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Children » Fine-art Children's Couture Photographer
The years have flown by, almost like the blink of an eye. I started this journey 14 years ago just after the birth of my first. 5 kids, countless moves across country and back again, 2 special needs adoptions and numerous medical appointments and hospital visits related to those, I almost feel as though I lost myself to motherhood. I am looking for her again, that creative passionate spirit that fueled my once thriving photography business. She was never fully asleep for over the last several years she has been learning, growing, creating, just not for others. I captured the beautiful moments of my own children. I am so thankful for the God given talent and the ability and means necessary to do so, for I have hundreds if not thousands of beautiful images of those most precious to me,. I have dearly missed creating for others though. I have missed the connection with my clients, many of whom have become dear friends after all of these years. I have missed the gasps and tears from moms when they first see the forget me not moments of their own children’s lives. I have missed the networking, idea sharing, community among other small business owners. So although I am not ready to take on photography again full time I will be accepting a very limited number of clients starting in the fall of 2021 and I will be co-hosting a number of shootouts in the South before we set sails for our new home in Texas. In the meantime, I thought it prudent to share some of my newer images so until time allows for me to share again, may you enjoy looking at these as much as I enjoyed creating them.
My husband and I were older when we got married, and a couple of years later, we decided to adopt. China at that time had mostly girls available for adoption and the process was very straight forward with the wait time only 6 months. Off went our dossier to China and we were all set to travel the next year! The next month we received a notification that the process had slowed down. Then another slowdown and another slowdown. Finally fifteen months later we received a photo of our girl! We learned a lot about patience during that time period and realized that we were under God’s timing for the perfect child for us.
Finally our family day arrived on March 5, 2007. Hannah was 22 months old and she was walking and talking. They handed over this beautiful little girl who immediately started crying her eyes out. It didn’t take long and after a couple of days, slowly a happy smiling little girl with a wonderful sense of humor emerged. She seemed to recognize at such an early age that we were there to care for her. The most important thing to her at that point was that we gave her lots of food! You could tell she had been loved immensely by her nannies, but she seemed to recognize that we belonged to her and our job was to love and take care of her.
Hannah is now 11 and will be entering middle school in the fall. She is a wise old soul with a sweet laid back personality. Hannah is very proud to be from China. We just returned from her heritage trip to China where she visited her orphanage and got to meet the people that had taken care of her.
A deep love and appreciation for my daughter’s birth country has lead me to being a chair with Families with Children from China, Greater Cincinnati. We feel it is important for Hannah to have a place where she feels a connection with other adoptees and can learn about her culture. Hannah loves taking Chinese dance and performing at our Chinese New Year’s celebration.
Adoption has changed everything about me because it made me a Mom. People might say Hannah is lucky. All of us that have adopted, know we are the lucky ones!
Our first son, A was adopted in 2011 from China. He was 8.5 yrs old when he came home. His adoption was special needs r/t spina bifida. In January 17, 2008, a friend, posted a plea on her blog about this little boy because his sisters, who were his orphanage friends, would name their friends from the orphanage and beg them to find them a mommy and daddy in the USA. After reviewing her blog post and his file we decided we wanted to pursue his adoption. This is where the story becomes complicated but extraordinary!!!!
After ensuring we met China’s pre-approval with WACAP, we began working on the paperwork. I contacted the case worker at WACAP about our current international living situation. We were planning to transition back to the states in the summer of 2008 and I wanted to make sure that would work with the adoption. Upon notification of this, they discouraged us from proceeding with his adoption due to our current situation (living abroad). They felt his adoption would need to be finalized during our transition back to the states and they didn’t want any delays in our paperwork or process. Here’s their response: “Unfortunately I would suggest that you wait. Even though pre-approval can take 4-6 weeks I have now had some families approved in less than 2 weeks. That means you could be approved a couple weeks from now and then we would be awaiting your homestudy and you should be working on your dossier. In order to submit your dossier you need to submit the homestudy and you have to have a permanent home (the home where you will reside with the child). Depending on the social worker writing the homestudy it can take anywhere to 4-6 weeks and sometimes they come out to visit you 2-3 times. It just doesn’t seem like perfect timing right now. If it were closer to June and your husband were in your new home it might be doable. I know you became attached to him but it is our hope that we bring him home to a family as quickly as possible. If for some reason he is still on the list later (and I hope he is not for his sake), I would advise you to begin the process closer to when you are due home. I will definitely keep you in mind if he has not found a family by then.” We were devastated. Through the “grapevine”, we heard this same individual at WACAP sent out an email a week later stating that his file was being sent back to China due to lack of interest. (If a child’s file is sent back to China it’s known that their file becomes inactivated and their opportunity for adoption is gone). We were so upset and shocked that they would send his file back when we wanted to adopt him even if it meant there would be delays. I was so heartbroken as I really felt this was my SON!!! That night after I cried myself to sleep, I literally woke up the next morning and told my husband, I know it sounds crazy, but A is our son, God told me. My husband tried to reassure me that we would find the right child but this adoption was highly unlikely to happen.
Upon contacting the agency concerning this, we were notified that a family who had completed prior China adoptions was paper ready and was interested in adopting him. We were so heartbroken and crushed that he was not able to be adopted by us, but we fully supported this family with their adoption of him. I stayed in contact with the adoptive family throughout their adoption process. In July 2008, we were notified by the adoptive family that he wanted to be taken off the adoption list and did not want to meet the family approved to adopt him, nor did he wish to go to the USA for his new life. We all could not believe the officials would let a 6 year old make that kind of decision, but they did.
At this point, we thought the door for adoption of this little boy had officially closed, so we sent in our initial online application fee to CWA agency. We wanted to pursue the Kazakhstan program, but in July 2008, CWA was not taking applications for Kazakhstan, so we decided on the Bulgaria program. As the months passed, we just felt like we were stuck in limbo. We never felt as strong about any particular country or child outside of that little boy. We started the process of gathering stuff for our home study but really did not have a sense of urgency.
On May 27th, 2009, our faith that God paid off. My friend sent me an email saying (her contact in China, W) wanted to know if anyone was interested in that little boy. W told her he had stated he wanted a family and surgical correction of his back. W spoke with him about what had happened previously and he assured her he was ready for a family. So she advocated to the CCAA and orphanage directors to get his adoption file up to date and available again for adoption. I have been told the fact that CCAA and the orphanage resubmitted his paperwork again at the age of 7 years old is a miracle in itself. We quickly emailed W and explained our story and told her we have wanted him since January 2008!!! We had been waiting for him!! W explained to us that Holt International could do a pre-ID adoption and would it be possible for us to use Holt as an adoption agency. Amazingly, we just moved to Kansas City, Missouri where a local Holt International office was!!! After the initial contact, we heard very little back from China or Holt concerning whether his adoption was going to be completed. Finally one year later on May 5, 2010, Holt notified us that his file was reactivated and was soon to be released to the CCAA shared files so we needed to update our Homestudy paperwork ready to go and start working towards completing our Dossier.!!!!
As excited as we were, we were concerned he might back out again, so we contact W and asked if it would be possible to prepare him for the adoption by teaching him English or placing him with an English expat foster family. On August 9, 2010, we got the miracle we prayed for, he left the orphanage forever!!! W was able to find him a foster home with an Australian expat family with 2 children. His foster mother was a teacher at BCIS and he began 2nd grade at BCIS, (private english expat school). A generous donation by a local Chinese businessman provided him a 25k scholarship to offset the costs to attend the school and stay in the foster home. While he was living with his foster family, we were able to send pictures, clothes, birthday and Christmas gifts, videos, and emails to him frequently, which has really helped us all to bond and be well prepared for his adoption. W and his foster family did a WONDERFUL job explaining his story to him while answering his questions about us, what a family means, and adoption.
How long did it take? Jan 17, 2008-Feb 13,2011: (1123 days) 3 years and 27 days.
Our second son, B’s adoption was totally unplanned and unexpected!!! In the fall of 2013, I started to have a yearning in my heart for another child. My husband and I briefly discussed expanding our family again, but we wers really unsure which path we would take to bring home our next child. We did not have a specific age group, sex, race or foster care/domestic/ international adoption route we would take. I prayed and hoped God would bring me a miracle just like what had happened with A.
Here’s what happened. I am an anesthesiologist. In a complete and utter surprise on 11/24/13, Iwent into work and covered OB call , ( which I had ended up swapping with another physician). On that Sunday morning we had been busy in the early morning then had some down time. During that down time, I was sitting around at the nurses desk talking with the team about a variety of topics including my adoption of A. During the discussion, we talked about A’s adoption story and whether or not we would adopt again. “Of course” I stated, ” I would love to as we are getting older but just did not know which direction to go: foster, domestic or international or when to start the process again”
As we were wrapping up our discussion, the team was notified there was a a new triage patient. One of the nurses went to check on the patient and came back very quickly stating, this lady is about to deliver and she is not keeping the baby and has no adoption plan. Shortly thereafter, I was called to her room to place her epidural. I only spoke to her concerning her medical history and the procedure I was performing. After she delivered, the nurse paged me to remove her epidural. As I was walking down the hall, the RN pulled me to the side and informed me that the mom wanted me to adopt her child. I was in complete shock.
She said from the moment she arrived in triage, she begged the RN for a solution for her baby. After a few hours of begging the nurse what she can do to make sure her baby will be safe, the nurse told her, ” the doctor who placed your epidural has adopted before and might be willing to adopt the baby” ( she remembered our conversation from earlier that day). As I walked into that room, to remove that epidural, the patient asked me to adopt her child. She stated the baby’s father was not involved and had no desire to parent the child and her relationship with him was extremely brief. She was older mature single mother who knew she could not raise this child. She told me from the beginning of the pregnancy, she had no intentions of ever keeping the baby. She was planning on an abortion but the time and funds alluded that option for her. In her current situation, her plan was just to abandon at the hospital but as she went through labor, she started to feel concern about his future and well-being/safety. She was adamant that foster care was a poor choice and did not want him to be “lost in the foster care system”. She did not want an open adoption but wanted to make sure she placed him with a loving safe forever family. She requested updates by email when convenient. I spoke to her about her rights and told her she needed to sleep on it and let the proper people speak with her the next day what options were for her and her baby (with it being a Sunday, I knew getting legal assistance would impossible) because this was a serious issue and we needed to do this the right and legal way. The next day, the hospital social worker and an adoption attorney spoke to her, counseling her. In addition, the hospital risk management spoke with the patient, myself, and nurse to make sure no ethical/professional boundaries were crossed.
At 5 pm that Monday night, I received the call that changed our lives forever. I was told the mother had signed over temporary custody to us, and that the papers are on the chart, and we could take our son home the next day!!! We finalized our adoption on Sept 24th, 2014 on his 10th month old bday. His name means gift from God.
There is something very magical about a boy and his horse. It may be because I grew up hearing Narnia stories and if you know anything about the wonderful world of Narnia you’ll remember the story of Brie and his rider Shasta who are escaping to the North, to the free land of Narnia. At first the two are strangers and by the end of the story they become the best of friends. Animals and children both of them pure. Maybe that is why I love this image so much. The beautiful light just bathing them in this sweet and tender moment, strangers when they meet, but now bonded together as the best of friends.
Pennsylvania is such a beautiful state. The Poconos especially are a refreshing, stunning environment to build a family and harness creativity. There isn’t a morning in the summer we don’t see at least a woodpecker, squirrel, hummingbird, or deer out our backdoor. The caterpillars are turning into butterflies as the season draws to a close and I reflect upon how every season our children grow as they blossom into the adults they will soon become. I try to cherish the little moments everyday but I know it won’t be long before they are walking away to build their own lives, to have their own children, and to walk their own path. I pray that they will walk that path holding the Lord’s hand. That they will always set their eyes to the light. And that the days of summer will slow down because the faster they go, the faster the days and the years seem to fade. Oh how I cherish the forget me not moments we are having as the last days of summer this year come to an end. I hope your family is as well.
