Three Months Back on American Soil

It’s been just over three months since we returned home from China.  It’s strange that it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, yet it also feels like Helen has been part of our family much longer!  All of the kids are doing great.  Ella is thriving in Kindergarten and learning so much more than we ever could have imagined.  Myles is potty training, slowly but surely, and getting too smart for his own good.  Helen still thinks the world is her buffet table with everything there for her to grab.  She's adjusted extremely well to a family of strong-willed individuals, showing signs that she may be stronger-willed than some of the rest of us.  :-)

As we noted before, the transition to our “new normal” wasn’t easy by any definition.  A few weeks ago, I (Steve) was asked to share what God has been teaching us about Himself throughout the adoption at a church group.  A better title might be “What he’s reminding us about Himself”, as we tend to forget these lessons and need to learn them over and over again.  We're in many ways still in the midst of a low valley in life, but historically these are the times we've found God to teach us the most.  Read the following from Psalm 23:
~~~~~
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
~~~~~

We constantly need this reminder.  God is with us always, through the good times and the bad.  There are so many truths in this brief passage!  We lack nothing.  He leads us.  He refreshes us.  He guides us.  He comforts us, specifically with his “rod and staff” which is a great word-picture.  A shepherd carries both a rod and a staff to herd the sheep.  The shepherd's rod is a tool to protect and ward off evil.  When there is danger, a shepherd would use the rod as a method of defense.  When a sheep was going astray, it is used as a tool of discipline.  Conversely, the shepherd's staff is a tool of comfort.  A shepherd would use the staff to draw a wandering sheep back into the flock.  We are much like sheep, you and me.  Often times we need to be defended, comforted, and disciplined all at the same time.

So, what has God reminded us about Himself throughout the recent changes to our family?  We could write a novel on this subject but will summarize into four main points:

God Sustains.  He gives us patience.  We had a desire to adopt even before we were married, and 10 years later it’s happened.  We went through a lengthy debt payoff journey leading up to the adoption, wondering if the loans would ever go away.  We waited nine months from our adoption application until we were matched with Helen.  We waited six months from the match until we traveled to China to bring her home.  The first weeks home we experienced utter exhaustion and even feelings of “what have we done”, but we're still here and still breathing!

God Provides.  The math of our financial journey still doesn’t make sense on paper.  We paid off more than $40,000 in debt in just 18 months and were able to fund the adoption and all travel costs without going a penny into debt.  God provides much more valuable gifts, however.  God also provided through His people in ways we’ve never experienced before.  Meals, prayer, or simply stopping one of us to ask how things are going all came during more opportune times than anyone will ever know. 

God Forgives.  To say things were tense throughout the adoption is an understatement.  There was extreme tension on our marriage and our relationship with the kids before the trip, and this became greater once we returned home.  I’m ashamed to admit that I (Steve) even became personally angry at God.  “What are you doing to us?  We followed Your calling to bring this girl into our family and this is how You treat us?!?”  It was as if I expected God to bless me because of something I did.  News flash, it doesn’t work that way.  We've had to say "I'm sorry" to each other and "I'm sorry" to God. 

God Directs.  Above all else, He has a plan.  Oh, does He have a plan!  Looking back over the past 10+ years, it’s impossible to not see God’s hand in all things.  He directed our marriage and knew the children that would join our family before they were even born.  Everything has a purpose and none of us has any idea what the future holds.  This should excite us!  I believe one reason we go through tough times in life such as these is so that we can become a blessing to others.  Our hope is that, someday, our experiences will allow us to comfort others in times of despair.

Author John Lynch spoke at our church this past Sunday and talked about taking off the “mask” we wear when we try to please God instead of trust God.  We all need to remove this facade that everything is "just fine", be real with others, and more importantly first be real with ourselves!  When somebody asks how you're doing, be determined to shout, “Things are not fine!  We’re struggling!  We still lose our patience with each other and the children!  We can’t do it on our own!  Life is not fine!!!!”

So how do we all make it through each day?  We trust God. 

Have all of these struggles been worth it?  Let these pictures speak to that.  We wouldn’t have life any other way.

Yes, We're Still Alive (or, "The New Normal")

Yesterday was the two month anniversary of our Gotcha Day!  Two months since we met this beautiful little one:

We've finally been able to catch our breath long enough to compose some thoughts about this journey so far.  First of all, we'll just say that Helen is doing SO WELL!  We're getting so many glimpses of an extremely joyful and silly little toddler who absolutely loves her older siblings.  She has happily taken her place as the baby in our family.  We have discovered that she is one smart little girl as well. She understood much of what we said to her even before we arrived home from China. And now, seven weeks since we've been home, she can understand almost everything we say to her and even communicates back through several baby signs and even a few words.

Steve and I have agreed to be completely honest with others when they ask us about this journey. If you don't want to hear about the hard parts of it, please stop reading here.  We want to be transparent and not fake, because that doesn't benefit us or anyone else considering adoption.  The best way we can say it is that adoption. is. hard.  It's hard to love someone so much and wait for months with nothing but a picture to dream about. It's hard to leave your other kids for two weeks while you travel across the world to get your baby. It's hard to not immediately bond to this child you've waited so long for. It's hard to get someone to trust you that has already experienced abandonment, neglect, and being handed over to complete strangers in their 16 short months of their life. It's hard (this one is minor, but still stands out distinctly in our minds) to fly 15 hours across the globe already in a sleep-deprived state with a baby that doesn't know you.  It's hard to be patient and loving to your kids when you are dealing with jet lag and one kid is screaming at you for 9 out of 10 hours at night and the other two are testing the limits because you were gone for two weeks and suddenly you're back home and in charge and you brought a screaming, biting baby with you. It's hard to have the conversation for the 30th time in one day when someone asks how it's going and expects you to say, "Oh, it's going beautifully! We love her sooooooooooo much and it has been everything we've dreamed to have her home!"  It's hard to suddenly have a toddler with free range in your 3-level house that grew up in an orphanage that was completely baby-proofed and nothing at all was off-limits.  And to top it all off, it's hard to experience something exactly like post-partum depression after bringing home an adopted child instead of giving birth to her.

With all that said, things have gotten MUCH better. Sleep has gotten better. Helen is really starting to trust us and open up. We got our first babysitter this past weekend and went on our first date since May. We've put Helen in the church nursery twice now and she has done great!  She still does a decent amount of screaming and biting, but we're definitely making progress :)  Sorry it's been so long since we've blogged, but we're just finally feeling like we've found our "new normal." We promise it won't be so long before the next one!

We're Home!

First of all, apologies for the lateness of this blog post!  The transition home has been quite challenging over the past few days.  Just an advanced warning that this post will be fairly long since we haven't written since just before our last bedtime in Hong Kong!

It was a huge blessing to stay at a hotel that was connected to the Hong Kong airport.  We woke up, packed our things, and 10 minutes later we had walked right up to the Delta counter.  After checking our bags, we made it through security with no issues and headed to our gate.  Several other adopting families were on the same flight, so Helen got to play with some new friends while we waited.

We boarded the plane on schedule and settled into row 31 for the long trek to Detroit.  We had upgraded to Delta's "Economy Comfort" section, and we even were able to secure the front bulkhead row.  What a blessing!  We had lots of legroom and Helen could sit on the floor to play from time to time.  Helen got a bit fussy throughout the flight, but nothing beyond what you'd expect from a typical one-year-old.  In fact, we're quite proud of how well she did!  She even slept for a five-hour stretch.  Mom and Dad, on the other hand, were awake the whole time.

Our flight landed at DTW and it was off to Customs.  We had to claim all of our checked luggage and go through the standard Customs line, and next we were whisked off to the immigration line to process Helen's documents.  Our family was third in line, and we thought, "this won't be so bad!"  Then we talked to the gentleman that was next in line.  He told us he had been standing there for 90 minutes!  They had one single agent working all permanent immigrations, and there were several adopting families now in line with us (and some kids screaming their heads off).  They finally opened up two more windows for all of the adopting families and we went through with no issues.

Next, it was off to another line to have our luggage rescanned and re-checked.  The agent asked us "What made you decide to adopt from a foreign country instead of the US?"  He was kind of gruff, so we thought it was a formal question.  We explained how we wanted to adopt a child as young as possible, which is challenging in the US.  We also explained that there are a lot of unknowns with domestic adoptions, and that there's a period of time where the birth parents can reclaim their rights and take a child back.  We also explained that we've always wanted to adopt and that there are millions of children out there that need a family.  The agent said, "Thanks, I always ask that question just for my own knowledge.  Congratulations!"  Turns out we weren't being grilled at all, but it was still a good opportunity to share with this gentleman.

We grabbed some bagels & coffee, and then it was off to our gate to head back to good ol' CID.... to the first assigned gate, that is.  A pretty huge rainstorm was covering Detroit, and all of the flight schedules were a mess!  Long story short, our flight to Cedar Rapids switched gates three times and got delayed twice.  We were on the verge of tears, because our flight was now taking off at the time we were supposed to be walking into the CID terminal!  After we arrived at the fourth assigned gate, we boarded our last leg home.

We must have had a good tailwind for the flight home, because it only took us about an hour until we were on the ground.  We walked through the terminal and were enthusiastically greeted by Ella and Myles!  What a wonderful family reunion!  We had honestly been pretty down in the dumps for the latter half of our time in China because we missed them so much.  People ask us what the most difficult part of the trip was, and we can answer with confidence that it was being away from our other children.  We were also greeted by some pretty amazing friends that came to meet us and Helen.  We'll let pictures tell the story:

That brings us to today.  It's Monday, July 30.  We've been home as a family of five for three days now, and as we said earlier, it's been a challenge.  We've been to Kenya twice, and Steve's been all over the world for work (Singapore, Paris, etc), but we've never experienced jetlag this bad.  So we've been dealing with two parents with jetlag, a toddler with jetlag plus adjusting to a 13 hour time difference after being on China time her entire 17-month life, and two other kids at home full of energy and bouncing off the walls!  Helen is having a hard time getting her days and nights switched around, but each night has been a little better than the last.

So, the past few days have been chaos, but it's a wonderful chaos.  Yes, we're exhausted.  Yes, we've had three nights with pretty much no sleep.  Yes, we just want Helen to sleep all night so we can get into the "new normal".  However, we're all safe, we're all healthy, and we're all together under the same roof.  We're HOME!  We know that Helen's sleep schedule will get on track.  We know that we'll catch up on our sleep.  Most importantly, we know that we're blessed beyond measure by a wonderful Creator that has brought three amazing welcome additions to the Adolphs family.

We'll end with a few pictures from Helen's first days at home as an Iowan. :-)

Bye-Bye Guangzhou, Hello Again Hong Kong (China Day 14)

We've spent our last night of sleep in Guangzhou!  Helen has been fighting sleep big time over the past few days, and it seems to be some sort of coping mechanism.  The poor little thing has been through a lot over the past two weeks, leaving everything she's ever known and being handed over to two complete strangers.  We can't say we blame her for being somewhat emotional.  This morning we went downstairs for our last hotel breakfast buffet, finished most of our packing, and decided to have one last adventure out on the town.  And where do you go when there's nothing else to do?

Yep, Chinese Walmart!  :-)  The Walmart here was about 20 minutes away via taxi, on the lower level of a huge shopping mall.  We entered the building into what must be the Chinese verison of Macy's; a six-story department store called Wanda.  We liked the warnings on the escalator:

After we "pleasa took care of kid", and again "took care of our children" (so important they made rules #3 and #4 on a 2nd sign), we made it out into the mall area and ventured up to the third level of the mall where the "food court" was located.  Hmmm, where to have lunch...  A good ol' US standby?

FruiteLife?  Happy Lemon?  Somewhere that seemingly promises "amorous feelings"?  An organic store ("Natural Is Best", they claim)?

Nah, we settled on this place.  It was pretty much the only place in the mall *without* any English on its name:

We ordered (well, we think we ordered) black pepper chicken, some kind of beef dish, and fried dumplings.    The meals even came with pickled mushrooms (not a fan) and a fruity drink that tasted like Sunny Delight...

Other than the beef being mostly tendons and fat, the food was delicious.  We even ordered a second helping of the fried dumplings, and our total bill was still under $10 US.  We've never had such hot (temperature-wise) dishes served to us in our lives!  Seriously, we would have scalded our hands on the bowl, and it made us sweat just sitting near them.  We ate too much food, but it was really nice to have one last authentic Chinese meal before leaving Guangzhou.  


Then came the moment we were waiting for!

We were greeted by the most popular children's character in China emblazoned onto backpacks, Pleasant Goat.  Side note:  Steve bought a Pleasant Goat DVD, and it's all Chinese with Chinese subtitles.  If anyone in Cedar Rapids wants to come over and watch it, we can talk.

Next we came to the... *ahem*... "fresh" meat portion of the store.  Mmmmm-boy, there's nothing like the smell of freshly deceased fish, squid, and various other animal parts!  Glad we had lunch first.

At this point a manager came out, and we'll just say he "firmly insisted" that Steve put the camera away.  Sorry to say we didn't get any pictures of the huge live frogs, prawns, squid, etc.; nor were we able to get any pictures of housewares, clothing, or other groceries.  Oh well, the dead animal section was definitely the most... interesting.

We finished packing our luggage in the afternoon while Helen protested yet another nap.  We received all of the final adoption paperwork and loaded up the van back to Hong Kong.  It was a little bit cramped, but it definitely beat the train station.  It took us just over three hours to arrive at our hotel, and that included our time at the border customs stop.  The driver handed them our passports & paperwork, they looked us over, took our temperatures with a remote sensor, and we were on our way.

It's 9:30pm right now (we started this post earlier in the afternoon; there's no way we'd have enough energy for all those Walmart pictures as tired as we are now!), and we just scarfed down a bit of Chinese food from a hotel restaurant.  We ate in the hallway to make sure we didn't wake Helen up.  :-)  We can't believe that we're about to go to sleep for the last time in China!  We'll head to the airport first thing in the morning to catch our much-dreaded 15+ hours enroute to Detroit.  HUGE prayer request:  pray that Helen does well on the flight!  Also pray the three of us transition back to Central Time quickly for the sake of the other two kids.  

We're not sure if we'll have the energy to post on our blog right after we return home, but we'll recap our last part of the travel adventure as soon as we can.  Thanks so much to each of you that's followed along with our journey to bring this wonderful little girl home!  The past 15 months have been a whirlwind at times and full of impatience/waiting at other times, but looking back we can see God's hand through it all.  He brought this little girl into this world to be a part of our family.  We are definitely blessed to have three amazing children alongside us for the journey we call life.