Updated Photos and Information

We received updated photos and information on Matthew today. The four new photos are to the left. We are assuming he is out of the hospital and the pictures were taken at his institution. We are not certain. He's about 21 months now and experiencing some delays common to infants and toddlers living in institutions. He's not quite walking yet. Overall, we think he looks great and the information provided is choppy (coming through translation), but positive. Enjoy the pics!

Kidney stones

Many of you may have heard the news in September about milk and formula contamination in China. Thousands of children have been affected.

At the end of September, we got a call from Holt that Matthew had been exposed to the formula. He was not symptomatic, but his caregivers wanted him to be examined. They did an ultrasound and found a small kidney stone in each kidney. Both around 0.3 cm. Since he was not symptomatic and the stones small, they recommended that he be treated with fluids back at the institution. Since he had been matched with us, his caregivers wanted him hospitalized and treated to ensure quality care.

On October 10th, we learned that the caregivers convinced the hospital to admit him and treat the stones. He has responded well to the treatments and the stones have shrunk in size. He was expected to be released within a couple of days.

Please keep him and us in your thoughts and prayers. It's frustrating when your child has a medical issue, your on the other side of the planet, it's difficult to get updates, and there is nothing you can do about.it.

How Molly became Matthew

This has been a long, strange journey. It began in the spring of 2006 when we decided we were ready to add child number two to our family. We had contacted our local agency, Lutheran Social Services and our international agency, Holt, to begin the process. At the time, the wait from dossier submission to child match was about 13 to 14 months. We decided we would take our time getting our dossier together and hoped to travel to China in late 2007 to get our second daughter, who we planned to name Molly. At the end of that summer, we began on the dossier. Updating our home study, pulling documents together, meeting our social worker, scheduling physicals, and much more. By January 2007, after some interesting twists and turns too long to get into, our dossier was ready and was received by the Chinese authorities in March.

Then the waiting began. And went on . . . and on . . . and on.

Each month, we would receive an update from Holt, and each month the timeline from dossier submission to child match got longer. In April of this year, we received another update. The wait time increased to 27-30 months. And it was going to get longer. Also within this update was information about children with special needs. Many children in China designated as "special needs" have minor or correctable medical conditions. We began to research this option and were surprised and excited about what we learned.

We decided to put our family's name on this list. So we completed a medical conditions checklist of what conditions we were willing to accept. On the form it asked us if we were willing to accept a girl or a boy. We indicated that we were open to both. We never thought we would be matched with a boy. Two months later, we received a call from Holt with a referral. Zhang Li, a little boy born on Febrary 5, 2007. In evaluating his medical records, he is considered a special needs child because of "delayed growth." But he is very healthy. We accepted the match right away. He was our son!

We decided to name him Matthew, in honor of the guide we had in China five years ago when we got Abby. When we told Abby that she was getting a brother rather than a sister, she told us, "I could love a brother, too." She also pointed out, "We can't name him Molly." So we're getting ready. November 6th we leave and November 10th we get him!