The furniture has a gray/brown finish and looks perfect next to the paint colors. We are still looking for a glider rocker for the corner and of course some curtains. We are getting there....
Hi, we're Chris and Amy Thompson from Athens, Georgia. Thanks for visiting our blog. We are excited to document our way through our open adoption, connect with other waiting families, and maybe even meet our birthmother. As you read through our blog and look through some pictures, we hope that you get some sense of who we are, and we encourage you to contact us directly with any question you may have... or just to get to know us a little better. We would love to hear from you!
Thursday, February 9, 2012
A Handy Husband
Chris has continued his work on the nursery. We have paint and assembled furniture now! We finally settled on the colors that we liked and ultimately decided that a stripe sounded like fun. Chris got to work on the light gray upper and lower background. He then painted the large green stripe connecting the two. He brought it all together by painting a dark gray border above and below the green stripe. I am completely in love with the look.
The furniture has a gray/brown finish and looks perfect next to the paint colors. We are still looking for a glider rocker for the corner and of course some curtains. We are getting there....
The furniture has a gray/brown finish and looks perfect next to the paint colors. We are still looking for a glider rocker for the corner and of course some curtains. We are getting there....
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Working on the Baby's room
We have very slowly been working on the nursery. In all honesty, it has been our junk room for the past few years. One of Chris' projects during his winter break has been to clean out the baby's room and get it ready for some paint! Here are some before and after pictures. You can see that he has been very busy!!
We are now working on selecting our color palate . I think I see a stripe in our future - we are leaning toward the darker two shades of gray and green. We found some lovely furniture with a gray/brown finish that we really like at IKEA - you can see the dresser/changing table here. Most importantly, we have also picked a theme that we love: BICYCLE. I have been "pinning" my nursery ideas on my Pinterest page. It is going to be super cute!
We are now working on selecting our color palate . I think I see a stripe in our future - we are leaning toward the darker two shades of gray and green. We found some lovely furniture with a gray/brown finish that we really like at IKEA - you can see the dresser/changing table here. Most importantly, we have also picked a theme that we love: BICYCLE. I have been "pinning" my nursery ideas on my Pinterest page. It is going to be super cute!
Monday, January 16, 2012
Happy 6th Birthday Hammy
Our sweet little Hammy boy turned 6 today. He loved that both mom and dad were home all day to hang out with him (we had Monday off for MLK day). We love you Hammy!
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| Soccer is a word we SPELL in our house |
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| Hammy catching snowflakes on his tongue. |
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| Waiting patiently until someone notices that he left his ball outside |
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| This just melts my heart |
Monday, January 9, 2012
Homestudy Renewal Complete!
We heard from our adoption coordinator today that our homestudy is complete and finalized! We are happy to have it behind us.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Homestudy Interview
We completed the last step in the homestudy renewal process today. Our social worker came out to the house for another visit. We went through our homestudy and updated the information and chatted about how the process has been so far. All that is left is for our social worker to send in our update and we will be good to go for another year.
Hoping that 2012 will be our year!!
Hoping that 2012 will be our year!!
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Nursery Library
To set up a nursery or not set up a nursery -- hmmm? Right now we are not planning to officially set up our nursery until after we come home with our baby. That doesn't mean that we aren't thinking about ideas/themes/colors/furniture though! One thing that I am starting is our nursery library. We are avid readers and know without a doubt that reading will be very important in our home. We asked out facebook followers on our adoption page what books they liked when they were little. We got so many great suggestions -- many of which I already have collected! Here are just a few....
Please leave a comment with other favorites that we may have missed! I started a board on Pinterest to keep track as well.
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| This was my FAVORITE book when I was little!! |
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| This was Chris' favorite book! |
Please leave a comment with other favorites that we may have missed! I started a board on Pinterest to keep track as well.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Homestudy Renewal Update
We have been patiently waiting for our FBI background check to be sent to our agency. The FBI informed me a few weeks ago that my prints were really difficult to read and had to be sent to a specialty unit. They estimated that it could take up to 2 weeks for them to process them. If they were unable to read them, I would have to submit another set and do the whole thing over - ugh. Luckily, the specialty unit came through and our background report arrived at the IAC this week. Yeah!
The next and final step will be to complete another home visit with our social worker. She should be calling to set up the visit any day now.
I also wanted to post a few pictures from our Thanksgiving down in Florida. We managed to see both sides of the family and all of our siblings!! We were busy.
The next and final step will be to complete another home visit with our social worker. She should be calling to set up the visit any day now.
I also wanted to post a few pictures from our Thanksgiving down in Florida. We managed to see both sides of the family and all of our siblings!! We were busy.
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| Chris with his family |
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| Our extended furry family Sunny and Chloe |
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| Dad carving the turkey |
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| Chris working on the brussel sprouts |
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| stuffing and smashed potatoes |
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| Green bean casserole and scalloped corn with oysters |
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| Out on the town for some seafood |
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| Kelley and dad get the lobster |
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| Amy and her family |
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| HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!! |
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Interview Project -- Meet Alison!
Today is the Adoption Bloggers Interview Project reveal day! You can read through a whole list of interviews completed by bloggers in the adoption community. More will be posted throughout the day so check back (to the link above)!
I was matched up with Alison Gresik from Canada. She and her husband have two children adopted from China. Lia is 5 1/2 and Nico will be celebrating his 4th birthday next week. They have just embarked on a great adventure - they sold their house and are spending the next few years traveling and living abroad. They are currently residing in Malaysia. I am excited to keep up with their travels and to continue reading about all of their adventures through their blog. Below are the questions that I had for Alison.
How did you and your husband decide to adopt internationally? What drew you to China?
There's a certain romance around adopting internationally that we weren't immune to. Hearing stories of unwanted girl children in China really tugs on one's heartstrings. Several friends adopted Chinese children, so we got to know about the program that way. There was a large, reputable agency in our hometown that had facilitated many adoptions from China and elsewhere, so we felt there would be a good adoptive community around us. And at that time, the China program was still placing many children, so it seemed like there was a need for families.
I think we were also attracted to creating a family that had ties to another country. We liked the idea of traveling to adopt our kids and we were open to living overseas in the future.
We knew that interracial adoption wouldn't be an easy road for us or our kids, but we were up for the challenge and how we would grow from it.
Knowing what we know now about corruption, trafficking and coercion in international adoption, I'm not sure whether we would have made the same choice. Our romantic illusions have definitely been stripped away. There is clearly much more need for adoptable children than for adoptive families in the China program now. That's partly why we switched to the Special Needs stream when we adopted our second child, Nico.
What advice would you give to waiting adoptive parents?
I think one mistake I made was in getting myself very worked up about the future. I read a lot of blogs by adoptees, first mothers, and adoptive parents, and started to worry: What if my daughter gets angry about her adoption? What if we can't find her birth family? What if she was stolen from her parents? I spent a lot of psychic energy on stuff that I had no control over at that time.
So my advice would be ~ don't get anxious about something that hasn't happened. Waiting is a good time to get educated about adoption issues, make connections with other adoptive families, and talk with your partner about how you want to parent. But if you find yourself going crazy with oh no and what ifs, ease up on yourself. You want to prepare but not tie yourself up in knots. For better or worse, you've made a choice for a particular path, and you might as well commit to it fully, whatever it brings.
Your kids are well on their way to being seasoned world travelers. What advice do you have about traveling with kids?
The more you do it, the easier it gets for everyone. We had no choice but to do long overseas flights with our kids to bring them home from China, and once you've done 24 hours of travel with an infant or a toddler followed by jet lag, everything else seems like a piece of cake.
Every child has a different tolerance for the stresses of travel, so we tried to take our lead from what they were comfortable with while still getting them acclimatized to car trips and sleeping in strange beds and eating different food. I think it helps that they associate travel with fun and lots of Mommy/Daddy attention. I actually believe I'm a better parent when we're traveling, because I'm focused on being present with the kids and showing them a good time.
Preparation helps a lot ~ having food and toys and changes of clothing. We also talk about our past trips, look at maps and photos, and dream about where we'll go in the future. When Shawn and I have a positive, excited outlook, the kids pick up on that.
In what ways have you (or do you plan) to build a sense of racial and/or cultural identity in your kids?
Here's a little of what we've done so far:
Spend time in China: We brought Lia on our second adoption trip, and then returned to Beijing for 3 months while Shawn was on parental leave.
Learn Mandarin: Lia had Chinese lessons in Ottawa, and we sent her to a Chinese kindergarten in Beijing, and now she gets some Mandarin at school in Malaysia. Ideally we would like to have both kids in a Mandarin immersion program. Language will be such an important link to their birth family and culture. Shawn and I are learning a little by osmosis! We would love to do some intense language study at some point.
Seek racial diversity in our community: We chose an Ottawa kindergarten that was more diverse than others so that Lia wouldn't be the only student of colour in her class. One reason we moved to Malaysia this year was because there's a mix of ethnicities, including Malays, Chinese, Indians, and westerners.
Talk about racial differences: We discuss skin colour, hair colour, eye shape, and other racial identifiers (Lia calls her skin "golden" and ours "peachy orange"). We talk about the difference between ethnicity and citizenship. We name the different countries that our friends come from.
How does Lia explain her adoption or being adopted to others?
You'd be surprised at how rarely it comes up. Perhaps it's because the kids are young and their friends just accept what our family looks like without questioning it. But I didn't hear any stories from Lia or her kindergarten teacher about adoption being discussed in the classroom. And I've only ever heard a few comments on the playground. Lia mostly ignores them and I end up explaining to kids that Lia was born in China and now we're her parents.
Have you had to deal with intrusive questions or comments from others? Do you have any good comebacks :)
Yep, we've had our share! The worst was a health practitioner who kept exclaiming, "How did you get a boy from China?" while the kids were in the room. Yeah, right, like I'm going to explain to you that my son was abandoned because of his cleft palate, unlike my daughter who was abandoned because she's a girl? I just pretended I didn't understand his question until he stopped asking.
My go-to comeback to intrusive questions is "Why do you ask?" Usually people have some personal connection to adoption, which is why they are curious. If they're just being nosy, that comeback brings them up short.
What was the hardest part about going from a family of three to a family of four? What was the biggest joy?
We felt it was really important for our kids to have a sibling who shared their ethnicity and adoptive experience, so they wouldn't feel alone in the family. Shawn and I really cherish our relationships with our brothers and sisters, and we wanted that for our children too.
Lia struggled with giving up her place as the only child. She was almost three when we adopted Nico, and it kicked off a difficult period of tantrums and disrupted sleep. She would also get angry with Nico and grab his toys or hit him. She was jealous of the extra attention he got, especially around his surgeries. One way that we dealt with this was by doing "special time" with her, one-on-one time with a parent where she got to be in charge.
The biggest joy of having two kids is seeing their relationship blossom. The first night we put Nico to bed in his crib, Lia decided that she wanted to go to sleep at the same time, and crawled into her bed voluntarily, which never happens! I remember going in after they were both asleep and being so happy to see them as a pair, a partnership, separate from Shawn and me. I think Nico's transition was made easier because of Lia ~ he loved watching her and being around her. Now they get along really well, play elaborate imaginative games, and giggle and dance with each other. That makes it all worth it.
-------------
Thanks so much Alison - I enjoyed working with you and reading your answers. There may be some follow up questions down the road :) Best wishes to you and your family -- and HAPPY BIRTHDAY NICO!!
You can read the questions that Alison had for me on her blog Many Lives.
I was matched up with Alison Gresik from Canada. She and her husband have two children adopted from China. Lia is 5 1/2 and Nico will be celebrating his 4th birthday next week. They have just embarked on a great adventure - they sold their house and are spending the next few years traveling and living abroad. They are currently residing in Malaysia. I am excited to keep up with their travels and to continue reading about all of their adventures through their blog. Below are the questions that I had for Alison.
How did you and your husband decide to adopt internationally? What drew you to China?
There's a certain romance around adopting internationally that we weren't immune to. Hearing stories of unwanted girl children in China really tugs on one's heartstrings. Several friends adopted Chinese children, so we got to know about the program that way. There was a large, reputable agency in our hometown that had facilitated many adoptions from China and elsewhere, so we felt there would be a good adoptive community around us. And at that time, the China program was still placing many children, so it seemed like there was a need for families.
I think we were also attracted to creating a family that had ties to another country. We liked the idea of traveling to adopt our kids and we were open to living overseas in the future.
We knew that interracial adoption wouldn't be an easy road for us or our kids, but we were up for the challenge and how we would grow from it.
Knowing what we know now about corruption, trafficking and coercion in international adoption, I'm not sure whether we would have made the same choice. Our romantic illusions have definitely been stripped away. There is clearly much more need for adoptable children than for adoptive families in the China program now. That's partly why we switched to the Special Needs stream when we adopted our second child, Nico.
What advice would you give to waiting adoptive parents?
I think one mistake I made was in getting myself very worked up about the future. I read a lot of blogs by adoptees, first mothers, and adoptive parents, and started to worry: What if my daughter gets angry about her adoption? What if we can't find her birth family? What if she was stolen from her parents? I spent a lot of psychic energy on stuff that I had no control over at that time.
So my advice would be ~ don't get anxious about something that hasn't happened. Waiting is a good time to get educated about adoption issues, make connections with other adoptive families, and talk with your partner about how you want to parent. But if you find yourself going crazy with oh no and what ifs, ease up on yourself. You want to prepare but not tie yourself up in knots. For better or worse, you've made a choice for a particular path, and you might as well commit to it fully, whatever it brings.
Your kids are well on their way to being seasoned world travelers. What advice do you have about traveling with kids?
The more you do it, the easier it gets for everyone. We had no choice but to do long overseas flights with our kids to bring them home from China, and once you've done 24 hours of travel with an infant or a toddler followed by jet lag, everything else seems like a piece of cake.
Every child has a different tolerance for the stresses of travel, so we tried to take our lead from what they were comfortable with while still getting them acclimatized to car trips and sleeping in strange beds and eating different food. I think it helps that they associate travel with fun and lots of Mommy/Daddy attention. I actually believe I'm a better parent when we're traveling, because I'm focused on being present with the kids and showing them a good time.
Preparation helps a lot ~ having food and toys and changes of clothing. We also talk about our past trips, look at maps and photos, and dream about where we'll go in the future. When Shawn and I have a positive, excited outlook, the kids pick up on that.
In what ways have you (or do you plan) to build a sense of racial and/or cultural identity in your kids?
Here's a little of what we've done so far:
Spend time in China: We brought Lia on our second adoption trip, and then returned to Beijing for 3 months while Shawn was on parental leave.
Learn Mandarin: Lia had Chinese lessons in Ottawa, and we sent her to a Chinese kindergarten in Beijing, and now she gets some Mandarin at school in Malaysia. Ideally we would like to have both kids in a Mandarin immersion program. Language will be such an important link to their birth family and culture. Shawn and I are learning a little by osmosis! We would love to do some intense language study at some point.
Seek racial diversity in our community: We chose an Ottawa kindergarten that was more diverse than others so that Lia wouldn't be the only student of colour in her class. One reason we moved to Malaysia this year was because there's a mix of ethnicities, including Malays, Chinese, Indians, and westerners.
Talk about racial differences: We discuss skin colour, hair colour, eye shape, and other racial identifiers (Lia calls her skin "golden" and ours "peachy orange"). We talk about the difference between ethnicity and citizenship. We name the different countries that our friends come from.
How does Lia explain her adoption or being adopted to others?
You'd be surprised at how rarely it comes up. Perhaps it's because the kids are young and their friends just accept what our family looks like without questioning it. But I didn't hear any stories from Lia or her kindergarten teacher about adoption being discussed in the classroom. And I've only ever heard a few comments on the playground. Lia mostly ignores them and I end up explaining to kids that Lia was born in China and now we're her parents.
Have you had to deal with intrusive questions or comments from others? Do you have any good comebacks :)
Yep, we've had our share! The worst was a health practitioner who kept exclaiming, "How did you get a boy from China?" while the kids were in the room. Yeah, right, like I'm going to explain to you that my son was abandoned because of his cleft palate, unlike my daughter who was abandoned because she's a girl? I just pretended I didn't understand his question until he stopped asking.
My go-to comeback to intrusive questions is "Why do you ask?" Usually people have some personal connection to adoption, which is why they are curious. If they're just being nosy, that comeback brings them up short.
What was the hardest part about going from a family of three to a family of four? What was the biggest joy?
We felt it was really important for our kids to have a sibling who shared their ethnicity and adoptive experience, so they wouldn't feel alone in the family. Shawn and I really cherish our relationships with our brothers and sisters, and we wanted that for our children too.
Lia struggled with giving up her place as the only child. She was almost three when we adopted Nico, and it kicked off a difficult period of tantrums and disrupted sleep. She would also get angry with Nico and grab his toys or hit him. She was jealous of the extra attention he got, especially around his surgeries. One way that we dealt with this was by doing "special time" with her, one-on-one time with a parent where she got to be in charge.
The biggest joy of having two kids is seeing their relationship blossom. The first night we put Nico to bed in his crib, Lia decided that she wanted to go to sleep at the same time, and crawled into her bed voluntarily, which never happens! I remember going in after they were both asleep and being so happy to see them as a pair, a partnership, separate from Shawn and me. I think Nico's transition was made easier because of Lia ~ he loved watching her and being around her. Now they get along really well, play elaborate imaginative games, and giggle and dance with each other. That makes it all worth it.
-------------
Thanks so much Alison - I enjoyed working with you and reading your answers. There may be some follow up questions down the road :) Best wishes to you and your family -- and HAPPY BIRTHDAY NICO!!
You can read the questions that Alison had for me on her blog Many Lives.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Old Friends Are Good For The Soul
We just got back from a great weekend hanging out with old friends. Martha and I were roommates way back (11 years ago) when we were living in Bozeman, MT on Harrison Street. There are a group of six of us that all lived together - somehow over the years we have all remained ridiculously tight as a group of friends. This is truly a feat because we now span the nation living in Oregon, Montana, Maine, Georgia, and Florida. Martha and I and our familes were able to hang out for the weekend for some camping, lounging around enjoying the fall weather, coffee drinking, ball throwing, and marshmallow roasting. We headed up to Ellijay to Chris' uncle's vineyard. We enjoyed beautiful weather - the trees were at the peak of fall colors, the air was crisp, the breeze was not yet cold, and the sun was out. The temperatures did dip below 30 degrees but Chris and I were nice and snug with the pups in our tent. Martha, Paul and Emmie slept up in the barn (the guest house above the barn). I mean, they ARE from Florida so we excused them from being wimps about not wanting to camp outside. There is something so warm and comfortable about being with old friends. I just love them so much and felt like my spirit was full after our weekend together.
As you will be able to tell from the pictures. The ENTIRE Thompson family is completely head over heels in love with Emmie. She just turned two and just melted our hearts - even the dogs adored her. She called Beano - "Bean-do". Everytime she heard her name, Beano's ears would drop back and her butt would start to wiggle. Emmie especially liked Hammy and yelled after him all the time. Hammy was so happy to finally find someone that was willing to throw the ball to him ALL DAY LONG. We might have gone overboard with our pictures of Emmie - but c'mon she is so stinking cute!!!
We had so much fun with Martha, Paul, and Emmie! We love you all so much xoxoxox
You can see some more pics here
As you will be able to tell from the pictures. The ENTIRE Thompson family is completely head over heels in love with Emmie. She just turned two and just melted our hearts - even the dogs adored her. She called Beano - "Bean-do". Everytime she heard her name, Beano's ears would drop back and her butt would start to wiggle. Emmie especially liked Hammy and yelled after him all the time. Hammy was so happy to finally find someone that was willing to throw the ball to him ALL DAY LONG. We might have gone overboard with our pictures of Emmie - but c'mon she is so stinking cute!!!
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| Martha and I - I love this woman!!! |
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| Emmie helps me make pumpkin pancakes for breakfast |
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| See what I mean?? She is sooooo cute. |
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| Chris and Emmie work on some mac and cheese |
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| We love Dr. Seuss |
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| Having some fun putting up the tent |
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| Em roasting her very first marshmallow |
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| We taught her all about s'mores!! |
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| YUM! |
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| more marshmallows |
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| The Kutters - don't they look tough?? |
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| Em loved it when Beano would hop into the tent |
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| Silly "Bean-do" |
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| Hammy giving a kiss |
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| Hammy and Em played lots of ball |
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| Hammy waiting patiently |
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| Taking a water break - a frisbee works well for a water bowl |
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| This is the face you get if you tell Emmie to smile - love it!! |
We had so much fun with Martha, Paul, and Emmie! We love you all so much xoxoxox
You can see some more pics here
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