It's A Girl!!!

Well, a lot has happened to my little family in the past several weeks. I received my referral for Marcella Lin YiDian on February 27, 2006. I knew from the on-line rumor mill that referrals had been mailed from China the previous week but was not sure when they would arrive at my agency, HFS in Texas. With the help of my good friend Ileana who watched our yahoo group for information, I knew in the morning to expect the call. Even though I have several friends who had gone through this exact same process, it is impossible to really prepare for how I would feel.

At about 1:00 pm, my cell phone rang and I answered to hear the voice of Stephanie from HFS telling me congratulations. I hurried to a conference room and got the details. The moment when Stephanie started to describe her to me sticks in my brain. She was 8 months old this past Wednesday and she is a very healthy little girl. She is currently living in a Social Welfare Institute in Jiangxi Province in China (same province as our friend Sophie who came home this past summer) and she was in foster care for the first six months of her life. I am so grateful for the obviously loving care that she received from her foster mother and family and I think of them and her birth parents often and how difficult these months must have been for them. It reminds me of how lucky I am that she is my daughter and how big my responsibility is to all the people who have loved her before me.

Her developmental information suggests she is doing well, is an extroverted little one, can be a bit naughty (I love that!) and loves all things red. I have one of her photos hanging on the window above the computer and just marvel that I am her mom! I'm a Mom!!!!

We are currently in the travel planning stage and hope to travel in the next 5-6 weeks to meet her. Once we send in our acceptances, we wait for Travel Approval (TA) from China. Once that comes we will have our Consulate Appointment (CA) in Guangzhou and can plan our trip. Rob and I had dinner with my sister-in-law last weekend to talk about the specifics of the trip (and make sure he still wants to come along!) He has bravely decided to spend these first days/weeks sharing a room with Ella and I (I hope those earphones are really good) and I am so glad that he will be along to share this with the two of us.

I will let everyone know what happens next. For now I had to go out and get a whole new bunch of clothes and try to return the small sizes. I just don't think that my 20 pound 7 month old will be wearing 9 months clothing when we see her. Not a problem, shopping for Ella was lots of fun and we've filled in the China wardrobe gaps for her pretty well at this point.

More later...