Marching Forward

We wish we had something new and exciting to share about our adoption this week. Unfortunately, not much progress has been made. Our paperwork did make it Vietnam, only to discover that we needed a few more documents. We hope those papers will make it to Vietnam next week. Once everything is received our paperwork can be sent to the Department of International Adoptions in Hanoi. That is when the real progress will begin.

Although not too much is occurring in the adoption. This weekend is an important one for our family. We will be speaking at the March of Dimes Walk America event in our county tomorrow. The March of Dimes is an important organization to our family. They are directly responsible for funding research and development of several advanced neonatal technologies that saved our son's life. Our son Aiden was born 13 weeks premature. He was a tiny two pounds and died shortly after birth, but was revived. He had a difficult path with several more near death encounters. Fortunately, after a 4 month hospital stay and multiple surgeries he is now nearly 2 years old and doing great. He does still have some special needs, but in all likelihood he will recover completely and be able to lead a normal life. But many parents aren’t as lucky as we were. That is why we support me in March of Dimes WalkAmerica. Because premature birth can happen to any family. In nearly half the cases, the causes are unknown. The March of Dimes is leading the way to find answers by supporting research into the causes of premature birth. If you are interested in more information, please visit our March of Dimes family web page http://walkamerica.org/craigrdavis.

Notice Craig's Wedding Ring on his Arm

Aiden Next to Chaunta's Hand

Easer 2006 - Doing Well

The Lost Boys

We received a letter today from a family that adopted a child from the same orphanage that Van is at. She painted a picture of the situation for little boys at the orphanage that we would like to share with you.

“…All of the nannies had their own kids to show off for [the adoptive parents]. Each was proud of her two babies. Some had us take pictures, especially of the boys, to try to find them homes. They all wanted their babies loved too. The director begged us to find homes for his boys. There were at least five boys to each girl, maybe more. You will see for yourself soon.”

Reading this really cemented the fact that God had planned for us to have Van all along. All this time we were planning for a little girl, God must have been chuckling. Too bad he didn’t let us know before we finished our little girl’s nursery. Hopefully, Van likes pink. Just kidding…we are coming up with a theme for Van’s room now. We haven’t yet settled on one, but we still have a few months.

Good News...

We spoke with our pediatrician on Monday and she let us know that we should not be worried about the bump above little Van's eye. She said that it is likely just cosmetic and she is not at all concerned about it. She told us that he looks "vunderful" she Russian, so that really means "wonderful".

Our agency sent all of our paperwork to Vietnam on Monday afternoon. I don't expect that they will get it until early next week. Once they get it, our facilitator in Vietnam (Ha Crick) will have it translated. After the translation is completed it will be submitted to the Vietnamese government for approval. I think they have 2 weeks to review and approve it. After that it will be sent to Van's orphanage with instructions for them to provide documentation that Van is legitimately an orphan. That can take up to 30 days. If we understand the process correctly, the orphanage then submites the information back to the government and they then give us a date to come to get Van. I think we will get about 2 weeks notice for travel.

So please pray that things go quickly and smoothly as our paperwork makes it way through the process in Vietnam. We just can't wait to get Van home!

Below are pictures of Van's Orphanage courtesy of another adoptive parent who adopted a little girl from the same orphange in 2002:

Happy Easter

Well it is late in the evening on Easter Sunday, and we are wishing we could share it with our dear little Van Lai. It seems that he is all we can think about these days. Wondering how he is doing, what are we missing, and how big he will be when we finally get to bring him home. Aiden is constantly carrying around his picture and says "baby bubba."

It was so nice to get an updated picture and information last week. I wish we could look forward to getting the update every week. It sure makes the wait a little easier. We also received pictures of the orphanage where little Van is staying until he makes it to his forever home (our home). It makes us a little sad to see where he is from, and even more anxious to get him home.

We spoke with a doctor at our church today about the bump on his head, she looked at the pictures and told us that we shouldn't be concerned. She thinks it appears to be a mole or a small hemangeoma. We have also dropped off the pictures at our pediatrician's office to get her take on the bump. Also the orphanage is supposed to be taking him to the doctor to check up on it also. We have become so connected to little Van, at this point I don't think it really matters what the bump is. We will just deal with it, whatever it is.

We still haven't decided on an american name for little Van. So it seems that we may end up keeping his given name. That is the only name that we have agreed on so far.

This week we hope that our dossier will be sent to Vietnam to be translated and sent to the Central Authority.

New Photo and Updates from Vietnam

This afternoon we received a wonderful update from Ninh Thuan Vietnam about our precious Van Lai.

The update included his his current weight of 16.5 pounds, and that he is now 26 inches tall. That is excellent for a 6 month old. He is in the 50th percentile for weight, and 25th percentile for heighth. The letter said that "he is a very healthy and happy baby".

They are taking him to the doctor soon to check on the bump that appears above one of his eyes. We noticed in the first picture they sent, and the agency representative in Vietnam confirmed that it is still present. The exact wording that the letter said was "
a case worker told me this more likes a pimple." So they will be taking him to the doctor to get it checked out. Please pray that it is nothing to worry about. They are going to hold our paperwork until it is clarified, to ensure it is nothing big.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. We really can't wait to get to hold this little guy!

And so it begins...

Yesterday we got some seemingly bad news. We were told by our adoption agency that they would not be able to match us with a daughter at this time. There are currently no little girls available that were less than a year old. In fact most were at least 2 years. So we were crushed. We then asked if they had any girls that wer close to a year (13-15 months). Again the answer was no. However they mentioned that they would send us a listing of available children for our review.

Late last night we started discussing the option of adopting a little boy. It started out as a very light conversation, but before long we were begining to convince ourselves that another boy might be good. Knowing that there were several infant boys available that needed homes abd that most of the adoptive families are wanting girls made us sad for these forgotten boys. Afterall, one of the driving factors in adopting from Vietnam was the fact that there is such a great need for families there. And adoption should be first and foremost for the welfare of a child. So we began getting more and more serious about a little boy. Of course if we were having a baby the traditional way, we wouldn't be able to choose. Next we visited http://www.fcvn.org/ (a site for families with children from Vietnam). We started looking at all the pictures of little Vietnamese boys. Still unsure of our decision started praying. It was well past our bed time so we headed off to bed. Neither of us could sleep.

This morning we called our adoption agency and they told us of a little boy named Van Lai that was 6 months old. He was born to 42 year old single parent who cared for him the first two months of life. However, she was unable to provide for him and relinquished her rights and placed him in an orphanage in Ninh Thuan. He has been there since December 6th. She learned that he weighed approximately 10 pounds and was relatively small. We asked our agency for some time to make the decision. We immediatly called our doctor and got her opinion. Based on the VERY LIMITED information that we had received, she said that he seems to be in good health (although small). We then called our agency back and accepted him into our family.

Next they e-mailed us a picture. He has the chubbiest cheeks. Not quite what we were expecting given his wieght. We were completely in love with him.

So today we completed a mountain of paperwork so we can start the process of getting him home. The agency says it will be 3-6 months before we get to go after him. Please pray that God will watch over him while we can't. Also pray that he comes home soon!

Here is a picture of Van Lai from January when he was 3 months old. He is chubby huh!

Keep checking our site for more updates on our progress.

Your Truly,

Craig & Chaunta

Follow us on our Journey to Vietnam

Dear Family and Friends,

As you may know, we have begun a new journey in hopes of growing our family. This journey will lead us halfway around the world to adopt a little girl from Vietnam. We don't know who she is, what she looks like, or when we will be able to hold her close…but she has already become a part of our hearts.

We began the process of adopting nearly a year ago. It is an extensive process. The process has kept us busy carefully completing paperwork, getting copies of birth certificates, meeting with a social worker, getting fingerprints, attending interviews, getting fingerprints, background checks, and more fingerprints (yes we were fingerprinted three different times by three different agencies). Once all the paper work was completed it was sent to the Secretary of State to verify authenticity and then it was sent to the Vietnamese Consulate in San Francisco to be translated. It has now returned from it’s trip around the country and is ready and waiting to begin its trip to Vietnam. We are hoping to be matched with a little girl soon, but God only knows what the future will hold. It is likely that we will still have to wait several months to be able to bring our baby home.

We have set up a blog to track our journey to little Sophie who is waiting for us now in a Vietnamese orphanage. We will be adding updates and all of our adoption related milestones here and would love for you all to follow along in our journey at http://journey2sophie.blogspot.com

You are welcome to forward this letter to anyone who may be interested in adoption or in following us through this process.

Yours Truly,

Craig & Chaunta