Adoption 39: Nick (Jacob) New York State

As the long term followers of Starfish might already know and others have forgotten or never knew, I was called by the director of the Big O on February 1st, 2009 to ask if I could take on 12 babies. I frantically started looking for a way to help these children because I knew what the alternative was and I could not live with myself unless I made a concerted effort to have those babies transferred to my house.  I send out a plea to the followers of Starfish and soon I had the monthly donations covered. Nine out of the 12 babies arrived and a few weeks later, I knew why the other three did not come with them. They got Chicken Pox at the orphanage and the ones who did come to Starfish were exposed, and so they brought chicken pox with them.  You can just guess what happened: Chicken pox went through the whole foster home.  To say that time was intense would be an understatement.

Nick was one of the nine babies.  In the beginning he was 3.3kg (7 1/4 pounds).  Looking at him you would never have believed that he would become one of the members of the brute squad.  He could eat and did eat often, and soon he caught up. He had a cleft lip and not a cleft palate so he only needed one surgery for his lip and it healed beautifully. On his growth chart you can see him steadily climb from below average to over the 97% mark in one steep arch.  Then he started walking and you can see the arch turn into a hump, to just below the 97% mark.  My favorite time is when he started walking.  Children have different ways of doing this.  Nick thought he could walk already and so he could get up and run and the result was he felt down.  He was undeterred and tried again.  The bad thing was that he fell on the same stop all the time......his right forehead. During the rest of his time here that was his favorite stop to fall on.  As a result he now has a big bump there, which I guess could be there for life.  He made friends easily and hung out with Tim, Bryan and Antonia often until they were adopted.  He turned out to be be such a typical boy with a love for cars, playing outside and going fast down the slide. He turned out to be an expert climber, on to things over things and into other people's cribs.

After a long haul we managed to get his adoption papers together and they went off to the orphanage and then to the CCAA.  We got no word from any families and I thought that the file was in Europe but I was wrong.  Nick was adopted by a family from New York State and they changed his name to Jacob. He now has a big sister Emily and from what I hear he is true to form and eating lots.  He went Trick 'n Treating as Tigger this past Halloween. 

I would gratefully like to acknowledge Gayly and Shawn and their family, who so generously supported Nick's care right from the beginning.

Life, love and laughter,
Amanda

At Starfish, we have taken care of 124 children to date, arranged more than 100 surgeries and had 47 international adoptions, so our little starfishes live all over the globe: the US, Netherlands, Norway, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Canada and in China.  Our last adoption was to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  We are preparing for adoption number 48, Stella on November 22 to New Mexico and number 49 Callum to near Atlanta, Georgia.  We currently have 47 babies under the age of 3 and three foster homes.  Caroline and Charlotte are still in the hospital but recovering well from their surgeries.  Operation Smile will be in town this week, November 17 to 22 and we will be doing some cleft lip surgeries.

Starfish Children's Services
US Tax Number:  20-4682916
Xian China

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