Grumptastic Links: Waiting for Xiao Hai

For those of you who may only know us via this blog, Enchanted Rose and I are in the process of adopting a child from China.

Unfortunately due to circumstances out of my control, I am not able to give my wife a child.  There are options available to us that involve 3rd party intervention, but after much thought, discussion and crying, we came to the decision that such intervention wasn’t something we were comfortable doing.

We have been discussing the idea of adoption since the day we got married 7 years ago so this wasn’t a decision that came with a lot of argument on either side.

In regards to China, we did a lot of looking around online and started leaning this way already, but it was the glowing recommendation of a well known member of the community that helped us feel really comfortable with the decision to go with China (thank you Kirby).  He also provided us the name of an agency that he had used and liked.  After much Google searching we really couldn’t find a lot of bad press about the agency he suggested (CCAI) so we sent away for some information.

It just so happened that all this was originated with a conversation on Twitter and some time on the internet at a hotel in Ontario, California the night before our flight back to Oklahoma following our excursion to Disneyland in January.

Many people have given us grief for our decision to do an international adoption but there are factors that have led us this way.  The child welfare system in Oklahoma is ranked very poorly and by the time the kids end up in the system they are usually very “damaged” either emotionally, physically or both.

Add to it the extreme difficulty in getting parental rights revoked and the fact that Enchanted Rose works in one of the busier Emergency Departments in the area, which meant she saw these abuses first hand, made it real hard to take on that kind of responsibility.  We have a lot of respect for those who decide to take that on, but we didn’t feel we were ready.

The process is going to take about 3 years to been seen to completion, so there is going to be a lot of stress and frustrations along the way.

Because of that, Enchanted Rose felt she needed a forum to voice the good with the bad.  So, we launched a new blog:  Waiting for Xiao Hai. 

In addition to it being a place to record our thoughts, it’s also the place Enchanted Rose is going to document the process of her Bai Jai Bei quilt (aka 100 Wishes Quilt).  Apparently, it’s a tradition in Chinese culture, to get clothing from friends and family and with that they provide a “wish”.  That clothing is used to make a quilt that is given to the child so that they are always surrounded by love and good wishes.

The concept has been altered to where people provide pieces of fabric that they have chosen and send it with a wish.

Enchanted Rose blasted many of you via e-mail and Facebook about this project that she’s very excited about.  And we have already gotten some lovely pieces of fabric and wishes.

If you weren’t included in our “spamming” of our friends, and would like to help with this wonderful project, please send an e-mail via the link to the left (under the “call me” widget).

BTW, for those of you wondering about the name of the blog……

We have a really good friend who is of Chinese descent and we wanted a nickname for our yet to be matched child because we were tired of just saying our “child from China”.

She told us that Xiao Hai is Mandarin for “little one”, so it is the name we call our child until the day comes that we have been matched.