting stoically for someone to return? Somehow the idea of being 3, an age from which we have some clear, conscious memories (and if we are Jiejie, we remember enough to tell our mother quite matter-of-factly that though she talks a good game about believing in "time-ins"instead of "time-outs" there was a time, at least once and probably twice, when Jiejie was 3, that mom made her stand in the dining room with  "that white timer ticking" and went into the kitchen.) makes it worse. Is it even possible for one abandonment to be worse than another?

At 3, (if indeed he was 3, and not 2 or 4) he would know his worst fear had come true and that he was alone. Does he have conscious memories of that day? Of the people in his life before that day? What went on inside this little boy as he became a seemingly obedient resident of an institution who learned to make his own bed and wipe down the dining table? Does he know his life is different than that of children with permanent families? In his foster home, does he know something is missing in his life?

We have so many questions, and it's likely that only a few have accessible answers.

In the meantime we have dispatched a letter, some matchbox racers, a toothbrush with a Hot Wheels car on the handle, neon Gummi worms, a puzzle of the states and some photos of us, the house, snow, and other unremarkable details of the life that awaits him. Also enclosed are two maps printed out showing the way from Guangzhou, China, to the United States. I used Google Maps, excising from the printout the word "Google," not wanting to ruin anyone's day in China, and the detailed directions, first in Chinese then in English, that guide the traveler to the sea and then advise: Kayak across the Pacific Ocean.

We are DTC!

That's dossier to China! On June 16, I got an e-mail from our adoption agency, ASIA, with those palpitation-inspiring initials in the subject field. And an exclamation point. Following close behind was another e-mail  that said Recall: DTC! I shot off a puzzled query. Oops, they said, didn't mean to mess with your head. They had merely forgotten to attach the invoice. Whew!

In any event, it's time to bring this blog out of the dark, T.J. We have written our first letter to you and we hope it can be mailed in China by our au pair when she travels there on Saturday, perhaps along with some presents that will make it past the orphanage and on to you and your foster family. First, though, we need a log-in date for the dossier. We are lucky enough to have an agency willing to walk our dossier in to the Beijing headquarters of China's adoption central.

We are hoping that all goes well and that the family can travel to China by the end of the year to bring you home, T.J. It's going to be a rough transition for you at the age of 7, leaving behind everything you know.The sooner we get started, the better. In the meantime, we will be writing you letters and hoping for more photos as we send out our love to you.

Getting Closer

TJ, we're getting closer to you! Our dossier has landed at ASIA, the adoption agency that made it possible for us to bring  you into the family. Within a week it will be on its way to China, and then we can send you the story of your forever family and start to make plans for our trip to Guangzhou to bring you home.

We were lucky enough to be able to walk in weeks before our assigned date and get fingerprinted. We even had  the notorious i-800a approved before our fingerprint date had arrived. We hope this kind of good fortune continues to pave our way on this journey.

Your father and I have spent long hours standing in line at the Chinese Consulate and a few cab fares trying to zip over there before a busy day at work.

When we're at our computers we look at your picture, play your video interviews, check and recheck air fares for that unknown travel date and think of you.

What are you doing right now? What do you think of when you consider the idea that a family is coming for you? What do you dream of?

The Next Step

It's so hard to keep you a secret, T.J. Right now your blog is dark and only I can read it. But we cannot be completely sure you are ours until our documents are sent to China and get the approval of the Chinese government. We can't post your picture or your name or your details. Yet.

The process has been excruciatingly slow. Since China signed the Hague Treaty on Adoption, the long paperwork process has become more complex and full of loops where bits of information can get stuck and delayed. So far we have had a few documents expired and lost a few others. Now it is taking a very long time to get our 1-800a form processed. Our home study took along time to finalize. Once we sent it off with the 1 800a, we waited nearly three weeks for a receipt to certify it had arrived at USCIS central processing. It took another 12 days to get a piece of paper setting our fingerprinting appointment for June 9. The average processing time for an 1-800a is 50 to 80 days. After that, the average time between sending our dossier to China and actually traveling is about 16 weeks if all goes well and if we don't run into questions or delays or spill coffee on a notarized document or miss a deadline. And then there is the Guangzhou trade fair. A lot of agencies don't allow families to travel during this period. Guangzhou is crowded and airfare and hotels are at their highest prices.

When we started adding up the days and weeks, we realized that the little boy whose photo and file had charmed us when he was six and a half might be close to 8 by the time we brought him home. And so we decided to march  (OK, creep) into the USCIS office before our appointed day in an effort to trim a few weeks off this process.

Who knows what reception we'll get? It's only been a few weeks since the Times Square bombing attempt. USCIS offices everywhere are probably extremely busy. But other families have walked in and succeeded. Maybe we'll be lucky. But we don't know anyone who has walked in in our state. And of the people we know of who have tried to walk in, we have heard only success stories. Has anyone been thrown out? Stay tuned.

A Brother for Jiejie and Meimei

It seems we have been waiting forever for Tianjun, who is living in Guangzhou, China, with a foster family. What do we know about him? He turned 7 recently, he likes to run and jump, likes superheroes and a Chinese cartoon called Xin Yang Yang, and, in answer to a question on the list we sent via the orphanage, he says he's not afraid of anything. (In answer to another question, he has no favorite animal, having never had a pet.)

We are adopting Tianjun, or T.J., through a new program called Hope's Journey for older healthy or special needs kids in China. China's international adoption focus is moving quickly in the direction of special needs only, and we're lucky that this recent addition is allowing us to add a child to our family.

We are waiting for completion of some fixes to our home study before the whole process really gets moving and we can start sending T.J. gifts and books and photos. In the meantime, T.J., this blog's for you.