And we're off!

Tomorrow morning, we begin our long journey to China. We're ready. Ready in terms of practical stuff (we're packed, etc.) but also ready to meet our little boy and give him all the love and care he could ever need or want. Just five more sleeps until we hold our little boy!

If you're the praying sort, the type to cross fingers or one to send positive vibes and happy thoughts, please pray / cross fingers / send vibes for the following:

- That we all stay healthy for the trip, kids and adults included. (I came down with a nasty flu just before leaving China last time and it put me out of commission for a good week. Please pray that both Paul and I are in the best of health so that we can care for our children's needs during this huge transition for both of them.)

- That we keep both children (and ourselves) safe during our journey.

- That we keep the paperwork required to adopt Ren safe and sound.

- That we have the strength, knowledge, skills and patience to assist Ren as best as possible in his difficult transition from an orphanage to our family.

- That Ren will have as smooth a transition as possible, not for our sakes, but for his.

Thank you, everyone, for your best wishes, support, advice, and love. It means the world to us that we have family and friends and even acquaintances back home rooting for us and wishing us well. Thanks also to my brother Stu for housesitting and taking care of Kitsya. Try to be nice to the cat, will ya Stu?

Next blog post coming to you from Hong Kong ... stay tuned!

We're in the single digits now

Four sleeps until departure, 8 sleeps until we hold Ren! Wow. It's almost surreal how fast everything has gone on our journey to Ren.

Except for finishing packing and a few odd things around the house, we're ready to go. We got our itinerary from FOI last week and although it is pretty much as we expected (very similar to our trip for Claire), it's still very exciting to see it all in print.

Here's a brief version of our itinerary, including our first few days on our own.

Thursday, February 19: depart for China!
Friday, February 20 at approximately 6 p.m. China time: arrive in Hong Kong!
Saturday, February 21: Disneyland Hong Kong!
(Okay, I'll stop putting exclamation marks after every entry. I'm sure it's very annoying to read.)
Sunday, February 22: travel to Guangzhou, Guangdong (approximately 2 hours by train) and settle into our hotel.
Monday, February 23: explore in the morning, receive Ren in the afternoon!
Tuesday, February 24: family picture, registration at provincial government office, and notarization of documents. This is the day the adoption becomes final.
Wednesday morning: administration activities. Free afternoon?
Thursday afternoon: receive Ren's documents.
Friday, February 27: depart Guangzhou for Beijing. Settle into hotel room.
Saturday, February 28: children's pictures in the hotel, group picture, assemble documents for Canadian embassy - all in the morning. Beijing Zoo in the afternoon.
Sunday, March 1: The Great Wall and the Olympic grounds
Monday, March 2: the Summer Palace
Tuesday, March 3: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City
Wednesday, March 4: Shopping (the Silk Store and Indoor Market)
Thursday, March 5: receive Ren's Canadian documents. Most families leave this day but we're staying an extra day because we'll have a better connecting flight the following day. Free day for us!
Friday, March 6: depart for Canada. Arrive in Canada the 'same' day (due to the time change) at around 6 p.m.
Saturday, March 7 - Saturday March 14: experience odd sleeping patterns with two toddlers still on China time!

As you can see, a big part of the travel itinerary is all the paperwork and other administrative activities related to Ren's adoption. There will be time for some sightseeing on our own too, but I'm pretty sure we'll simply spend a lot of our free time in our hotel room getting to know Ren and letting him warm up to all of us. Some of our best memories from our trip for Claire are just from hanging out in our hotel room, playing with Claire and rejoicing as she revealed more and more of herself to us.

We're also really looking forward to spending time with Carolyn, Marvin and Jaida, the family we travelled with in 2007 and the only other Guangdong family on this trip. I'm still in disbelief how this all came to be.

Okay, I better sign off now and get some stuff done while Claire is still napping. I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

A warm welcome

Today we received an incredibly heartwarming gift from my niece and nephew in Saskatchewan: a poster welcoming Ren! Here are Sonia and Liam with the poster before their mom, my sister Stephanie, mailed it to us:

If you are able to enlarge the photos, you'll see that the poster has the Chinese characters on it for Love, Peace, Happiness, and Family. I am so impressed with my niece, Sonia, for finding the characters online. And if you look closely again, you'll see that the hockey sticks have the Montreal Canadiens and the Edmonton Oilers written on them. The story goes that Liam did the Canadiens first and then my sister, aghast, exclaimed that it has to be Oilers. They then added the second stick. It actually worked out perfectly, though, because Paul is a fan of both teams. The poster also has little cars and hearts on it.

Isn't that the best? Thank you so much, Liam and Sonia! You really made our day. My cheeks are actually sore from smiling.

I can't wait for Ren to see his poster. I wanted to blog about this too because then he'll have a record of this in the book I'll be making for him from this blog. If he doesn't understand when he's little, he'll certainly get it when he's older that his big cousins were very happy and excited about him joining the family.

When I called to thank the kids (and my sister), Stephanie told me that Liam is going to talk about Ren tomorrow at show and tell in his class. Apparently, they are encouraged to bring in something meaningful (not simply a toy), so Liam created a little book with Ren's picture, a map with China highlighted and a picture of the kids with the poster they made for Ren. Stephanie told me that Liam is very excited for us, but also very excited for himself about having a new little cousin. Awww!

Sweet dreams

We just received confirmation that our last package for Ren at the orphanage arrived there. We used Blessed Kids' services to send him a pillow with our photos on it:We wanted him to receive something in the last couple of weeks there that would help familiarize him with us (in addition to the other packages and photos we have sent). Hopefully this will get him accustomed to cuddling with us!

It arrived there on February 3 and here it is already the 11th. Adele hasn't received any photos yet so I'm guessing we won't luck out like we did for Ren's birthday with the photos of him with his cake. But I'm not complaining; after all, we'll have the real boy in less than two weeks!

I also found great news on my Zhuhai adoptees yahoo group this morning: another family is going to receive their daughter (from the same orphanage as Ren) in Guangzhou the same day we receive Ren! They are a family in the States (with a different agency, etc.) so it's very unlikely we'll be at the same hotel as them. But we'll see them for sure on Forever Family Day at the adoption centre, and probably throughout the first week as we go to various offices for paperwork. Their little Yao Yao is very close in age to Ren so I'm guessing they will be quite familiar with each other. I hope it will be comforting for them to see each other throughout that first week.

Ren's last two weeks in the orphanage

In two weeks from today, we'll receive Ren. It's unbelievable to me that there are only 14 sleeps to go until we meet our beautiful son.

As we run around and prepare for our trip, Ren is spending his last days in the orphanage. I wonder how Ren is being prepared for what awaits him. I'm pretty sure the nannies have told him that he is about to become part of a family with a Mom and Dad but does he really have any concept of what that means? How could a two-year old in an orphanage understand that? I hope they have given him the albums of our photos or at least that they have looked through them with him, describing who we are. Are the nannies preparing to say goodbye to him? Will they tell him "Goodbye" and "We love you" and will they wish him well with his new family? I hope with all my heart that they tell him these things and more. Their words may not lessen his pain upon departure (or arrival with us) but perhaps they will help him process what is going on.

Preparations aside, I wonder which nanny or nannies Ren will miss the most. Which children? What games or songs? Which toys or what part of his routine? We do not know much about his routine at the moment but I hope to find out as much as we can when we are in Guangzhou to help him with the transition at the very least.

However Ren spends his last weeks in the orphanage, I hope they are good weeks, full of love and comfort. We'll offer the same on this side of his journey.

Forever Family Day

Today is our second anniversary of Forever Family Day with Claire (the day we received her). It's always an emotional day, full of memories, but today I'm especially emotional.

I can't believe we caught our first glimpse of Claire in person only two years ago. Claire is the child on the left in this photo:

And then she was finally ours and we were hers:

And now we are the royal, loyal subjects to Princess Claire:
I'm reflecting on all that's occurred in the last two years but also anticipating what's to come when we experience another Forever Family Day very soon with Ren.

I'm incredibly excited right now. We leave for China in exactly two weeks from today. In just over two weeks, we will receive Ren. So many thoughts are running through my head. What does his voice sound like? How long will it be before we coax a smile from him? What does his laugh sound like? What does he like to play with? Will he allow us eye contact right away, and if so, how great will that feel when I can hold him and look deep into his eyes? How big is he really?!

I'm also very nervous about all that's ahead of us. It's not like we're totally unprepared. After all, we've done a lot of reading on attachment, we're prepared to do some signing with our guy, we're trying to learn a few comfort phrases in Cantonese (hard, hard, hard on our own; with Mandarin, we took a class and gained a lot of comfort in regular practice in class), I'm doing some reading on siblings (thanks for the book recommendation, Dawn!), and the house is pretty much as ready as it's going to get until he gets home. It's just that I can't predict with any certainty what's going to happen in the next few weeks (or much longer!) and I've always had control issues!

We are self-educated on possible ways Ren may respond to being taken away from everyone and everything he has ever known, and we're equipped with information on how best to respond in various scenarios. But it won't be easy to see Ren grieve his loss (my heart is already breaking for him), and to call upon the right thing to do at the right time to help him. I guess at this point, I just have to have faith in myself. I do most of the time but of course, self-doubt creeps in from time to time. I have constant faith in Paul so why do I doubt myself from time to time?

On top of that, I'm worried about how Claire will do during this time of transition. When we adopted Claire, it was just us grownups to worry about; this time, I'm worried about how she'll interact with Ren, how we'll help her adjust as time goes on, how I'll cope if she becomes incredibly clingy to me (a strong possibility), and well, the list goes on. But I do know for certain that in the long term, she'll be incredibly enriched by having Ren as her brother, just as I am certain we will all be enriched by our little fella. It's just probably going to be tough in the next while.

On the very bright side, we received great news a couple of days ago that Ren's condition appears to be fine at the moment - no immediate treatments required. There will likely be things to deal with later, but at least there is nothing that requires immediate attention. We also learned that he still takes a bottle! Apparently, he gets 2 or 3 a day! I was very surprised to hear this but also very glad because cuddling with him while feeding him his bottle will be a great opportunity for attachment.

Before I sign off, I want to extend happy anniversary greetings to all our travel mates from our 2007 trip. You have become family to us, and we feel blessed to have you in our lives. You will be in our thoughts as we visit China once again.

Meet Kino, our Year of the Dog mascot

Ren was born in 2006, the Year of the Dog. Coincidentally, Ren's future godparents Kelley and Paul have a beautiful Alaskan Malamute who was also born in the year of the dog. In honour of Ren's year of birth and his future godparents, we asked them if we could use Kino's image in some of Ren's room decorations.

We were totally blown away by the beautiful pictures they sent us of Kino to use in the decorating! He is a gorgeous dog, and Kelley and Paul take amazing photos of him. Here are a couple of beautiful shots:

I mulled over several ways to use Kino's image but finally settled on this, a canvas print, with a 'painted' effect to the photo:
My friend Marianne had the great idea to embellish the 'painting' with a ribbon resembling a collar or leash and a little doggie name tag:

I'm really happy with how this turned out. The red really picks up the red in Ren's quilt, too. I just hope Ren's not afraid of dogs!

Claire was born in the Year of the Dog as well. It is said that peope born in the Year of the Dog have the best traits of human nature. They make good leaders and are honest, intelligent, straightforward, loyal, friendly, and affectionate. I think Claire definitely has many of these qualities. I can't wait to see how well these descriptions fit Ren. Best of all? Dogs are compatible with those born in the Year of the Tiger - which I was!