The Waiting

As many of you know, Daniel's dad will travel to China with us to help us adopt Emily. His presence allows us to bring Sydney and adopt Emily as a family, and we are grateful! We were talking on the phone tonight, trying to figure out travel plans, and it struck me a little more forcefully than usual that we are traveling to China soon!

But the tough part right now is that we don't know exactly when we're traveling to China. Although we have a general timeframe in mind, we don't know with enough certainty to book tickets so Daniel's parents can come up a few days before we leave for China. We can't really make plans for the holidays - we think we'll be in China for Thanksgiving, but Christmas is starting to feel right around the corner - because we're not sure how long we'll be in China or when we'll return. Will Daniel's parents have enough time to return to their home before coming back up to be with us at Christmas? (It's Christmas at our home again this year - tough on the rest of the family, but a relief since this will be our first Christmas with Emily.) In short, we're close to the prize, but it feels far off right now.

Today was a day for reflection and anticipation. We took a look at a Web site of a family in China right now adopting another daughter: http://myadoptionwebsite.com/elizabeth. Take a look at the menu item "Follow Us to China" to read a day-by-day account of their journey. This family is traveling to Wuhan, Hubei Province, as we expect to do in the next few weeks, and their travel schedule includes a lengthy stay in Hong Kong before traveling to Wuhan. We wonder if we'll have a similar stay in Hong Kong. If so, we'll be traveling almost three weeks rather than the two weeks we traveled when adopting Emily. Hong Kong looks very cool, and we'd love to visit - but we're just not sure we'll feel so friendly toward Hong Kong if it feels the city is keeping us away from Emily a few days longer!

As we looked at this Web site, I got inspired to once again rework and update our own Adoption Story Web site. So I've just uploaded Red Thread: Hocutt Family Chinese Adoption Story and I hope you'll take a look at it. We'll be shifting some of our other links around; the best place to get to any of our pages is right here, from our Hocutt's China Adoption blog. Take heart - you're in the right place!

We also browsed around a cool site for Chinese gifts, ChinaSprout, that sells "Chinese Cultural and Educational Products." We were especially drawn to their Red Thread Girl products, including posters, mugs, shirts, and charm bracelets. Don't be surprised to see some of these items in your stocking this Christmas!

My sister and brother-in-law maintain a baby blog for their soon-to-be-born baby boy or girl. Currently known as either Wilbur (if a boy) or Wilburina (if a girl), Baby Bailey's Blog kind of inspired us to get this adoption blog going. My brother-in-law Richard also regularly posts to his own Etcetera Whatever blog, and he wrote about the Chinese eBay baby sale story that's been recently reported in the media. Take a look at his Knots in the Red Thread post to read more about this astounding, yet all too common, story.

We're traveling to China. Soon. We can't wait!