handsful

Today, we received Lainey’s finding ad. When a child is found in China, an ad is placed with the child’s photo and identifying information. They do this in case the parents want to claim their child, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this happening. We acquired this information from a man named Brian Stuy, of www.research-china.org/index.htm. He and his wife have 3 girls adopted from China. He finds the ads and offers them to adoptive parents, believing that it’s vitally important to have this earliest link to our children’s pasts. We’re so grateful to have this picture of Lainey, at approximately 3 days old, as well as a little more information about her beginnings.

The paper contains a picture of Lainey before her lip repair. It appears to be a unilateral cleft, but it’s a little hard to tell for sure. She looks so young and quite sleepy :)

In addition to the enlarged photo that Brian made, he also sent us the whole paper that her ad was in. It’s called the “Anhui Youth Daily” paper and only about 5 pages in length. Here is a closeup of the ad page. Lainey is 2nd from the left, on the bottom row. I’m not sure how often this paper is produced…there are 12 abandoned children in this one.

Brian’s wife, Lan, is Chinese and translates the ads. Lainey’s ad says this:

An abandoned baby

A girl

We don’t know what her name was

She still had her umbilical cord on. We estimated she was about 3 days old.

She has small eyes.

She has a cleft palate and lip, thick hair, slightly yellow skin.

On July 7th, 2006, she was found on Nanhu Road, Bengbu City.

I would love to know a more specific spot for her finding place, and it’s possible that the orphanage will be able to tell us more. To think of her being left beside a road is difficult to understand…I imagine that there must be a very safe, yet obvious place on that road, where her birth mother felt she would be found quicky and taken care of. We’ll be forever grateful.

My ladybug yahoo group (reminder…we’re all Christian women, adopting from China) decided to have a Christmas ornament exchange.  I received my package today!  She gave me one of the Hallmark ornaments that I really wanted, the Forever Family.  Along the bottom of the tree, it says “Connected with a bond of belonging…Forever Family 2007”.  In the adoption community, the term “forever family” is used all the time…because when we adopt our child, we become their forever family.  She also included a Yankee candle in the Christmas Cookie scent…yum! Thank you, Melinda!

Lainey’s first care package! We took a trip to our local Babies R Us store this weekend. It’s been literally YEARS since we’d been in that store, and it certainly made this adoption even more real! We’re sending her an outfit, a soft cell phone that makes sounds, stuffed bunny, pink blanket, photo album with pictures of us (each labeled in Chinese), candies for the nannies, and a disposable camera that we hope will be used to take pictures of Lainey. We’ve heard from other families with children from Bengbu and they’ve told us that they did receive the cameras back on adoption day, with all the pictures taken. That would be so cool!

I got this picture from a family who adopted their daughter from the Bengbu orphanage, and they made a trip back to the orphanage last June. She shared this picture with me. This was taken in the old orphanage, a new one was built in August 2007. We have no idea if Lainey is one of these babies, but I can at least see what her sleeping situation might have been. She would have been just shy of one year old at the time this pic was taken.

See the nice Fed Ex man, posing for a picture while holding our daughter’s paperwork?? This may seem weird (yep, you’re probably thinking we’ve lost it by now), but this is a pretty common thing in the adoption community! When your referral information, the precious paperwork about your new little one, is delivered to your home you MUST snap a picture of the man responsible for delivering said information!

We almost missed the picture (gasp). The boys had a baseball game yesterday around 1pm, so we had to leave the house before the Fed Ex truck showed. As we rounded the corner, THERE HE WAS! Driving right toward our house! “Randy, turn around!!!” So, he did and we got back to the house just as he was walking up our driveway. I grabbed the camera (we had it for the game), jumped out of the truck, and walked up to the unsuspecting man. I had to wait for him to get off his cell phone and then quickly asked if I could take his picture, and explained that he was holding the information for our new adopted daughter. He looked at me as if I’d spoken Mandarin (which, I only know a couple words of that so far…). I actually had to explain this twice, before he “got it” and stood there for the picture.

So, there you have it. One China adoption rite-of-passage checked off the to-do list.

Here is the other picture of Lainey that we have. I imagine that maybe one of the nannies at the orphanage plopped her on the horse and then walked away to take the picture. Lainey looks less than thrilled to be posed, maybe a little anxious that she walked away? I’m just imagining, of course. As far as Lainey’s eventual attachment to Randy and I, it would be a good sign that she is attached to one or several of the nannies at the orphanage. Children have an easier time transferring attachment from one person to another than they do if they’ve never formed a secure attachment to another person. I’ve read what feels like a mountain of books on attachment, and I have 3 more on my bedside to read. There is so much to learn, and we want to do everything possible to help Lainey’s journey from her old life to her new one as easy as possible. So, lots of prayers and lots of reading. In that order.

Today, we received her official paperwork, which was over-nighted through Fed-Ex from our agency yesterday. (stay tuned for a story about that tomorrow!) Here are a few things that her Developmental Report says about her…

-at one month old, she liked to suck her fingers.

-after her surgery at 5 months to repair her lip, she was more active and open. She especially liked the nannies to hold her and snuggle her.

-at 6 months, they gradually added other foods to her diet, and she loved to eat them all.

-a description…she has a pair of almond eyes, a round face, and a broad forehead. Her facial features are full and her hair is brown. She is very lovely.

-at ten months, she could roll over in her crib freely and understands adults’ facial expressions.

-she is described as a deep sleeper with a restless personality, quick in reaction, and impatient at times. (uh oh)

It’s been a little more than 24hrs since we first saw Lainey, and our love has already grown!