OUR FAMILY WILL BE GROWING AGAIN!!!!!!!!

A lot has been happening and I am hoping to get my blog all caught up soon.  The biggest news is that our family is going to be getting larger!  Yes, it is true!  I cannot post a picture of our newest daughter and I probably won't be able to until maybe the Fall.  We are using an agency out of Alabama called Lifeline.   She is on their waiting children pages but her picture is blurred out due to CCAA rules.  Lifeline is a Christian based agency and so far things are going well.  We are just at the very early stages so we don't expect to travel to China until next spring or summer.

Of course, we pray that God's timeline will be faster than that, but if there is one thing that we have learned with our previous adoptions is that you cannot ever predict when you will be going to China.  We have not told Emma and Meilynn yet because of the length of time and of course because until China says that she is our daughter she is not.  In our hearts she is already ours.  So here is the story how this happened. 

  I had never considered adopting an older child.  I knew that Mike was done with the baby stages so I thought our adoption days were over.  Little did I know the plan that God had a plan for us.  My friend from Washington (the one that told us about Meilynn) mentioned in her blog about  two little four year old girls that she had met at an orphanage near her daughters orphanage.  Vicki was in China adopting her fifth daughter.  Her guide was stopping at the orphanage to take video of the two little girls.  Their file was going to be sent to the CCAA.  This means that they were going to be put up for adoption.  In the back of my mind I thought wouldn't it be great if I could find these two little girls.  The CCAA sends files two ways now.  The most common way is on the shared list.  This process requires that you already have your dossier done or almost done.  The first agency that locks the file then gets to have the file.  The other way is that files are sent to individual agencies.  Since we had not even began the process at all it would be a while before we could look at the shared list.  

I was reading one of my waiting child yahoo groups when a post came up that there was an agency that had two, healthy, almost 6  year old girls and two boys with special needs available.  She wrote if you would like to hear more to e-mail her.  I went out to tell Mike what I had read and asked if he thought I should write to her.  He said to do it.  Shock!  I was very nervous about it but God was leading me in this direction.  I wrote to her and she sent me the pictures of two little girls together.  They are best friends.  Then she sent a video of them.  I didn't know how I was supposed to decide something like that.  You don't usually have two pictures to look at.  I called to ask more and one of them was already on hold and she asked me if we wanted to put the other one on hold.  I ran out to Mike and told him.  He said to do it.  So we were sent the medical report for "Lily" as the agency calls her.  Because they were from the same province that my friend Vicki had adopted from I mentioned her name.  It turned out that these were the same two little girls that she had met.  Only they were not four but almost 6.  God is amazing! Her medical and growth report are very old.  It was  from when she was four months old.  We asked the agency to get a new medical record for us to look at.  At four months old her medical shows a healthy baby doing all the things that a four month old does.

While we were awaiting the medical report we had to think about how this would change our family dynamic  and what it would be to adopt an almost 6 year old.  She turned 6, June 5th.  Emma's  "forever in our family" day.  We spent a lot of time in prayer and discussion.  We received the most recent medical report and again it said she was healthy.  

I contacted our homestudy agency to at least get an application going while we prayed about Lily.  We then asked if we could get more information about her schooling etc.  This is the update that they sent.  It is just a paragraph but we would take anything to give us a little glimpse of her.

" She eats everything.  she has 4 meals a day, 7am, 11am, 3pm and 7pm.  She likes to eat rice, congee, steamed bread, apple.  she has very good appetite.  She takes a nap from 12-2pm.  Then sleeps from 9pm to 7am.  she is a very pure, active and lovely girl.  she can talk so much, sing songs, put clothes on, count numbers.  Her mental development is very well.   She doesn't go to the day care yet.  She can walk, run and jump very well.  she has many good friends.  she enjoy playing with other children.  Now she is 106cm, 16 kg, 17cm foot and full mouth teeth."  

I was hoping that she was in school since if she was here she would be starting first grade in the fall.

We called the agency and told them that we wanted to adopt Lily.  So now we are at the beginning of the paperchase again.  When we adopted Meilynn we were almost ready to turn in our dossier so the wait for her was only 6 months.  With the new Hague laws and with us only at the beginning I am expecting 9 months to a year.  We know that God will let us go to her at just the right time.  We know that there will be many adjustments for her and for us.  We will use this time to prepare the best we can for what is ahead for us.

Vicki