A lot to catch up on.  The girls are older and have gone through various stages, some quite serious, og growing up.

Not sure where to start as there is so much.  I think I will just discuss one child each day so its not too overwhelming.

Now that they are all teens I understand the privacy issue in several areas.  But I also know that perhaps other parents might benefit from my experiences in what to do or not to do.

Lets start out-of-order with my deaf daughter.  She is the third oldest in 5 and adopted 5.5 years ago.  Its as if she was raised in a bubble of ignorence, no self-regulation, problem solving skills, right & wrong awareness, no common sense, dis-regulated - you get the picture.  

I last left everyone hanging (sorry) a couple of years ago when my daughter with her limited sign indicated that she had a family that she lived with and the only reason she was at the orphanage (on the weekends and deaf school during the week) was because her family lived in the mountains 2-3 hours away and they were required to send her to school.

A FAMILY!! I asked?  Does this mean she was adopted without their permission?  I started shaking trees to find out some answer and got nowhere, especially with my agency WACAP, which was in total denial, even that her age was wrong by over 2 years. Finally a year later, I was invited to a function where many adoption officials and Directors of orphanages were invited.  I started laying seeds with the assistant to the Director of CCAA.  Over the next several months I went back and forth with her and my agency, because CCAA said they had to be involved, (again they were useless).  When WACAP sent me some translations of some documents they sent, the translations were wrong.  How do I know?  Two of my daughters are still fluent in Chinese because they came here at 13 years old.

Anyway, the jist of what the orphanage and CCAA came up with is that she did live with a family for many years, but it was a foster family.  She never knew this she thought it was her real family.  It broke her heart.  And they refused to give me contact information to the family because it was against policy.

On a slim to non chance, I weirdly came across an article about a wedding in a small village of a Swedish woman and a Chinese man.  Looking at the pictures of the children in the street I saw, what I think to be avery close resemblance of my daughter.  So I wrote the author of the article and sent picture of my daughter showing the similarities and she passed it along to the bride, (her friend), but the couple won't be back in the village for several months.  And since this could be a very touchy subject, it has to be done in person.  Wouldn't it be great!

Here are the pictures.  They both also have dark skin.  What do you think?

Look at the girl in the white 'T' shirt with the red collar.

Now look at my daughter's pictures below.  In this picture she also has a white 'T' on with a red collar.

There is more update for her but I must go now.  I will write more in a day or two.