Baby shower May 20, 2007

Our friend Robyne hosted the most beautiful and lovely shower for me on Sunday May 20th. It was a wonderful event, and particularly wonderful to have my mother and sister there. Our friends Laurie, Mary, Susan and Allyson all helped Robyne with the shower. We had the most delicious sandwiches, champagne, the cookies Robyne & I had baked and iced on Friday night, delicious punch and Susan bought the most glorious cake. I was surrounded by family and friends who are close enough to be family, a lot of people who have been around for us during some very tough times. The day was very emotional but also an unbelievably happy time. We were given so many beautiful and special gifts for Indigo - we are so blessed and lucky. Robyne had little favors that were chinese shaped cartons in peach and purple and in the cartons were fortune cookies - I have attached the message on the fortune cookies.

Thank you to all. Some photos included in the post. I am going to try and post a link to Flickr (if it works right - this is the first Flickr attempt to help practice for China posting). This link will have more shower photos - there were a lot - thanks to our dear friend Shelli who was an awesome photo taker! Some shots shown are me & Robyne - the gorgeous pregnant lady - she is due in June and did all of this. The beautiful cake brought by Susan, me, my sister & mom, a cute "worth the wait" onesie. Beautiful dresses from David's mom Lee who sadly could not be there for the shower but was with us over Memorial Day weekend, and a "Daddy's little princess" onesie to remind David that he was not forgotten. The framed pictures, as you can see, totally choked me up. The print says "the moment we saw you we fell in love" and there is really nothing more to say.

http://www.flickr.com/gp/7322989@N05/508J36

Our little cover girl!

Thanks to our dear friend Ellen, I found out this morning that little Indigo is the cover child for the GWCA October2005 LID chat group on Yahoo. God bless Ellen for keeping me in the loop on these things otherwise we might have missed her moment of fame. What was most touching was that Ellen said it was a beautiful way to start her day, seeing a picture of our little girl. Ellen's little beauty, Sarah, has already had her cover page debut. Anyway, I know it's been ages (more than a week) since I have posted and certain people were starting to worry - Ellen's mom :-) so please rest assured that we are fine and have just been having a lot of company around the clock since May 19th so we have been on the run. It's been all wonderful company and we have been having a blast but it's kept me from keeping up so Ellen's news this morning gave me a quick opportunity to post a quick update - what can I say - I am a super proud mom!

The Weekend!

What a weekend - gear up for some long posting. On Friday night I went to Robyne's house to bake cookies - for my shower on Sunday. One might wonder why I was making cookies for my own shower but Robyne says "a) I get to spend time with her, b) David loves sugar cookies and c) I get to spend time with her..." We had a great time baking, icing and chatting until midnight. Some results shown below.

On Saturday we had a really fun brunch at Ellen & Rick's house. This was a gathering of all the 10/28/05 LID couples, Ellen & Rick, Shawn & Karen, Pam & Robert, as well as us. We also had Christi & Eric who leave on May 31 to get their daughter Zoe. To say the group was giddy with joy and excitement would be the understatement of the year! It has also been arranged to have a Baby Signs class at our gathering. This was taught by Amy who has also adopted a daughter from China. Hats off to Amy for dealing with our rowdy punchy group and actually teaching us some baby signs. After the class, the gift exchanges began and again we were spoiled by people's thoughtfulness and generosity. Ellen embroidered this little top with Indigo's name on it as well as a bib with Indigo and the Chinese character for love. She also gave us these hand made (by Ellen) fabric fortune cookies all filled with little fortunes. In addition to the fabric fortunes she gave us a silver fortune and had put Indigo's information in that - too beautiful. We also received some very cute animal themed rompers from Ellen & Rick and a little photo album for wallet photos. Pam & Robert gave us a really cute little top and pants - can't wait to see her in those. Shawn & Karen gave us a beautiful Chinese silk fabric styled photo album and a cute little cell phone carrier in the style of a chinese dress, and let's not forget the Buddha . Kristi & Eric, who had just sent us a package in the mail, filled with Beatrix Potter books, a kit for footprint & handprint and a yellow rubber ducky, also gave us travel size bath stuff for Indigo and some stacking cups to take with us. We had the best time together - everyone was so happy. The best part was getting copies of the photos of everyone's babies - we all got beautiful girls. We had so much fun that we lingered longer than we should have and by the time we got to our house mom & dad had just pulled into the driveway.

We had a brief rest and left by 4:30 p.m. to go the Simcha Bat of Rou Rou, Shelli & Jason's daughter. This service was the formal Hebrew naming of Rou Rou. The service was so beautiful and Rou Rou was such a delight. More than one tear was shed as it was very moving. Later that evening, Clare had arrived and we all hung out on the couch and watched a movie together. The next post will cover the shower on Sunday.

Zoofari - Thursday May 19th

After work on Thursday night we went to the zoo's largest annual fundraiser - Zoofari. David and I went with our friend Tanja and met up with Liz, one of the other cheetah volunteers. Last year I volunteered at this event but this year we took advantage of discounted volunteer tickets and went as guests. It was a wonderful evening. At Zoofari there are at lest a hundred of the D.C. areas finest restaurants. They line the walkway of the zoo pretty much from the bottom of the hill all the way up the panda area. These restaurants all put out little plates of different dishes so it's as if though there was the biggest tasting menu you could imagine. David, of course, was enthralled by all the dessert options, I believe he sampled at the very minimum, cupcakes, one or more varieties of mousse, Gelati ice cream, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Melting Pot dessert tray, chocolate ganache mini cakes - he wondered why he could not sleep that night? David was very excited because he bought the grab bag where you pay $15 for two bags without knowing what is in them and he won pretty much the biggest prize - this giant stuffed river otter for Indigo!

Red Thread Connections...

Just a reflection on the red thread that connects us to our daughter. Last year on Mother's Day David gave me a silver pendent which had Mother Daughter in Chinese characters engraved on mother-of-pearl on the front and then on the back silver tag it had it in English. Back then, we still thought we would be getting our referral in the summer or perhaps by the Fall of 2006 so David was sure our daughter was born and that I was already a mother to her but she just was not with us yet. I have been wearing this necklace all this past year. Last year Mother's Day in the U.S. was May 14, 2006 - that would have already been May 15, 2006 in China - the day that she was born! There truly is a red thread connecting us. Also, I don't think we have mentioned this yet but the English translation of her growth report said that she loves to look at pictures, especially of animals and that she loves to see animals on t.v. - she is definitely our daughter.

Indigo's 1st Birthday! May 15, 2007

Today is Indigo's first birthday. How we wish we could be with her for this momentous occasion. However, we celebrated her day with her in our hearts. Our friends at work held a wonderful party for Indigo. Our friend Becky made the most incredible ladybug cake and all of Indigo's aunties signed a birthday card for her. Thank you so much! Before work this morning we stopped at the post office and sent a care package to her. We included disposable cameras to have photos taken of her - we hope to get the camera back when we get her in China. We sent a baby soft photo album with photos of us and her pets. We included a giraffe soft toy with some interactive features, gifts for her caretaker and gifts for the orphanage of baby clothes, childrens vitamins, coloring books, crayons and colored markers for the older kids. A friend typed for us a note to her in Chinese characters that we pasted in a birthday card to her from us. We laminated a large 8 x 10 photo of us holding pictures of her which we hope will be given to her so that she can become familiar with our faces. There is talk of travel before the end of June so the count down is beginning. We are back in paperwork land with obtaining visas, compiling documents to take with us etc. all to bring us closer to our daughter. Thanks to everyone who helped us to celebrate Indigo's birthday today and to help us not feel too sad about being apart from her.

Mother's Day May 13, 2007

What a wonderful and glorious day! We were up early and David made me a lovely cup of tea. My friend Tanja and I went to the zoo together as we were both on the same shift today. It was a beautiful day at the zoo. Afterwards, we had brief stop in the zoo shop! Then we did a quick walk around Asia trail to see who was out and about, saw one of the clouded leopards, both fishing cats, sleeping little otters and baby panda Tai Shan coming down the tree in all his glory. When I got home, David had made a picnic lunch for us and we went out to Huntley Meadows which is a refuge area managed by the Parks Service. There are lovely trails, including a boardwalk through some wetland marshes. We had a great time and were excited to see two new bird species for us - a rose breasted grosbeak and a common yellowthroat. We also saw some great turtles and a baby Canada goose. There were also a lot of lovely red-winged blackbirds all about. David gave me a lovely pink t-shirt that says mother in Chinese and English on it. He also had a little pink onesie for Indigo that says "Jiangxi Girl". We also had our new "roommate" join us this Saturday. David is my cousin Ruth's husband and he has been assigned to the Pentagon and will live with us until Ruth and their daughters move down here from Connecticut. We had a good Saturday - frantically cleaning in the morning pending David's arrival and then a lovely party at a neighbor's place in the afternoon which included a nice pontoon boat ride down the lake. In the evening we went to see a scary suspense thriller movie - Disturbia - there was a lot of screaming!

What's her name?

Contrary to popular belief, our daughter's name is not "the girl" which is how we have affectionately referred to her for at least the past 18 months. If we had to wait much longer that might have ended up being her given name but her name is now official. We were waiting until we had the translation of the characters of her Chinese name before we made a final decision. How the characters of the name are written in Chinese determines what they mean. Thanks to several connections to Chinese people we had sent the characters of her name pretty much around the world and already had consensus from at least three people. On Thursday, when we received the translation of her growth report we had the final confirmation. Her Chinese name is Ji Wen Zhou. The Ji is her surname (last name). It comes from Ji'an which is her home city. The Zhou which is a middle name means "state", possibly because she is in the Jizhou district social welfare institute. Wen, her first name, means figured clouds or multi-coloured clouds. We have named her Indigo Wen. We first saw the name Indigo in a Parent's magazine in an article on names. As soon as I saw the name I knew that it was perfect - as my friend Tricie says, it has a musical/lyrical sound to it. The fact that the color is in my favorite color hues just meant that I already thought of it very positively. David took a wee bit more convincing so we did look at a multitude of others names and also agreed that we would wait to see what her Chinese name was. Later, David brought to my attention that the word Indigo also had an association to his parents, Skid and Lee. They moved from NY to LA - the east to the west. In NY, their friends and them had been part of a social club they called Club Indigo. When they moved to LA (along with many of their closest friends) they called themselves Indigo West. They had letterhead under this name and had all sorts of fun events such as Academy Awards etc. I really liked this connection of the name to David's parents, especially since his dad died back in 1991. Additionally, I had seen a passage from Isaiah, which essentially says, I'll gather you from the west and bring you children from the east. Our daughter is coming to us in the west from the east so the connection to Indigo West was fitting. Some other little things happened such as learning that the Japanese word ai means love and indigo blue. The last piece of kismet was that the weekend before we received the news of our beloved daughter I was at a B&B with girlfriends in the VA countryside. As an amateur bird watcher I spent a lot of time watching the birds from the porch. I saw a beautiful iridescent blue bird that I had never seen before. On Monday, when we learned that our LID was included in the next batch and that our referral was imminent, I had phoned my mom and while on the phone told her that I had seen this bird on the weekend if she wanted to look it up. It was an Indigo Bunting! I never even knew such a bird existed. She was going to be Indigo Jane but we liked Wen from her Chinese name so much, and liked the meaning of it paired with the Indigo so well, that her name is Indigo Wen. We might incorporate Jane into her Hebrew name, but that will be a tale for another day.

CCAA Matching!

We have waited a long time to see this posted on the CCAA website! This shows how the families with LIDs through November 1, 2005 have been matched with children!

Saturday & Sunday - still elated...

Saturday we were up really early as we had some major house cleaning to do. My cousin Rachel and her husband and two boys and mom-in-law all arrived in the late morning and we went to the zoo. I had a shift so while I did my shift they all toured the zoo and had a fabulous time. Saturday night we hung out and David did a really great bar-b-que. All the family stayed the night and this morning we had a super breakfast before they left. Diego became great friends with our dog Egan. David and I went to do a little shopping and then had to go and print more photos of our daughter as we have pretty much passed out and/or framed all the others we printed. Also, because it's her first birthday on May 15th we bought a card that we are going to send with a care package. Someone is going to help us write in Chinese in it and we'll hope that somebody will read it to her. We bought two of the same card so we'll fill out two and keep one here as a memento for later. We were going to do more organizing and house stuff but quite frankly were just too pooped.

Friday - start of first weekend as parents

By Friday we had just received so many e-mails and phone calls from all around the world with loved ones expressing their joy for us and our new little family! Everyone was so gracious and wonderful in their comments about our darling daughter. Thanks again and again to everyone for their love and for sharing our joy at this remarkable time. After work on Friday we went to join our friend Shelli and her daughter Rou Rou for dinner before Temple. Jason joined us later at Temple as he was flying back in from Michigan. Shelli spoiled us yet again with beautiful things for our daughter. We had to tell her that we won't see her anymore if she does not stop! At Temple, we were not sure who was more excited to tell about our daughter - us or Shelli. It's wonderful to know our daughter is so loved.

Fedex Man...

On Thursday I worked from the house because we were told by our agency that the Federal Express with our acceptance papers would be arriving. I fully anticipated having to sign for this package. However, at some point, the doorbell rang and by the time I got to the door - camera in hand, ready to take a photo of the FedEx delivery person, the guy was already jumping back in the van! How can they just leave the most important paperwork of your lives just sitting at your door without a signature! I wonder if way back when somewhere in this process we actually signed something saying it could be delivered without signature? Anyway, the guy must have thought I was a crazy psychotic person because I stood at the front door photographing the van as he pulled away. Thursday night I actually went to my knitting class! It was really just an excuse to show her photo to more people! I am just about finished knitting her second cardigan so perhaps I'll post a picture of that soon.