Some Updates on Emily and Travel

We've recently received additional information that is helping us get ready for our journey to China. Just today we received our visas, which permit us to travel to China. Yesterday we received a little more information about Emily, including how and where she was found and taken into the orphanage's care. We also received her immunization records. Yesterday, separately, we received confirmation that our U.S. Consulate appointment has been set. And just last Thursday we received confirmation that CCAA, the Chinese adoption agency, had submitted the necessary approvals to enable the Consulate appointment to be set. As you can see, the past several days have been a little hectic!

As you probably know, my dad will accompany us to China as a travel companion. He will help us take care of Sydney while we help Emily adjust to her family - and while we complete the flurry of paperwork in China! My mom will stay at our house in Virginia while the rest of us are in China. She has been charged with the tasks of dropping us off and picking us up at the airport, taking care of the house and the cat, checking the mail, putting out the garbage, and collecting the paper each morning. Without my parents' support, we could not travel as a family to adopt Emily. Traveling as a family has been our goal since we adopted Sydney, so we are grateful beyond our ability to express. Please keep us all in your thoughts and prayers.

We estimate that our travel to China will begin in the next few weeks. We don't know our port of entry to China, or even exactly where we'll stay during our visit in China, but we do know when our appointment with the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou is scheduled. This date is significant, for without this appointment none of our other arrangements could be made. We estimate that we will depart China a couple of days after our Consulate appointment.

About Emily: We received from the orphanage "Lin Hui's Development Report." She was apparently discovered on December 10, 2004, at the front gate of a candy factory in the city of Xiaogan. She was dressed in a black cotton-padded diaper and wrapped in a red baby quilt. She was taken to the local police station, then on to the orphanage for care. Doctors at the orphanage examined her, found her to be in good health, and estimated that she had been born the day before, on December 9. After being bathed, she was placed in the "loving care of an experienced foster family." She was named Hui, which means sunlight, and the report includes this warm sentiment: "We hope her life will be as brilliant as the light of the sun." The report offers a prose version of information we received in various forms in our match referral. It concludes with the following affirmation: "Lin Hui is a smart, pretty and lovely little girl. We all love her and we hope she would be healthy and happy."

In the coming weeks, we will finalize our travel itineraries to and from China with our travel agency. We'll also learn our in-China travel itinerary and hotel arrangements. We're currently working to set Daniel's parents' travel itinerary so they're here with us a few days before and a few days after we travel to China. We're also shopping for the several odds and ends we'll need for Emily - additional car seats, a double stroller, feeding paraphernalia, and the like.

As with Sydney's adoption, shopping is a challenge - does Emily eat from a bottle or from a spoon now? Will she drink from a sippy cup? Does she take a pacifier? What's her current size and weight? Our last update on these things was dated July, so who knows now? So we're taking bottles and sippy cups, containers for rice formula and bottles for milk formula, clothes for 10-20 pounds, the whole nine yards. What we don't use we'll share with other families or donate to the hotel, where the next group of adoptive families will stay.

We are fortunate to have so many things from Sydney that Emily will be able to use - bedroom furniture, clothing, linens, tableware, high chair, booster seat, toys... and the list goes on! Our shopping list is relatively short, as is our need for additional stuff. As a result, we have not established a registry for gifts or materials for Emily - we really don't think we'll need much more! Emily's first birthday is December 9 and Christmas is coming soon afterward, so anything you'd like to give could be directed toward those milestones.

In our spare time (ha!), we've reworked, relocated, and updated our adoption Web site. We've named it "Red Thread" in honor of a Chinese folklore tradition that is familiar among adoptive families. You can read about the tradition, and see the updated site, at http://danielhocutt.com/redthread. The link also appears on the right sidebar of this page.

Finally, we have converted our former "main" Web site to our Hocutt Family Photo Album. You can access the photo albums at http://homepage.mac.com/hocuttfamily. You will need to enter a password to access each album - please email us at hocuttfamily@mac.com if you'd like to receive the password.

About the blog: You may have noticed that we've not included specific dates in the information above, even though we've received confirmation of some of our travel information. We hesitate to provide specifics about locations and travel schedules on the blog in real-time - there are too many hazards associated, including issues that might arise from foster families tracking down adopted children they've fostered. We'll be as specific as we can, but we'll work to avoid references to where we are and where we're going on the blog until after the fact. Feel free to email us at hocuttfamily@mac.com for specifics - we'll answer as soon as we can.