Happy uh, Gotcha, day.

Hi everyone.

It is one year ago today that DoT and I were handed twin girls in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China. It feels like about 5 years. Today, in honour of the day, the girls decided to let DoT and I sleep in until 7:35 a.m. It was wonderful. I think I can count on one hand the number of times E has slept past 6:30 a.m. And, in fact, she's up almost always up at 6:00 a.m., like clockwork. So this morning was a real treat.

So, I'm not really sure what to call this day. In the world of international adopters (and maybe domestic adopters too, who knows), most people refer to it as "Gotcha day". I'm not sure I like the term because it sounds to me a little bit possessive... almost like you're acquiring a new car or some great piece of property you've been eying for awhile. I've heard a few people call it "Forever Family Day", and I like the idea of reinforcing to the kids that this time when they were handed over it was for forever. But still "Forever Family Day" has a bit of a cheesy, 'after-school special' kind of sound to it. So, I'm taking suggestions for a name for the day. If I can't come up with anything better, it will probably end up being "Gotcha day", so please help me out and give me some ideas.

On one of the blogs that I visit regularly, the author puts a picture every year, on the anniversary of their referral day, of their child holding up her referral picture. I really liked this idea, because you have a picture every year taken at the same place and holding the same 'prop' - so you can see how the child grows and changes. Well of course, referral day rolled around and I was unprepared. I had the referral photos, but hadn't had them enlarged to a size that would have been okay for being in another picture. So I decided to do it on "Gotcha Day" (seriously, help me here) instead. So, below you will see pictures of E and A holding photos of themselves taken when we got them in Nanchang. Obviously they're not happy in the Nanchang photos, but the pictures really do reflect their state of mind at that time. Happily, it has changed. And yeah, while I may have had the foresight to get photos developed and enlarged for this picture, clearly I didn't have the wherewithal to comb their hair before taking these pictures. And they could both use a haircut.





















In other news, some of you may remember a post I put up awhile ago about a young Vietnamese orphan who needed lifesaving surgery to remove a tumour from his face. Well, last week he arrived in Canada to spend the next four months at the Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, where they will be doing some tests and hopefully performing surgery to remove the tumour. There was an article in the Globe and Mail last Thursday, which I've copied and put in below (hopefully I'm not breaking any copyright laws here...)

Race against time to save Vietnamese boy's life
An Ottawa charity is inspiring hundreds to help in its quest to give an orphan life-saving surgery in Canada
HAYLEY MICK
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
June 28, 2007 at 4:35 AM EDT

Sitting on his bed in Hanoi, Hoang Son Pham plunged his small hand into the parcel sent from Canada. The 10-year-old Vietnamese orphan dug deep, past dozens of letters and cards addressed to him, and drew out something hard: a wooden airplane. Son Pham said nothing - the tumour in his face made speech impossible - but he gave a lopsided smile as he cruised the toy through the air: a sign of things to come. Late tonight, two months after receiving that goodwill package, Son Pham is expected to step off a jet in Toronto. Waiting for him will be a small group of elated Canadians who, for more than a year, have raced against time and a growing mass of blood vessels to bring him here for surgery.

"We want to welcome him," said Tan Ngo, a staff member with the Children's Bridge Foundation, an Ottawa-based charity that provides funding and support for international orphans. "But we have to be very careful."

Hoang Son Pham, a 10-year-old from Vietnam, will remain in Toronto for the next four months as doctors try to remove a tumour from his face. Next week, Son Pham will undergo diagnostic tests at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Doctors will determine whether the boy is fit to undergo a life-threatening operation that would remove the massive knot of blood vessels - called hemangioma - and save him from starvation.

But this is not only a story of an unlucky child who may be rescued by Western medicine. It is also about a small group of Canadians who decided to make a difference in a boy's life, and the snowball effect that decision is now having across the country.

It began last March, when Kate Maslen, a 25-year-old manager with Children's Bridge, delivered equipment to an orphanage that houses about 800 children about an hour's drive north of Hanoi. Dozens of children pushed to get close to the tall, blond Canadian woman, but it was a boy elbowed to the back of the crowd - the one with the giant tumour on the left side of his face - that she could not forget.

"This little guy snared my heartstrings," Ms. Maslen said. She learned that Son Pham was dropped off by his parents when he was 3. Staff at the Hai Duong orphanage said the parents were likely too poor to care for the boy, or afraid that his deformity would bring bad luck - a local superstition. Over the years, the tumour grew. Now, it was obliterating Son Pham's nose and shrinking his mouth to the size of a walnut. Orphanage officials feared that without treatment, he would soon be unable to eat or even to breathe.

Ms. Maslen brought photos of Son Pham back to Ottawa. She wanted to help, but her resolve was steeled when she received a handwritten note from Son Pham. "Dear Aunt Kate," he wrote with someone's help. "Please help me."

Others came on board, deciding to fundraise and seek out medical care for the boy; one of those people was Mr. Ngo. Mr. Ngo understood rough beginnings. Thirty years ago, Canada scooped him out of a Vietnamese refugee camp and gave him a new life in Ottawa. His two children grew up to be a pediatrician and a teacher, and Mr. Ngo dedicated his life to helping others. Mr. Ngo returned several times to Hanoi and visited Son Pham. During one trip in March, Mr. Ngo fell ill eating 50-cent soup from roadside vendors because he wanted to donate the rest of his food stipend, provided by his work, to Son Pham's cause. He also brought the boy a present from Canada: Halls cough drops, which he melted in water, and gave him to drink. Halls are available in Vietnam, too, but "I wanted to send him a message, that people in Canada loved him," Mr. Ngo said in an interview with The Globe and Mail from Hanoi.

In Canada, Children's Bridge was appealing for funds. Son Pham touched a nerve: This spring, more than $125,000 was raised from hundreds of families, much of it from Canada's Vietnamese community and parents of children from international adoptions. A six-year-old boy from Halifax donated all $8 from his savings: "I hope that's enough for your surgery," he wrote in a note to Son Pham, which Mr. Ngo delivered to the boy, along with dozens of other letters of support and the toy plane. Still, no one at Children's Bridge knew whether surgery was even possible. They had faced a setback in March, when a team of U.S. surgeons visiting Hanoi said local hospitals weren't equipped to support a complex surgery.

The group then pinned their hopes on two Canadian hospitals for children - one in Toronto and one in Halifax. In early May, the group received hopeful news. Doctors at The Hospital for Sick Children had given them the green light to send Son Pham to Toronto. Sick Kids spokesperson Lisa Lipkin said yesterday that doctors will perform Son Pham's first tests next week. "Over the next few weeks, a team from Sick Kids will evaluate his condition and determine what treatment is possible," she said.

A Sick Kids charity called the Herbie Fund, which provides children with operations not available in their home countries, will foot the surgery bill if doctors decide they can do it. A Vietnamese family living in Markham, a north-Toronto suburb, has agreed to host Son Pham and his nanny for the four months he will stay in Toronto. "It's a little surreal," Ms. Maslen said. "It's wonderful he's here and that we're one step closer, but we're not quite there yet."