Made to Guangzhou!!

We arrived in Guangzhou (guang joe). Emma did great on the plane. She has been suprisingly perky for being up early and only two small naps. (must have been power naps) Our room is very nice and a/c that works. Emma is opening up more and more, she has flickers of silliness and has a funny side and a serious side. We are also finding out how badly our house is not going to be baby (toddler) proof. Both Jenn and I think that she is really advanced for her age or she is older than reported. She imitates more and more. She can wrinkle her nose, raise her eye brows up and down......... We ordered papa johns to the room, ,its here so better go and eat it.

Free Day #4

Emma really likes noodles, and spicy ones too. She just finished helping Baba eat spaghetti for dinner.

Here we are sitting out in front of the bookstore after shopping. The Chines are very curious and watch us everywhere we go. One lady made sure Emma was keeping her thumb out of her mouth during our picture.

Emma with Wendy our guide. Emma was looking at her Baba off to the side because he let Wendy hold her.

Emma loved walking around the front hotel lobby. The last few days she would go out on her own and get going a little fast and slip on the marble floors, luckily she did not cry each time she went down.
Picture from our 18th floor elevator lobby.

We had our last full day in Lanzhou today, and were looking forward to going to Guangzhou tomorrow. As we have heard lots of people say, we are ready to come home already. Guangzhou will be a nice change, however the temperature is nothing to look forward to. Temperatures range in mid to upper 90's but the humidity is supposedly high and make s it feel like 100+.

Our guide told us to have our luggage outside our doors at 5:00 Am to be picked up and loaded into the van, and we have to have ourselves down to the lobby at 5:30. We have approximately a 1+ hour ride to the airport, and then a 3 1/2 hour plane ride.



We went to a bookstore today and bought some english/chinese picture books, a tour guide book of Gansu province and a music CD of Chinese children's music. We played it before nap time and Emma sure seemed to know some of the songs. One in particular, we were able to catch the chinese phrase "wo ai ni" which is chinese for "I love you" and she actually said it after it was sung in the song. We tell her wo ai ni all the time anyway. After her nap Jenn went over to Evelyn's room for a few minute and Emma said "MaMa" twice in a loud voice after Jenn left. Good sign.



We got Emma's Chinese passport today, which is what we have been hanging around in Lanzhou for. When we get to Guangzhou we will start the next round of paperwork for Emma to be able to enter the USA. We will be there another week while that paper work gets finalized and then be on our way home.



I will finish up and post next from Guangzhou. Thanks again for all the posts and e-mails, we appreciate hearing from everyone.


Eric, Jenn, Emma, and Evelyn

Free Day #3,another Lanzhou Park

We found a group of Kindergarten aged children in the park we were at today, they were so cute.

Some stranded cars in the murky waters.

Another part of the park and pond

There is a petting zoo?!?!? inside the park, with bunnies, top cage were some squirrels, and two goats and a deer in the background.

Picture of water feeding the man made ponds.

Local vendors selling all kinds of different produce near the park.

Another view of the park and pond. On the farthest end there were men fishing. The pond had a net fence near a bridge, I'm guessing to keep the fish at the far end because nobody was fishing anywhere else.

Play area of swings, and different playground equipment for children.

On the bridge crossing the water, it is hard to see but there was a zip line behind us. We saw two people riding it. There was also a paintball area that we unknowingly walked into. Luckily thee was nobody playing at the time.

Not much to post about today, we went to dept store tonight after dinner to get some more snacks for next couple of days. We walk to a book store tomorrow. Hopefully we can find some music CD's and books for Emma. She loves music (and the little toy player that Grandma Steiner bought for her, she plays it all the time) and books. So good night for now. We will get ready to leave Lanzhou tomorrow for Gaungzhou on Saturday morning at 5:30 am.

Eric, Jenn, Emma & Evelyn

Hi from Jenn

Greetings to everyone!! Thank you for all the great emails, prayers and thoughts! Eric has been doing all the great posts/pictures etc since he much better at the computer stuff then I am! I am just wanting to post a personal message to you all since I have deeply appreciated all the personal emails and encouragement! Emma is soooooo cute and each day we see more and more of her sweet, witty personality! She loves to imiatate me and Eric and she actually walked over to me from Eric and smiled. She still will not let me hold her or pick her up etc, Luckily, she has made a strong connection w/ Eric! Again, just wanted to say thanks, It has gotten much warmer here today and humid! As a group, we walked to another local park and really enjoyed seeing the local people i.e. the grandparents with the young children, people of all ages doing Tai chi or some other form of exercise, people fishing in very merky water, the amusement style rides and activities etc. Our definition of a lake differs greatly from the Chinese' definition. Everything here is a lake which here in China their lakes are man made ponds! Eric will post pictures and more details later this evening! Thanks again and God Bless, Jenn, Eric and Emma :)

Free Day #2 in Lanzhou (lawnjoe)

We are getting more and more smiles and giggles from our Emma.

These were in a bucket near some fish tanks at the restaurant we ate at tonight. (hmmm?!?!?! What did our guide order for us tonight?)

Group picture at Lanzhou University with our new friend/tour guide.

Man made lake in University square, Eric was told that there was a tomb inside the pagoda in the picture. (8,000 students attend here.)

A couple of boys fishing with a net in the university lake.

Short post tonight..........



Emma doesn't like going to bed or napping, took longer to get he to bed tonight. We went to the Gansu provincial museum today and toured the building. We had bottled water that brought with us and Jenn had to swallow some of it before we could enter with it. They also didn't allow us in with our backpack, because of the metal rod in the back used for towing it with the roller on the bottom. Our guide Wendy talked them into letting us have it for the baby. The Lanzhou University is a block away from our hotel, so we walked there tonight after dinner with the Dorroh's and a kind Graduate Student came and talked to us and showed us around. We attracted crowds again as there are not many Americans in the City, especially with Chinese babies. Almost everyone asks if they are Chinese.



We will be walking to a bookstore tomorrow and maybe back to the department store, as Eric has not experienced it yet.


Eric, Jenn, Emma & Evelyn

Free Day #1 and trip to the Yellow river and Park

At the park, all these ladies said that Emma was very beautiful and very lucky girl. They all wanted to hold her.

We were walking outside the hotel tonight to tire Emma out (She is starting to show some of her personality, probably from her older foster brother.)

She also knows how to blow raspberries.

The Yellow River is Behind us (2nd largest in China) .
Here we are with the Cynthia, Joy, and Craig Dorroh. We are travel group #1385
This is one of the modes of traveling down the Yellow river, can you guess what they are?
This is part of the entrance to the park we visited today. The horse is famous in Gansu, and the original was found many years ago. We will learn more about it tomorrow at a museum.
Newest Employee at E&J Sprinkler. I need to start them and train them young.

We went to see the Yellow River today, and saw lots of tourists there enjoying the sites and hype for the 2008 Olympics. Of course we were the only caucasion people, so we were quite the attraction ourselves. We had lots of pictures taken of us and the babies and took lots of our own. There were also people exercising, playing music, and singing songs. Emma really likes music and starts rocking back and forth when she hears something familiar.

We spent some time at a park walking around enjoying some of the smoggy, sunny day. Lanzhou has 3 million people (small according to our guide,) and lots of "industry" chemical plants, mining, factories, and some kind of memory chip/computer plant. We all have dry scratchy throats. Mainly retired people, tourists, all watching us and us watching them. There was also some group of younger 20 something doing team building exercise. There was two lines of them with their hands grasped across each other. The leader and another member was standing above them and he would push the other off into the hands of the others and they would surf the person to the end of the line.

Emma is slowly opening up and letting Jenn get closer and closer. We decided that she would be the only one to feed her while she sits with Eric. So far so good and she will let Jenn touch her without crying. She does much better and expresses her self more when we are out and about. So we have a new strategy for attaching. She does have a hard time waking up after a nap or bedtime, and seeing that we are still around, but will slowly open up.

Better get ready for bed, and will post more tomorrow.

The raft above was made from sheep skins.

Eric, Jenn, Emma, and Evelyn

Thanks for all the e-mails, and posts.

Lanzhou / Gotcha Day!!!!!!!!

Do I look a little tired here.

Emma and her new Mama and Baba (Chinese for Dad)

Emma not exactly happy right now.

Emma and Mama back in our Hotel Room.

OK.........It looks like we are able to post from Lanzhou?!?!?!?!??! We made it here to Lanzhou and on the way to the hotel from the airport our new guide Wendy Wang, said you know your daughters will be here this afternoon right? I think you could have seen 5 jaws drop on the Craig & Cynthia, and Evelyn (Jenn's Mom) and our faces. Somebody said, I thought it was supposed to be tommorrow. Wendy said.........oh no, the orphanage director and nanies are on their down right now, it takes 4 hours to drive here. I know we were all stunned!!!!!!

Well, when we arrived in Lanzhou we had about an hour before the girls were supposed to show up. We scrambled to our rooms and started to get ready. Luckliy, Wendy called our room and said they were late. so we had some extra time to sit and worry. We ended up going down stairs in the lobby to look around and change some money. We were looking for a WiFi connection on the third floor area when either Jenn or Evelyn saw some people with to toddlers walk in. I didn't see them and we couldn't see them by the time they walked closer into the Lobby. We debated about whether or not that was them because they were ahead of schedule then what Wnedy said they would arrive. I said we should go back to the room and call Wendy to say we were back in our room and would wait for her call. She said give her five minutes and she would call back to come down to her room. ?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!??! Why? Wendy said they had just walked in!!!!!!!


Well long story short we went down to the room first where everybody was at and found Emma and Joy. Emma was walking around near the beds and Joy was standing holding onto the sides. She was not sure of us of coarse and really didn't want to come to us. The nannies, guide and O director coaxed her towards us and she finally went to Eric. One of the male Orphange workers told our rep that she likes males better than females. Poor Jenn Ithought, ok we will work it out. I picked up Can Xiao (Emma) and felt her bottom was all soft and felt like skin. I looked down and sure enough she was wearing her split pants. (They don't wear underwear or diapers in China to speed up the potty training process). The Dorroh's showed and picked up their daughter and got aquainted. We were able to ask questions of the orphange workers through our interpreter, about the girls and their schedules, habits, etc.


Skip forward to Monday night 9:30 PM ( 7:30 AM in Idaho) Emma is sleepinmg through the night eating and making dirty diapers like normal. She is not at all happy about her new Family but started to show signs of warming up to us tonight. Unfortunately, for the first day and a half she would only let hold her. She will let Jenn feed her and play with her more and more put throws a major fit if Jenn picks her up.

Our info about Emma said she loves baths, we really don't believe that right now. She cries and would not even sit down tonight. So she got wore out through the day and fell asleep while finishing off her bottle before bed.


We cleaned up the room and got ready for tommorrow as we are going to a park to let the girls enjoy some outdoor time. The sun finally was showing itself tonight before it went down so tommorrow should be a nice day for us.


For those of you interested the red dot on Emma's forehead was put their by the foster parents or nanny (not sure which) for good luck.

In Beijing

Well my last post did not make it onto the web site somehow, something about the settings on the computer, oh well. We made it to Beijing and have busy (or tired) enough that we are just know catching up and or napping.



We were up almost 24 hours by the time we got to the Holiday Inn Downtown Beijing on Thursday evening. We met our guide the next morning in the lobby for our day of Touring around Beijing. We started at Tiananmen Square and saw the Famous picture of Mao and had our picture taken in front of him. There are other importnat buildings in the square, but would have to look them up in our guide book that is at home to tell you what they were. We wlaked to the Forbidden City that is just behind Tiananmen Square. It is were the Emporers held daily business, had ceremonies, weddings, banquets, ................ Again foggy on the history because of lack of sleep. Those two tours took about 3-4 hours. We had lunch at a local restaurant with many different dishes served on a lzy susan for 8-10 people at a table. We than got back on our bus and went to a Silk factory, where they showed us how silk blankets and blanket covers were made. We had an oppurtunity to buy the blankets, and or different items they had upstairs in their store. We then were taken to tour the "Hutong" which are a very old preserved part of Beijing's history where people or families live a courtyard type setting and share bathroom facilities. We were told about the history of the Hutong and visited a family where they lived. It was very interesting part of the day. Oh, and we toured this area on rickshaws.



Oh, and the weather in Beijing...............Hot and Humid!!!!!!! Our guide told us it had been raining off and on for several days and was very hot and sticky. We had also heard about how bad the air and pollution was and that was also correct. Between the weather and smog it was very heavy air to breathe.



Back to our 12 hour day on Friday.............. We next went to an Acrobatic Show. Very very entertaining. It reminded me alot of the new show "Circus of the Stars" or something like that. Lastly we went to a Peking Duck Dinner. We had had a similar dinner in Boise the Chinese New Year before this last one, so we kind of knew what to expect. We had roast duck (main attraction) and others dishes on a 4-5 lazy susan. That was pretty much our day on Friday.

Twas the night Before.........Beijing

Ready to go to Beijing, China

Well we are packed and ready. Ok, Packed anyway.... We are leaving for Seattle Tacoma Airport in the morning (July 9th) from Boise around 0930. Then we will be in the airport for several hours in Seattle, and then leave for Beijing from Seattle. 12 hours on the plane. We arrive in Beijing in the afternoon on the 10th. (How did we skip a day?!?!?!)

See ya in a couple of weeks

Eric, Jenn, & Emma

TRAVEL and CONSULATE APPOINTMENTS!!!!!!!!!

OK, so we haven't posted for a while. There wasn't much to post about until last Friday, and then we didn't know for sure when we could travel. We heard from our agency that we might receive our travel approval from China soon….this week or next week. Well we heard from them on Friday, that we did receive our TRAVEL APPROVAL FROM CHINA!!!!!!

It means that we can travel to China to bring Emma home, and that our agency can request a consulate appointment for us. It also means that we will probably travel to China on July 9th in less than 2 weeks!!!!!! On Tuesday (today) CCAI received our Consulate appointment which is one of the last things we need to do before leaving China. It also confirmed our travel dates of 07/09 – 07/26. Here is our travel itinerary and things we have to do along the way.

• 07/09 - leave for China
• 07/10 - Arrive in Beijing
• 07/11 - Tour Beijing – Great Wall, Tiananmen Square
• 07/12 - Tour Beijing - Forbidden City, Hutong (old neighborhood) Tour
• 07/13 - Leave for Lanzhou, Gansu Provence
• 07/14 - **Gotcha Day** - Receive Emma
• 07/15 - Make Adoption Final, Apply for Emma's Passport……………..
• 07/16 - More Paperwork, Free Time, Tours……………
• 07/17 - Tour Lanzhou……………
• 07/18 - Hang Out in China…………………
• 07/19 - Leave for Guangzhou / Shamain Island – Where US Consulate is.
• 07/20 - More Paperwork, Apply for Emma's Visa……………..
• 07/24 - Consulate Appointment…………………
• 07/25 - Consulate Oath………………
• 07/26 - Leave China for Emma's new HOME……Here we Come USA!!!!!

At this point we will be posting our travel and pictures from our blogsite. We might change to another site and or format that everybody can make comments or ask questions of us from. Also you can e-mail us at ejsteiner@juno.com anytime and we will be checking our e-mail too. Ready or not China, here we come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK , if somebody can tell me how to post lists like the dates above so that they don't get all run together, let me know!!!!!!!!!!

Official Travel Visas

We know have official permission to travel in China. We recieved our travel visa for our passports back on Friday afternoon. We had to actually send our passports to the Chicago Chinese Embassy for them to grant our applications for travel in China. (We are new to this international traveling.) But our passports arrived back safely and had the visas placed in our passports.

I guess it is not big news, but is just another thing that we dont have to do when we get our actual TA (travel appointments) from China. And of course, we have not gotten out TA yet. We and Craig and Cynthia Dorroh (another set of) parents going to same province, think we might hear something on Monday or Tuesday.

Still Waiting for Our TA (Travel Approval/Arrangements)

We are still waiting for our Travel Approval/Arrangements from China. A group of parents from our agency ahead of us received their TA's today, and are now waiting for their CA (Consulate Appointment). CA is the very last appointment in China before we can come back home. Also we have to have CA before we can make any kind of airplane reservations. The sooner the better because the prices of airfares change at a regular pace, especially with the Olympics coming up.

Tongue Twister

So far no new news. It seemed like we were learning something new every few days. But we havent heard anything since we received our LOA (Letter of Acceptance.) We had somemore paperwork to do and send to our agency. We are getting chinese visas applied for to travel in and through China.


We had to call our agency for a question about how to spell Emma's Chinese name. They said it is however we prefer to spell it. (?????) So we asked how should we spell it on the paper work? It doesn' matter was the response. Still puzzled at the answer, but anyway. In the same conversation she told us how to pronounce her chinses name too. It is not how we thought and how it looks. Can is pronounced "tsan," she said like in the end of "cats." And Xiao is pronounced "she-ow." "Tsan She-ow" Say that 10 times real fast.




Jenn sent our little daughter a care package today. She sent her a new little outfit, a little plush toy, rubber ducky, a framed pictured of Emma for her foster parents, a small photo album with pictures of us in it for Emma (with chinese labels indicating "Mama and Baba"), and a disposable camera so her foster parents can hopefully take pictures of where they live, themselves, and Emma in the meantime while we wait to travel. According to the USPS, it should be there in 6-10 business days.

We Received Our Letter Of Acceptance.

Our agency has e-mailed us again with our Letter of Acceptance, and we received an overnight package from them containg the Letter for us to sign and send back to them. they also gave us a file of all the info that they had received from China about Emma in both Chinese and English. So we now have all the info for Emma that is available.
Our agency will hopefully receive our signed Letter on Monday and forward onto Beijing for us. We then wait again, for China to issue us Travel Acceptance to bring Emma home. We could actually be traveling to China anytime in the next 4-6 weeks.

NEW UPDATES FROM CHINA!!!!!!!

Wow, we received an e-mail from our agency today with new pictures and some growth information from the 23rd of last week (we think). Eric was at home getting some lunch and checked the e-mails and saw one from one of the ladies at our agency. He printed out the info and pictures and hurried down to Elks rehab where Jenn was spending her day at work, and surprised her with the updated info and pictures.

We also received some Medical/Developement/ and Personality info as well:

She sat at the age of 6 months, got first tooth at the age of 8 months (8 teeth altogether), crawled at the age of 9 months, walked with adults holding her hands at the age of 12 months. She weighs approximately 19 lbs.

Personality:
Her personality is introverted (HMMM, Just like Jenn & Eric). She does not ask strangers to hold or hug her. She likes her bath.

Well we were totally surprised by the uodates, but are so glad to have it. We cant stop looking at her pictures and reading from the updates.

Our Emma Story

Well, we have known for about 9 days about Emma, But China has a policy that we could not tell anyone but family until we had what is known as Pre-Approval. "PA" means that the CCAA (China Centre of Adoption Affairs) has received our Letter of Intent (LOI) to adopt Emma and has moved of our file to their matching room.

So last Tuesday, Eric checked his messages and saw a 303 area code on his phone (which is Colorado, where our agency is located). The message said that they were "desperately needing to talk to us." He called back, and they said they had a referral for us, a little girl from Wuwei City, China in the Gansu Province. She just turned 12 months old on May 04. They wanted to know if we would like to look at her file?!?!?!? Of course Eric said yes!!!

He immediatley called Jenn at her work and told her of the news. We both decided that we would take the rest of the day off to rush home and view her pictures and files that were emailed to us. We knew alomst immediately that we would accept the referral for her and that she would have a forever family in Idaho.

She has been in foster care since she was 2 weeks old. The pictures below and all of the files we received about her are about 5-6 months old, but she was on tract for all of her milestones. We had a doctor look at her files and she said that from all the info we received that she was a healthy happy little girl.

We have obviously been waiting for Emma for a long time know, but have been anxiously waiting for the day when we could share her with the rest of our friends and family. And know we are waiting, again for the day when we can travel To Gansu Province in China and bring her back home to Nampa, Idaho. Hopefully within the next couple of months we will know more about Emma, her foster family, and when we will be able to go and bring her back home.

We ask that you will pray for, Emma, her foster family, and us as we wait to bring her home!!!

MEET: EMMA GRACE CAN XIAO STEINER

HERE SHE IS

OUR BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER

Emma is in WuWei City, Gansu Province China

Emma is 12 and a half months old, born on May 04, 2007

She is living in foster care.

Another Update!!!

We belong to a internet Adoption group that is a group of parents from our agency (CCAI) that are waiting for a SN Referral. Within this group (which is not representative of all the families waiting through our agency) we usually had 20 other parents waiting in front of us for a referral. The list has been updated lately and most recently today. It now shows that there are only 5 sets of parents waiting in front of us for a girl 0-30 mos old. WOOHOO!!!!!

WE ARE CLOSER TO A REFERRAL!!!!!!!

Well, I didnt read my last post to know exactly what I told everyone about the changes in China. But we just had a post from our adoption agency in Colorado that they have made 36 matches for waiting parents in the last week, and THEY ARE ROUGHLY INTO JUNE OF 2007 for files with a medical conditions checklist date. We don't exactly know where that puts us, other than we have a checklist date of 06/03/07. If that is all confusing, sorry. But it is great news for us meaning that we may hear something from our agency anytime soon.

Through the new program, China will post files of children on a website that agencies can check on a daily basis, if they see a file that they have potential parents for they can lock in on those files for their families. Then the agency has 48 hours to notify the China adoption authorities that they have found a match for that file for China to take the file off the website permanently. The bad thing for us is that once our agency locks in a file for us, the 48 hour clock start ticking. This is a complex part that we have hopefully been prepared for. It is a rush for us to look at the file, have some doctors we have lined up look at the file, have the doctors give us their opinion about the medical conditions of the file, and then we have to let our agency know our decision, all within the 48 hour window.

Sorry, about the randomness of the post, we are excited, scared and always overwhelmed with our long wait. But our agency gave us a few details of the last batch of matches. Youngest match was 7 mos old. Oldest match was 6 yrs old. The most common range was 12-36 months old. Most common medical conditions included, Cleft lip and cleft palates, and some with congenital heart disease.

Well this is the newest of the information that we have so far. If we learn anything else we will post here.

Time for an Update

Well, China has again added another twist and turn to our Journey to Emma. It might be a good change or it might not be so good.
In our last post our agency had been waiting on the next batch of SN children to arrive. They had informed the families that are in this program that the delay was probably due to some lay-offs of wokrers at the Chinese government adoption office. We are still not sure that it has ever arrived though.
According to our agency CCAI, china has been implementing a new computer referral process for SN children and they have been apart of the process in helping work out the bugs over the last sveral years. It sounds like that the Chinese government adoption office finally decided to start using this computer referral process in February/March. (Sorry for the long explanation.)
So now 30+ agencies now have access to this new process and all see the same children that are available for adoption through the SN program. This basically means that all of the agencies see this list and can lock a childs file for a family in there agency. There has been muc controversy over this new process, and some agencies were posting the entire list of children over the internet. And of course our agency did not want to be involved with this new progam because of the competition that would arise from it. So they had told us they would continue to make referrals the way thaey have always been doing it.
After several more weeks of the list being put out over the internet. Families from our agency (as weel as us) were starting to get worked up about CCAI (our agency) not getting involved in this program. Phone calls and e-mails were being made into the WC (waiting child/SN) dept. So our agency finally found out from China that this new referral process was going to be the way all SN children would be referred.
Well to try and make a long story shorter, Our agency has had to change the way they find and make referrals. They say over time once they figure out the changes that have been made referrals will probably start to speed up through this process.
There are downfalls to the process though. When an agency locks in a file for a child the families only have 48 hours to make a decision to adopt the child or not. The 48 hr clock starts as soon as the file is locked by the agency, ( and they can be locked in at anytime, 0-24 hours a day ). So families don't have near the time it takes to have Doctors looks at the files or process the information in the files, etc., etc., etc.
We also used to track in a somewhat normal fashion how many families were receiving referrals each month, but now we will not be able to track that info at all. Because of some other new international rules that do not allow any families to share the info of there child on the Internet group chat rooms until after the family is "pre approved"to adopt that child from China.
So we don't know anymore than we did several weeks ago. Please pray for us, and our process as we take another turn in our long wait. We appreciate it so very much!!
We will post again when we know more information>