Henry: 'Tis the Season to be Thankful

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

'Tis the Season to be Thankful

From our little corner on Green Street here in no particular order are a few things for which we're thankful: friends; family; Lusher Elementary and this year's school successes; Ochsner and Children’s hospitals; people across the planet who care about making things better; holidays and birthdays; our home; Plum Street sno-balls; washable markers; parades uptown; Doppler radar and those storm path computer models; sunny mornings and shady oak trees; little voices ringing through the house.

希望您是如保佑以好运
(Hope you all are as blessed with good fortune)

1 comments:

mumma to many said...: We hope that all your wishes and dreams come true for this most amazing season! What a year you guys have had! We nearly connected and missed by days! It is amazing that both our families have grown by one and the joy and wonderment that brings
May peace be with you all!
Arohanui(big love)
Ruth, Keith, Aiden, Emily and Alice in NZ; November 27, 2008 2:57 AM

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How This All Began

It was a typically dusty afternoon on September 11, 2006 in the high plateau of hardscrabble Gansu Province in northwest China. In Jingchuan County south of the city of Pingliang, a driver named Tian Wu Ping had just dropped off a fare at a roadside inn called the Tian Yuan Guest House when something caught his eye on the east side of the crossroad and next to a refuse bin.

That something looked at first like a bundle of rags but turned out to be an infant wrapped in an old cotton quilt, a small baby boy who appeared to be newborn. Tian picked up the child and called the local police who searched the area briefly for parents. But the baby had been abandoned; he was missing part of his face below his nose. He had been born with a serious cleft anomaly—no bone structure between the upper bridge of his nose and his lower jaw, and no separation between his oral and nasal/sinus cavities.

The child had been left by the roadside without the usual effects. No red cloth note indicating a birth date. No bottle, cup, or packet of formula. No infant clothes. Local police drove him north to Pingliang and turned him over to the prefecture Civil Affairs Bureau, which placed him with the Pingliang City Social Welfare Institute. There at this orphanage the staff named him Liang Xiao (Small) Wei (Big).

A doctor on the staff noted that Xiao Wei was indeed just a few days old and underweight at not quite 5.5 lbs. Then this tiny fragile infant took his place among about 80 other children then at the orphanage. Another medical exam at five months showed that despite the issues that can accompany his condition, Xiao Wei was small but growing. So the orphanage staff posed him for a few photos and began to prepare a dossier of paperwork to send off to Beijing, to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA), for his case to be accepted into the CCAA’s waiting child program.

China's waiting child program seeks to find homes internationally for orphaned or abandoned children with special needs that might otherwise make finding a family highly unlikely. These can include treatable medical issues such as congenital heart disease, Hepatitis B, cleft issues, or spina bifuda. Some waiting children have more severe issues.

Not all abandoned children with special needs become waiting children. Not all waiting children find homes.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

'Tis the Season to be Thankful

1 comments:

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