Trying to Bring Sophie HOME...

If you are reading my blog most likely you are family or friends, therefore you know that we are in the process of adopting Sophie (A.K.A. Sophia, Sophia Grace, Sophie Pants, "Baby Soapy" or Yang Xi Zi Ye)...she has many names. : )

Although my blog is mostly about the princess Emma these days, I decided to dedicate THIS entry to our daughter Sophie tonight. It does not matter that she is half way around the world at the moment, she is already our daughter in our hearts and she had been on our minds EVERY second of every day lately.

It has been almost eight months since I saw her little black eyes and spiky hair staring back at me from her little red chair. It was November 8, 2007 and we were so certain that we would be traveling by this summer or fall to bring Sophie home. Now it is appearing that the end of 2008 will come and go with out boarding a plane to China. Unless of course God grants us a miracle.

Although Greg and I have completed all of our paperwork on time and stayed one step ahead of the adoption process, in the end we simply could not control others incompetence or lack of compassion for our beautiful daughter. It started with our Illinois Social Worker, Erika cancelling our Home Study appointment in October (Yep-I had scheduled it before I even found Sophie!!), apparently she was too busy to make it and we did not even meet with her until mid November. Then to add to that she waited a full month after her visit before she even wrote our home study, it turns out she had a full time job at UPS and Social Work was a side gig for her! She continued to make mistakes that cost us a lot of time. FINALLY by the later part of December our Home Study was done and DCFS had approved it. We received a filing date from USCIS in January and were fingerprinted in February. So we waited and stalked the mailman for our I171H approvals that never came, in April we received a notice from USCIS that they needed additional information and we promptly complied. And, then we waited and waited some more....still not I171H approvals. I obtained an email address for the orphan unit and to make a long story short I got no where emailing them.

My next plan of attack was to contact the media...a Chicago TV station and Chicago Newspapers...I received a few responses but nobody willing to go out of their way to help. I am currently working with TWO Senator's offices, one back in Illinois and another right here in Kansas. We are running into an issue now-our move might delay things more.

Greg and I will NEVER stop advocating to bring Sophie home. We will no longer accept any more delays, we simply can not afford to. Sophie is sick and needs to begin her medical treatment plan. She also needs to eat ice cream with her big sister Emma, play silly games with her Daddy, and fall asleep at night in my arms. We are her family and it is up to us to find a way to get her home.

So, for all of you that were too nervous to ask what how Sophie's adoption is progressing-now you know.

Below are two pictures that I'd like to share. The first is of Sophie (in the red pants) with her friend and crib mate Ella. Ella's parents shared this picture with me when they traveled to China to bring her home in April, so I am assuming that the SWI staff took this picture of our daughters sometime in March or April of 2008? The second picture is of Ella with her AYI ("Auntie"). I'm pretty sure that this woman is Sophie's AYI too!



Sophie (on the right) with her friend, Ella.

Presumably Sophie's Ayi (holding Ella).

Please keep Sophie in your prayers as she waits to come home.

BASEBALL GAME!

"YEAHHHHH"!!!!


Emma is just like her Daddy in the respect that she enjoys watching sports! : )


We attended our second baseball game last weekend and Emma had a blast! She clapped, jumped up and down, sang, waved her little fan, ate popcorn and yelled "Yey" along with all of the other fans in the stands.

More Pictures from the Zoo

Emma likes to watch the bears~especially when they're in the water playing with their ball. :)
Smiling at one of the bears!
Waving good bye to the bears...."Bye Bears"! Snow Cone Disaster...
Look to the bottom left corner of the photo. Emma learned on this trip that you have to hold a snow cone with both hands! ; )

Pictures from The Zoo

Being that we live less than ten minutes door to door from The Sedgwick County Zoo, Emma and I "go see the animals" (*Emma's own words*) once or twice a week. Greg joins us on Tuesday nights when the zoo is open late or on weekends.

As you can see from the pictures Emma is growing up quickly. While she still enjoys a spin in the stroller, these days it is used more often to carry our bag and snacks! Emma tells us that she needs to "walk with my feet" and she enjoys pushing the stroller more most of the time. : )

Below are pictures that I took a couple of weeks ago. My PC is not letting me rotate the shots counter clockwise... so I am crying "UNCLE" and posting them as is! Just turn your head sideways and enjoy! : )

What BEAUTIFUL species of Penguin is in the white shirt? ; ) Emma likes to watch the Penguins swim!

Observing the Penguins upclose!
Emma likes to watch the Giraffes too! Cautiously feeding the Goat at the Petting Zoo! : )

Kung Fu Panda and Mommy's PC has a Virus!

Emma hugged me out of the blue yesterday and I realized just how lucky I am to have her! It has been a never ending vacation being able to spend each and every day with her since moving to Wichita.

Emma and I went to go see the new movie Kung Fu Panda last week. It was our first time together at the movie theater and we had a great time! I think that my favorite part was watching Emma instinctively stuff herself with unhealthy concession stand popcorn while watching the movie on the big screen. Her little profile looked so cute!!! She liked the movie, although at times the darkness and loud acoustics made her uncomfortable, so she ended up on my lap for the better part of the movie!

Greg had our camera with him in Singapore last week so I was unable to take pictures to commemorate this event. Instead I thought that it'd be cute to download a picture of the movie characters for this blog entry. But, in my attempt to do this my PC picked up a virus! So that is why I have not added any new posts lately. Hopefully I will be back up and functioning by next week! In the meantime enjoy this (*SAFE*) official movie site for Kung Fu Panda. Emma LOVES watching the trailers over and OVER again! : )
http://www.kungfupanda.com/

On a Sophie note: Sophie turned 19 months old yesterday! Since last weekend Emma suddenly has been talking about her mei mei (little sister) ALL OF THE TIME! She tells us that she will eat doughnuts (a 1X a month treat by the way!!!!) with Sophie and take her to the baby pool. She also tells us that "Sophie is in China". It is very sweet and we are happy to see Emma making a connection with all of this. When we ask Emma is she will share her toys with Sophie she says "NO"...I guess that we will have to work on that part! ; ) Four months after we were fingerprinted we are STILL waiting on our I171H's from the Chicago USCIS so that we can proceed with Sophie's adoption. We now have Illinois' Senator Dick Durbin involved so I hope that my next post will have good news! : )

Happy First Day of Summer Everybody and Have a Great Weekend!

Sweet Picture & Update on Sophie

~*~Emma and Mommy on Saturday~*~I liked this picture that Greg snapped of Emma and I on Saturday~ obviously she will smile for a picture when she wants to! : )



I thought that I'd share a little update on Miss. Sophie who continues to wait for us in Yangxi SWI- Guangdong Provence. Another family who adopted their daughter from Yangxi last month found pictures of our Sophie on their roll of film that they recieved back from the SWI after they adopted their daughter. (I am not mentioning their names to respect their privacy). It turns out that their daughter and ours were cribmates! To me this is a small miracle and a gift from God! They scanned & e-mailed the pictures to us, Sophie looked SO SO SO beautiful, just like her big sister Emma. Sophie has a fuzzy head of black hair and soulful black coffee eyes. I wish that I could post the pictures but since they were an email scan and I don't have a CD I don't think that I can. That was not our last Sophie sighting though....somebody from my Yangxi SWI Yahoo Group posted pictures from June of 2008 a couple of weeks ago. I looked at the pictures and guess who was in 3 of them....SOPHIE! I would know this baby girl anywhere. : ) She was laying on the floor with a few other babies and had herself propped up on her elbows, she would have been 7 months old at the time. Again, I don't have a CD of these pictures so I can't upload them on the blog....sorry!

So, as we wait for our I-171H's (FBI Fingerprints) to come back so that we can complete our dossier (paperwork) these pictures give us hope and keep us going on the days that we feel like we will never bring her home. It "finally happened" with Miss. Emma and it will "finally happen" with Sophie too, probably not until November or December now. : (

Wichita Wingnuts

*Family Picture at the Game. Emma refused to smile because she was MAD that we would not let her go out on the field and play with the Mascots...what mean parents we are....*

*Emma ran right up to the KU Jayhawk, too CUTE our daughter is*! : )
*Here Emma is trying to sit on the Giraffe's lap*!

*8:00 pm and Emma is done....or so we thought....she woke up at 9:00 pm asking for the Giraffe*!

We took Emma to her very first baseball game on Friday night. We went to see the Wichita Wingnuts, our minor league team play. Okay, you can stop laughing now....it was a lot cheaper than going to Wrigley Field to see our beloved Cubs play. ; P

Emma talked all week long about going to her baseball game and we SO excited! So excited as a matter of fact that she refused to take a nap that afternoon before the game. Do you see where this post is going?! By the time that we got there she was yawning and every little thing was bringing on a full blown meltdown....yikes. The poor thing fell asleep after an hour and poor Mommy and Daddy drank their beers hoping that a buzz would hide our embarrassment! *lol*! ; )

It was mascot night so Emma was happy to see The KU Jayhawk, Geoffrey the Giraffe from Toys R Us, a polar bear, an oil filter, and an egg roll....hey you have to keep in mind that we were not a Wrigley Filed! ; P We actually had a really fun time and the 3 of us are looking forward to attending another game soon. : )