'Orphan' Horror Film Outrages Adoptive Parents - ABC News

'Orphan' Horror Film Outrages Adoptive Parents - ABC News

This was something that was recently brought to our attention through Adoptive Families Magazine. Warners Brothers is releasing a new horror film in July called "Orphan" about an adopted girl who turns out to be some kind of child from hell (literally). In their initial trailiers they added a line which implied loving an adopted child was not easy like loving a biological child. After quick responses from the adoption community, it was removed from the trailer, but I am sure the damage has been done. I am not telling anyone what to do, I want you to make your own decisions. I am not urging anyone to not see this movie or write angry letters. It is just an example of how adoption still has a long way to go in the landscape of our collective psyches, how we have to be aware that there are still many negative beliefs about adoption still out there and we have to be sensitive to it regarding our children. We don't have to cocoon our kids away from it or constantly talk to them about it. We need to have an awareness of it and realize that they may experience this negativity. We need to be able communicate with our children, to let them know that they can to talk to us about it and that we will respond appropriately to their needs.

Adoptive Families Magazine has a great website that talks about a wide range of adoption issues if anyone is interested in matters that concern adoptive families. This link will take you to an article that helps you explain adoption to family and friends:
http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/bonding/community.php

WooHoo!

Our dossier is on its way to Taiwan...it left Washington today! The dossier is all the legal paperwork we have been getting together over the last month. It will be submitted to the Taiwanese court by St. Lucy's on our behalf to facilitate the adoption. It should be in Taiwan in a few days and submitted to the court hopefully by the end of the month. I think we are probably looking at a September/October travel date if the paperwork is submitted in a timely manner. Whew! Now comes the hard part of waiting for updates from Taiwan. It seems like a piece of cake compared to the interminable time we spent waiting for the referral. The difficult part is knowing that we are now in the hands of the courts...kind of scary.

Our 6 year anniversary is coming up at the end of the month and I can't think of a better gift than the one Sydney is already bringing to us. We have been trying to start our family for 5 years and the fact that Sydney is the start of it is the most wonderful thing that could happen to us. Even though she doesn't know any different, it kills us to know she is living in an orphanage. No matter how much love and care she may get there...it's still a group home. Our consolation is in knowing that she is coming home very soon to people who can't wait to meet her and shower her with love and the blessings of family. Please pray for us that everything will go smoothly and Sydney is able to come home as soon as possible.

Sydney 4 months old

Here are few more photos of Sydney from her update. I have been learning how to use Fickr and Picnik. I uploaded the photos to flickr, made the collages on Picnik (using photos from flickr), uploaded back to flikr and then blogged the photos from there. Not sure that I really need flickr to do any of this, but its a good place to store photos on the web. I do think Picnik is great though!

May Update

We received an update from St. Lucy's today. Sydney is now 25 inches tall and weighs 13 lbs. She is able to lay on her stomach and lift her head in both directions, reach for things and is starting to babble. She also recognizes her name and is starting to practice rolling her body. They said that she is "sweet, pretty and petite (like the style of Lin Dai-Yu – a character in a famous Chinese classical literature)." She is adored by all!
In the paperwork department, we have sent in all our dossier paperwork to JoH (we had to do a little backtracking on a few documents); it should be on the way to Taiwan by the end of next week and into court by the end of May- if nothing goes wrong or has to be resubmitted to JoH.

Almost there!

It has been three weeks since our referral. We were able to get all of the paperwork which will be submitted to the Taiwanese court done while we were in Washington D.C. last week...WHEW! We did not hear from TECRO or JoH so I guess everything is fine there. I was also able to work on getting the paperwork together for USCIS while we were in the States and everything got mailed out yesterday. Cross fingers they accept it. Now we just have update a few more things for St. Lucy's.

In case anyone was wondering, here is Sydney's Chinese name in characters:
梁 优 欣
Liang You Shin
(It is prounounced like "Lee-ang" "Yo" "Sheen") and it means young and joyous; Liang is her surname and it is very common in China and Taiwan.

I added a few more links for sites to visit and learn more about Taiwan, so please check them out.

Let the paper chase begin!....Again

We got our adoption paperwork that needs to be submitted to the Taiwenese court this week. We have to have it notarized, authenticated and certifed by three different agencies. Luckily we are in the States right now and have easy access to all three of those agencies. The notary was easy, we went to the UPS store! That was a first for us, since up to this point we have used the base legal office for free!! The next step is to go to Richmond, Virgina and the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth and have them certify our paperwork. Since we are only a short drive from there, we will be going there on Thursday. Once that is done, on Friday we will go to the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office in Washington D.C. to have them certify the documents; then we send them back to Journeys of the Heart and they send them to Taiwan where they are logged into the court system....and we wait a little bit longer. We are thinking its going to take 3-4 months once we are logged in. We are crossing our fingers for smooth visits to OSC and TECO.
Once we get back home we have to work on updating all of our other stuff, but since I am not going back to work (I resigned), that should not take more than a week. Whew! We will be so glad when it's all done!
The timing of the referral and our trip to the States for two weeks seemed like a set back at first, but it actually could not have worked out better. We will be able (knock on wood) to get all the paperwork certified and authenticated in two days rather than having to mail it in to the two agencies seperately and wait for them to be returned.