Ni
Hao!
Yes,
it’s been a year since I’ve blogged. The other day, a friend asked me if I
blogged any more. I chuckled and said,
“No…mainly for 2 reasons: (1) No one
would be interested in the mundane day-to-day chaos of the Martindale family
and (2) I barely have enough time in the day to bathe, much less blog.” I think bathing is probably more important,
and I’m sure my family and co-workers would agree.
Please
bear with me. I’m just going to type and
see where it leads. Maybe it’ll be
short; maybe it’ll be long. But, I am
purposefully taking time to do this because I think it’s important to document
my feelings on this very special day.
It’s
been quite the year! Another friend of
mine says, “The days are long, but the years are short.” Isn’t that the truth?!? I can.not.believe that it has been 3 years
since traveling across the world to meet Olivia.
Many
of you know our story, but many of you may not.
I’ve said it many times, but our story is one of perseverance, grace,
and multiple blessings. Blessings and
grace that I don’t deserve. It’s a story
that growing up, I never would have imagined living.
I
guess I’ll start with the significance of today. You see, it was on this
day, April 21, 2014, that Yong Ning Yu became Olivia Yu Martindale. It’s
a day that I will never forget. It’s a day that I had waited for….for
almost 8 years.
I
grew up thinking that I would go to college, get married, have children, etc. I did the first two and then hit a “snag” in
“the plan,” or what I thought was “the plan.”
At age 30, after many rounds of fertility treatments, I was told that
the next step was in vitro and even then, there was no guarantee that I would
be able to have children. Wow – insert
shock and awe here. I’d never really
thought that infertility would ever be something I would have to face
(ignorance on my part). So, after
weighing the pros and cons and much prayer, we decided to go the adoption
route. We attended an information
session at Children’s Hope International (We had friends who had adopted
through them, and at the time they had a local office.) and started the
adoption journey. I will spare you all
the details about the paperwork (You can read them deeper in the blog if
interested.), but let’s just say that any unorganized individual would be
overwhelmed with the paperwork.
At
one point early in my life, I prayed for patience. As my grandmother would say, “Be careful what
you wish for.” Wow – did God answer that
prayer!
We
waited, and waited, and waited…..keeping our paperwork up-to-date along the
way.
Fast
forward to 2009 – S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E!!!! A
pregnancy test came back positive, and baby Ansley was born in
September!!! (That’s a story for another
day.) http://martindalefam.blogspot.com/2009/04/surprise.html
This is a current picture of Ansley.
We
continued to wait and wait and wait….keeping our paperwork up-to-date. I also read blogs and scoured information to
see where we were in the time warp with this adoption.
Finally,
in January of 2014, I got the call. The
call I had been waiting on for almost 8 years.
I will never forget that day as long as I live. Read that blog post here: http://martindalefam.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-moment-weve-been-waiting-for.html.
This is the first and only picture we received of Olivia.
Fast
forward to December of 2015, and we had another surprise – baby boy this time! (Olivia loves her little brother Reese and is
very nurturing and motherly.)
Here is a picture of Reese.
Stealing
words from my blogpost last year because they are still applicable:
I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember the wait….the long wait….that morning/afternoon until it was time to leave the hotel to meet Olivia. I remember the smell of the hotel and how I did not sleep the night before…I remember how nervous and anxious I was….I remember how emotional I was….I remember having breakfast in the hotel that morning and crying when I met a mother who was there with her 12 year old daughter on a heritage tour and telling her, “today is the day.” I remember the silence in the van on the drive over…except for Ansley chatting away…I remember the construction at the building….I remember the awful elevator we had to ride, how cold it was in the building, how it smelled. I remember the room where we waited. I remember hearing footsteps, and our guide saying, “That’s them. They’re here.” I remember turning around, and there she was. Little tiny thing….with no expression whatsoever…..Ansley tried to give her a stuffed panda bear that we brought her, and the orphanage workers speaking to her in Chinese telling her that it was for her. I remember the looks on the orphanage workers faces and how they checked us out. I remember how they genuinely looked sad to leave her. I remember how she wasn’t too sure about Philip at first….I remember taking our first “family of 4” photo…I remember taking a picture with the orphanage team (so glad we did)…I remember how she screamed in the van on the way back to the hotel. I thought at the time she was grieving. (As it turned out, she screamed every time we got in the van.) I remember trying to give her a bath, but she wouldn’t sit down in the tub….so, I bathed her standing up. I remember the first smile…her signature, infectious smile….the one that melts your heart…I remember seeing her terrible front teeth…I remember holding her as she cried going to sleep that night.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember the wait….the long wait….that morning/afternoon until it was time to leave the hotel to meet Olivia. I remember the smell of the hotel and how I did not sleep the night before…I remember how nervous and anxious I was….I remember how emotional I was….I remember having breakfast in the hotel that morning and crying when I met a mother who was there with her 12 year old daughter on a heritage tour and telling her, “today is the day.” I remember the silence in the van on the drive over…except for Ansley chatting away…I remember the construction at the building….I remember the awful elevator we had to ride, how cold it was in the building, how it smelled. I remember the room where we waited. I remember hearing footsteps, and our guide saying, “That’s them. They’re here.” I remember turning around, and there she was. Little tiny thing….with no expression whatsoever…..Ansley tried to give her a stuffed panda bear that we brought her, and the orphanage workers speaking to her in Chinese telling her that it was for her. I remember the looks on the orphanage workers faces and how they checked us out. I remember how they genuinely looked sad to leave her. I remember how she wasn’t too sure about Philip at first….I remember taking our first “family of 4” photo…I remember taking a picture with the orphanage team (so glad we did)…I remember how she screamed in the van on the way back to the hotel. I thought at the time she was grieving. (As it turned out, she screamed every time we got in the van.) I remember trying to give her a bath, but she wouldn’t sit down in the tub….so, I bathed her standing up. I remember the first smile…her signature, infectious smile….the one that melts your heart…I remember seeing her terrible front teeth…I remember holding her as she cried going to sleep that night.
This is the blogpost from that day: http://martindalefam.blogspot.com/2014/04/gotcha-day-421.html
Olivia
continues to thrive. We are so thankful
for how healthy she is. She's very small for her age, but she makes up for it in personality. She’s a great
eater, and it appears that her food possessive issues are slowly going away.
Olivia's school friends. They love her unconditionally, too!
She
is stubborn, hard-headed, highly spirited, independent, strong-willed…..all of
those adjectives apply. All of these
traits will serve her well in life, as long as we can survive until then! J She is strong and athletic. We discovered in December that she’s
musical. (If I can figure out how to
post that video, I will.) She is loving;
she is sweet; she doesn’t know a stranger.
She loves to play outside. She’s
smart and inquisitive. She loves to work
with her hands, help in the yard, and help fix things. She has a 100,000 watt smile that lights up a
room.
Her
English is SO much better! She still has
speech once per week, but she has made great strides. We have made the decision to go ahead and
start her in kindergarten this fall. She
is ready, and I think she will do great!
For
those of you wondering, she does not sleep with her shoes any more. That tells me that she’s finally comfortable
now and knows that no one is going to take her shoes. She is rather possessive about what she deems
as “hers,” and we are still working on sharing.
We celebrated her 5th birthday with an ice skating party. She had a blast and wants to do it again!
Adoption
is tough, and parenting is, too. It’s hard;
it’s exhausting; it’s painful, but it’s also beautiful and amazing. We do our best each and every day. Some days are better than others! We have and will continue to have open
dialogue and communication with all of our children about adoption. As Olivia grows older, we will share all we
know about her past. She knows she’s
from China. She will see other Asian
people and say, “They China. Me
China.” She is beginning to make the
distinction. Before, it was just eye
color. Now it appears to be other
things. She asks about when she was a
baby, but I don’t think that she’s made the connection that she has a birth
mother out there. She is beginning to
pick up on more and more things. Some
day soon, we’ll have that conversation.
I
couldn’t do “life” without the unwavering support of Philip, our families, and
our friends. Everyone, and I mean
everyone, has been nothing but supportive in every way throughout this entire
process. They love Olivia….they love her
for who she is…..her crazy little sweet and stubborn Chinese self, and they
love us even when we aren’t at our best.
THANK YOU!
The
other night, we were looking at our pictures from China and talking about our
trip. There’s a great shot of Ansley as
we are leaving the hotel to meet Olivia. I said, “Ansley was excited to meet you.” The next picture was this one….the first time
we saw her in person. I said, “We were
waiting on you.” and went on to tell her the story. She said, “You? Wait on me?”
And I said, “Yes, baby girl…we were waiting on you.” We waited on YOU for almost 8 years, and YOU
were definitely worth the wait.
This is the picture of that moment when she walked into the room.
Thanks for sharing in our journey.
Jill
