A Splendid Reunion

About two weeks ago we were finally able to come together and celebrate the long awaited reunion of Xiao Dua and WaWa. Or, more commonly known as Asher and Sophie. The two of them were able to enjoy and experience each other's company for the first time in over a year.

We packed up part (two stayed home) of our crew and headed out to Cape Canaveral and the condo where Sophie and her family were staying. Excitement and anticipation were overwhelming all of us as we made our way up the steps, through the door.. and finally to Sophie. I'll never forget the way Sophie greeted Asher;

"Xiao Du! I'm Sophie, but you already know my name!"

They eagerly exchanged the gifts they had picked out for each other and happily showed them off to everyone. Asher had been collecting all of his menu's and coloring pages from our Disney cruise that previous week, in order to save for Sophie. He also got the autographs of several famous Disney characters in his autograph book and gave that to her as well. Sophie handed Asher a Spiderman toy (which is currently making a home in his bed), Spiderman pj's (he wore that night) and Frog windchimes from Sophie's Mimi.

It was so precious to watch the two of them reconnect. The first signs of shyness quickly dissipated as hugs and kisses were soon exchanged.

The hungry bellies of six young children quickly sent us to a nearby McDonalds, where we ended up spending the majority of the day. (We had fully prepared for a day at the beach.. but the stormy skies had other ideas!) But it didn't matter where we were.. the kids were all happy, especially those two.

I've never seen Asher so happy before and already in the short time he has been home, he has seen so much. Hunting camps, visits to Disney World and a Disney Cruise, jet ski rides and karate promotions. Nope, nothing could compare to the joy on his face when he was with Sophie.

The kids all got along great. Between the two families we have five Chinese children with Sophie,
Esther, Emma and Maddie all within a few months of each other. The four girls got along great.. and I think Maddie even had a little thing for Ian. =) He seems to have that affect on all the girls..

It was a wonderful day and we are so glad that it was just the beginning of many more reunions to come. Fortunately, Sophie doesn't live too far away and although nothing is for sure yet.. a visit for a certain someone's 6th birthday would sure be super fun!

Esther, Maddie and Sophie

The kiddo's:
Back: Ian, Esther, Sophie and Asher
Front: Maddie and Emma

Maddie sure loved Ian =)

The night we got home was tough for Asher. I did have to go in and comfort him because he had just lost it. I didn't really expect him to get upset because he is not one to show off his emotions, but it didn't surprise me either. Last time he said goodbye he didn't know if he would ever see Sophie again, but at least this time he knows he WILL see her again. The next day he showed everyone in church the photo's from their special day. Asher still talks about Sophie and their reunion every day.



As soon as we came home from our trip, Asher ran outside to the backyard and hung up the windchimes he had received from Sophie's grandmother. Thank you so much Mimi! =)





****I took a ton of pictures and video and put it all together in a movie.. however my iMovie program is unexpectedly quitting on me each time I try to open it. Once I figure that out, I'll have the video up.. but I wanted to get the pictures up for all of you to see!

The Reunion..

Since they say a picture says a thousand words,
I though I would leave you with this..

Asher's Speech

Asher recently reached the 10 month mark since joining our family. In that time he has gone from speaking barely any words in English to completing full sentences. This has been the hardest struggle of anything for him, but he is finally starting to conquer his speech! We have been overjoyed to watch Asher's speech continue to progress and progress. Granted, he still has a long way to go but his upcoming surgery on August 1st will tremendously help.

The first part of this video was shot just a few weeks after coming home. You can notice in the video the high nasal sound of his voice, and also how shy he was! The last part was shot today and if you listen carefully you can probably make out all he is saying. He is still a bit nasally, but you can see a big difference and notice how he is much more confident! Both of these video's are about Sophie, btw. =)

Oh The Excitement...

It's been just over thirteen months since Asher last saw his best friend, Sophie, or "Wawa" as he called her. Sophie was adopted in May, just a few short months before we brought Asher home. Ever since the day we met him, not a day has gone by that the name Wawa or Sophie has not been mentioned. He talks all the time about her.. what she likes, that she was his favorite friend, how he wants to grow up and fly an airplane so he can go see her.. and he wants to marry her! ;)
Sophie is the only part of his memories of China that he has been able to verbalize. Just recently he has started opening up a lot about his life in China, especially since his speech is getting much better and he feels more comfortable talking. I think he was scared about this new transition in his life so rather than cry or get upset, he threw all of his old life behind him and refused to think about it. Now that he realizes this setting is permanent he is starting to feel more comfortable and is much more apt to talk about it. Though it all, Sophie has been the only constant in his life and thank goodness for Sophie's mom Jennifer and her blog! Just today I was watching a video that we received from friends of ours in Washington who visited his orphanage in December 2005 while adopting their daughter. In the video, there's a short snippet of Asher, delicately embracing Sophie and you can just see the love he has for her in his face. It is so sweet to watch and I am just so glad that this was apart of God's plan for their lives. To live with together all of their lives and then be adopted just a few months apart by families who had already known each other through the cyber adoption community and only live one state away.. that isn't just a coincidence. =)
Tomorrow, we are heading out for this long awaited reunion of two special friends..
Asher is just beside himself with anticipation. I don't think the word EXCITED even begins to describe the emotions he is feeling. He just can't wait. We returned yesterday morning from our Disney cruise and all he could talk about the entire time was how we were going to see Sophie after we came home. I can't wait to see his face.. I bet he will barely be able to sleep tonight!
Stay tuned! =)

Sophie, this is for you....

Cleft Update, Part 2

Asher was re-evaluated by the Cleft Team on Thursday.. but we know about as much as we did before he even went in. To make a long story short, he has another appointment on Friday (I think) and we might even be switching doctors. The only problem is that there aren't many who specialize in this field and we want Asher to have the best care possible. So.. we're going to wait and see, yet at the same time call around for second opinions.....

Cleft Update

As most of you know, Asher was born with a cleft lip and palate. His lip was a unilateral cleft, which means it was open on one side. You may notice in some of his photo's that his nose is a bit caved in on the left side from the cleft. His lip was repaired when he was about two years old, and it looks great. He will probably have a lip revision done in the future to help make the skin and lip appear more even.
Asher was also born with a cleft palate, which is a hole in the roof of the mouth. The hole was repaired in China in 2004, but the surgery was unsuccessful. Although the surgeons closed the hole, they did not repair the defect in his mouth. I don't know the specifics of the palate but from what I've been told, the nerves (?) in the roof of his mouth are misaligned which is contributing to his poor speech. (I don't know if it's the nerves specifically, but something is not lining up correctly.. and that's the problem.)
Asher was seen by the cleft palate team in November and they concluded that he would need to have further surgery on his palate, even going as far as re-opening it to align everything back up correctly. He is also sporting the largest tonsils that the surgeons have ever seen and obviously those need to come out too. Together with the large tonsils and misaligned palate, it is affecting his speech even with all of the speech therapy he is getting.
We knew when we adopted Asher that surgery was a possibility, and obviously it will be necessary in his case. As you can see from the picture, he has a palate expander installed in his mouth. We use a key to "turn" the expander each day with the goal that it will expand his small mouth. Asher is such a tough little guy and never complains. Even when we ask him if his mouth hurts (and I know it does) he always says no. He's such a strong little boy and I know he will do well through all of the surgeries he will face in the future.
Tomorrow, he visits the cleft team again to discuss his third surgery which could be happening this summer..

I'll update tomorrow when I know..

Happiness

I've tried to type up this post on several occasions, yet each time I've never been able to fully gather the words I've needed to express the points I want to make. Simply put, my love for Asher continues to grow each and every day. Each day I am more and more enamored by his courage, his bravery and his zeal for life. I wish all of you could meet this special little boy since he would capture your heart as he has mine. How has God blessed our family with such a sweet child? I don't know how we got so lucky..

Soon we will be celebrating nine months since our happy boy has been apart of our family and it's amazing to think of the journey that we have been through, and continue to take. Asher's adoption has taught me many things, one of them being FAITH. Never doubt for a single minute that God isn't caring for you as you go through the roller coaster ride that adoption is. The biggest mistake I made during the beginning was not trusting God that everything would work out with the crazy, wild child we had just imported from China. (kidding....)

How do you measure the amount of happiness a child brings to your life? I don't think you can and that's how I feel about my sweet Asher. My heart is overflowing with the love I have for him. It didn't come easy though- just scroll down a few posts and you'll see my first reactions toward him upon coming home. I didn't adequately prepare myself for what was taking place in my life, nor think about the changes in his life. It's easy to say you know that he will have adjustments and it will be rough.. but it's not easy to ride that roller coaster of emotions. It took a good, solid two months before things started to calm down and my love for him started to grow.

What was Asher like when he first got home? A sneaky, smiley, kicking, biting, full of rage when angered, non-attached beast, stuck inside the body of a seven year old. Is that enough of an explanation? Yes.. that's exactly how he was. If he was happy, then everyone was happy. If he wasn't, he made sure that ALL of us were unhappy as well. I can't blame him for most of it though- at seven, he had hardly been beyond the walls of his orphanage. Therefore he lacked the common skills most children learn as they grow. Life in the orphanage taught him to be sneaky. Being one of the few non-mentally disabled children there, he learned to get in trouble and then blame it on those who couldn't defend themselves. The orphanage told us a story about Asher when we went to visit. Apparently, he had instructed all of the children to throw their shoes out the window, then blamed it on one of the deaf children. They later found out it was Asher.. but little things like that is how he grew up. Nothing really changed once he got home, only it was a different set of territory so he needed to see how things worked. Yet for him, he acquired a mother just as stubborn as he is so there wouldn't be much that he would get away with. Along with his anger, came grieving which was easy to overlook. Two days after coming home from China, he let it all go. He must have cried for over an hour just weeping and wailing.. it was so sad to watch him go through that. I had to excuse myself from the house in order to escape it. He didn't have enough English to tell us who he missed, but he kept repeating someone's name, over and over again. Since then, he hasn't grieved at all.

After arriving home, Asher completely shut off his memory of anything to do with China. If we showed pictures to him of his friends from the orphanage, he would pretend he didn't know them. He didn't want to speak Chinese to others. I am sure this was his way leaving behind his old life and focusing on the new one in front of him. I'm sure many of these memories were painful for him to remember, so he probably figured the only way to be strong was to forget them. The only person he would ever talk about is his Wawa, (Sophie) his best friend from his orphanage. I believe he was in charge of caring for her because of the way he talks of her. Last year, we received some video from a family who traveled to Dandong in 2005 and in it you can see Asher, lovingly holding onto his young Wawa. To this day, he constantly talks about Wawa and loves to visit her blog and look at pictures.

Just in the last few weeks has Asher started opening up about his life in China. It's not very often when he does it, but when he does open up it reminds me of that scene in the movie, The Notebook when Allie remembers who Duke is. It happened one day when I pulled out a few photos we had developed from the disposable camera sent to the orphanage. We have several images of Asher and his friends and life around the orphanage. All of a sudden he started talking about his friends... pointing them out by name, and saying whether he liked them or not! I thought it was funny when he pointed out one little boy and said they shared a bed and apparently the little boy peed in their bed!

One time, we were driving and I had Asher and Ian in the backseat and all of a sudden Asher started opening up. He started telling us that once he went swimming in a river, but he was naked! It's the little things like this, when he gives us a glimpse into his life in China that I love to hear about.

Another time, Asher dictated to Ian some of his feelings about Sophie before and after she left to be adopted. Quick thinking Ian thought to write them all down and I'm sharing them here because they just melt my heart. The conversation between Sophie & Asher before she left went something like this: (and I'm copying Ian's exact words)
Sophie: (speaking sadly) "I don't want to leave and go on the airplane."
Asher: "I don't want you to leave."
Sophie: "I love you Asher."
Asher: "Please come back, bye Wawa."

The rest of the letter dictated by Asher, and written by Ian says this:
"Asher was crying on his bed. He told me his heart broke. He was crying in the middle of the night and saying, 'Wawa, please don't go, please.' "

I share the above because it helps me to understand what Asher was going through. He had left his entire life behind him, and his Wawa, his best friend.

How do you describe Asher? Those who have met him would probably say one word: happy. He's always happy.. and has been since we first saw his referral pictures! I wish I could take on the world the way Asher can- nothing seems to ever phase him and he's the most easy going child I have ever met. Asher is a pleaser- he wants to be there for you and do whatever he can. He's a charmer- everyone seems to fall in love with him. And he uses that precious smile of his to his advantage. He is sarcastic-so much in fact that we call sarcasm his third language-and has been since the day after we got him! (I remember him walking up to Ian in the bathroom as they prepared to get a shower, and he slapped Ian on the bottom as if to say "Hey Dude.") He loves to joke with everyone and he totally understands humor. He's playful- never wants to sit still and always wants to be doing something. That would explain why he eats almost twice the amount I do, yet he doesn't have the problem of gaining weight, like I do!! =) Asher is a great dancer and singer, although he's very shy about performing in public. However, get him warmed up and comfortable and he's quite the entertainer!

As of February, Asher is reading! It's those little Bob books, the ones with three words per page, but he is reading them! Asher loves math but I think he would rather do away with everything else. Considering he started at the level of a 2 year old in August, I think he is doing very well! Mom wants to have him starting second grade in the fall, but we will see what happens. He still attends a once-a-week homeschool co-op and loves his school days. The class is very hands on, and just recently I helped Asher put together a whole poster on China. He continues to be tutored twice a week by our friend Nancy, and also receives speech therapy three times a week. His speech is slowly and steadily improving and I understand about 90% of what he says. Having his tonsils removed and his palate re-done will tremendously help improve his speech. We're looking at a surgery possibly sometime this summer, but more on that in my next post!

We're still working on getting rid of his old habits; he still lies and doesn't like to follow the rules. Some of that is due to orphanage behavior, but it's also because he's a typical eight year old boy. We discipline Asher by putting him in time out- he has a chair right at the front of the house that he sits in for eight minutes, until he apologizes for what he has done wrong. (Learned that from SuperNanny!) We still have our good days and our bad days. Asher is always very well behaved when I am around him, but since I'm not home that much, I don't experience as much of his bad moments. It's always hard to come home and see him sitting in his chair, or hearing from Mom what he had done that day. It's still a learning process and these things just take time.

So many people ask us all the time how Asher is doing, and I always answer "Terrific." He's doing so well considering the amount of time he has been here and all of the obstacles he has faced. He's very intelligent, so he picks up on things very easily. Writing from the standpoint of having him for almost a year, I'd say our older child adoption story has been a great success. (I wasn't so sure back in September!!) It's taken a lot of time, PATIENCE, love, faith, patience, discipline, grace, and did I mention patience? Overall, I'd say this is definitely one of the best decisions we have ever made. It's funny how we think of it as a decision, yet God had already planned this out before any of us were even born! Asher is such a blessing to our family and we are all looking forward to what God has in store for his life in the coming years. Stick around!

Six Months of Photos

In November..

Asher learned how to shoot a gun during a camping trip to Georgia..

He experienced his first Thanksgiving..

And went to the beach for the first time..


In December..
He dressed up in a parka and saw the ICE! exhibit..
He got some Christmas kisses..
He happily drank his first milkshake..
He baked cupcakes with Dad on Christmas Eve..
He experienced Christmas morning!


In January..
He grew more handsome each and every day..
And knows how to ham it up for the camera..
He licked icing from the dish..
And dressed up as a girl for his little sisters' birthday..


In February..
Asher went to Disney World for the first time..
He met Mickey Mouse
He celebrated his first Chinese New Year here in America..
He celebrated my 18th birthday with me..


In March..
He promoted to a Camo belt in Karate..
His karate teacher jumped over his head..
He won two trophies at his Karate Competition
He enjoyed playing on a paddle boat in the lake..
He is playing the violin..
He accepted Jesus into his heart on Easter Sunday..


In April
He tied his little sister's flower bows to his hat..
He went down the slide for the first time..
He became Spiderman..

Just a few photo highlights of the last six months..