About Us
Jenn is now a full time Mom, who also works part time in a store that sells kids clothing and accessories! (Best. Job. Ever.) Ben is the Helpdesk Coordinator for the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. They both grew up in the same town and they both had to move out of it for a while before they could meet and fall in love. Jenn spent a good deal of time in Boston and Ben spent a good deal of time in New Hampshire. Three days after Ben returned to his hometown, he met Jenn and they've been together ever since. They have three cats and a family of birds. Some of them live in the drainpipe on their balcony and others live in their apartment.
News about our adoption
8/2703 - We've made an adoption web site. You probably know this as you're staring at it right now. In other news, we had our second successful garage sale to raise money for our adoption, and move some stuff out of our apartment. We've also acquired our first piece of baby furniture - a changing table. For now it's serving as a cat rest stop.
8/28/03 - We've gotten the guest book up and running (I hope). So feel free to sign it!
8/29/03 - We've decided (although our site has only been up two days) to move off of Geocities and onto Comcast.net. Comcast gives us hosting with no adds, a bit more storage space and slicker tools. We've also updated our guest book. We've also added a huge links page!
In adoption news we've both been hearing rumors that referrals would be coming quicker than we originally expected! So now, instead of planning on a referral in July, we're looking at March or April or possibly earlier. Unfortunately rumors are just that. It's been a little hard not to put too much stock into them.
9/2/03 - Yesterday Jenn and I accompanied a friend and her three children to the Zoo! We had a great time, and both learned a lot about how children see the world. This was especially fun for us as we think our friend has great kids! She also was the one to first point us towards CAWLI, which we appreciate.
9/5/03 - Referrals are in! I've seen posts from families who were DTC in October and November of 2002! That means that the CCAA is now running at 10 months. Let's hope they can keep this up. If they stay at 10 months, Jenn and I will receive our referral in May of 2004.
9/8/03 - We went crib looking this weekend, which is similar to MTV's Cribs show, except we look at actual cribs and none of them are owned by famous people. We ended up at the Baby Depot in Burlington Coat Factory - I would highly recommend this place. We saw some great prices on lots of stuff, not just cribs, but bedding, toys, strollers and whatnot. We've pretty much decided on a crib and we hope to be ordering it in early October. Since it takes several months to order them (unless they're magically in stock) we can probably expect it towards the end of December or early January. We also spent about 9 hours reworking our spare room over the weekend. Between the two of us we moved 3 metric tons of stuff into our storage area, and are making some real progress in the spare-room-to-nursery project.
9/17/03 - Jenn and I had a great experience last weekend. We went to the Autumn Moon festival in Nahant and met up with 30 or so families who have adopted children from China, or who are in the process of doing so. We ended up chatting with a number of people who convinced us that this waiting will eventually end, and that we will have our child home with us. That was a great help. Jenn's been at her theatre job for the past several weeks, so we generally only see each other for about 45 minutes to an hour a day. On Sunday however, she didn't have to go in until 4:30, so we got a number of fun errands done and got to spend some real time together. Her show has a press opening on Sunday, September 21 which should be a lot of fun. We also learned yesterday that the July DTC folks were in the review room at the CCAA. Another step closer to referral!
9/23/03 - First day of Autumn. It's strange and wonderful to think that this will be the last fall we spend without our child. I'm tempted to go buy a rake and make leaf piles, but I doubt they'd last until next year.
10/1/03 - Referrals are in! December of 2002 and January of 2003 have arrived! This means that the CCAA is currently running at about 10 months.
10/7/03 - Rumors are flying all over the place about our wait
time. Conservative estimates have us getting our referral in March (about a 9
month wait) while some folks are speculating about referrals as early as January
(about 7 months). I guess time will tell, and all of this is dependant on a
smooth international scene. We're a bit nervous about finances but we'll pull
through. I can tell you that not one thing will stop us from going to China when
the time comes to pick up our child!
3/12/04 - We get our referral! See the referral page for the
wonderful news!
5/05/04 - Leave for China
5/9-10/04 - Gotcha day!
5/19/04 - Isabella touches US soil for the first time, and becomes a United States Citizen.
10/21/04 - The three of us are having a wonderful time! Bella's teaching us all about being parents and we're learning about what childhood's all about. Where she once hated to be near water, she now loves her baths, the ocean, ponds, puddles and anything else she can get into. When she first came to us she could barely sit up on her own, and now she's running everywhere with a big grin on her face. We've had a few bouts with illness, but nothing serious and in general she's a healthy, happy, bright and funny kid. She's been with us just over five months but it feels like we've been together forever. We can honestly say that this adoption, and bringing our lives together this way has been one of the best experiences.
10/21/04 (Part Deux) I will get the travel section finished. . . someday. It takes a lot of time, and I've been working with a friend developing her website. Hopefully I'll get it done before Christmas!
2/17/05 - Another year gone and it's hard to believe! Bella's made so many strides! She's got a great sense of humor, is still running about everywhere and is fascinated by the world around her. She can spend hours moving from task to task and then spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to tie her shoes. Her language is improving at a great rate - she's putting several words together and learning new words at the rate of one or two a day. We're also working on colors and numbers. She is however approaching the age of two rapidly and has a great deal of "No!" in her new vocabulary. I've also finally gotten around to updating the website and added two more pages to our travel section. About 7 more to go!
3/15/06 - Bella is Three!
6/07/06 - We start our journey for our second child by sending our application into CAWLI!
6/24/06 - We meet with our social worker, the first of four meetings. It was a very friendly and informal meeting as we have (at our request) the same social worker we had for Bella's adoption. We exchanged paperwork, informed her that all of our CORI checks were in the work and she got to see Bella for the first time in almost a year. Here's to a quick paper chase!
7/5/06 - The 4th was fun and low keyed, which was nice. We've got a massive yard sale coming up as we're getting rid of as much clutter as possible - all part of making room for #2!
Jenn has her second appointment with our social worker lined up for this weekend, and I'm going in to the Docs to have my medical form filled out next week, and also to check to see if I still have antibodies for the various Heps out there.
We have multiple forms out to multiple state and federal organizations doing criminal background checks, renewing passports and whatnot. Sometimes I wish I could just drive to each place in turn, say "get it done!" and walk away with the necessary paperwork. Sheesh!
7/13/06 - We've both had our personal meetings with our social worker. Things are progressing nicely and as always we're just waiting for other (government) organizations to follow through with the paperwork. Both our state CORI and DSS checks have gone back to CAWLI. We're waiting for the Feds to get their paperwork in, and for Ben's passport to arrive (which should be here in a week or two).
While waiting, we took of for an early weekend and drove off to Sesame Place near Philadelphia. It was a blast! Bella got to meet Zoe and Elmo and a host of other characters. The park is half rides and half water park, mostly aimed towards 3-5 year olds. We also saw the liberty bell, and that other great American institution, the steps where Rocky trained.
9/20/06 - Our USCIS approval has come! This was fast! I mean, roadrunner fast. It won't be long until we officially exist in the eyes of the CCAA!
10/10/06 - We're DTC! Four months and 3 days since we've submitted our application to CAWLI and our documents are speeding towards the CCAA in Beijing. We've really got to hand it to CAWLI! Our first adoption with them took us almost exactly four months and now we do it again. We've been told that this is pretty fast in the scheme of things. We're hoping that we'll be logged in with an October date as well. I'm certainly not predictive at all but I'll use my psychopathetic powers to say we'll have a log in date of 10/28. Let's see if I'm right.
Now we've got to psyche ourselves up for the wait. When we started our first adoption we were told 14 months. 9 short months after that we were holding a picture of Bella in our greedy little hands. Now, we're being told 15-18 months and there's no speed up in sight. I'm really hoping that the process will speed up but after our first experience and now living as a family with Bella, I'm certain that our child will come to us in the exact right amount of time. If it's going to be a year and a half, we'll once again get a referral in March and probaly travel in May. That would be interesting. So we'll focuse on the three of us for now, and can only dream about what is to come.
11/20/06 - What a week it's been! Last Sunday the whole family was involved in an auto accident which left all of us unharmed but our car was much worse off for wear. A few days later our insurance company totaled it. We were planning on buying a new car next year but had to speed up the process a bit. We just purchased a 2003 Honda Element! What a neat car. Then, today we got the real good news of the week! We're LID! November 9th 2006 is the day the CCAA logged us in. Finally! Now we're really in the waiting zone. Talk about a week of ups and downs. Fortunately we're all okay and the ups far outweigh the downs.
03/15/07 - Bella has turned FOUR! Where did the time go? She's in pre-school, starting to do real well with her letters, in love with all of the princesses and generally is a happy, very high energy little girl!
11/09/07 - One year of LID. And the wait times keep stretching. No one is quite sure what's causing the wait times to get longer and longer - some say up to 3 years! It could be political, or Olympic based PR, it could be bureaucratic stuff or it could be that domestic adoption has opened up in China. Whatever the cause, we're just going to have to buckle down and wait.
12/18/07 - After a lot of talking, thinking and pondering, we've decided that we would be able to parent a special needs child just as well as a non-special needs child. With that in mind, we called CAWLI and set things in motion to be added to their SN list.3/11/08 - We got the call! Meg from CAWLI called us a few days ago to ask if we'd be interested in looking at the file of a little girl with a cleft lip. She let us know that CAWLI had already paid for her surgery, which had just taken place. We pondered this for a bit (really, a short bit, I think we were pretty much ready to travel shortly after we got the call) and had our pediatrician look at her files. Everyone everywhere was giving us the thumbs up so we accepted her referral and are looking at our new daughter, XiaoTian (soon to be Luca XiaoTian).
3/15/08 - Isabella is now FIVE! That means in six short months she'll be in Kindergarten. When did this happen? We had a great party for her at Crazy Jaynes (think ice cream meets paint your own pottery).
3/24/08 - We just got news that our Pre-Approval letter is on it's way! We're also getting labels soon so that we can send XiaoTian a package.
Feel free to Email Us us with any questions or concerns!
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Check out Ben's other project, Arsgeek!