The desperate situations of Haitian orphans — and the travails of U.S. parents trying to adopt them — have been covered extensively on msnbc.com and TODAYshow.com in the wake of Haiti’s devastating earthquake. Here are updates on two Haitian children we’ve profiled: Charly Schumacher, 11, and Lovely Benedict, 2.

Charly’s story
Charly is now safe in his new home in Wilmington, Ohio, with his adoptive parents, Jan and Paul Schumacher. The Schumachers had been trying to adopt Charly since 2005, when he was 6. Charly had lived with them for a year when he came to the United States at age 5 for treatment after being burned in a kerosene-lamp fire. He returned to Haiti when his medical visa expired.

“That was a nightmare sending him back,” Jan Schumacher recalled. “He was screaming and clinging and didn’t want to leave with the Haitian stewardess.”

Since that time, Jan Schumacher has visited Charly at his orphanage in Haiti and has struggled with red tape and obstacles to his adoption. When the earthquake hit, she panicked; she had no idea whether he was alive or dead. It turns out that Charly survived but was injured in the earthquake, so he was cleared to travel to the U.S. for necessary medical treatment.

Jan Schumacher traveled to Miami to pick Charly up. After yet more delays, she sent this update via e-mail:

“I was finally able to clear the FBI and get Charly out of ... Florida on Thursday a.m., Jan. 28. What a prickly time it was down there, I got to see Charly for about an hour a day and beg for them to keep checking on my status. I had to give them copies of all of our adoption papers, financial disclosure info, get several notarized and get fingerprinted, which is what we waited on all week.

“But we're home now!!!!! Charly is standing here bugging me as I write this ... it is so nice! ;)”

Lovely’s story
As of this writing, the story of little Lovely has no such happy ending. Her adoptive parents, Janelle and Bryan Benedict of Torrance, Calif., had completed the entire adoption process before the earthquake struck. They had just been waiting on the Haitian government to issue a passport for Lovely, who is developmentally delayed because of the effects of malnutrition and parasites.

“I’ve gone and spent a week with her (in Haiti) three times,” Janelle Benedict said. “She is just the sweetest little thing. She’s beautiful. She cuddles. And when you play music she likes to dance, which is so cute. ...

“She’s 2, but she’s just recently started crawling and barely started standing and taking a few steps. ... She only weighs 15 pounds because of malnutrition. But I think she will grow quickly once she gets home and gets proper food and medical attention.”

Since the earthquake, the Benedicts have been struggling frantically to bring Lovely home. They came close late last week, when officials almost put Lovely on a flight to Salt Lake City with other orphans. Janelle Benedict sent this update:

“We went to Salt Lake City to meet Lovely coming home on a plane that had taken humanitarian aid to Haiti. After the pilot refused to leave with the children and a big stand-off at the airport and negotiations directly with (Haiti’s) Prime Minister, 50 or so children were able to leave to Miami, but not to Utah. However, because USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) or the Port-au-Prince Embassy made a mistake with our updated fingerprints, Lovely and 13 other children were not allowed to board.

“Now, the process nearly starts over for her. She still is waiting for humanitarian parole, and then (we) hope the Prime Minister will sign her file. All the while, things are becoming very political and our team fears that they may close the door to children leaving to join the families at any moment. It’s all unbearable. We continue to wait.”

The Benedicts’ efforts to bring Lovely to the United States are chronicled in a BBC video. To watch the video, click here.

Related links:

Painful limbo for parents adopting Haitian kids

Reunited: Desperate dad goes to Haiti to rescue kids

Americans rush to adopt orphaned Haitian children

Home at last: 7 Haitian orphans arrive in U.S.

Haiti judge questions jailed Americans

A grown woman lost her balance and fell onto Picasso's "The Actor" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week. Have you ever endured a similarly embarrassing moment, either as a clumsy adult yourself or as a parent touring a museum with small, antsy children?

Who said parenting was stressful?! According to a new study in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, people with children have significantly lower blood pressure than those without. It seems that throughout the hectic schedules, constant worrying and lunch-packing, parents are able to find a certain calm and fulfillment in raising their kids. Not surprisingly, this effect is found more in mothers than fathers.

"Women were driving the effect," says co-author Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychologist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. "Women with children had the lowest blood pressure, and women without had the highest."

Earlier bedtimes make for happier, less depressed kids, according to a new study in the journal Sleep. For many children, bedtimes set by parents were almost as important as the total number of hours slept.

From Laura T. Coffey, TODAYshow.com contributor

I've never been a real food snob, but living in the Pacific Northwest for many years has rubbed off on me in this undeniable way: I now have a deep and abiding love for good coffee and good beer.

It's funny because I don't drink very much of either beverage. (I couldn't even if I wanted to, for reasons that will soon become apparent.) But the time I do spend drinking good coffee or good beer is an EVENT. Something to be savored. Something to be planned around, even. This is serious business!

Or it had been, at least. Until I had a kid.

It literally took months for me to awaken enough from my sleep-deprived stupor to realize the new pattern that was afflicting me, not just every now and then, but every single day. Each morning I would pour myself a cup of coffee and doctor it up in just the right way, with a little bit of sugar and milk. Then I'd begin tending to my infant son. (As the months wore on, he transformed into a toddler son.) Rush-rush-rush, hustle-bustle-hustle-bustle ... and then I'd finally remember my neglected cup of coffee and take a sip.

"Oh no!" I would think. "It's cold." (Not just lukewarm, by the way. COLD.)

Good coffee ain't cheap, so I'd nuke my cup and soldier on. And then it would get cold – again!

That's when I'd reach a crossroads: Do I nuke it a second time?

I'm frugal, and I already feel guilty enough about the money we spend on coffee, so you can guess what I've been doing. And I'm here to report that thrice-nuked coffee is DISGUSTING, no matter how good the pot was when it was fresh. The milk in it even starts to curdle into solid little doohickeys that float along the top. (Why does THAT have to happen??)

I also can tell you that coffee sitting in a pot for seven-plus hours doesn't taste that great by the time naptime finally rolls around, either – no matter how much you've been waiting to savor it.

I often encounter a photo-negative of the exact same problem in the evenings with beer – not every day of the week, as happens with the coffee, but often enough to notice a pattern. In a spirit of generosity, my husband will crack open a frosty Sierra Nevada for himself and grab one for me too. That open beer bottle will sit there, forlorn and increasingly dripping with condensation, from approximately 6:45 until 9:15 p.m. when I can finally sit down. That's when the beer and I come face to face with one another – and again, I reach a crossroads.

"Hey Michael," I'll say to my husband. "If I put this back in the fridge, will you drink it when it turns cold again?"

"Why would I want to drink an open beer?" he'll say. "I'll just get a new one."

"But this is a perfectly good beer. It just needs to turn cold again."

"Why don't you drink it?"

"I don't think I'll last that long. I think I'll be sleeping by the time it finally turns cold."

And so it comes to pass that on many a weekday morning, I find a bottle of cold Sierra Nevada sitting open on a refrigerator shelf, losing precious fizziness and zip. I'll feel so cut to the heart by this sight that I'll cover the top of the bottle with plastic wrap or tin foil and vow to drink it that night at approximately 9:15 p.m.

It's so nice to have treats like this to look forward to at the end of a long day, isn't it, moms? :-)

One Colorado baby was denied coverage for being overweight. Another was denied for being too small. When it comes to children, should insurance companies be allowed to use size when deciding who gets coverage and who does not?