In case you're not counting, Joshua turned 4 this August. He's becoming quite the big boy, is helpful, generally compliant, and loves his brother and sister. People always ask about his english - he speaks english as well as any other 4 year-old. That is to say, his sentence structure is a bit butchered and his pronunciation/annunciation is poor (although some of that could be because he's learning english from his dad who has a mid-western mushy mumble mouth). All in all he's doing great. Here's a picture of him on the day of his birthday party. For comparison you can go back to some pics from when we picked him up, he's grown a lot...
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| Iron Man Joshua with his marshmallow pistol |
Joshua also started Tae Kwon Do this fall (for those not up-to-speed on their martial arts, Tae Kwon Do is a Korean practice, not that it matters). He loves it and he seems to be doing well. He isn't a ninja yet but he's on his way (I know that Ninjas are Japanese, not Chinese or Korean. It'll be OK, it was a joke anyway...).
Current Adoption
Our dossier is headed to China, which means what.? This means that all our paperwork has been sent around the USA and accepted, sent to the Chinese consulate and accepted, translated to Chinese, and is now headed to the China Center for Children's Welfare & Adoption (CCCWA). In the adoption world, this is a significant milestone. There's only about 54 more things that have to happen before we can travel to China and get our son.
Really, for now, most of what we do is:
- Pray.
- Wait impatiently. The way this is playing out we'll probably travel Q1 2015.
- Stock-pile a ton of money so that when it's time to travel we can actually afford to do so.
With the third bullet in mind we've done a couple of things around fundraising to give others a way to help us adopt, if they want to. The first is that we've purchased a suitcase for our son and anyone that donates to the adoptive effort (any amount) gets their name on the suitcase. Our son will then have a record of all the people that helped bring him home. The second is that we've applied for, and have been awarded a matching funds grant from LifeSong. If you donate to the grant your donation gets doubled, it's tax-deductible for you, AND you'll get your name on the suitcase. Who wouldn't want to do that..?
If you do want to donate, you can contact me at micah.j.shanks@gmail.com and I'll give you the details on how.
That's all for now. Just trying to hold down the fort and prepare for the newest addition.
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| Here's the suitcase we got for our son, some names already on it... |
