If You Shower the People You Love With Love, You'll End Up Getting Wet

On Saturday, our wonderful church family celebrated the impending arrival of our little girl by holding a shower for us. They showered us with food, gifts, love. We showered them with tears of joy. Excitement and anticipation filled the room, and joy radiated from every face as we opened our many amazing, thoughtful, creative gifts. Love was all around, and the memories of this special event are priceless. These wonderful people have waited these many months right along with us, and now their dreams for us are coming true. How blessed we are, indeed! Thank you, all, so much for taking this walk with us.

It's All Good in the Hood

Our wonderful neighbors held a shower for us last night.  It was an amazing outpouring of love and enthusiasm for our family.  To see and feel such kindness was awing.  From the moment they found out we had been matched with our daughter, a shower was in the works.  No detail was missed in order to make it a perfect evening.  The food was fabulous, the decor was worthy of a magazine spread, the company was outstanding and so beautiful.  So many of them volunteered to help.  It was a lot of work for them in a collaborative effort, and, yet, it was seamless.  We didn't have to lift a finger except to carry all the wonderful gifts home.  So many wonderful gifts.

 

Thank you for all you did to put on a truly memorable party.  Thank you, too, for sharing our joy and for all you have done to help welcome our little girl home.  We are so touched.

Showered With Love and Loot

T's friends at work had a shower for us yesterday. What a wonderful group of people they are. They have been so enthusiastic through our long wait, and it was such a special treat for us that they hosted this celebration. The invitations were beautiful, the desserts were fantastic, and the pink and green theme was an excellent choice. You really did it right! The gifts they gave were so thoughtfully chosen, and we know, without a doubt, that our daughter will love them all. We've already put a guard on duty to protect them until she arrives.

Long Distance Love

We were able to send a care package to our sweetheart limited to a disposable camera, small toy, photo album and love letter. Our Chinese teacher translated our letter for us, beautifully penning the characters, and, when she finished, it was a work of art. It looked like it had been done on a machine. The characters were perfect and beautiful, but, more than that, she told us she was honored to help us and she poured her heart into writing the characters as if she were writing the letter to her own daughter. It was a labor of love, and it showed.

We took the care package to the post office, gave it a kiss and sent it on its way to China. Once it left our hands, we wondered about it's route to China and whether she would receive the package. Amazingly, we were lucky enough to find out that she has, indeed, received the package. What a rush of emotions that information brought. It was a direct link to her. She knows she has a mama and baba. How does she feel about that? What does that mean to her? We'll soon see.

Here's Our Story

On Monday, May 4 we had the surprise of our lives when, on our last day of vacation, we woke up to a telephone call from Tina with our adoption agency telling us there was a healthy, 7 year old girl who was going to be placed on the multiple agency waiting child list and were we interested in locking her file. I immediately went into stammer mode. "Ugh, ugh," was the only thing coming out of my mouth. I recovered enough to tell Tina we were in a hotel room, without a computer, leaving tomorrow to fly home, etc. I hung up the phone, told T about the call, and immediately we called back to tell Tina to lock the file. At that time we were told we had until 8 a.m. Wednesday, May 6 to file a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the adoption affairs office in China stating our desire to adopt the specific child, how we would take care of her special need (age), how we would educate her, etc.

We went to the front desk at the hotel and explained to Sasha, the desk clerk, that we needed to get on a computer to receive the information about the girl who might become our daughter. In real time, it was a lot more chaotic than that. The tears we had in our eyes and the urgency in our voices probably scared the beejeebers out of Sasha, but he maintained his composure and helped us out. We got behind the desk with him, and he printed the information that had been emailed to us.

First thing Tuesday morning we flew home. When we arrived at 2:30 p.m., I called our agency to let them know we were on the ground, and, at that time, we found out we did not have until 8 a.m. Wednesday morning to file our Letter of Intent. We had until 7 p.m. that night. The clock is running. . .To say the adrenaline was pumping is an understatement. We took the hotel shuttle back to where we'd parked our car for the week, and I got on the phone to the office of the doctor who was going to review the medical information we'd received. Since we had parked in a new location we got turned around pulling out of the parking lot and drove on the local streets for a while until we could find the correct highway on-ramp. The clock is running. . . We had more than an hour drive in work traffic ahead of us. Road construction snarls traffic necessitating a circuitous alternate route home. The clock is running . . .We were getting concerned because we still hadn't heard anything from the doctor, and it was almost 5 p.m. At 4:55 p.m. the doctor, who, in addition to running an international adoption clinic, has four children adopted from China, called and said . . . she looks healthy. "She's a big kid," he said. Good news.

While T drove I wrote the Letter of Intent, and we finally arrived home. I typed the LOI into email and we sent it off to our agency at 6:30 p.m., a half hour before the deadline. When we called to confirm that it had been received, Tina told us we had sent it to the office, but she was working from home that day. We resent it to her home and gave her a few minutes to receive it. When we called back to confirm, she said, "It's already in China."

Here's the Story

More than three years ago our dossier was sent to China and given a log in date (LID) of March 29, 2006. The dossier, in which we requested a nonspecial needs girl age 3-7 years old, works its way through the system based on that LID. Eventually the dossier arrives in the Matching Room where it is matched to the paperwork of a specific child.

Although China changed the requirements for all dossiers logged in after May 1, 2007, our dossier was grandfathered in under the old requirements and the program has remained constant. Over the years, there have been changes made to the paperwork process for the special needs program, also known as waiting child program. There were times when we submitted paperwork for specific children in the waiting child program, but, happily, those children always went to the families that were intended to have them. Most recently the waiting child program included something called a multiple agency list. Those lists of waiting children are updated periodically, and profiles of those children are available to a number of adoption agencies at the same time. In order to be considered for a child on the waiting child list, we would have had to submit paperwork to our adoption agency for each special need diagnosis we felt we were capable of managing, including how the child's medical, educational, etc. needs would be handled. When a child is going to be placed on the multiple agency list, agencies can contact a family that has submitted paperwork for the specific special need diagnosis based on the family's LID and give the potential parents the opportunity to decide if they would like to have the child's file locked to review the information about that specific child. As the months went on and we crept slowly closer to getting our referral, we chose not to submit paperwork for the multiple agency waiting child program because we felt that we were close enough to getting a referral through the nonspecial needs program. We had grown comfortable in understanding the way the process worked, and we would follow the course we were on to being matched with our child.

Throughout our long wait, there have been many things we have learned. Most certainly we have learned that we are not in control. We have always put our trust in the fact that this would happen in God's time not ours. Well, His time came as a complete surprise.

The Stork Has Landed. We Have A Daughter!

Our Seeking Confirmation Letter arrived today at 3:04 p.m! This is our official referral. We have a daughter! We were notified yesterday that it was going to come today so I took off work, got up early to walk the pup, took a quick shower and plopped myself down on the front porch bench at 7:50 a.m. to wait for the UPS delivery. There was no way we were going to wait inside to hear the doorbell ring. They are too quick to drop and run. One or both of us was out on that porch all day long. The videocamera was on the tripod and the digital camera was ready to be attached to the tripod so we could jump into the shot. Sitting out there we looked like we were waiting for a parade to go by or that we had a beef with the neighbors about the mailbox or something and were waiting to catch someone in the act of doing something because the videocamera pointed in that direction all day. We went through a variety of weather changes in the course of 7 hours on the front porch from multiple layers and blankets to T-shirts and back again.

We jumped at anything that sounded like a truck. Four rounds of school buses, garbage truck going up one side of the street and down the other, landscapers, and even Fed Ex. But no UPS. Finally, at 3:04 p.m., I shouted, "Truck. It's here," and we sprung into action. T turned on the video, and I hopped down to the truck with the camera shouting to the two drivers, "Our daughter is in that package!" We told them we had been waiting 38 long months for that package. I hugged each of them twice. They were so happy for us and happy to get in our pictures. I know it made their day. It certainly did for us.

Shout it from the rooftops. We have a daughter!