We have a date for our hearing!

Our agency always seems to have big news for us whenever we go to their office. Last December, our case manager had just received our referral by e-mail when we stopped in to drop off some preliminary paperwork. Today, when Rob stopped in to drop off our latest package for Ryan, our case manager was just getting off a phone call with the Taiwan program director, who learned that our hearing will be held on May 17!

From what we understand, the purpose of the hearing is for the court to review the information we submitted in our dossier to determine whether we are fit to adopt Ryan, and whether the adoption is in Ryan's best interest. I think Ryan's birth mother also has to attend the hearing in order to testify that she has relinquished her parental rights. (We do not have to attend the hearing ourselves -- we have a representative in Taiwan, who attends on our behalf.) After the court issues its first ruling following this hearing, there is a 10-day period in which the birth mother can decide to "reclaim" the child from foster care. We understand that this is rare, and our agency believes it is unlikely to happen in our child's case...but you never know.

Our case manager said that the second (final) ruling is typically issued one month after the first, but also told us that another couple in the program received their final ruling only 10 days after the first (i.e., as soon as the waiting period was over). The final ruling makes the adoption official, which means we will legally be Ryan's parents before we even travel.

After the final ruling, we will be assigned a travel date, which is typically 2-3 weeks after that ruling. We will need to spend about 1 week in Taiwan, which will include completing immigration paperwork at the U.S. Consulate. That paperwork will make Ryan a citizen as soon as we land in the U.S.

So....if we are lucky enough to receive our final ruling as quickly after our first ruling as this other couple did, we could be traveling by late June. Or, if we receive our final ruling about 1 month after the first, we should still be traveling by the end of July. In any event, we're really getting close!

We should also have new pictures of Ryan by the end of next week.

Chunk Chicken and Bubble Tea

Last night we had our first taste of authentic Taiwanese food and drink at a little restaurant that happens to be in the same general area of town where we had an adoption parenting class to attend, so we decided to make an evening of it. Although Rob and I have enjoyed all of the Asian food we’ve experienced (Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and of course Chinese), I have to admit I was a little nervous about Taiwanese cuisine after some of the pictures I had seen of it on the internet -– one of which looked like a whole octopus sitting on a dinner plate. But our meals were so delicious that by about the third bite, we were already planning our next trip and deciding which entrées we would try next. We both had a dish called “Taiwanese chunk chicken,” which consisted of chicken (dark meat), slices of fresh ginger, fresh basil leaves, big garlic cloves, and a few hot red peppers, in a medium-spicy sauce.

I had also recently learned about “bubble tea" and couldn’t wait to try it. Bubble tea (pictured below) is apparently enormously popular in Taiwan and is supposedly sold “on every corner,” perhaps comparable to Starbucks here. It’s a mixture of black or green tea, milk, and flavored syrup, over ice, with large tapioca balls (the “bubbles”) that lay at the bottom of the glass, where they absorb the flavor of the drink and become gummy. It’s served with a large diameter straw so that the tapioca balls can come up, so you can chew on them as you drink the liquid. (It's one of those things that probably doesn't sound very appetizing in words, but when you try it, it's really good.) This website, where the picture is from, has a good description and history of bubble tea: http://whatscookingamerica.net/BubbleTea.htm, as does this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_tea.


Last night, I tried bubble tea made with black tea and almond syrup. It was excellent, and may become my new food obsession. Unfortunately, this restaurant is a 45-minute drive from our home (and is the only Taiwanese restaurant in the region), but -– how convenient -- my adoptive moms' monthly support group meets a few blocks away, and our next meeting is this Friday. I am already fantasizing about the spicy-beef-and-cabbage dish that I want to try next -– so what if Rob makes me sleep on the couch :-)

If you have a chance to try Taiwanese food or bubble tea, we highly recommend it!

Family, Food, Fun

This weekend, my parents came to visit. Like us, they are very excited for Ryan to join our family. He will be their third grandchild (all grandsons). They are a 5-hour drive from us, but we see them fairly often, and they will be a big part of Ryan's life. My dad has been wanting to learn how to make a pretzel-like Italian recipe called "tarales," which my paternal grandmother often made. They were always a family favorite, so I’m really glad my grandmother taught me how to make them a few years before she passed away in 1996. (Many of my fondest childhood memories involve her wonderful cooking and baking.) It is a multi-stage and rather labor-intensive process which takes an entire day for one person to do alone, so I don’t make them often (and whenever I do, I’m amazed that my grandmother was doing this into her 80’s). My dad and I spent most of Saturday working in the kitchen:


Fortunately, all that work yields about 200 pretzels, so there are plenty to share, as well as plenty to have around as an excuse to put our usual carb-conscious lifestyle on hold for the next several days.

Since food is one of the most common and enjoyable ways of connecting with our ethnic backgrounds (Rob’s family’s Scottish shortbread is also to-die-for), we hope that Ryan will be interested in trying Taiwanese food one day. Rob and I certainly are -– we’ve found a Taiwanese restaurant in our area that we can’t wait to try (we’ll be going this Tuesday night). I would bet that, as the American little boy he will be, Ryan’s favorite foods as a child will be more along the lines of macaroni-and-cheese and french fries, but we will be sure to take him out for Taiwanese when he is a little older and interested in trying “new” things.

Our little guy is getting so big!

Today we received Ryan's monthly measurements from his 6-month checkup. He weighs 16.7 lbs. and is 26.4" long, which (according to my online research) are both right around the 50th percentile for his age. We're already counting the days -- about 12 -- until we receive more pictures!

To Taiwan With Love

We are getting ready to send Ryan another package this week (as pictured), including clothes, bibs, toys, and a “Who Loves Baby?” photo album with pictures of us and his future grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. He will probably enjoy teething on the photo album more than looking at the pictures, but since babies start to recognize faces around this age, maybe we will look slightly familiar to him when he meets us for the first time.


I keep thinking about how, in the first year of his life, Ryan will have had to transition between three different moms -– his birth mother, his foster mother, and soon, me (his “forever” mom!) -– and how that might affect a child, even at such a young age. We need to keep in mind that, while we have been waiting for Ryan all this time, he has not been waiting for us. He has probably become quite attached to his foster mother and feels secure in her care, so, although we will be loving parents who will take care of all his needs, we have to be aware that the adoption will be a disruption in his life. When we travel to Taiwan to bring him home, we will get to meet his his foster mother (who he has lived with since December), so we will take the opportunity to learn as much as we can from her about Ryan's daily routine while she cared for him -- things like his nap schedule, the type of formula and baby food he has been fed, what she does to soothe him when he cries. We hope that we will be able to ease this last transition for him by continuing as much as possible of what he has become familiar with.

Passing the wait time....

As we anticipated would happen, the wait has been getting more difficult as we get closer to completing our adoption. We’ve been trying to plan something we enjoy doing together each week so that we have always have something to look forward to during the wait, and to keep us from fixating on when we’ll receive news of our first hearing. This past weekend, we went out for pho, our favorite Vietnamese dish, followed by specialty food shopping (Italian cheeses and chocolate, Kona coffee, and other such indulgences). Then we spent Easter Sunday with Rob’s family, including our adorable nephew, James, who is 10 months old -- about the age Ryan will be when we bring him home. Rob wore James out playing, then he -- James, that is :-) -- fell asleep on my lap.


I can’t wait to be able to hold Ryan like this!

This coming weekend we’ll be traveling to visit Ryan’s other future cousins, our two little nephews on my side of the family (age 1 ½ and 3). Our 3-year-old nephew, Elliot, knows Ryan from his picture, and will point to it and say, “That’s my cousin Ryan; they're going to go get him soon” (repeating what my sister has told him). He also talks about how Uncle Rob is going to take him and Ryan fishing.

Our next project, which we're planning to begin by the end of April, is Ryan’s nursery and bathroom (our former guest bedroom and bath). The room is a nice size, and we have already done the prep work (i.e., clearing it out), and Rob’s parents have bought Ryan a crib. This is what we’re starting with:


We don’t have any kind of “theme” in mind –- other than making it very boy-ish to counteract any residual effects from the pink sheets Ryan has been sleeping on in foster care :-) We’ll post updated photos as we make progress.

He keeps getting cuter!

We've received another update! Our little guy, who turned 6 months old on April 1, seems to be doing GREAT. We received a 50-second video, where he is grasping for a stuffed toy and seems very alert and responsive to what is going on around him, with good eye-hand coordination. Since he is in foster care, he is receiving lots of individual attention, as babies in orphanages often do not (although we understand the orphanages in Taiwan are very good), so his development will probably be right on track with a 6-month-old who has been raised from birth by his biological parents. He will probably be crawling by the time we travel home with him, which will make for an interesting 30 hours of flying, but we're hoping he'll still like to be held a lot even after he becomes "mobile."

We're getting more anxious to receive the monthly updates now that we know the schedule on which they're sent (between the 2nd and 5th of each month). We were both stalking our e-mail accounts all day yesterday and today, hitting "refresh" several times an hour, since we knew another update was coming soon. We were happy to see that, in his new pictures, Ryan is wearing some of the (boy's!) clothes we sent him in February. We're in the process of putting together another package to send him this month, with some toys, teethers, and, of course, more clothes.

This is a summary of the court procedure in Taiwan, as described on the U.S. Department of State's website, at http://www.travel.state.gov/family/adoption/country/
country_335.html:

"An application for adoption is first submitted to the Taiwan
District Court. [Ours should have reached the court by late February.]
After one to two months, the adoptive parent(s) or a designated
representative will receive a notice to appear. During this waiting
period, a Taiwan social worker from the local bureau of social affairs
or a designated agency will review the foreign (U.S.) home study.
After the hearing, the court will rule on the adoption (usually within
two months) and publish a final ruling three weeks later.

The third step is to register the adoption at the Taiwan Registrar’s
office by submitting the original court ruling, final ruling, and the
power of attorney certified at the Taiwan Foreign Affairs Police
Station at the Taiwan Registrar’s office. This usually takes only one
hour."

We are presently in the stage of the process described in the first paragraph, waiting for the first of the two rulings. I am not sure if the "third step" described in the second paragraph is something we participate in during our trip to Taiwan, or if it is done by our attorney beforehand.

Based on what our agency has told us, we are optimistic that we'll be traveling this summer (hopefully July), which makes me the equivalent of being 6 months pregnant -- without having to suffer any of the physical symptoms!

Happy Half-Birthday!

Our little guy is now 6 months old! We should be receiving updated photos this week. We think we may also receive another report of all the things he is now able to do, like the one we received after his 3-month checkup. We're also interested to see if they will get him a haircut since he has quite a head of hair which has been getting really long!

Our agency recently told us they believe we’ll be traveling in 3 to 4 months (July or August), so it’s probably time to start painting and decorating the nursery, a project we’ve been saving for the final few months of the wait. To complete the adoption, we need to receive rulings from 2 courts in Taiwan. We're hoping to have the first ruling in the next month or so. The wait seems to have gone pretty quickly so far, but we expect that it will start feeling slower as we get closer to traveling, and especially once we receive our travel date (which we’ll have about 4 weeks’ notice of).

Rob’s sister is due to give birth to a daughter (our first niece!) in late July, so it will be exciting to have two new additions to our family around the same time (and Rob’s parents will quickly go from having 1 to 3 grandchildren). I'm sad that our baby will never get to know my wonderful grandmother, who passed away on March 18. We showed her his pictures the last time we visited her and she commented on “what a cutie” he is. We were very touched when my aunt told us at her funeral that she had a picture of Ryan in her room at the assisted living home where she lived, and that she was spreading the news to extended family members who did not know about our adoption.

We'll post some photos when we receive our next update.