Getting You all Up to Speed!

It has been way too long since I have posted on here...there is so much to catch you up on! We have been busy with daily life, with getting ready for LIlly, and enjoying TOm's parents who visited over President's Day weekend (we had such a great visit!). But in the midst of all of our normal busyness, we have been making great progress in our quest to go get Lillian Joy!

We have finally received our Travel Approval (TA), and are now awaiting the US Consulate in GUangzhou to assign us a day and time for our Consulate Appointment (CA), where we get Lilly's visa to enter the US. The CA date is the date around which the entire adoption trip is built, so once our agency has that confirmed appointment, they can get us exact travel dates and we can book tickets. For now, they are estimating that we will travel sometime the second week of March--propably March 11th. Just like a pregnancy due date, this may shift a bit, so we are staying tuned and hope to know our exact dates this coming week.

I cannot tell you how very excited we are, and words cannot begin to capture the mixture of raging emotions I feel. THe joy of knowing that we will soon have another little girl in our family is overwhelming, and I think at times I hold back on allowing myself to feel that excitement fully for fear that I'll wake up and it will all be a dream. I am looking forward to days at home with a preschooler again, even though I realize this will mean my life as I have known it for the past 4 years (since Anna started school) is about to be turned upside down! I have grown very accustomed to being able to fill my time (and I have) with activities and relationships of my own choosing, and now my days will once again revolve more around a very small human being other than myself! So, a mixture of emotions--eagerness to spend time loving, playing with, and caring for Lilly, and knowing that my daily routines are really about to change!

I am excited for Jared and Anna to have a younger sister to love and play with, and am excited for the ways this experience will shape them and stretch them and open their eyes to enormous needs in our world. My prayer for them is that they would quickly and wholeheartedly accept Lilly without any sense of resentment or rivalry as we will likely need to give her much of our parental time and attention. My prayer is also that God would expand their hearts of love to have the same compassion and love that I feel for her.

For Lilly, my heart aches right now, as she has most likely been moved back to the orphanage out of her foster family in preparation for our arrival. They do this so that when her adoptive family arrives, they are not the "bad guys" ripping her out of her foster mama's arms. I hope and pray that she has bonded with her foster family, even though that means more grieving for her at this moment, because it also means that she has learned how to be emotional attached to someone, and the concept of family will not be completely alien to her. I hope and pray that the care packages I sent her--with lots of family photos of us with labels in Chinese--made it to her so that she perhaps has some idea of what is about to happen in her life! My prayer for her is that she would quickly come to accept, trust, and feel secure with us, knowing that we will not ever leave her.

Lilly's room is almost entirely ready. For some reason the compnuter is not reading the card from my camera but as soon as it is fixed, I'll post photos of her pretty room complete with fresh paint on the walls, the crib donning pretty new bedding, and a new valence and roller shade on the window. We have been given some wonderful clothing from friends with older girls, and my book club did a surprise shower for me this week when book club met at my house--such cute things they gave me for Lilly! We did receive updated measurements on Lilly, and they indicate that she is still a tiny peanut. In fact, the new measurements indicate that she even lost a little bit of weight since her last update. I am hoping this is due to a difference in the clothing wore when they weighed her, and now due to malnutrition. She currently weighs only 20 pounds, and her measurements indicate she is roughly a size 18 months for most clothes. I finally have a foot measurement, and it looks like she wears about a 6 1/2 shoe. I'll buy some shoes for her in China to be sure they fit. We are going to be facing a variety of climates during our 2-week adoption trip, starting in Beijing (where temps are still cold, probably similar to NY weather), then on the Henan Province (where LIlly is waiting!), where it is also cold, but maybe more like DC weather, then on to Guangzhou for the last portion of the trip, where it is similar to Florida weather. So layers will be the name of the packing game for us!

Our travel group--the other families traveling at the same time with us using the same adoption agency--sounds large and very friendly. We have connected via a yahoo group and e-mail, and our excitement is almost electric. Can't wait to meet everyone in person and go get our babies together! It is cool that one of LIlly's little friends from her same orphanage will be adopted on the same day as her by a family taht I have met through the yahoo groups.

I will try to be more up to date on here now that things are rolling along! Stay tuned for our itinerary!