handsful

I knew our agency requested an update on Dylan last week…they routinely ask the orphanage for new pictures/measurements 3 months after the Letter of Intent is sent in.  Orphanages aren’t required to send anything – some do and some don’t.  I was so happy to see these pictures and info in my inbox today! 

Notice the concentration and that amazing stack of blocks!  Love the split pants and this is also another shot of him using his small leg (knee?)  for support.  Randy isn’t thrilled with his choice of football team, though :)

This one melts me…I think I see a dimple?! 

There were current measurements included, which I still have to convert from metric.  Here’s the info they gave us:

health is good – can express his wish and request – potty trained, but needs diaper at night – knows red (this makes me laugh…he’s a NC State fan already!)

They call him Yu Hai – He is outgoing (Abbey loved that) – He is in the orphanage (he could have been transferred to foster care, I’m glad they confirmed where he was) – He received our care package – he eats noodle, rice, and drinks juice.

We are thrilled to have this new information on our son!  We seem to be on schedule to have our dossier go to China next week, and families “usually” travel about 4-6 months after that.  We’re still guessing November…we’ll see!

This time around, we decided to use an in-China organization to put together our care package.  Ladybugs N Love (www.ladybugsnlove.com) was begun by Angela (a former adoption guide who lives in China) and Kelly (a mom to 3 adopted children from China – and Angela was her guide for all 3).  They offer care packages, birthday cakes, orphanage calls, photos, etc.  All I had to do was go to their site, choose the items I wanted to include in the package, and Angela shopped for them and will mail them to the orphanage (with confirmation of delivery!). 

She took the above picture so I could see what she chose based on my requests…treats for the nannies and children, a disposable camera (hoping they fill it up with pictures taken of Dylan that we’ll pick up on Gotcha day), a photo album (I emailed her pictures of us to label and put in the album), and a toy car. 

Quick update on where we are in Dylan’s adoption…we received our fingerprint appointment letter, telling us to come in next Thursday at 10:00 to be fingerprinted.  After that, we wait for the immigration clearance form I-797C to come and we quickly send it (and our completed home study) to be certified at the state level and then authenticated at the consulate level.  When those are complete and returned to us, our complete dossier heads to China!  I’m thinking, based on others timelines ahead of us, that we *should* be able to send our dossier in June.  Which puts us around November maybe for travel.  At this point, it’s a TOTAL guess and anything could happen to speed that up or (more likely the case) to delay it.  We’re trusting in the timing.  Plus, with all that’s going on right now with our upcoming move (May 14th), we do have a diversion to keep us from dwelling on “the wait”.  Thankfully.  But, the truth is he’s waiting and everyday without us (and without him) is just plain wrong. 

Until then, we send him presents and hope he’s being told who the people in those pictures are.  Our next package will be sent in July, including one of those collosal birthday cakes!!

new pictures of Dylan!  It amazes me how many we have so far, given how few we have of Lainey during her time in the orphanage.  There are a lot of families currently waiting on their children from Luoyang, just like we’re waiting on Dylan. 

Denise is a mom, waiting on her adorable son Seth.  She’ll travel well before us and has offered to take pictures of Dylan…how wonderful!  In the meantime, they sent a birthday cake to Seth through an in-China organization and received pictures back.  She was certain that Dylan was in a few, and shared them with us. 

In case you can’t tell, Dylan is the guy to the right of the birthday boy.  He seems to be saying “let’s get this show on the road”.  lol…

This cake is huge!

I’ve been hoping for a picture of Dylan smiling.  I guess having a picture of him with his mouth covered in frosting will suffice for now :)

Thank you, Denise!

Remember this picture? 

Another adoptive mom was visiting the orphanage with her daughter, and snapped pictures of the children as they gave them treats.  We were fairly certain it was our Dylan, but not 100%. 

Today, we received new “official” pictures of Dylan!  See what you think…

Using a chair as a walker??  :)

Yep, same guy :)  Our adoption agency will be contacting the orphanage in mid-May to ask for updated pictures.  I knew this…it’s customary that they wait 3 months after pre-approval before they ask.  I was impatient and went another route to get pictures sooner. 

He looks younger here…hair is longer, so it must have been shaved recently (we believe this because the pictures of him with shorter hair match the ones taken in late March by the adoptive mom).  He also appears to be on “both” knees?  I guess we’ll see about that. 

There is a wonderful lady named Adele, who has the website www.blessedkids.com .  She is a Chinese woman, living in Texas with her husband and adopted Chinese daughter.  Her family still lives in China, and through them and because of her good relationship/reputation with the orphanages in China, she is able to offer many services to adoptive families. 

Standing steadily, holding onto the shelf. 

I contacted Adele, because she is able to contact orphanages and ask for digital pictures and updated measurements of a requested child.  She told us that her dad was able to call the orphanage and get this information for us.  These pictures are a treasure!  The measurements, however, are a little confusing.  Comparing them to the stats in his initial file from almost a year ago…he’s the same weight (actually a tad lighter!).  I’m not concerned, because he looks healthy (as much as we can tell under all those layers) and because it’s quite common to get skewed measurements.  We’ll compare these to the ones we’ll get in May. 

Playing with tape!  Looks like maybe they’re making decorations? 

Blessed Kids has many services…care packages, translation, birthday cakes sent to the orphanage, etc.  What a wonderful treat it was to open the email with these pictures on Easter Sunday :) 

We also received an email from Brian Stuy (www.research-china.org) telling us he found Dylan’s Finding Ad!  We’ll be ordering that tomorrow.  All this makes this wait for Dylan easier in some ways (more pictures to stare at) and harder because it just makes us want him HERE now.

So, last week a mom posted pictures on the Luoyang Orphanage Yahoo group we’re members of.  She had sent a birthday cake to her soon-to-be daughter…there are organizations that allow you to do this, they deliver the cake to the orphanage and everything.  We’ll be doing that in July for Dylan’s 3rd birthday.  Anyway, she added the pictures to the yahoo site and told the other waiting families to check and see if any of our kiddos might be in the pictures. 

Well, I’ve looked through ALL the photos posted on that site, in the off chance I might recognize Dylan…even though the latest pictures we have are almost 12 months old.  (We have to wait until May for our agency to request new pictures and updated stats of him.)  In all those photos, none have ever jumped out at me as a possibility for Dylan.  Until…

I was looking through my friend’s pictures and I stopped at this one. 

He’s sitting beside the birthday girl (I cropped the picture).  Is that Dylan?  My friend thought so, after she compared this photo to our referral pictures.  And, someone else on the board posted that she enjoyed the birthday pictures and said “I see Donna’s son, too.”  I asked them why they thought so, and they pointed out…same hairline, eyes, ears (left one looks a little larger, like in our referral pics), and left eyebrow is a little more pointed, too (like we’ve seen in the referral pics). 

After checking other pictures on the Louyang site, I found that someone else had JUST posted a few more from this month.  They were in China with their daughter, and were able to visit the orphanage and take pictures of some of the kids.  And, there he was again…

Scroll down and compare these to our referral pics – understanding that he would have obviously aged quite a bit.  I really see it in his close-up with the red background.  What do you think??

Forgive the picture quality, but here are the contents of the care package we sent Dylan today.  A few toys, photo album showing him his new family, a camera that we hope is used to take pictures of him, and treats for the nanny’s and children. 

We sent 2 care packages to Lainey while waiting, and sadly neither were received by the orphanage…we have no idea why.  So, we’re praying this one makes it.  It will let him know that there is a family waiting for him (China usually doesn’t officially inform the orphanage until travel has already been approved, and we’re months away from that). 

On another note, Randy did some tweaking to the Pages part of the blog – some of them hadn’t been updated since we began Lainey’s adoption.  Oops.  That’s been taken care of, so check them out :)

He’s wearing some form of pink or purple in EVERY picture we have of him. 

We’ve decided to name our new son Dylan.  Randy suggested this name a while back, when we were still making our decision to adopt him.  One night, we were online looking at boy names and decided to look up the meanings of the boys names we had on a list. 

Remember what Yu Hai means?  Yu – “of” or “for”  Hai – “sea”.   So, you could say it means “of the sea”. 

We were floored to read what the name Dylan means…. it means “son of the sea”

How cool is that? 

So, Yu Hai is our Dylan.  Dylan YuHai.