And Her Name Shall Be...

Lucy!!!  We know that it wasn’t the poll winner but to us, she just looks like a Lucy.  Her American name will be Lucy Siying Jacques.   Much to Tyson’s chagrin, we will not be going with ‘hotdog’. 

Thursday we had our first travel meeting with our agency.  It was a 3-hour conference call with our agency’s travel coordinator and the 11 other families that are also preparing to travel.  We can’t even express how excited we are to be in this stage of the process.  Of course there is still lots of paperwork to do but it is with joy that we do it- this is the paperwork that will finally bring home our little girl, Lucy.  It is no longer the dream of A little girl, it is the reality of bringing home OUR little girl; she has a face, a name and also a personality that we can’t wait to see!

The million dollar question- WHEN???  When do we go to and get her?  Adoption time is like football time.  This last quarter of the game could take its scheduled time to play out or a lot longer. (Or for my fellow ER staff it’s like ER time.)  There are so many variables.  All that said, we are thinking that we will go in July.  Woohooo…. we’re coming to get you Lucy!

The Jacques house is going to be undertaking some pint-sized changes in preparation for Lucy.  The guest room will now be hers.  The furniture has been ordered and its theme will be based around some fabric that NaiNai (Maureen) picked out and will make a blanket with.  Because Tyson was 4 when he came home we skipped a lot of the baby proofing that other families do.  We will need to install baby gates, locks, furniture straps and a few other things to keep her safe.  We can’t even imagine where we are going to put Lucy’s toys amongst Tyson’s little toy kingdom.  Good problems to have, right?

Hey parents of little girls, help me out.  How do you not go absolutely crazy with all of those cute clothes and accessories?!!!  We’re going to go broke!

Random other ramblings:

When Tyson wants to stall going to bed he likes to say, “let’s sit on the couch and talk about when MeiMei (Mandarin for little sister) comes home.”  I think that he may be a little shocked when he realizes that she really doesn’t want a Wii remote as her homecoming present. 

Prayers needed:  Please keep praying for our paperwork.  The sooner it is done the sooner we get to go get Lucy.  Also, please continue to pray for Lucy herself.  She seems to be doing well medically but it is so hard not to be there everyday with her and only getting minute updates on occasion.  

It's Official!!!!

We just got word from our agency that we got the Letter of Acceptance (LOA) from China!!!  This is the official notice from the CCAA that approves us to adopt little Siying.  So we can now post her pic!  Here she is...

How stinkin' cute is she???  Only little girls can make daddies gush this much!

So, when do we go to China and get her?  Best guess 3-4 months. I know, that seems too long.  I agree.  But there are a few more paperwork hurdles we have to go through on the US Customs and Immigration side. Our travel planning will start soon but no specific dates will get nailed down until the US Gov gives it's big stamp of approval.
Nevertheless, this is the BIG news we have been waiting and praying for. Yahoo!  We are sooooo excited.  We can now move forward with doing things like decorating her room and ordering her room furniture - all things we have been holding off on until we got this LOA. We'll update as we get more info, but things are definitely moving forward.  What a blessing!

We love you Siying and can't wait to bring you home.

Cast Your Vote!!!

CCAA guidelines request that we don't post our little one's pic on a public site until after we've gotten the LOA and are officially matched with Si Ying.  However many of you have seen her pic via email, so you know she is absolutely adorable.  We are still bouncing around on an American name for her and thought we'd let you play along.  So, I've created a poll to survey our friends on which name they like best.  Relax, your votes aren't binding; Melissa reserves the right to change her mind at any time and either add or drop a name from the list.  A few names that have already been passed over (unless Melis resurrects them) include Ruby, Fiona and Jar Jar (jk).  So, let us know what you think...we just might listen.

Little Jacques Update

So we've decided to resurrect the blog to fill everybody in on all the latest and greatest news about our little girl from China. That's right, we're going for number two!  So after over a year of paperwork hell we finally received a referral on February 8th; a beautiful 14-month old little girl from Nanchang, China.  She is gorgeous and cute and has the biggest brown eyes you've ever seen.  Our match with her has been "pre-approved", which basically means both China and our agency have preliminarily approved for us to be her forever family.  Now we are patiently awaiting the "official" match from China, called the Letter of Acceptance (LOA).  This takes an an average of 58 days but could take as long as 100 days.  Needless to say we are praying to beat the average.  After the LOA it can take up to three months to travel, so basically we are talking about a 5-6 month wait until we can go get our little girl.  The waiting is agony.  And I'm pretty convinced it will take that long since that would make our travel dates sometime in August.  August is the hottest month in Nanchang (one of the hottest cities in all of China) with average highs of 96 degrees.  So, we're pretty much guaranteed to go in August...

Tyson is very excited for his little sister to arrive.  I'm sure he thinks she'll kung fu with him and play with his Transformers.  He's probably in for a bit of a let down as there is nothing in her file to indicate she is much of a fan of giant, metal, fighting robots.  He has decided to name her Hot Dog, but he's changed his mind several times now so that's up for grabs.  We'll keep everyone updated as things move along, but be ready to play the waiting game with us for the next several month.  Thanks for celebrating this small miracle with us.  More news to come...

An Update from Mama

Hey all.  I must warn you up front, I (Melissa) am writing the blog tonight so don't expect the normal wit and great writing that you usually receive from Travis.  :)This blog is about Tyson so I'll just jump right in to it.  Ty is doing really well.  He had surgery and it was a rough road for a while there.  He wouldn't take his pain medicine and was in bad shape.  You know those plastic surgery patients that you see on t.v., the ones with the black and blue eyes and lots of swelling?  Well, just imagine that scenario on the face of our tiny little guy.  Poor thing.  The two or three weeks following surgery Tyson was just generally grumpy.  We think that he was really mad at us and we felt like he took a few steps back in the bonding department.  Good news now though, things are back to normal.  He's his normal, happy, active little self.   His speech hasn't changed much but his palate is now 'together' as h

e puts it.  Immediately before the surge

ry Ty would tell other people to say 'ahh' so he could see if anyone else had a hole in their mouths and needed surgery.  After the surgery he was proud to show off

 his 'together' mouth and still asked for some 'ahhs' in case there was still a hole out there somewhere.

The last few weeks have brought about a lot of progress for Ty.  He's been to two birthday parties and loved every moment of them.  Twice a week he goes to speech therapy.  Tomorrow morning he will have an assessment for preschool.  This Sunday

 has to be mentioned.  Thanks to a very patient friend (Ashley), Tyson went to Sunday school!  This marked his first significant time away from Trav and I without being with

 another family member.  We just couldn't be happier!

Chinese New Year was less than two weeks after surgery so we had a small get together in celebration.  Ty had just had the packing taken out of the roof of his mouth but still had a face full of stitches and blood, but still loved it.  I think that our attempts at this traditional party fleshed out to look something like a Chinese New Year/American New Year/birthday party event.  We

 tried our best and hope it is memorable to him.  Our decorations were from Party City, our food was a mix of Chinese and American and our 7 candies were mostly American (including some sugar-filled Fun Dip).  

Of course we are just typical proud parents but we really do think he's bright. He's picking up new words every day.  My friend Andrea asked a few weeks ago how I thought that he was like me and I didn't have any good answers.  Just a few days later I realized 

that he has a lot of my dramatic mannerisms.  All day long he says, 'come on mama, let's go mama, oh jeez and oh man.'  With a very emphatic nod of his head he  rolls his eyes at whatever he wants to silently comment on.  Silence is not something we get much of, thankfully of course

.  Our little chatter bug just never stops talking.  I often have to interpret his mixture of snuffely Mandarin and 4 year old English for others.  He loves to recount his time away from me.  What a hoot.

Today it snowed, well, Virginia Beach's version of snow.  When he looked at my car he said 'snowman on mama's car'. (My Aunt Deb and Uncle Georgie bought him the Frosty the Snowman book for Christmas so if you even say the word sn

ow he sings the song over and over.  He just can't understand that there is a differnce between snow and a snowman, too funny.) There was really only a little snow and ice but to him it was a thing of magic.  Even tho

ugh the snow was only on the grass and cars I still took him out to play in it.  Mostly he just

 kicked icicles off of our cars.  Towards the end of our play time I suggested that 

he take his glove off and touch the snow.  He said 'aww yucky'.  That's his g

eneral term for anything wet or actually yucky.

Sometimes he does things out of nowhere.  A few days ago Tyson was eating lunch and when he finished he popped off of the chair and ran for the tape measure.  He then measured himself.  I can only assume that someone told him he would grow to be a big boy if he ate all of his food.  Who knows.  Now he does it after almost every meal.  

We're all still enjoying life in Va Beach.  Trav's mom and dad are close by and watch him when I go to work on Mondays.  He loves to hit the beach or just hang out with them.  Ty is stil

l adjusting to life in the US and being a

 Jacques but we just can'

t even express how happy we are.  There just aren't words to express the joy of getting to see the answer to our prayers and our dreams walk around our house and call us mama and baba.

Thanks for hanging in with us!

Surgery 1; Tyson 0

It has been a long couple days.  We were up at 430am yesterday and at the hospital by 530am for Tyson's cleft palate repair, cleft lip and nose revision.  Surgery got underway about 8am - after a few snags and some resistance from Tyson.  Melissa had to gown up and go with him into the prep room and hold him as they gave him orange flavored laughing gas.  After that he went off the surgery and we sat helpless in the waiting room for HOURS.  We got hourly updates from a nurse in the OR but nothing more than that things were going well and on time.  

Dr Roche, the ENT, went first to check Ty's ears under sedation - Ty has not allowed any medical personnel near his ears since China, throwing monster tantrums if they even get close with an otoscope - and today we found out why. Or, at least part of the reason.  Dr. Roche pulled a bead the size of a pea out of Ty's right ear and it looked like it had been there a while.  He has not been in contact with any beads here in the states and the bead looks curiously "china-like"; so who knows how long this thing has been pressing against him eardrum.  My dad scoffed at the idea of the bead looking "Chinese", but upon seeing the bead in it's specimen container he said, "I'll be darned, it does look Chinese!"  Ty also had the pleasure of having tubes put in his ears to help with fluid drainage.

The palate and lip surgery went well but took a long time by our clock.  My mom came to keep us company and we're sure glad we had her there for support. We were finally called back to the PACU a little after 1pm and sat with him until he came to.   PACU rules dictate only two adults are allowed with each child - so mom and I traded off once for her to spend some time with Tyson in recovery.  We didn't actually get to Ty's room until after 5pm, but it was a single occupant room and that was well worth the wait.  Ty's been in a lot of pain but has refuse to take the liquid oral medications he's been offered, so he's been really fussy.  I stayed with Ty until a little after 8pm last night and them my dad and I left.  The hospital let both Melissa and my mom stay the night with Tyson in his room.  The plan was that they could have a continuous vigil throughout the night and take turns resting/sleeping.  Ah, the best laid plans....

Tyson would only receive comfort from Melissa and got upset and even furious if Melissa left his bedside -even going to the restroom became a major ordeal.   He was all around miserable and was very fussy to deal with.  So, neither Melissa nor my mom got any sleep last night.  And I had to work today, so I wasn't able to get home until after 3pm today.  He has hardly said anything today other than "out", as in "I want out of this hospital."  They finally let the little guy at 1pm.  He's still not willing to take any fluids or food but he was on an IV all night and we can attest that he was very well hydrated.  Standing pee breaks became an hourly ritual last night.

So, it's 5pm now.  Tyson is fitfully sleeping on the couch and Melissa is knocked out in the bedroom for some well deserved sleep.  I am watching over the little guy who seems to wake up about once every 15 minutes, cries for a few minutes and then drifts off again.  He does not receive comfort very well and looks at me like "you did this to me!"  In short, he has been miserable.  So, even though the surgery went well (thank the Lord), the recovery has been very difficult.  Please keep him in your prayers; specifically he needs to start taking his meds, drinking fluids and eating soft foods - all of which he refuses to do right now.  Melissa had me pick up some Tylenol suppositories to, er, circumvent the fluid refusal part, but if he thought drinking children's Tylenol was painful...  Anyhow, we are hoping to get some pain meds and antibiotics into him tonight, so that could use some praying over.  I'll keep y'all posted on the progress.

Travis

Tyson's Big Day

Tomorrow Tyson is scheduled to undergo surgery to correct his cleft palate.  We have done everything we can to prepare him for the big day.  He knows he is going to get the hole in his mouth fixed "together" and that he is going to wake up with a boo-boo.  We have to be at the hospital at 5:45am. Yikes!  So, the little guy is fast asleep and we are trying to hit the hay early so we have enough energy to make it through the day.  Surgery time is 730am.  I will post an update tomorrow to let everyone know how he's doing.  Please keep him in your prayers.