The Zen of Adoption

China is experiencing some of the worst winter weather it’s seen in nearly 50 years. Electricity and clean water are in short supply and transportation has all but ceased. Reports are rolling in from several of the Social Welfare Institutions (SWI’s) that conditions are getting worse and they are having a hard time keeping the children clean, fed, and warm.

I’ve written about Half the Sky before. They are a wonderful organization that work to bring training, supplies and medical care to their sponsored SWI’s all over China, and they are doing what they can to send aid in the form of food, clothing, heaters, and money to the areas that are hardest hit.

They have set up The Little Mouse Emergency Fund to quickly offer aid to the SWI’s that are in desperate need of assistance. If you can help, click the mouse below. Half the Sky has volunteers on the ground in China to get help to the areas that need it most.

The weather outside is frightful!

Please donate the The Little Mouse Emergency Fund.

Half the Sky’s annual auction runs from October 18 to 25th. More than 100 great items will be added to the auction list throughout the day and evening of the 18th. Win a tour of the set of hit TV show, Scrubs! How about a gourmet dinner for 8?! Professional family photos? Author-signed books, artwork, and China treasures galore. See you there!!

I just added a copy of Barefoot Book’s Motherbridge of Love - you can visit the Half-the-Sky auction to see the wonderful items they are offering - or you can go directly to the Motherbridge of Love listing. I’m donating 100% of the winning bid to Half the Sky so if you’ve been meaning to buy this beautiful book, this is a great opportunity to help a worth cause at the same time!

clipped from missionfish.org Half the Sky was created by adoptive parents in order to enrich the lives and enhance the prospects for the children in China who still wait to be adopted, and for those who will spend their childhoods in orphanages. We establish early childhood education, personalized learning and infant nurture programs in state-run Chinese welfare institutions to provide the children stimulation, individual attention, and an active learning environment.Location: Berkeley, CA 94710 Web address: www.halfthesky.org

“Once there were two women
who never knew each other.
One you do not know.
The other you call Mother.
Two different lives
shaped to make you one.
One became your guiding star;
the other became your sun.”

So begins Motherbridge of Love, a new picture book published by Barefoot Books. With gorgeous illustrations and a touching poem that has been a mainstay in many adoption communities for years, this book is going to have a very special place on our shelves.

When we decided to add a child to our family through international adoption, we talked a lot about how we could raise our daughter to value her Chinese heritage, expose her to Chinese culture, and give her the space and the support to feel connected to her birth parents. Due to the nature of of abandonment laws in China, most children who find their way to one of China’s Social Welfare Institutions, don’t have any information about when they were born, where they are from, or who their parents are. That lack of history worries us, it is something we won’t be able to give her, no matter how much we love her - that is a hard thing for a parent to accept.

From the beginning we are going to tell our daughter what we know about her life before she was placed in our arms… it is a part of her story. Hopefully this openness will help her process the emotions and questions that are inevitable as she grows.

It’s so nice to have a book to share with a child as a starting point for conversation, exploration, and understanding… I’m thrilled that Barefoot Books has provided the book, we’ll be sure to create the opportunities to share this with our daughter.

To learn more or to order please visit: Motherbridge of Love on Barefoot’s website.

Barefoot Books Presents: Whole World

Click to view an animated version of
Barefoot’s new title: Whole World!

What kind of world will our children grow up in? Join Barefoot Books and Live Earth on 7/7/07 to celebrate the ways you can make a difference!

Check out the sights and sounds of Barefoot Book’s new title “Whole World” and click on the links to discover ways to help your family make changes that will have a positive impact on our planet!

click the image to play!

A Message from: Love Without Boundaries“Born in my Heart” Committee

In every orphanage in China, children in need of heart surgery wait.Four years ago, Love Without Boundaries began their “Born in MyHeart” fundraiser as a tribute to the miracle of adoption and toraise funds for these essential operations. You can truly save thelife of a child by taking part from May 18-23. Every penny raisedwill help to heal a precious child, giving them the opportunity togrow and thrive, and perhaps even find a family of their very own. So please bid often and bid generously! Items will be addedthroughout the day on Friday, May 18th and the fundraiser will endWednesday, May 23rd when the final item closes. This year we have approximately 250 amazing items, all donated byour fabulous supporters! Just a few of the items you won’t want tomiss are: an autographed guitar from Steven Curtis Chapman, THREE giclee prints of “Bengbu Girl”…an incredible oil painting createdespecially for LWB by Zhao Kailin, a life-size Terra Cotta Warriorstatue from Xian, several personalized custom lifebooks, beautifulwatercolors, acrylics and oil paintings, collection-edition dolls,custom adoption videos, a stunning array of quilts includingseveral “100 Good Wishes” quilts, photography, gift baskets,jewelry, paintings by Chinese orphans, clothing, heritage items, andso much more!

You will be able to access the fundraiser from the Love Without Boundaries website homepage at: www.lovewithoutboundaries.com

Please help us to make this year’sfundraiser our best ever!

We frequent the St. Petersburg Saturday Morning Market, which is full of wonderful produce, plants, and unique gift items. One such vendor with a unique product is Shirts of Bamboo. They are a local company that specializes in apparel made of, you guessed it, Bamboo. They have adorable baby onesies, great clothing for men and women as well as some fun accessories, such as socks and scarves.In Asia, bamboo has been used in the traditional hand-made production of paper for centuries. Shirts of Bamboo uses Moso bamboo which covers about 7.41 million acres in China.

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of Bamboo clothing visit the Why Bamboo? section of their company’s site. this company’s mission is one I really like, and their products really are unique and highlight a wonderful plant from China.

Our Chinese Daughters Foundation, Inc. was founded in 1995 by Dr. Jane Liedtke as a non-profit Foundation with the desire to support families who have adopted children from China. A main focus of the Foundation has been bringing Chinese culture and heritage to adoptive families.

Chinese Culture Tours - programs to provide hands-on
experiential learning for children from China. Chinese Culture Camps sponsored by OCDF began in 1996 at Illinois State University and extended to China in 1999. We’ve grown from 23 persons to 650 persons in 2006.OCDF Adoption - OCDF will now facilitate and serve in the China adoption process for 10 US licensed agencies..For information: www.ocdf.org/adoption or Ross@ocdf.org

OCDF Orphan Support Projects enable families and individuals to easily donate care packages to orphans or sponsor orphans for school. In addition, special projects support unique needs of orphans across China including Coal for Kids and Building on Dreams projects.

OCDF Institute - seminars and workshops for adults and “Learn and Play” programs for children on a wide variety of topics related to China, Chinese culture, literature & music, history, and language.

Annual Grant Program - each year grant(s) are awarded by the Foundation to local/regional adoption support groups for their initiatives in support of Chinese culture/heritage programs. Grants have been awarded for 8 years.

Publications - the OCDF Newsletter is published quarterly and brings stories about adoption, real life stories and situations in China from modern news sources, Chinese culture information, and resources for adoptive families. We have two published books: New American Families: Chinese Daughters and their Single Mothers was publishedin 1996 and Finding Happiness was published in 2005. Both are collections of stories written by single mothers about the adoption of their daughter(s). A portion of the proceeds from that publication go to our scholarship fund.

OCDF Magazine - China for Children Magazine is a quarterly publication for Chinese children growing up in English speaking households. It brings art, history, culture, science and technology, music, and language through stories and activities.

OCDF Academic Connections - placement of universitystudents in internships in Beijing, China.

Love Without Boundaries is a worldwide group of volunteers who have realized that people with a pure love for helping children can truly make a difference. We all donate our time and resources in an attempt to brighten the lives of orphaned children in China.

David and I have decided to do what we can to help children in China while we wait. Who knows, perhaps something we do now will help our daughter. We will continue to participate as a family, we want Alex and our future daughter to know that they have a great capacity to do good in the world.

We believe Love without boundries is doing wonderful things for children in Chinese orphanages through their dedicated volunteers and sponsors. You can shop to support this organization and participate in a variety of programs such as sponsoring a child’s surgery, supporting education, and improving nutrition in China’s SWI’s. If you’d like to know how you can help visit: http://www.lovewithoutboundaries.com/HowToHelp.php

Raising a Barefoot Family…

I have the pleasure of working for Barefoot Books, a wonderful independent children’s publishing company, that has enriched our family in so many ways. Prior to taking this full-time position with them in 2004, I was involved in their Stallholder program.

I love my job. I am constantly amazed at the wonderful community we’re creating. It is a community that believes it is important to teach children about other cultures and traditions, challenge them with complex stories, and captivate them with art, that while certainly fit for gallery walls, is so much more accessible and appreciated by little ones in the pages of a book.

So that’s what we do; we make beautiful, unique books full of rich language, and breathtaking art and then we try to get them onto every family’s book shelf. This is not an easy task in an industry dominated by large publishing houses and massive distribution channels. However Barefoot’s strength lies in it’s attention to detail, uncompromising quality and it’s grassroots strategy of spreading the word, and connecting to like minded individuals who believe in our message.

Barefoot’s message has taken on a new relevance in our family. We’ve always tried to instill a sense of curiosity and wonder in our son, Alex, and help him explore our world. Now Barefoot Books takes on a new significance in our family’s journey, as we begin the process of adopting our daughter from China. We are so lucky that we already have, at our fingertips, exceptional books and resources to help us share with our daughter, a sense of understanding and pride in her birth country.

If you have never heard of Barefoot Books before you can explore further at www.barefootbooks.com

Some titles of particular interest to families who have adopted from China:

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (HC/music CD) $16.99
Sing Along with Fred Penner as you follow four children from different countries, each getting ready for school. See what the pictures tell you about different ways of life in Europe, Mali, India, and China.Comes with a music CD so you can sing along as you explore the bold art!

The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac (HC $16.99)
Race long with Rat, Monkey, Dragon, and their companions while discovering the origin of the Chinese Zodiac. This bright and colorful book includes intriguing notes about the Chinese calendar, the festivals, and the animal that rules each year. A great book for the Chinese New Year Celebration! Discover which animal didn’t make it into the Zodiac…

We’re Riding on a Caravan: An Adventure on China’s Silk Road ($16.99)
Explore the world of stunning silk, delicious spices and exotic trade locations in this rhyming tale about a Chinese family’s journey along the Silk Road, the trade route that runs thousands of miles through Asia. The rhyming text is lovely and the notes in the back provide a map of the route and further information about the prominence of the the silk road throughout history.

Stories From the Silk Road (PB ) $12.99
The Spirit of the Silk Road is your guide as you journey through this book from Chang-an to Samarkand, following one of the arterial caravan routes of the silk traders. As you travel across treacherous deserts and through lonely mountain passes, you will learn about the importance of silk as a commodity, see some of the distinctive customs of the Central Asia people, and join in many storytelling sessions at starlit oases and campfires.

The Barefoot Book of Princesses (HC) $19.99 (PB w/CD) $14.99
This warm and humorous collection presents much-loved favorites such as “The Princess and the Pea” from Denmark and less familiar figures including “The Beggar Princess” from China and “The Horned Snake’s Wife” from the Iroquois of North America. Caitlin Matthews’s wonderfully dramatic retellings are perfect for reading aloud, while Olwyn Whelan’s bright and witty illustrations are a feast in themselves. Full of strong clever heroines, the stories in this book present a cross-cultural look at the idea of “princesses”

Holding up Half the Sky
One day an elephant saw a hummingbird lying on its
back with its tiny feet up in the air.
“What are you doing?” asked the elephant.
The hummingbird replied, “I heard that the sky might fall today,
and so I am ready to help hold it up, should it fall.”
The elephant laughed cruelly. “Do you really think,” he said,
“that those tiny feet could help hold up the sky?”
The hummingbird kept his feet up in the air,
intent on his purpose, as he replied, “Not alone.
But each must do what he can. And this is what I can do.”
— A Chinese Folktale

Half the Sky offers the love and concern of family for thousands of orphaned children in China. They provide individual nurture and stimulation for babies, innovative preschools that encourage an early love of learning, personalized learning opportunities for older children, and loving — and most important, permanent — foster homes for children whose special needs will keep them from being adopted.

Half the Sky was created in order to enrich the lives and enhance the prospects for orphaned children in China. We establish and operate infant nurture and preschool programs, provide personalized learning for older children and establish loving permanent family care and guidance for children with disabilities.  It is our goal to ensure that every orphaned child has a caring adult in her life and a chance at a bright future…helping them hold up half the sky.

This is a wonderful organization doing important work. If you want to help you can Donate or Shop and make a difference in childrens’ lives. To learn more you can visit: http://www.halfthesky.org