CNY 2020: The Year of the Rat
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
4y ago
I am very excited about Chinese New Year this year because I am a Rat! My high school’s mascot was the River Rat so I wholly embrace my Chinese zodiac animal. The Great Race account of the Chinese zodiac tells the story of a race across a river. As legend goes, the crafty Rat hopped on the back of the Ox and sang to him as they crossed the river but when they neared the other side, Rat jumped off ahead of Ox winning the race and was named the first animal of the Chinese Zodiac. So as we begin a new decade in 2020, we also begin a new cycle of the Chinese zodiac. Celebrating Chinese New Year ca ..read more
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Lessons from Rudolph
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
4y ago
Being a family of faith, we try to find most of the stories we tell and lessons we teach to our children this time of year from the Bible where the Christmas story is found. But we do own and enjoy a copy of the Limited Keepsake Edition of the Original Christmas Classics, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And this is where my story begins… On our first trip to China in 2013, we spent nearly two weeks at the Garden Hotel in Guangzhou, as our son is from a city in Guangdong. The medical appointment took place on a quiet week day (before all of the other families arrived from the various ..read more
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Dental Health & Down Syndrome: How Parents Can Help Their Children Have a Healthy Mouth
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
4y ago
Dental health is important to one’s overall well being. Most of us do what we can each day to prevent oral issues by visiting our dentist and having a dental routine at home. However, for children with Down syndrome, they may be at a higher risk for dental issues. While this can be challenging, there are ways to work to prevent oral problems. I have been practicing dentistry for more than 17 years, and have experience working with children who have Down syndrome. This article will discuss some common dental issues in children with Down syndrome may suffer from and how parents can be prepared t ..read more
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We Are Their World
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
4y ago
We are their world and they are ours….. A few months back I wrote about the first time I rocked my son to sleep. He was four and had never let me rock him in the two years we had been home with him. It was a little thing for most moms, but a huge moment for us. Attachment is an ongoing and changing part of life in the adoption world. Somedays it’s amazing and other days it can be heartbreaking reminder of early childhood trauma that we, as parents, just cannot fix. It is important during times of change to be mindful of attachment and how it fits into each part of our day. We recently moved ..read more
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What’s in a Name
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
4y ago
Every adoptive parent dreams of how they will “meet” their new child… Will they see him or her on an advocacy post and be flooded with warm fuzzies? Will they get “the call” or open an email to an endearing face that will change their family forever? I had been dreaming about this moment for over twenty-five years. Yep, that’s a bit of a wait! At age six, my parents bravely moved our family to Russia right after the Iron Curtain fell in the early ‘90s. We spread God’s love in a once cold and shackled land, especially visiting orphanages. One of my clearest memories from our time there was pla ..read more
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With Open Doors and Open Arms
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
4y ago
Our son Falcon’s adoption story began three years before he was born. We were in China adopting our first child, a baby girl, through the NSN program. Touring her orphanage, I remember cresting the top of the four flights of stairs, excited to hear the sound of little voices. We asked our guide if we could play with the babies. The director of the orphanage quickly said something to the nanny who, in turn, looked toward us with eyes cast downward as she closed the door. “No. You cannot go in there because these children have some special medical problems.” The shame on their faces imparted so ..read more
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Letting God Write Our Story
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
4y ago
Life is full of things we thought we could never handle… until we have to. As we considered growing our family via adoption, one thing we thought we “couldn’t handle” was a child with limited mobility. We already had three very active children. We love to hike, bike, go to the beach or spend a day exploring the city. We did not want that to change. Thankfully, though, we chose to approach adoption with an attitude of complete submission. We wanted God to write our story, not us. This meant making our choice of gender, age and special needs as broad as possible. But we still had our ideas of wh ..read more
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For Kids, By Kids
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
4y ago
“Mom, can we please do a lemonade stand today?” begged the kids. They had been wanting to do one for a long time, so I reluctantly agreed to do a stand that hot day in May 2015. We got a poster board, some lemonade, a table, and headed down to a park in our neighborhood. Although we profited about $20 that day, the Lord birthed an incredible idea in the hearts of our children. While we were sitting there doing our stand, one by one, ideas began to pop up. One child commented that they wanted to give the money we raised that day to Lifeline. Wheels started turning, and my children were blurting ..read more
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Treasuring the Gift of Communication
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
5y ago
My husband and I love talking about adoption. Among our greatest joys is sharing our journey with others and communicating that God uses the most ordinary of people (like us!) to participate in something extraordinary. I always feel a deep need to impress upon those who are considering the call to adopt that every family’s story looks different. The joys, the fears and the struggles are so individual and couldn’t ever be prescriptive for others. I know of families that have gone through unimaginable pain and trauma with their adoption journey. And I’ve known families who’ve experienced unbelie ..read more
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Ethan: Adopting a Son with Cleft Lip and Palate
No Hands But Ours
by nohandsbutours
5y ago
Early in our marriage, my husband showed interest in the idea of adopting. “Wouldn’t it be great to be able to give a family to a child who doesn’t have one?” he said one day. I remember thinking, “I don’t know if adoption is for me. I don’t know if I could do that.” Throughout the years, the idea of adopting came up periodically; looking back I can see that God was watering the seed He had planted in my heart. After we had our second biological child, my husband’s friend was adopting an older special needs child, and my husband said to me, “We need to be open to adoption. We need to pray abou ..read more
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