First court hearing

\ 5 Comments

Tonight was our seventh Skype call with Cin-Ru and it was the best one yet. Why? Because we were told that we had our first court hearing on May 8th. At that court hearing, Cin-Ru, her social worker, and the agency director stood in front of the judge as he or she reviewed our adoption petition. The judge asked Cin-Ru if she wants to come to America and if she wants to be adopted.

She said YES!!!!!

If everything goes well, this beautiful child will be my daughter very soon. We have to wait for the judge to issue a ruling on our adoption petition and then there are several other steps to make the adoption final. But the agency thinks we will be traveling to meet Cin-Ru in either July or August. I cannot wait!

Posted in: Adoption, Uncategorized \ Tagged:

Small projects make a big difference

\ 4 Comments

Today I wrapped up several small projects. First, I finally retrieved my CD out of my husband’s retired laptop. His old laptop is the only CD drive left in the house and I accidentally left the CD in the computer when I played it a week ago.

Then I scanned the photo that my grandma mailed to me last week. I’m sending the hard copy to my mom but wanted a scanned version for my photo albums.

This is me at 13 months’ of age. I actually rather like this photo!

Finally, I decluttered and rearranged the bookshelf in our dining room.

before

after

I decluttered KonMarie style. (Which reminds me that I really need to write up a blog post about the book itself…) I pulled every item off the shelf and asked myself, “does this bring me joy?” If so, I put it back. If not, out it went. Sort of. I now have a growing pile downstairs of stuff that needs to be physically removed from my house.

I’m happy with the results! The top shelf holds my sponsorship notebooks where I keep all of the letters from the children we sponsor, my library books, and review books that I am in the middle of reading and reviewing. The second shelf now holds our Bibles and a row of children’s books. The first couple books are ones that we purchased for Cin-Ru. The rest are library books that I will be reading to better discern what we should actually buy.

The bottom shelf now holds some of Cin-Ru’s toys that require a table to be used. We intentionally chose not to purchase a desk or table for her bedroom. This way, she’ll be encouraged to spend time upstairs with the rest of the family instead of hiding out in her room. I thought it would be a good idea to move these types of toys upstairs so that she can pull something out and play at the dining room table with us instead of in her room without us. I still need to sort through the toys downstairs as I am sure there are more that I can bring upstairs. I’ll leave the dolls and some of the books downstairs.

I’m happy with my progress today! Now off to study Chinese so that I can actually talk to my daughter once we meet her in Taiwan.

Posted in: Adoption, Uncategorized \ Tagged: , ,

Scripture Memory Songs – a review

\ Leave a Comment

Adams Group sent out an email asking if people were interested in reviewing a newly released CD titled Scripture Memory Songs. I jumped at the chance! This CD is by the same writer who wrote the book Life Not Typical, which I reviewed here. This CD includes 30 Scripture songs which are word for word from the NIV, plus nine original tracks that remind me of VBS theme songs.

I requested this CD with the hope of helping Cin-Ru memorize Bible texts. I remember learning Scripture songs as a child and enjoyed them. I can still sing a number of them even though I haven’t heard them in years. I’m not sure if Cin-Ru will be interested in this style of music, as most of the songs were reminiscent of 80’s children’s music. She listens to Taiwanese pop, which is a far cry from this CD!

I carefully listened to every single track on the CD and liked 8 of the 39 songs. When I replayed these eight songs, I realized that most of them were stylistically different from the rest of the CD. Most of the CD is piano music with Jennifer and a small children’s choir singing. The songs I liked had drums or an acoustic guitar along with the piano. This is probably a reflection of my taste in music as I mostly listen to Air1 radio.

My husband was a bit more vocal in his opinion and asked that I please not give the CD to Cin-Ru. He does not enjoy listening to children sing, especially when they are not very talented. The children on this CD are not bad singers but they are also not talented. Ms. Shaw has a beautiful voice and I felt like the CD would have been better had she been the only one singing. Jeff also found the scripture references at the end of each song rather jarring.

Overall, I think I will keep the eight songs that I really liked and create my own playlist. I think the album is a great idea but it wasn’t my taste in music and felt dated. Hopefully it will appeal to children but I’m not sure it will appeal to my 13 year old who is coming from a secular background and is accustomed to Taiwanese and Chinese pop music.

You can preview the CD here if you want to see if your children would be interested in this style of music! Track 11 was my favorite!

Posted in: Uncategorized

Upcoming Skype call – what to do?

\ 4 Comments

We are preparing for our Skype call on Friday and are running into a bit of a dilemma. We’re not sure what to prepare! Cin-Ru is really shy with us. She will answer our questions but has only asked a couple of her own, even when prompted. I can tell that Cin-Ru is a hands-on kiddo and not really one for conversation with strangers (I don’t blame her!).

So far, we have:

asked her a bunch of questions
showed her Mandarin books
showed Taiwanese snacks available here
toured the house
held up a few outfits for her
watched her open two care packages
decorated cookies
showed her a birthday cake we baked for her
played with the cat
showed off toys like puzzles, sticker books, art supplies

I’m not sure what else to do! We have a ton more questions we can ask and will continue working our way down the list. I have a fun picture book to read her. I still haven’t been able to read the paragraph I wrote in Chinese, due to the audio issues during the last two calls. What else?

We walked around the toy and craft departments at Fred Meyer tonight, trying to come up with ideas of something we could do that she’d be interested in watching. We left with the store with nothing. The closest we came to buying something was a travel sized version of this game:

Unfortunately, it seemed like a dumbed down version of the game I played as a child. I don’t know if the newer ones are all like that, but it played a really annoying song between each game and never gave us more than four beats to repeat. I remember going up to 8 or 10 in the pattern but this one seemed really simple.

We have three days to come up with something. If you have any ideas, please let me know! When I posted on Facebook asking for ideas, almost everyone had talkative kids. We can’t rely on conversation alone to carry us through a 30 to 45 minute long call. So what worked for them definitely won’t work for us!

I can’t wait to see Cin-Ru and find out how she’s doing! I just hope she doesn’t find us boring.

Posted in: Adoption, Uncategorized \ Tagged:

Mother’s Day 2015

\ 3 Comments

Ah, Mother’s Day…

Last year my mom sent me a beautiful card with a note about how I was going to soon be a mother. I loved that card and was so grateful that my mom thought of me, even though our adoption was still in process. We thought for sure that we would be celebrating Mother’s Day 2015 as a family of three.

But then in October, our dreams for Zih-Ting came crashing down when she refused to join our family.

We immediately started Cin-Ru’s adoption, as we already knew that we wanted to adopt her. For months, I mourned the loss of Zih-Ting even while I slowly started to open my heart to Cin-Ru. Older adoption is scary and not just because of the trauma the child has already faced. Older children have to agree to the adoption. After being denied once, it was really hard for me to risk my heart again.

So I debated… should I celebrate Mother’s Day this year or skip it? All indicators point toward Cin-Ru telling the judge that she wants to be adopted by our family. But there is always a chance that she’ll get scared when the time comes to say yes or no.

My husband made the decision for me, telling me that he wanted to take me out for a nice meal to affirm the hard work I’ve done thus far to prepare for motherhood. I am married to such a sweet, sweet man. We went to the Teapot Vegetarian House, a favorite restaurant of ours. It’s nice that we can eat anything off the menu as it’s all vegan. I ordered spicy and sweet eggplant, which I absolutely loved.

Then for dessert, we split a slice of vegan cheesecake. It was fantastic!

I am still hoping that next Mother’s Day, we will finally be a family of three. I don’t know if Cin-Ru will be able to embrace Mother’s Day or if it will be yet another reminder of the biological family she lost. Either way, if Mother’s Day is a traumaversary for her or a celebration of a new mother, I’ll still be grateful for the chance to love this beautiful 13 year old girl that I have started to think of as my daughter.

Posted in: Adoption, Uncategorized \ Tagged:

Such a beautiful day!

\ Leave a Comment

Bruno enjoying our walkway
Since it was such a beautiful day, we went for a drive. Because it was a fairly last minute decision, we didn’t plan it out. Instead, we just drove around Lake Sammamish.

We didn’t stop to take pictures of the lake, but I did take a quick photo of the distant hills.

These flowers are in our complex.

I’d love to grow the pink ones in our yard someday when we buy a house.

Posted in: Uncategorized

My week in photos

\ 2 Comments

I thought it would be fun to post a few snippets of my week, captured in photos.

making okonomiyaki for the first time

avocado tree getting taller

new growth – two brand new leaves!

my next KonMarie project

beautiful condolence card from our vet

a bit overwhelmed with all the kids’ books!

trying to find good books for Cin-Ru

what my puzzle should have looked like

how it looked when I finally gave up

trying a new pizza place

karahi paneer veggie pizza – yum!
This is a fun way to post. Maybe I’ll have to try it again in the future!

Posted in: Uncategorized

吃吃看吧!

\ 4 Comments

As part of my Chinese studies, I have started watching a Taiwanese television show titled “The Patisserie With No Name.” I stumbled across this show and was delighted to discover that not only does it have English subtitles, it has Mandarin subtitles! This means I can listen, test my comprehension, and look up words if I wasn’t able to catch what was said (this happens a lot because I have a hard time following speakers at native speed).

In tonight’s episode, I heard some familiar words but wasn’t sure what they meant when used together. I know what each of these words means individually but have never heard them used as a phrase. 吃吃看吧 – After digging around in the dictionary, I discovered it basically means “give it a taste!” when offering someone a new-to-them dish. So I searched google.tw to see if it’s a commonly used phrase and found a blog I have to follow and learn how to read. This recent post looks like a review of a pastry shop in Taipei. I am drooling!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged:

May 30 Day Challenge

\ 2 Comments

To help keep me busy while we wait and wait and wait for the court process, I thought it would be fun to pick a project for the month of May. There are several I could have picked from, most of which consist of finishing knitting and quilting projects that are in various stages of completion. But I thought it would be more fun to do something related to cooking – making cheese.

My mother-in-law bought me a cheesemaking kit for Christmas and I am so excited to get started!

I have two cheesemaking books. One is for dairy cheeses…

And the other is for vegan cheeses…

This weekend I will flip through both books, decide what type of cheese I want to attempt, and make a shopping list in preparation for grocery shopping on Monday. I can’t wait!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ,