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September 25, 2006
Unexpected blessing
Today we were surprised to receive updated pictures of Violet! She's still yawning!
Posted by ben at 09:28 PM | Comments (8)
September 24, 2006
Getting carried away...
A local pediatrician looked over the medical info we have on Violet. He told us she was in the 25th percentile in weight when she was born (I'm not sure on which scale). Three weeks later she weighed in the 40th percentile. Our baby is growing fast!
It has been hard for us these past five days knowing who Violet is, but not being able to be with her. We can imagine the days to come will be even harder. However,we have plenty of preparing to do between now and then!
First of all we have to get our referral acceptance paperwork to Taiwan. This task is not as easy as it sounds. It will probably take a couple of weeks to finish getting it together. This paperwork will start our court process in Taiwan.
Secondly (thirdly and so on) we have got to get baby gear! Ben's parents visited us this weekend and got us our first major baby item, a stroller (thank you guys)!
Here's a picture of us having too much fun with the stroller.
Posted by ben at 04:13 PM | Comments (5)
September 20, 2006
Violet Tsaiching
Thanks for all the sweet remarks! We are overjoyed and so in love with our little girl,
Violet Tsaiching!
Here's the promised info. Violet was born on 08-07-06, so she has a cool birthday like her mom (3.14, aka Pi day) and dad (1-18-81). We've been told to expect 3-6 months before we can travel to bring her home.
This is her Taiwanese name in characters. The first character is her family name, and is spelled "Chiang" in Taiwan, pronounced "Jiang". It means river. The second and third characters make up her given name, "Tsaiching". Tsai means cheerful, and Ching (pronounced "Jing") means calm. We are incorporating her given Taiwanese name into her new name, in order to honor her Taiwanese heritage, and her birthmother who likely gave her that name.
Here's the video again for those of you who had problems seeing it:
Posted by ben at 07:44 PM | Comments (13)
September 19, 2006
It's a girl!
Her name is Tsai-Ching (pronounced "Tsai-Jing")! Here's a video! More info later...
Posted by ben at 07:03 PM | Comments (25)
September 17, 2006
Bubble Tea
I learned this week that bubble tea was invented in Taiwan. There are two shops that claim to have invented it first. One is in our baby's hometown (Taichung) and the other in Tainan. I've tried this tea before and although I thought it had a great taste, I felt I could take or leave the "pearls". I just read on Wikipedia that the pearls can be swallowed whole for a massaging effect. I'm going to have to try this!
So this week adoption progressed by one small step. This past week we learned that JOH finally got back to our local agency on the corrections that needed to be made in our homestudy. Our local social worker thinks she can make the changes this coming week. As soon as she does this we will be officially waiting! Hope to have a good report for you next week!
Posted by ben at 05:41 PM | Comments (4)
September 10, 2006
Mt. Morrison
According to cursory internet research, there are four "Mt. Morrisons" in the U.S. Actually two Mt. Morrisons (CA, CO), one Morrison Mountian (OK), and one Morrison Peak (MO). There is also a Mt. Morrison in, you guessed it (or maybe you didn't), Taiwan!
The Taiwanese call the mountian "Yushan" which means Jade Mountain. This mountain is not only the highest elevation point in Taiwan, it is even taller than Japan's Mt. Fuji! The earliest literary note of the mountain in Western history was made by Captian W. Morrison, an American, in 1857. Henceforth it became known as "Mt. Morrison" to Westerners.
Another interesting (to me anyway) Morrison - Taiwan tidbit... In Taichung, the city where our baby will be from, there is a Morrison Christian Academy. This college prep school was established in 1952. It is the largest Christian school in Taiwan. The students are primarily children of expatriates and missionaries (non-Taiwanese). Also of interest, MCA opened a branch office in Taipei (Taiwan's capital) which is named Bethany Christian School.
Regarding our adoption, today is the one month anniversary of us having a completed homestudy. Unfortunately JOH has yet to offically "review and finalize" the study. I think this time frame is a tad excessive. Hopefully we'll get the news that we are reviewed, approved, and "officially waiting" soon.
Posted by ben at 03:31 PM | Comments (1)
September 04, 2006
LW
So you know, we have been calling our baby-to-be "LW". For example, we often say to each other we "wonder what LW is doing now". We don't actually plan to name our baby LW; we have three favorite names in the hopper that aren't even close to the initials. Why are we calling her LW, you may ask?
Since we didn't want to commit to one name yet, we needed a name place holder. First we called our baby "Tia", making use of the first three letters in Taiwan. After using Tia for so long the name really started growing on Ben. It is a sweet name, but I still wasn't sold on it so we decided to change our place holder to Wanda (also inspired by Taiwan). At the time we agreed that this was definitely a name we would never actually use, no offense to other Wandas out there (I love you aunt Weeze!). Well a week or so went by and low and behold Ben and some of his family members started to get attached to Wanda! Now we are using LW, which stands for Little Wanda. Sometimes we refer to her as our little LW, which I think is funny. Our actual favorites right now are Violet, Matilda, and Tessa.
On the adoption front, we are still waiting for our homestudy to be reviewed and finalized. We are also currently in our local agency's training program (one session down, three to go). We really enjoyed getting together with lots of other couples who are in the same process to discuss adoption related issues.
Posted by ben at 01:55 PM | Comments (2)