Thursday, June 29, 2006

June 29--A Good If Sleepy Day

Thursday, June 29, 2006 by Laurel
Well, we had the best morning yet, with only a little bit of grieving from our darling girl. Our group went on an outing to the countryside today, visiting a rural village that would be similar to the ones our girls most likely came from. It was, of course, pretty primitive, especially the roads! I was amazed time and again when our bus driver got us through craters and mud bogs without the slightest hesitation. But, the countryside, as seems to be the case with all of China, is under construction. There is new construction everywhere! In the rural village, we saw the people working hard at their agricultural work or building new and better structures. Here's a picture of Andrew and Althea in the courtyard of the home we visited. The umbrella is a Chinese thing--and a very smart one in this weather--it really helps to have portable shade.

Then we visited an embroidery factory. They have a museum (here's a picture of Althea and her daddy near an old loom), but they also have ongoing artists working on new pieces. We were able to purchase a few small items for gifts for our girl later in life. Hunan province is famous for it's beautiful embroidery (and its beautiful girls!). I should mention that despite her cold, Althea is eating very well. She was the first one in our group to produce a "#2." That's my girl! She has started to play with us more--very fun. She thinks mommy's hair is funny and will shake her head sometimes so I will copy her and flop my hair around. She also likes pulling it. Did I mention she has a grip like an eagle's claw? Just try to get something away from that girl when she wants to hold it! Please continue your prayers for all our health. We fly to Guangzhou tomorrow--our first flight as a family. Should be interesting.
Love to you all, Dawn

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June 28--Althea's Personality Begins to Emerge

Thursday, June 29, 2006 by Laurel
Well friends, June 28 was kind of an up and down sort of day. We had some difficult periods of grieving, but also some very fun moments. We gave ourselves alot more time for breakfast and that was a lot better. It's tricky getting Althea AND mommy AND daddy all fed in a hurry. Our big expedition for the day was to Wal-Mart! Yes it's true. (And no, the Wal-Mart in China is not full of things made in the US.) Wal-Mart in China has some seriously funky Chinese fruit. The selection is a wee bit different at this Wal-Mart. True to her report, Althea does like shopping. She really enjoys looking at things and people. The difficult part was that she wanted everything NOW--not quite up to the concept that we needed to purchase things before she could dive into them.

We spent much of the afternoon hanging out at the hotel. We decided to see if there was anything interesting on the tube. Chinese TV is...well...kind of different. We were amazed when Althea made a lunging grab for the remote and wrestled it away from daddy! Did we mention she is incredibly strong? Things are going a bit better on the bonding front. She still isn't happy if I hold her, but she's interacting with me a lot more. She still has a cold--please pray for that to clear up.

Love to all of you, Dawn

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Tuesday, June 27, 2006

June 27--A "Baba's girl" Gets Adopted

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 by Laurel
Well folks, no big surprise but it looks like we've got a serious daddy's girl on our hands. (Or, as she is ALREADY calling Andrew "baba," a baba's girl.) She has decided Andrew is great (and actually I'd have to agree). Here he is giving her a bath, which they both really enjoyed.

This morning we went back to the office where we picked up our babies for the official adoption through the province. We filled out some paperwork and Althea had her footprint taken. Here we are right afterwards, an official family!

She is _slowly_ warming up to me, but she was very attached to her foster mother, so I also seem to trigger bouts of grief sometimes when doing things her foster mother typically did. Diaper changes are no fun at all! We celebrated the last one anyway, since she had pooped! (File it under,"You know you're a parent when . . .") I have snuck off to blog while she takes her afternoon nap. At least so far, the sleeping thing is much better than we anticipated. She slept from about 9 pm to 5:30 am last night and took a 1-1/2 hour nap this morning. She is also eating a lot better today.

Please pray for her health as she seems to have a little cold. We plan to try a bit of Western baby cold medicine on her tonight before bed and see if that helps her little cough. Pray for me to continue to be patient with her gradual acceptance of me.
In the words of St. Francis, pray that I might not so much seek
--to be consoled as to console.
--to be understood as to understand.
--and to be loved as to love.

Oh, and how we love her!
Blessings to you all, Dawn

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June 26--Gotcha Day!

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 by Laurel
We finally have her in our arms. This morning we flew to Changsha and this afternoon the group went and picked up our daughters. We learned that Althea's nickname is XiangXiang. As you'll recall that means fragrance or incense. We decided this was very appropriate as she certainly was INCENSED at being given into our arms. Crying is really not the word. ALL eight babies in our groups were screaming! (It was, from their perspective, a mass alien abduction after all.) Anyway, this picture was a rare moment of calm in the storm. For my birthday, Andrew gave me a beautiful locket with Althea's picture in it and I am showing her her picture. She calmed down on the bus ride back to the hotel. (Many, many thanks go out to General Mills, the makers of our new best friend--Cheerios.) Back at the hotel, she was relatively calm for awhile, exploring the room. She especially liked Andrew's PDA as it was playing music. It was not until meal time that the real storm hit. She was very hungry by the time the food arrived, but eating is a huge grief trigger for her. She ate, but got very upset and threw it up twice. She wailed for hours as I just held her and talked and prayed for her. Andrew went to a paperwork meeting. When he got back, he walked the halls with her for awhile. She calmed down when he sang to her in German. Go figure. Andrew actually got the first smile from her while dancing with her to Weird Al's Polka Party. I guess she really is our daughter. Finally she fell asleep in his arms. Here's what it looked like. Very beautiful.
Love to you all, Dawn

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Sunday, June 25, 2006

June 25--Orientation & Anticipation

Sunday, June 25, 2006 by Laurel
New pictures! New info! At orientation this morning, they gave us an updated look at our daughters. Oh my! Was that ever a room full of excited people. We'll let the pictures tell you how incredibly beautiful she is.

Apparently she does NOT have the giant clown feet the last measurement report gave us to believe. We have learned that she enjoys baths (hooray!) and shopping (I call that rather precocious.). And she is apparently very close to walking already, already able to do it while holding on with one hand. (Glad Andrew got all that child-proofing done!) It has been confirmed that Hunan province is the home of spicy food and spicy babies.

Oh, and we went and saw Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. It was the first time we noticed people taking pictures of Andrew. Did I tell you we have new pictures of our daughter!?!?!?

We fly out tomorrow morning to the province and we should finally get her in the afternoon. Words fail me. Since we'll be a little preoccupied at first, and we'll be in a new city in terms of internet access, it may be a few days before I can write again. But please keep up the prayers! I will write when I can.

Love to you all, Dawn

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June 24 in China

Sunday, June 25, 2006 by Laurel


June 24 was a seriously Chinese sort of day. First we went to the great wall--sure enough it's really great! We hiked along for many sections with some other folks from our travel group. Also a fun way to get to know each other. It's so interesting how the hike changes depending on the pitch of the hill at any given moment. There were some stretches that were unbelieveably steep. One surprise to me was the many, many, MANY peddlers on the wall, constantly working to sell you all sorts of things from "I climbed the wall" t-shirts to small dolls of boys that really pee. Then we went to one of the few remaining hutongs--the extremely narrow streets with traditional dwellings. A family brought us in for a tour and explained the ins and outs of hutong life. Very interesting. But definitely the highlight was the way we got around in the hutong--rickshaw! We were a little concerned as both Andrew and I climbed into one of the tiny rickshaws. The driver looked a bit concerned also--I noticed he glanced back at his tires as we started. Turns out we all had reason for concern as one of the tires did break! Andrew would want to make sure I told you that it broke on my side though. :-) One other highlight to the day was that we actually found a place for dinner that had REAL ICE CREAM. A wonderful and rare treat in China.

Blessings to all of you on the other side of the planet! Dawn

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Saturday, June 24, 2006

June 23--What a birthday!

Saturday, June 24, 2006 by Laurel

I guess I'd have to say I had the best birthday ever in Beijing. (I did miss you though, Mom.) Our first breakfast at the hotel--east meets west in a breakfast buffet form. (And I thought I would lose weight in China!) Then we met our wonderful tour guide, Susan for a tour that went first to the Lama Temple. It's a form of Buddhism. I guess the highlight for me from there was seeing a big sign with part of our daughter's name on it--Xiang means incense. And hoo doggies was there a lot of incense going on!

Our next stop was the Summer Palace--used by many of the imperial families. Very beautiful--lots of sculptures and beautiful furniture--wonderful ornamentation on the buildings. ***Tip for anyone planning to do this--bring a tiny tape recorder. We were tipped off to do this and have been taping our tour guides. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for a record of all this fascinating info.*** Our next stop was the pandas at the Beijing Zoo. Many pandas, mostly doing what you usually see pandas doing--sleeping. But some were a bit more active. All were super cute. Our favorite part of the regular tour was definitely the Temple of Heaven. It is not particularly Buddhist, but a place where the "High God" was worshipped. Very interesting indeed. Here's a shot of me outside one of the buildings.

Then, just as we thought the fun was ending, we started to talk about Kung Fu on the way back to the hotel. Our guide told us about a great Kung Fu show in Beijing and then decided to take us there! We ate at a "noodle joint." Very fun, more real than the official tour stops for food. Then we went to the Red Theater for a truly amazing show. We're not sure if they were actual Shaolin monks, former monks or just Shaolin practioners, but whoa! Here's just one picture from the show. It was awesome--there was a story line about a little boy who becomes a Shaolin monk. Your basic "boy walks on path training in awesome wushu way, boy loses path with help of girl, boy feels bad about the whole losing path thing, boy repents and atones with cool iron body tricks, boy regains path and becomes the new head of the monastery" story.

What a birthday! Still...we kept getting distracted at all of these places. Our guide started laughing at us, as we kept looking wistfully at tiny Chinese girls as they passed by...Soon, so soon

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Friday, June 23, 2006

A Day of Adventures

Friday, June 23, 2006 by Laurel
Well friends, we had quite a first day in Beijing. First we had "adventures in banking." We had been feeling pretty savvy about getting our traveller's checks for free since we're AAA members. But we discovered that while American Express brand traveller's checks are well known and accepted just about everywhere, AAA visa traveller's checks are met with puzzled looks, furrowed brows, and a suggestion of another place that "will be able to take those." We went on quite a trek, finally ending up at the Bank of China over a kilometer from our hotel!Actually, once we got the money thing solved it became quite fun. Getting so far from the hotel allowed us to see another layer of Beijing life and experience the truly terrifying pedestrian experience. We finally discovered the only way to cross a street--wait for a local and walk right behind them!

Then we had some "adventures in fine dining" at a really great restaurant. The food was incredibly delicious and so beautiful. Here are some pictures of us in the restaurant and the marvelous food. The orange fish sculpture was made from a carrot! All in all, we are feeling great so far, though every darling little Chinese girl we see makes us impatient to get to Hunan!

Love, Dawn and Andrew

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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Here We Are In Chiiinnnaaa!!

Thursday, June 22, 2006 by Laurel
Well, friends, we made it to Beijing at around 11:00 am in this time zone (10 pm your time). Here's how Andrew looked on one of the many plane rides. We are doing quite well aside from some stiffness and a bit of ankle swelling for Dawn (boy, am I pregnant!).

We are already feeling pretty adjusted time-wise. China is very cool, though it's a wierd feeling to be illiterate.

We ate some interesting things for breakfast at the hotel in Guangzhou. We're not quite sure what all of it was, but the poky deep fried things turned out to be chicken feet. Yum!










We will write again soon.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your prayer support!

Love, Dawn & Andrew







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Monday, June 19, 2006

Blest be the ties that bind

Monday, June 19, 2006 by Dawn B

I know there are some of you faithful blog checkers either in the adoption process or considering it, so I thought I would post a copy of an article we recently wrote for our church's newsletter. It is about the bonding process and some of the different recommendations for those adopting children:

Notes from
the Pastors


“Children are a gift from the Lord” (Psalm 127:3).

 And we are so excited to finally be going to China to pick up our little gift! We plan to fly to China on June 20, returning back July 6. Thank you so much for all your prayers and love and encouragement to us. Please continue to pray both for Althea and for us, especially during our time in China later this month.
 Knowing that Althea is a precious gift from God, we are doing our best to prepare and plan for her arrival. As we have read and talked to others who have adopted internationally, we have learned a few important things that we want to share with you. The most important thing we have learned is that it is wise to work extra hard for a really good attachment in the earliest part of our time with our daughter. We’re not worried about it, but we are planning to do a few things a bit differently than many parents do, so we thought it would be good to explain them.
 When children come to their parents biologically, they have a tremendous “head start” in the attachment department. They are born already recognizing their mother’s smell and her voice (and often dad’s too!). They already associate their parents with comfort and security.
 In our situation, our daughter Althea will undoubtedly think we look funny, smell funny, and sound funny (insert joke here). She will also hopefully have established a strong bond to her foster family. This means it is good for us to be more intentional about helping her form a strong attachment to us. It is much easier to go ahead and spend a concentrated “attaching time” at the start of our time together (the first 6-8 weeks). With that in mind, here are a few things we are planning to help this process.
(#1) We can’t have a welcome home party at the airport.
This was our original plan, but we have learned it’s not actually a good idea:
“A common misconception is that the baby will be ‘excited’ about coming to her new home. In fact, the baby will probably be frightened by the new sensory bath in which she finds herself. All of a sudden, after a lengthy journey, she is being thrust into a crowd of many new and unfamiliar smells, sounds and strange bodies. . . . The baby should have as much serenity as possible and must be in Mom’s (or Dad’s) arms the entire time.”1
(#2) We can’t pass her around for a while.
Most parents are able to let everyone take turns holding the baby; and we have certainly enjoyed holding your babies! But during the first 6-8 weeks, it’s really best if we don’t play “pass the baby.” She needs to learn that these two people (strange as they are) are the source for comfort and interaction. Certainly, a few minutes in another person’s arms would not make much difference, but consider how many of you wonderful loving people there are! So please be understanding when we can’t begin letting others hold her for a while.
(#3) All three of us will be “holed up” for a while.
The best way for us to promote good attachment with Althea is for us to spend lots of time together, without a lot of distractions. So when we come back from China, you won’t see much of us at first. We’ll still try to communicate with everyone through the blog (www.burnettfamilyorama.blogspot.com). And you can also write us notes there (please do!). But don’t be surprised if, during our parental leave time, you see very little of us. Also, we have to ask that you don’t stop by and visit. (It’s really hard saying that, but it seems the best for her.)
 We really do look forward to Althea getting to know and love her church family, but we know a solid foundation of attachment to us is so important. Feel free to think we’re silly for taking these books so seriously, but please respect our plans. It’s wonderful that we have such a loving, affectionate congregation! We do give thanks for you!

 Peace & joy ,
 Dawn & Andrew

p.s.--many, many thanks to our dear Laurel who will be keeping our blog up to date while we are in China!

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Thursday, June 15, 2006

Our Prayer Calendar

Thursday, June 15, 2006 by Laurel
Here’s some idea of what Dawn & Andrew (& Althea!) will be doing on their trip to China with prayer suggestions. The calendar reflects the date in Sioux Falls, so the events of most days will take place the following night while you sleep— technically the next calendar day in China. (Don’t worry about it, God can sort it out.)

Before the Trip
Please pray for our preparations, both for the trip and our home, and ourselves! Please pray for Althea, that her last days with her foster family will be happy, healthy ones.

Tues, June 20
We leave in the afternoon—flying through Minneapolis, Tokyo, Guangzhou, then to Beijing at 9:55 pm on the 21st (Sioux Falls time). Please pray that our travel will go well.

Wed., June 21
Still flying to Beijing. Whew! Pray that we will begin to adjust our sleeping schedule. Please also pray for others in our travel group—that their flights will connect well.

Thurs., June 22
We will be visiting the Beijing Panda Zoo while you sleep. Pray that we will be able to stay awake. Please also pray for our health. Many of the parents become ill.

Fri., June 23
We will visit the Great Wall of China. Please pray that we can be attentive as we try to learn as much as possible about our daughter’s birth country.

Sat., June 24
Orientation Day--Pray that we can pay attention.

Sun., June 25
We fly to Hunan Province to meet our daughter!
Please pray for her as she will have just taken an eight-hour bus ride over bumpy roads, then she will be handed to people who seem very odd to her. Pray that God would grant her peace and help her not to be too afraid. Pray for us that we will be patient with her fears and grief and will find good ways to comfort her.

Mon., June 26-Wed., June 28
Time to get to know each other. Please pray that we will be filled with love and patience and that Althea will learn that we can be trusted. Pray that she will continue to eat and drink well. Also please pray that we will not get sick from lack of sleep and exposure to new germs.

Thurs., June 29
We travel down to Guangzhou. Please pray for our first plane ride together.

Fri., June 30-Sat., Jul 1
Our first few days in Guangzhou will be mostly for cultural trips, some shopping, and most importantly—lots of bonding time! Pray that we will use our time well.

Sun., July 2-Tues., July 4
We will then be meeting with government officials to complete Althea’s immigration paperwork, and waiting for the papers to be processed. Please pray that we will be able to entertain Althea as we sit in boring waiting rooms. Pray for patience for us and that we will continue to learn and enjoy our time in China.

Wed., July 5-Thurs., July 6
We begin the trek homeward early in the morn (around 6 pm Sioux Falls time). Pray for all of us to have good plane rides (the longest one is 11 hours!) and that all of our connections go well. We do not have long layovers, but we sure don’t want to miss any flights. Perhaps you should pray for the other passengers around us too.

Post Trip
Please continue your prayers for us as we settle in at home. Pray that all three of us will be able to adjust to the time difference and be able to sleep (at least some) when it’s dark. Pray for us as we settle into our new life together at home—learning new routines, experiencing new challenges and joys.

Xie-xie (thank you!) for all your prayers!

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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Whoa! How big is she now?

Tuesday, June 06, 2006 by Dawn B
Well, go figure. The adoption agency told us we wouldn't get any more information about Althea's size before going to China. Then today, we just received an update!



It seems she is now . . .
  • 26.7 inches tall (taller than we expected).
  • 17.6 lbs in weight (a bit bigger than we expected)
  • 17 inches around her head
  • 17 inches around her chest
  • in possession of 2 teeth
  • and 4.72 inches in foot size!
Now, we're finding that last one kind of hard to believe. Get out a ruler and imagine feet almost 5 inches long on a nine-month old baby! I guess we should plan on her having excellent balance.

And for those of you really paying attention--yes this is another picture of her. I call it her "mug shot," while Andrew has dubbed it her "oh no, goodness" picture. It is not new, it's also from January when she was only 4 months old.

We should be able to send new pictures of her in 20 days! June 26th is definitely scheduled as "Gotcha Day!" Woo hoo!

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