Getting ready for travel

We were transferred to the Travel team at our agency this past Monday. They told us to go ahead and apply for our Visas and put a travel date of May 15th on the application. This means that we could travel a week before or after this time approximately. Still not sure when we are going but it looks like May. My work is OK with me taking three weeks off (2 for travel and 1 for acclimation) but I am sure I will be working a little bit from home.

We have been buying baby stuff left and right. Holy cow diapers are expensive. I took a poll at work on cloth diapers and I was pretty much laughed out of the office. We cleaned out our cupboards and put in some of the baby food and bottles and things that we purchased. Still really weird. For intra-China travel we are only allowed one suitcase each weighing no more than 44#. Now, for those of you that know C understand the boulder I am pushing uphill here. She could fill both suitcases with shoes for a weekend trip so we are going to have to economize.

This past weekend we bought a 4-pack of the bags that you rollup and squeeze the air out of to save space; hopefully these will work. The recommendation is to pack super light and have your clothes laundered while in China. There is always the option of buying inexpensive clothes there as well.

We are sending our care package off to the orphanage tonight. This will include a camera so that the care providers can take pictures of Maya, the other babies, the people who take care of her and her orphanage. There is also a service that provides a news clipping service that reads Chinese newspapers for finding notices. By law, the orphanage has to take a picture of the kids and place them in the newspaper. This will provide us with a picture of Maya when she was younger.

A brief recap of the referral process was that 64 of the 90 were "misplaced". About 30 of the misplaced ones were found (we were lucky enough to be in that group) and the remainders had to have their pictures regenerated and only received the one small photo that is attached to the file.

What we are most distraught about is that of the original 26 referrals that were delivered without issue; it appears that they were able to turn their paperwork around quick enough and they are actually leaving tomorrow. So, yes, if our referral wouldn’t have been lost we may have been boarding a plane Thursday. We are bummed, but we are plodding through.

Influenza!

Sometimes life gets in the way of our best intentions.

A little over a week ago I woke up about 1 AM with major stomach extension. I know, I am 33 now and all the tubes and pills I used to make fun of now have ended up in our medicine cabinet. I grabbed some Gas-X and tried to get comfortable back in bed. You know how you toss and turn and never really fall asleep; well that was me until about 3 AM when I started getting the familiar tickle.

It's amazing how quick you can make it to the bathroom when you have to toss your cookies. Unfortunately, this case was literal. We had made some Duncan Hines that night and that is
all that came up. It was total toe clenching retching for about 20 minutes complete with two dogs freaking out at the noises I am making and sniffing my butt at the same time. Not recommended. I felt fine afterwards and even planned on going to work. I grabbed a couple hours of sleep and woke up feeling abysmal. Court took my temp and it was 102. (I know Mom, I will get a flu shot next year)

I spent Monday morning between lying on the couch and lying on the bathroom floor staring at the grout. Took Tuesday off too for good measure. When we get sick in our house we take care of each other, of course, but we also avoid each other without trying to be rude so we can avoid getting ill.

Courtney had a girls' night planned for Friday of that week and she was taking special care to avoid me while trying to be helpful. It was Wednesday and she thought she made it, but my germs caught up with her. She left work early and took the train home. The station in which we commute is your typical high volume train station. She grabbed a juice and a water from a kiosk when she got the tickle herself.

She ran into the public bathroom and apologetically pushed aside a mother and her daughter to get into the stall and unload, most likely cursing my name. Now a major transportation center's public facilities are not the cleanest place and the world and because of my germs she was sprawled on the bathroom floor touching and hugging the porcelain. I scrubbed her down three times with industrial-strength solvent before I would touch her.

Sadly, she had to spend a dizzy 90 minute commute home with a little vomit in her hair. We ate soup for 4 days straight and I still can't even stomach the thought of home made cookies any longer.

Referral!

Introducing Maya DaoLiang Hoffmann! More to come soon.

Click the picture for a larger version.

Lady Luck

WooHoo! So we are on the right side of fate for once and our referral was in the group that was recovered in New York. DHL rerouted it and we received a phone call and E-mail today saying we are one of the lucky ones. Our package will be delivered some time tomorrow.

In the mean time we were E-mailed a picture of our daughter that was scanned by our agency. I can not post it yet because I have not looked at it. Yes, that is correct, a pixelated picture of our daughter is mere finger clicks away from being viewed and I have not opened it yet. Courtney made me promise her that we will look at it together on the train tonight on the laptop. So, we are taking the 5:25 train and we will view our daughter for the first time around 5:30 or so.

I will get the picture up when I can!

Another Update

The courier, DHL, was able to locate 38 of the 64 missing documents and these have been re-routed to our agency and should be there by the end of the week. Hopefully they will turn them around quickly and we can have our paclet and picture by this weekend.

That leaves 26 families without a picture and still hanging on for more info. I am not sure if this will screw up our travel time, we were hoping for the first two weeks of May, we will see how this is going to affect it.

Our agency just informed us that they should have these tomorrow afternoon and I am expecting they will work their butts off to make it happen for the 59.375% of families that are going to get their referrals from this batch.

C is off today, she has her Uncle's family in town and we are heading out for some well-deserved margaritas with them tonight. More information to come.

More Maya Info

It has been a crazy couple of weeks for us, but things are starting to calm down before they are going to be ramped up shortly. Work has been crazy for both of us. C has been out of town and we have barely had time to breathe, much less provide an update about Maya.

Our referrals were sent in one large package containing two smaller packages. One of the smaller packages fell out and was lost. Our agency has been scrambling to locate it to no avail. They contacted their people in China and have been trying to regenerate the documents for us. They have pieced together information for us and have sent it out piece y piece this week.

We were given the following information about our daughter so far and we can expect a picture next week hopefully. We have a daughter! She is in the You Xian county welfare institute in the Hunan province. Her name is You DaoLiang. You is her last name and she is described as healthy with a birthday of 8.1.05. It is so amazing to actually have pertinent information and makes everything so real. We now know her size information and of course, being a weekend C is out shopping for clothes for her.

When we had the province breakdown outlined in the map below C just knew that she was going to be from the Hunan province; this is where hot peppers are grown and the food is spicy. The girls born there are known for their "spicy" personality and are supposedly firecrackers; again another reason why C thought she was going to be from there.

This is information from when she was 4 months old:

Weight
14.3lbs

Height
23.44inches

Head Size
16.35inches

Yes, that is a Hoffmann head! I do feel sorry for all the women in my family that had to pass watermelons out of their bodies. It is funny that they looked at pictures of us when matching our baby. They probably took one look at my noggin and knew they had a match. The following is the other information we received regarding out daughter.:

Growth Report on You Daoliang
You Daoliang, female, was found abandoned at the gate of the Chinese Medical Hospital by a passerby Zhou Meiyun on Aug 3rd, 2005. Daoliang has round face and thick black hair. She wore in red clothes, and there was milk formula, bottle and birth note together with her when being found. Zhou Meiyun, the finder, reported this to police station on the finding day and than sent her into our institute.
Her birth note said she was born on Aug 1st , 2005. Our doctor did a check up for her, and she was 19.5 inches tall, 8.58 pounds in weight, her head size was 13.79 inches and chest size was 13.40 inches. She had fine skin, and her skull, eye, nose was functioned well. Her limbs motion and Nervous system were functioned well. She was a healthy newborn baby. We named her You Daoliang. You, is after You County, Dao means leader, and liang means ridge. We hope she could be adopted by a good family, and has a happy life.
Daoliang is very cute and active. She is growing well. Two month old, she liked stretching hands and legs, sometimes, kicked out her quilt. She had some facial expression at that time. Daoliang could follow moving objects. She felt happy when being amused and cried when feeling sad.
Three month old, when in crib, she likes putting her hands out of quilt, and then tried to grab nearby toys. When you passed by, she would look at you and make sound. It seemed that she wanted to talk to you.
Now, Daoliang is over four months old, and she is developing very well. Currently, she is 23.44 inches tall, 14.3pounds in weight, her head size is 16.35 inches, chest size is 16.15 inches and feet size is 3.15 inches. She is not cutting teeth. She likes touching or grabbing things. Daoliang is curious about her surrounding, and sudden sound could catch her attention. When lying on crib, she likes playing with pillow and quilt. When lying on stomach, her hands could support body and at the same time, up her head. She can use her hands well. When feels happy, she could make some simple sound, like “a” and “yi”. She is very active and cute.
Following the Children Immunization Plan, she has been injected the following shots: BCG, Poliomyelitis, PDT, and Hep B from Aug, 2005-Nov 2005.
Her appetite varies according to her age. The first three month, she only had milk formula, and took it every two hours, each time 70ml to 90ml. From three month old, we add some rice cereal into her milk formula. She took one bottle every three hours, totally eight times a day. Four times milk formula, 120-140ml each time and four times mixed rice formula and rice cereal, 140-160ml per time. Additionally, we fed her cod-liver oil, calcium pill and vitamin three times. She drinks water two or three times a day.
Daoliang formed a health routine as lives in -group. She sleeps from 7:30pm to 6:30am. She takes 2 two hours naps at daytime, one at 10:00am, and one at 2:30pm. She is a sound sleeper. She wakes up when being fed at midnight and when the diaper is wetting. She likes sleeping in dark. She pupus one or two times per day, usually after breakfast or after noon nap. Normally, She pipis every two hours everyday.

Prepared by You County Welfare Institute
Dec 5th, 2005

We are both ecstatic that there was a note left with her and we hope to get it when we make out journey. The note leave no doubt to what day she was actually born and hopefully we will get to visit the site that she was left. Below are pictures we believe to be her orphanage and were taken from this site http://www.geocities.com/sandrapeffly/YouxianSWI.html:















More updates to come!

So, it's Wednesday now and where is the picture?

I am sure you are asking this, as we are asking this as well. Apparently, from our agency only 26 of the 90 referrals actually were delivered. Our agency is trying to keep us calm by providing absolutely no information at all.

They tell us that they are in constant contact with Beijing, but they have provided no real explanation if the second package was not delivered, delivered to the wrong location or even lost. We are hanging in there, but getting frustrated daily. I will update this as I know more.