There's No Place Like Home

[Queen Of Hearts]

9 hours ago, Geechee Girl said:

So rather than enunciating Joey's name, she'll add to or change Joy's? What's wrong with these people? To my ear, Joey and Joy sound different regardless of speed.

Extra weird, considering they named three of their kids very similar sounding names already - Emma, Anna, and Ella. I suspect the talk of changing Joy's name is more of a control thing.

[waterandrocks]

Is Joey short for Joseph? That seems like an easy fix right there, and one that won't be yet another change for Joy while her whole world is changing.

[Four is Enough]

Wow. The people I know who adopted internationally have spent years and second and third mortgages paying for the adoptions. How they did it all those times is way beyond me.

[DarkAnts]

They remind me of Pokemon. They just have to catch them all.

Spoiler

 

[SummerRocks]

For someone who blogs so much -and yes, I do read her blog and I do like following their lives- she gives very very little information about Joy.

 

I wish I read the blog before the edit. I am also convinced I saw Joy on another blog before ... where?! 

[blessalessi]

I saw this blog a couple of weeks ago, while I was following the rabbit warren from other adoption blogs.  The writer seems very naive and self-absorbed to me. The tone is very much about keeping things simple (for her) , getting everyone dressed up for church (which she enjoys), showing off all the blessings(that she enjoys).  

I wonder how well and how deeply she really knows any of the children as individuals.

Edited January 2, 2016 by blessalessi

[JillyO]

19 hours ago, Queen Of Hearts said:

LOL... Jean has edited her blog after getting some push back in comments. Now she says Joy came to them through the 'blessing of domestic adoption'... not rehoming.

Edited to add... she also deleted the critical comments that also mentioned rehoming. Oh, how I wish I had screen capped!

I think she edited her post yet again. Now it just says "Before Christmas, Hubby and I were blessed with a new daughter from China!" I wonder why she changed it again.

[Jingerbread]

20 hours ago, Queen Of Hearts said:

LOL... Jean has edited her blog after getting some push back in comments. Now she says Joy came to them through the 'blessing of domestic adoption'... not rehoming.

Edited to add... she also deleted the critical comments that also mentioned rehoming. Oh, how I wish I had screen capped!

Even that has been removed now.  Joy is now just a new daughter from China.  I'm also kind of bothered by the picture that's supposed to show how well she fits in around that big table.  It's all Chinese faces.  So she fits in with the adoption brood.

I know it can always be worse, but it's sad that these kids really are just being collected and boarded more than anything.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Jingerbread

[Casserole]

After the fencingmama blog was posted, I fell down the fundie-adoption-child-collector rabbit hole... the picture of Joy looks eerily familiar like I have seen that child before but now I can't place her because I read so many blogs at once. 

[Mercer]

Kind of an aside, but why do people who comment on adoption blogs (especially religious adoption blogs) so often say they are "in tears" or claim that a post made them cry? It's such an odd affectation and makes them seem way too emotionally invested in the lives of complete strangers.

It's really okay just to say "I'm happy for you" rather than professing to be weeping tears of joy.

[Four is Enough]

7 minutes ago, Mercer said:

Kind of an aside, but why do people who comment on adoption blogs (especially religious adoption blogs) so often say they are "in tears" or claim that a post made them cry? It's such an odd affectation and makes them seem way too emotionally invested in the lives of complete strangers.

It's really okay just to say "I'm happy for you" rather than professing to be weeping tears of joy.

My thought about that is that by saying they're "in tears", they are MORE joyous than the heathens... more kids for God! THEY understand the precious-ness of the gift better than the rest of us. Even as an adoptive mother, I think I've only cried tears of joy when my own children's adoptions were finalized. IOW, I agree with Mercer.

[Queen Of Hearts]

Wow. My positive feelings for this family have now completely vanished after reading Jean's latest edit. If she is going to be so dishonest about this, what else is she lying to us about? My guess is plenty.

 

[FundieFarmer]

This just seems like a lot happening in one house. I second that it's entirely possible that though loving, it's not the best for the kids. I'm interested to see how this progresses.

[DaffyDill]

This is a tad off topic, but I looked at the blog of one person whose comment was deleted from the comment section of the "We've adopted Joy" post, and these are family pics from her last blog post in Sept 2015.

Blog post: http://porknbeansinchina.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/im-back.html

I'm thinking they may have rehomed a child, because one of the 6 kids in the photos, has a cartoon sticker digitally placed over her face in every photo. The family's blurb says they only have 5 children.

A couple of posts back in the blog, when talking about plans for their family holiday, the mother says 

Quote

We will be traveling across S.D. to see Mount Rushmore, Wall Drug, The Corn Palace, and hope to sneak over to Wyoming to see Devil's Tower!   What a trip!  Our special friend will be going with us there too!

So maybe the "special friend" has stickers on her face...but why? I don't trust any of these child collecting people.

And count me as someone else who thinks Joy looks familiar...just not sure from where.

Edited January 3, 2016 by DaffyDill
Added a bit

[DarkAnts]

They did rehome one of their children. It could be joy.

[accountingstar]

The child with the smiling face looks older than Joy. Look at the legs of that child and look at the legs of Joy. The child on porknbeansinchina.blogspot has heavier legs. They look like the legs of a teen/tween. I used to read Christine's blog. We discussed her on this forum before. Then she made her blog private before. She had adopted a little girl named Linzi and it wasn't going well. She wanted to leave her in China, but didn't. It looks like Linzi is gone. I haven't read her blog since 2012. She did adopt six girls. She actually got a child who was being rehomed. Linzi came home at the end of 2012.

Here's a photo of Linzi from her blog:

Now I am going to have to read 3 years of posts before she makes the blog private again.

[accountingstar]

I finally found out what happened to Linzi. She was rehomed to a family in the Portland area. But get this, Christine tries to adopt another girl from China shortly after she rehomed Linzi and China said no. You think that if your family was under stress from Linzi then why would you want to adopt right away. Let your family recover from the stress. It appears that Linzi was rehomed in February and in April of that year Christine was doing a physical for the home study of this new girl. That's only two months.

http://porknbeansinchina.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/my-post-to-fb-tonight.html

Quote

We have had to stop our adoption of the beautiful 10 year old who probably saved my life. How did she save my life? I had to have a brief physical for our home study update. The ARNP told me it had been a while since I had my mammogram and the office set up an appt. for me. Very soon after I received a call that there was a density on the mammo that they wanted to do an ultrasound on. That density was Triple Negative Breast Cancer. A biopsy was done to confirm and on April 19th I had a lumpectomy. This kind of cancer is very aggressive and it had grown from the time it was biopsied to when it was surgically removed. Thankfully my lymph nodes were benign! I started chemo this morning. 

We adopted a 6 year old in November 2012. According to her referral and the updated reports and video we asked for she was on target developmentally for her age. I arrived in China to find that China had lied! She is a toddler in a 6 year old body. She has many more issues than we were told...many. We do not have the resources to take care of her. We have adopted five girls from China and we were prepared for delays, but not to the extreme she is. I traveled alone and called my husband right away. He contacted our agency and I was on Skype with our adoption coordinator for over an hour. Bottom line, I knew I couldn't leave her in China. We agreed to bring her home and have her evaluated. The doctors have told us many things. Possible Institutional Autism, Autism, and probably mental retardation. We are devastated. We tried our best until February when we contacted our agency again. They suggested respite care. Friends of ours called out of the blue to tell us that they have been praying about our family and our daughter and they can't get her out of their minds. They want to help. He does listen!!! The mom came and stayed with us for a long weekend and our daughter returned to the Portland area with her. They have two daughters from China, they are much younger than us and she is a stay at home mom!! PTL! We didn't realize how much stress our whole family was under until she was gone. Three of our daughter's grades had slipped from A's and B's to C's D's and one F! We missed her, but she was getting much more help that she needs.

Long story...I am sorry. We told our agency about my cancer and our daughter in respite and China told them a resounding NO they can not adopt from China again. There is a good chance if I had decided to leave her in China that we could have come home and applied for another child. I could not have lived with myself thinking about her not getting the help she needs. We are hopeful that she may eventually catch up. Our friends are going to adopt her.

I don't need grief about our decision. Our whole family has been devastated. I am advocating for the 10 year old who we will be releasing. She tested positive for syphilis as an infant and was treated with IV and intramuscular penicillin per protocol. According to her report she still tests a "weak" positive for syphilis. The infectious disease specialist we showed her char to says that is common and since she is showing no signs or symptoms of the disease she is okay. He thinks that their lab work could be wrong, because there is another little girl with the same diagnosis. Anyway he says that she will live a long healthy life and it shouldn't be a concern. If you are interested in this beautiful girl please contact me off FB at
christiev1 @yahoo.com Our agency is willing to release her file to someone's agency who wants to adopt her.

If you have read this far, thanks for listening. We are very blessed to have five beautiful daughters from China. We are super blessed to know who and where our sixth daughter is with. Our family has gone to the brink of H#ll and back and we are slowly healing. We have a daughter who we adopted from a disruption and she is a joy. We are true believers that He had a hand in this.

I will be cross posting this. Xin Hong Tuan DOB 1/15/2003 deserves a family!! Just wish it was ours! We will be adopting again possibly from a disruption. After six trips to China I have seen so much and learned so much about adoptions from there. Go expecting the worse and hope to be pleasantly surprised. I wish we had the resources to keep our child, but neither one of us have family or friends in our area who wanted to help us with her.

 

[Toothfairy]

How do these fools pass home studies.  This is why I say international and domestic adoption are businesses. These agencies want money

[dianapavelovna]

We discussed Christie (porknbeansinchina) a fair bit back when her rehoming of Linzi went down (thread here). I haven't been keeping up with her lately, so I'm not sure what to make of the "special friend" situation.

I suspect Jean is being a little light on the details on Joy deliberately so it is harder to figure out who dumped her (whether they blog or not). They do appear to be pretty wealthy and give the kids opportunities to participate in lots of activities and fun stuff, but I've gotten the sense the adopted kiddos won't get quite the same experience the biokids did. She flat out says that in this post, and it grosses me out a little. 

I would not be shocked if Jean changed Joy's name. They named one of their adopted kiddos Mia despite having a dog named that. See here (I think they chose a different name for whoever they were adopting when that was written...IIRC Mia is one of the more recent adoptions).

I'm also turned off by all the editing of the post. When I read it the other day, it said she came to them from "the blessing of domestic adoption," and I snorted and thought, "yeah, you mean rehoming." She also had a line about not sharing much to protect kiddo's privacy. 1.) Serious worries about a child's privacy would preclude prolific blogging. 2.) We all know you guys were turned down for another adoption from China. 3.) Anyone even semi-familiar with international adoption in the US is aware that kids regularly get dumped when they fail to meet the adopters' expectations.

But the rehoming situation that is currently giving me flames on the side of my face is the Hameloths shipping Josie (nearly 13-year-old with CP adopted from China 4 years ago) off to the Mussers (family with 10+ biokids, including one with DS and two other kids who have severe special needs and were adopted from Pleven, the second of whom died a year and a half ago when adoptive mom left him alone in the bathtub). I almost started a thread about it, because I have a lot of thoughts. 

[Mercer]

39 minutes ago, dianapavelovna said:

But the rehoming situation that is currently giving me flames on the side of my face is the Hameloths shipping Josie (nearly 13-year-old with CP adopted from China 4 years ago) off to the Mussers (family with 10+ biokids, including one with DS and two other kids who have severe special needs and were adopted from Pleven, the second of whom died a year and a half ago when adoptive mom left him alone in the bathtub). I almost started a thread about it, because I have a lot of thoughts. 

Oh man, that is really disappointing to me.

I've never felt harsh toward the Mussers over Tommy's death. The mom made a serious mistake, but it's the type of mistake that many tired and overwhelmed parents have made. Unfortunately for Tommy, it had the worst possible consequences. I'm sure she'll carry the guilt for the rest of her life.

I really hoped that the family would learn from it that good intentions are not enough, and you have to know your limits. If you don't, it's not just the parents who get hurt.

If they're taking on yet another challenging child on top of everything else they have on their plate, it seems like they haven't learned that lesson after all.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Mercer

[blessalessi]

Yeah, when I read the Musser blog, Tommy's death was a tragedy, but the time it took the family to be "ready" to adopt again was relatively brief and I wonder if it is a guilt/redemption thing going on.

The Mussers eem to be very passionate about their family but they definitely have a significant "Saviour Complex" going on. 

Edited January 3, 2016 by blessalessi

[Howl]

Holy crap.  A woman with a houseful of kids diagnosed with breast cancer, starting chemo and thinking about taking in more children.  My stepdaughter was in this situation (triple negative aggressive breast cancer that had not metastasized) and she was in for almost 9 months of two types of chemo followed by radiation.  THEN she had to begin some type of estrogen suppressing drug that is almost worse than the chemo (fatigue and weight gain).  

But I've been having thoughts about how this type of large scale adoption could go right.  High energy, happy, thoughtful parents with lots of money; lots of kids so if you arrive off the boat from China, you have instant playmates that may even speak your native tongue; as you grow older, sibs with the same background; when you arrive, an environment that may be what you were used to in your orphanage: lots of kids. 

In other words, a large family might be what some of these kids need to thrive.  I can also see all the ways it can go wrong, like the RV family wanting to start an orphanage in South Africa. 

 

Edited January 3, 2016 by Howl

[accountingstar]

Last night I caught up on three years worth of blog posts on Christie's blog, http://porknbeansinchina.blogspot.com.au/ Her last blog post was on October 7, 2015. I believe that the girl with the smiley face over her photo is a child being rehomed with Christie's family. Christie said on her blog that she always wanted six daughters. Even after she was turned down by China, she went back to adopt agencies trying to adopt. They told her that she needed to wait. Also, Christie would have to fund-raise again to adopt. There was no fundraising on her blog for a new adoption after Linzi. She was out of work for a long time and now only has a part-time job. I believe that Christie probably met Jean on a rehoming website and the girl with the smiley face is most likely her new daughter.

Quote

We will be adopting again possibly from a disruption.

That's just my opinion based on reading her blog. We will have to see if she keeps updating her blog. It has been almost 3 months since the last update.

[iheartchacos]

"Josie needs a full time caregiver to help her but we have come to the realization that we can’t have someone in our house"

http://hamelothjourney.blogspot.com/2015/11/change-is.html?m=1

Something ain't right. This is all kinds of shady.

There's a link to a post saying they no longer trust anyone and will keep their circle small and be more secretive about their parenting :/

[Howl]

Well, apparently the live-in nurse who was caring for Josie turned them in for child abuse.....which is why they can't trust anyone ever again to be a live-in caretaker.  At least, that's what I understand from reading the blog.