Bits and Pieces

1. No news on Bo. It will still probably be awhile before we hear anything. We have started to discuss Bo with Maizie. She is learning the terminology, such as "baby brother", but I do not think she is old enough to anticipate the changes. We let her pick things out for him in an effort to make it more concrete. For example if we are buying her a book, she picks one out for baby brother. We have been getting a lot of fabric for Bo's quilt. Of course I am going to extend the deadline so if you have not sent it, please do. We still need a lot of squares to make our 100.

2. Maizie elevated toilet flushing from a hobby to a job. She calls it her job and she takes it very seriously. Unfortunately she has decided she no longer wants anyone to flush because we are saving it for later. Jeff and I do a lot of secret toilet flushing behind her back. Not sure what we are saving it for or when later is.

3. Maizie currently hates tags. We are cutting off all the tags off of her clothing and stuffed animals.

4. I do a lot of shopping for Maizie's shirts in the boy department. They do not offer Thomas the Tank shirts for girls. Cookie Monster and Mickey are also hard to find in girl clothes and so I just started buying from the boy departments.

5. When Maizie is concentrating very hard she sticks her tongue out. It is very cute. It is also something Jeff does.

6. Maizie loves collecting sticks right now and playing ring around the rosy. Maizie is deeply into Halloween. She alternates between wanting to be Elmo or Cookie Monster for Halloween. I want her to be a pumpkin but we made the mistake of asking her opinion so now we are kind of stuck with it if we do not want to disappoint her.

7. Maizie loves doorbells. If you come to our house, please ring the doorbell multiple times. It will make her happy.

8. Cute story, the other night the clouds were out and kept drifting in front of the moon. Maizie played a very cute came of peek a boo with the moon. Whenever Maizie can't find the moon, she smiles really big and declares it a "tricky moon". I think her Aunt Beth started with the "tricky moon". We have told Maizie that during the day the moon goes to China to say hi to baby brother, her first family and the caregivers at the orphanage. So if you ask her where the moon is at during the day, Maizie will tell you that it is in China.

9. As of tonight Maizie carried to bed with her: 3 blankets, boop, bunny boop, the new puppy boop, kitty cat pillow, Goofy doll, 2 George dolls (big and little), a monkey and a small bumble bee. Maizie loves her stuffed toys.

10. Maizie has always been a little difficult to put to bed. It started shortly after she started to become comfortable with us. She needs some time to goof off before falling asleep. She is very inventive on how to keep engaging us in order to stay awake. When she was little it consisted of flinging Boop off the bed repeatedly. She went through a period in which we had to build elaborate pillow tents around her in order to block out any speck of light. Currently she wants to be covered in blankets to fall asleep. Once she lays down she says she wants to "Close eyes", which means put a blanket over her head. Do not worry I remove the blanket the second she falls asleep. For a long time she did not want a blanket over her toes, but now she HAS to have a blanket over her toes. So every time she shifts as she is trying to fall asleep we have to reclose eyes and recover toes. It is all very elaborative and designed to keep us in our place but it also seems to be what she needs so it is what we do. I am more than a little interested to see how that works when Bo comes home. I imagine her antics will just keep him up.

2006/2007

The top picture was taken August 2006 and the bottom September of 2007. I love comparing similar photos to see how much Maizie has grown.

Bo's 100 Wishes

Dear Family and Friends,

As many of you already know, Jeff and I are adopting a son. Our son was born in China on July 20, 2006. He is currently being cared for by his foster family while we wait for permission to travel to China and complete the adoption.

While waiting for Maizie, I made a “100 Good Wishes Quilt” for her. Many of you contributed to her quilt with a chosen fabric and wish. As you can see by the enclosed picture, the quilt turned out beautifully. Maizie likes to flip through the scrap book of wishes and admire the fabrics you chose.

We would like to make a quilt for our son also and need your help once again.

If you would like to participate, please send me enough fabric for two 8” x 8” squares. The fabric should be 100% cotton. Any print that chose will be perfect as there is no theme to the quilt fabrics. You do not need to cut the squares. You might find it easiest to purchase a fat quarter or ¼ yard of fabric. Do not worry about pre-washing the fabric as I will do that also. Additionally, please enclose a wish written on any type of note card, greeting card or paper. Good wishes may include a poem, religious verse, favorite saying or quote. The purpose of the wish is to identify who contributed, what fabric they contributed and their joy in our son’s arrival.

I would like to have the quilt completed before we travel. We anticipate traveling sometime between December and March. If you intend to contribute please send the fabric and wish to us by October 1, 2007. If you would like to be included but are not able to send fabric by then, please send a wish and I will select a fabric for you.

We will continue to update our blog with news on Maizie, our son and our travels. You can visit us at: www.mingmaizie.blogspot.com.

We want to thank all of you for your contributions. We truly enjoyed receiving the fabric and wishes for Maizie and eagerly anticipate the enjoyment your wishes for Bo will bring us.

Jeff, Carrie and Maizie

I will be mailing out the above letter in the next few days. If you have viewed this letter on our blog and would like to contribute but do not have our address, please email me and I will let you know were to send the wish and fabric to.

More Maizie Fun Facts

I know I only posted Fun Facts about two months ago but I wanted to list some fun 2 year old stuff.

1. Maizie just started with the "Whys". The first 1-2 whys in a series of questions are kind of cute but I run out of answers after that. My favorite series of why questions went as follows.

Mommy: Maizie do not bite Mommy.
Maizie: Why?
Mommy: Because it hurts.
Maizie: Why?
Mommy: It makes Mommy cry.
Maizie: Pinch Mommy?

2. Maizie is 90% potty trained. Maizie has made this part of parenting simple. I am a little worried about regression when Bo comes home. She will only wear diapers at night, although she rarely wets in it. Maizie is the official toilet flusher of the household. If she hears Jeff or I head for the bathroom she goes running so fast to make sure we do not flush for ourselves.

3. Maizie loves accessories. She does not pay much attention to her clothes, but loves shoes, necklaces, hats, sunglasses, and purses.

4. Maizie's lovey is a little towel/blanket with a bunny head that was given to me by my supervisor. We call him the Boop. Boop came by his name because it was the sound we made every time Boop touched Maizie's nose. Maizie loves Boop. Maizie also likes to carry three blankets with her. Maizie does this thing we call "The Pack Up". Boop is always in the pack up, usually all 3 blankys, and then whatever else captures Maizie's fancy at the moment. Whatever is in the pack up goes from room to room with us. The only time we are allowed to touch Boop or blankys are when we are being packed up to move to the next room. Maizie has a second Boop at daycare. We call him Booposter.

5. Maizie counts to ten. She does not pronounce the letter "F" very clearly so it sounds like "one, ,two, pee, pour, pive".

6. Maizie continues to learn her letters. Maizie knows "A, B, C, D, E, H, M, O, T, X".

7. Maizie sings three songs. Twinkle, Twinkle and Row, Row, Row your Boat and Jingle Bells.

8. Maizie is a back seat driver. She knows red means stop and green means go. When we are stopped at a red light, she will yell for a green light. When we are on our way home from daycare, she frequently asks me to go to Daddy's work instead of home.

9. If you ask Maizie wants she want to eat she always answers "Mac y Cheese". She will eat a lot of different things but if you ask her, she will only request "Mac y Cheese".

10. Maizie loves to relive all of her injuries. If Maizie falls, we all have to come look and see where it happened and what part of her body was hurt. Maizie loves band aids. Maize has a lot of fake owies that she blames on the cats.

Bo Baby!

I know that we have not done a very good job of updating on Bo. We spent all of our free time in July getting our dossier ready so that it could go to China. Not sure what happened to August.

So much has happened in regards to our adoption of Bo. We did manage to get our dossier done with very few problems. We were DTC on August 3, 2007. What that means is that all of our paperwork, which is called the dossier, was sent to China by our agency on August 3. Once our dossier made it to China, our agency translated it and submitted it to the CCAA, which is the government agency that oversees adoption in China. We do not know our LID date yet. Typically it takes awhile before we find that out. A LID date is the date that the CCAA enters us into their computer.

We also received our PA. PA means preapproval. That means CCAA has reviewed our LOI (the first set of paperwork we sent over) and approved us to proceed with Bo's adoption. Of course the still need to approve our dossier. The PA does not give any indication of our time line but it is still nice to have. Our agency has advised us that it is taking approximately 90-200 day to receive an LOA or Letter of Acceptance. An LOA will be issued after our dossier has been approved. After we sign the LOA we wait for travel approval or "TA". After our TA is received our agency will schedule our travel dates and off we go. We expect to travel in late December at the earliest and March at the latest. Hope you got all of that!

Now for the exciting news. I joined a yahoo group for people that have adopted children from the Shanxi province. After posting an introduction, I received an email from China Care. China Care is a charity that works with orphans in China and they are sponsoring Bo. They sent us 142 pictures of him starting from shortly after his birth until recently. We know that he is living with a foster family. The foster family has two older girls and he is being cared for by his stay at home foster mom. It is clear from the photos that he is very well cared for and loved. He has also had both his lip and palate repaired. In regards to his medical condition, he will need to examined when he comes home and will need surgeries in the future, but at least none right when he comes home. The news did bring us some sadness in that it hurt to to be reminded of how many photos we do not have of our Maizie. We also feel a lot of sadness for Bo and his foster family knowing that our adoption will be very hard on both of them.

And here are a couple of photos for you!

Maizie's 2nd

Maizie turned 2 years old! This birthday was a lot different than last year. This year Maizie understands gifts and enjoys cake.

We started off her birthday week with a party with our extended family on Jeff's side. We had been talking about a choo choo party for weeks. Just for fun Maizie would occasionally request an Elmo party but since the choo choo party favors were purchased there was no changing themes. Jeff's family caters to Maizie's every whim. See my nice party hat. All the adults were wearing them.

Her favortite gift by far was a guitar given to her by her Uncle Li Li. No one was allowed to touch it. If anyone even looked at it, she clutched it tightly and said "Maizie's guitar".

Then on Maizie's birthday we took pizza and cupcakes to her daycare. We did plan on having a party for all of her friends and cousins but we never quite got organized. We were in the middle of finishing up our dossier for Bo and just did not plan timely. Turns out it was a good thing because when Maizie woke up from her nap after the party at daycare the first thing she said was "No more choo choo party." I figured that was a pretty good sign that she was done celebrating. I am very impressed that she knows her limits and knows when to quit partying. Let's hope she remembers that when she turns 21.