Zhangshugirl

Christmas 2009

2010-01-26T09:57:00.000-08:00

It has been way too long since my last blog. Very busy year for the Casey's. Lauren left for Virginia to College last September, came home in December and is already in her second semester of college. Mike is a junior in high school and gearing up for Spring soccer and visiting colleges. Caroline started pre-school at a very nice pre-school on University property where I can drop her off, walk to my office (kind of far but nice days it is a nice walk) and walk back to pick her up end of day. She has transitioned to her new school beautifully. Her friends, Emily, Anya, Noelle, victoria and Nora are very nice girls. They all like to dress up and pretend they are princesses.

Caroline is a petite princess who likes 100% attention from Daddy. If Daddy is in the house, he is #1. Between Mike and I were are #2, Lauren is down at the bottom, too much competition for Daddy's attention.

She is currently attending gymnastics on Mondays and would love to start ballet. We figured we would start with one activity and see how it goes. At preschool she will start karate and swim lessons. Very convenient to have a preschool at a University!

Everyone else is good, we take day by day and looking forward to a warm Spring and hot summer. We were robbed out of a nice summer last year and are due!

April Showers Hopefully Bring Nicer Weather!

2009-04-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

April showers have been among us for several weeks now and we are getting pretty sick of it. Rained all day on our Easter Egg Hunt at Tuckertown Park. Never mind the rain, but it was really cold too! Caroline was eager to collect eggs but was done at the count of 12. Not sure why, but she was very satisfied with this number of eggs. Terry was ready to get more eggs and I quickly had to stop him from pusing other kids out of the way.

Speaking about Caroline, she is doing great, typical 2 1/2 year old going to school few days a week and few days with either Gramma or me. Gramma is in Florida taking a much needed vacation and should be back beginning of June.

Caroline has met all of her targets and has been released from Early Intervention. Speech, fine and gross motor, cognitive and growth are all where they should be at her age. Still tiny at 31 inches and 24 pounds, she makes up for it with her strong personality. She loves teenage boys and watching all sports on TV. When she gets scared from a show or movie she asks us if we can put on the soccer channel.

Halloween

2008-11-05T16:01:00.001-08:00

Boy did she love Halloween! Lauren took Caroline out in the neighborhood and collected a whole bag of candy. Not good for us since there is a lot of candy in the house. I guess next visit to dentist?

Fall 2008

2008-10-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

Lots of things have happened to the Casey's in the last several months. Lauren is now in her senior year of high school, Michael transferred to private school and Caroline started nursery school three days per weeks. The weeks are very hectic getting Michael to school 6 days per week 30 miles away. With both of us working, we have to carefully plan our days. Usually I bring Caroline to school or her Gramma's house. We have been inundated with soccer. Everyday day this past week we went to see either Lauren's game or Michael's game. Lauren is finally out of PT and is able to play for short periods of time. Knee is still bothering her though. Mike is doing well starting Varsity soccer at school. Both are doing well in school. Caroline goes with the flow and is happy to play with all of her friends at the games. Last nights game was the toughest when the temperature went below 40 degrees. That is when Caroline and I decided to go home and warm up!

Caroline is doing well, can carry on a conversation and most of the time the words are understood. There are still some words she is working on and sometimes i have to translate when others don't understand.

Caroline has been healthy (knock on wood) and besides a cold or two has been well. She is completely done with all of her shots and doesn't need to go back until next summer. It became a burden to bring her in because she knew she was getting more shots. Quite sad when she would have tears coming down her eyes even before we walked into the doctors.

Soon to be our first anniversay of "Gotcha Day", we plan on going out to eat with the entire family. Can't believe it is almost 1 year. Picture to your right is Michael, Lauren Caroline and Nana and P-pa!!

Summer in Rhode Island

2008-06-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

Well the older kids are out of school and Caroline is still in nursery school three mornings per week. The interaction with other kids her same age is really important instead of hanging with teenagers all day. Lauren and Michael both had great academic years and will likely take in many hanging days at the beach this summer. Caroline had her first biting incident at school. they tell me that it is very normal two year old thing. We are trying to explain to her at home about how biting is bad (I recall doing this about 15 years ago with Lauren). Work is very busy for me and I thank my mother every day for picking keeping Caroline those extra hours so I can meet our year end deadlines. Scary thought, but next year end Lauren will be graduated from high school and going to freshman orientation! Yikes.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer i am quite happy with the warmth versus the coldness of this past winter!

6 Months

2008-06-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

It has been six months since we returned from China with Caroline. I have said this before, but I still can not believe that she hasn't been with us our entire life. Most people ask me, your life has probably changed, hugh? Well it is true, our life has changed a lot. We had Michael and Lauren in our lives for the past 15-17 years and now we have this beautiful daughter - Caroline.

Caroline is walking, running, tumbling, and almost talking. She is starting to put words together like Dadda, Momma, Lo-Lo, yellow, purple (she loves to say purple), most animal sounds, book, cracker. you know those important things. Her sleep is fantastic, she goes to bed at 8:30 and gets up around 7. Since the weather has warmed up, we spend a lot of time outside. She is starting to walk barefoot outside. She doesn't like the feel of the sand, dirt or grass on her barefeet, but now she is getting used to it. Our pool will open this week and it will be interesting if she goes in it.

Lauren and Michael are doing great as big sister and big brother. They are going through final projects and exams for the year so very busy.

I have attached more pictures, her hair is finally growing and since she is deathly afraid of sissors i am expecting more pig tales, and pony tales!

2008-05-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile since I have last posted. We are really busy with the teenagers, then Caroline. She is such a trooper going to all their activities. She has probably been to about 10 soccer games in the last week. I am back to work full time, but my friend Sharon and my mother were great and took Caroline for pictures. She really has changed and matured. She has quite the independent personality and is trying so hard to talk. I think she gets very frustrated that we don't understand her, because she understands everything that we say!

Updates....well Caroline has hit the 20 pound mark, 30 inches long and has had all of her shots. She goes to nursery school 3 mornings per week then goes to Gramma's and sleeps for about 3 hours. She loves Barney, Wiggles and Baby Einstein. We rented a van in Florida that had a DVD player in it and she became very addicted!

Florida was great, the whole family went. Not too much longer Michael will be in prep school and Lauren off to college. Hopefully we get 1 more vacation with all of us able to go.

Take care everyone!

Second day of nursery school

2008-02-19T10:44:00.000-08:00

Caroline had her second day of nursery school today. She goes two mornings a week with other children between the ages of 18 and 22 months. One of her favorite activites is fingerpainting! We were not sure if she was going to make it to 12:15 for pickup because she usually falls asleep by 11:30 when she is home. She makes it to 12:15 but then takes about a 3 hour nap! Good for Gramma so she can get some things done. to the right is her after her first day of school. do you see the choc cake still on her lip!

Happy Chinese New Year!

2008-02-08T11:04:00.000-08:00

I can't believe we are going on our third month with Caroline, she has been a wonderful addition to the family. She enjoys our busy life of soccer games, basketball games and reading books from ABC Books to AP Environmental when Lauren is studying. To us she has grown tremendously, but the scale still says she is 18 pounds. We all did have a pretty bad cold that lasted for weeks, and Caroline has been walking if not running up a storm.

Caroline has her own personality which we are still finding out. She has a mind of her own and does not like to hear "no", the bottom lip quivers and tears star coming down her eyes. When we got her she was so stoic, now that she is able to stretch out and do things she doesn't like being held back. Her eating is also very good and probably can get away without drinking a bottle a day. We still give her a bottle before bedtime, just to get milk into her.

We are so excited that Caroline will start toddler school next week. She will start with 2 mornings per week in a child development center that starts at 18 months. We spent about an hour at the cdc the other day and she loved it. Not that she doesn't like staying with Gramma, but she does need some activities with kids her own age.

Lauren and Michael are doing well. Michael actually picked up Caroline the other day on his own. Now if we can get him to change her diapers!

Pictures of Caroline's "Crib Mates" and Nanny at Orphanage

2008-01-03T20:27:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post some of the pictures that the orphanage took of Caroline's friends, nanny and where she lived for her first 16 months. Caroline is in the middle. Would love to know if her two friends have been adopted!

Heading back to work

2008-01-02T20:11:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow will be my official first day back at work since we left for China November 8. I have stayed in contact with the office, and when I did have a spare moment, I did go in for a few hours. I am confident that Caroline will love staying with Grandma a few days per week. My plan is to enroll her in part time toddler school by mid to late February. She loves playing with other kids. Right now we take her to the toddler program two days per week at our local recreation facility.

Wish me luck!

Lauren and Caroline!

2007-12-15T06:21:00.001-08:00

Haven't posted in awhile

2007-12-15T06:11:00.000-08:00

As you can imagine we have been really busy. Caroline is adjusting quickly and we have more good times then not so good. Although Caroline sleeps 10 hours straight at night without too much noise, she is having a hard time with the naps. If she doesn't get a good two hour nap in during the day she is really cranky and tired at night when everyone else is at home. The other problem is that the orphanage allowed her to go to bed with a bottle of formula. (Dentist not very happy). We had changed the bottle to a bottle of water, but still allow her to have a bottle in her crib. We found a toddler program at our local town recreational center and started going this past week. We now have on our schedule to go two days per week for 2 hours. She loves hanging out with other kids, and I am sure this will help her get adjusted to our life. I will soon have to go back to work and my mother is starting to organize her time so she can take over. I think I will try to work part time for awhile. I would like Caroline to get in a toddler program twice per week in addition to the recreational center program.

Eating is going well, she does not like any baby food, so whatever we have she tries. She likes macaroni, noodles, rice, vegetables, watermelon, apple, melon, raisins, oatmeal, cheerios, eggs, toast, peanut butter (thank goodness she is not allergic to nuts!).

The first doctor's appointment well really well, besides the few vials of blood and other samples we had to have done, the shots went relatively well. All her test came back really well, and it appears we have a very happy healthy little girl. On the "American chart" they have at the pediatrician, she is not yet on the scale for weight, but is at 10% of height. Interpretation: We have a very petite little girl that is considered a little taller than her weight.

Caroline goes to Lauren's basketball games, but has not yet seen Michael play soccer. His games are much too late, but looks like maybe next week she will be able to go.

Well, that is it for now, we are busy with Christmas and decorating the house. Very hard to take care of a 16 month old and clean house at the same time. I am surprised I got this much time on the computer!

Six days

2007-11-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

In six days we will be traveling to Beijing China. Work has been so hectic, and trying to get all open projects completed by Tuesday. I will take next Wed off to finish packing and getting those last minute things. I ordered an international cell phone today. For me, not having a cell phone or internet for two weeks, I will die! I hear that we can get on internet at the hotel.....so hopefully I will be able to post or send emails.

Travel

2007-10-22T08:18:00.001-07:00

Day 1 - Leave 9:00am in the morning to Detroit then to Japan then getting to Beijing 19 hours later.
Day 2 - Tours of Artwork Factory, Great Wall of China, lunch then back to hotel
Day 3 - More sightseeing, Forebidden City, TienAn Men Square; check out of hotel then go to airport to Jianjxi Province. We may get Caroline tonight or first thing in the morning.
Day 4 - If we didn't get Caroline, we would get her first thing in the morning. We have a total of 10 minutes to meet with the nanny with a translator to see what she eats, sleep patterns, etc. We have previously sent in a list of questions that I hope they answered. Documentation process begins. We will have some diapers, but we will need to go in search of good.
Day 5 - more paperwork and sightseeing in the city we will be.
Day 6-8 Paperwork, sightseeing, getting to know Caroline, getting Carolines passports.
Day 8 - heading for Guangzou at night
Day 9-11 consulate appointments, doctor appointment, Visa's
Day 12 Group pictures, final dinner, wrapping up any paperwork not completed
Day 13 - Flight home!

Official

2007-10-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is the message from the agency today, your travel has been approved and we are working on getting you out on November 8th and returning home on November 22nd.

Wow....! It really is happening. Fingerprints were updated today as well as Visa applications overnighted.

TA Updates

2007-10-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

Okay so after a stressful day today of thinking that we were traveling by November 1st, I spoke to the agency and they said it looks more like November 8th. We would be returning the day before or on Thanksgiving. Meg was concerned that we would miss Thanksgiving with our family....I said, they will be fine eating Turkey at their Uncle Tom's house! Better idea on when we are traveling in the next few days. Bought more socks for Caroline today. We now have 10 pairs of socks, enough for the trip. I am worried now about clothes, diapers, and other toiletries. Oh well, at least we got the socks!

TA!

2007-10-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh, I received a call yesterday that it appears we are getting our TA on Thursday. Not sure how my agency knows this, but they asked me if we could travel November 1st.....I said like in 2 weeks? Yes....they said.....is it a problem? When you have been waiting as long as we have, and all of a sudden everything is coming so quickly you have a tendency to panic.....Holy crap!

Tomorrow we get our fingerprints updates, we have to complete our Visa applications, and I need to calm down.

Fall

2007-10-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

It is Monday night and the kids are very busy with mid semester homework. They seem to be doing fairly well in school. Fall semester is always the toughest for any kid, especially after having a free summer. By mid semester they usually are getting accustomed to getting up early, organizing themselves and doing their homework. For both, it is usually a shock the first couple weeks of school.

Soon we should hear about when we can travel. Usually 3-4 weeks after we receive our LOA (letter of approval) we get our TA (travel approval). For those that are involved in adoption you know what all of this means, for us, this is all brand new.

It is starting to sink in that by Christmas we will have a new baby. I have even gone to the store and bought socks! You probably ask, why socks? I am not sure, but to me when Lauren and Michael were little it seemed like we didn't have enough socks. I need to pack 10 pairs of socks for her when we go to China. I was thinking of what kind of shoes should we get? I am sure once we get back to US, we will need to have her fitted into good shoes. In the meantime, I think Lauren and I will go get her crocs...this seems to be what all kids wear and the sizes run down to the 4-5. I am thinking she should be around this size.

There is a whole list of clothes that I need to pack including diapers, wipes, baby shampoo, lotions...they even suggest that you get a prescription antibiotic just in case for the baby. I hope my pediatrician goes for this one! I also can't remember the last time we changed a diaper....I think it will all come back pretty quick.

I will post tomorrow, because I want everyone to read about how we will spend our days in China. I think three days into the trip we get Caroline. "Gotcha Day" is the big event day when we actually get her!

Have a good night....and go Red Sox!

Room

2007-10-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

I think it is time that we work on Caroline's room this weekend. We will set up the crib and go out and buy her blankets, pillows, sheets, etc.

Approvals!

2007-10-02T08:40:00.001-07:00

wow, I received a call this morning at 8:30am from our agency that we have been approved to adopt Caroline. Now we are just waiting for the travel approvals. Travel approvals can take up to 4 weeks then plan to travel. Right now we are looking at traveling end of November. We were hoping to get updated information on Caroline, maybe in the next few weeks?

Happy Fall! It is October 1st

2007-10-01T05:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am trying to be positive that maybe this is the week that we hear something. I do hear that the CCAA is closed this week, but they worked this past weekend. I also see from their website that all of August 2006 is out of the review room, this means (since we haven't had any questions) that we should be fine, just waiting for the travel approvals. Anyways, beautiful weekend in New England, went to waterfire on Saturday night with the girls. Watched soccer all weekend. Back to work and school today.....hopefully that call comes in today!

2007-09-24T19:14:00.001-07:00

It is Monday night and no news today. We did talk to the agency about our fingerprints expiring. We have sent a registered letter to USCIS to get appointments to have them updated. Our agency also contacted them. Nothing else knew. Very nice day here in the Northeast, sun was shining, very warm fall day!

Jiangxi Province

2007-09-21T06:21:00.001-07:00

Okay well I am not sure how to put on a star but Zhangshu City is in Yichun.

Where in the world is Caroline?

2007-09-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

I have been getting emails on where Caroline is right now. I have attached a picture of China and put a star where we think she is....China is a really big country!

Zhangshu City Social Welfare Institute
7 Gan Yang Road
Zhangshu City, Jiangxi Province
Postal Code 331200

Zhangshu (Chinese: 樟树; Hanyu Pinyin: Zhāngshù) is a county level city in Yichun, west-central Jiangxi province. It has an area of 1,291 km² and a population of 536,500. The literal translation of the name is Camphor laurel, because traditionally, the city was a major commercial hub for camphor laurel

No news....hopefully Monday we will hear something

2007-09-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

Do they say no news is good news....well I am not sure. We were really hoping to hear something this week from our agency with regards to the LOA and then TA. The Letter of Approval means that the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) has approved us to adopt Hanyan Zhang (Caroline). Then we wait for the TA - Travel Approval. As superstitious as we are, we haven't set up any type of bedroom yet for Caroline. Once we get this LOA, we will start working on her bedroom...... We are also waiting for updated pictures and medical records so we have an idea how big she has gotten. Then we will start shopping for clothes for her!

Isn't she beautiful!

2007-09-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

Let's start from the beginning

2007-09-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

I am pretty new to this blogging thing but I thought I would give it a try. February 2006 we decided as a family to look into the possibility of extending our family through adoption. People ask us why we would do this since our other two children are just a few years away from college. We feel that we are good parents, have a lot to offer, and can offer another child a home full of love, provide a great education and enter a family with lots of friends and family members. Through a lot of research we decided to go the international route and adopt from China. In June 2007 we were given wonderful news that there was a little girl waiting for us from Zhangshu Welfare Agency. To say the least we were ecstatic. Hanyan Zhang turned 1 August 5, 2007. We hope to meet her soon!

September 20, 2007

2007-09-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

Terry and I wanted to give everyone an update on Caroline. We have been in contact with our adoption agency at least a few times per week and have been assured that our paperwork is being “worked on” in China. Our agency has not been given any indication that we would be denied….it is just that the paperwork has to be all matched up. This can take up to 4 months after we are referred our daughter (our referral date is June 18), then after the paperwork is matched up we wait for the “travel approval”. The travel approval can take up to another 2 weeks then we will receive dates to travel. So the magic question is…..when do we think we travel…..our agency is expecting mid to late November. We will have at least a few weeks notice before we go so it’s not like we will get a phone call one night that we have to travel the next day. When we do travel we will be in China for 2 weeks, we will bring Caroline back with us.

To say the least we are getting antsy, we would have liked to be traveling by now. However, (always looking on the positive side) Michael started High School this past month and we have been able to make sure that the transition from Middle school to High school has gone smooth. Lauren, who goes to the local Catholic school, had surgery on her knee late August; so again, we are glad that we have been around to make sure that her therapy has gone well.