NEW PICTURES!

We just received a couple of new photos and updated measurements for Lilah from her Foster family. She has gained 5 pounds and now has eight teeth! We are falling more in love with her every day!

Taken in June

Taken a few weeks ago

Introducing our Little Lilah!

First Pictures!!

These are the first pictures we have received. They arrived via FedEx earlier today.

WE GOT THE CALL!

Today is the day we found out who our little girl is! Quinn and I were walking out of Quizno's around 12:30 when the phone rang. With sandwiches in hand, I scrambled to locate it in my purse.
I noticed the "314" area code and immediately started hyperventilating! Here are the vital stats:

Name: Ling Wan Lan
D.O.B: 4/14/08 (15 months)
Weight: 7kg( about 15 lbs.) at 1 year check in April
Orphanage: Shangrao Children's Welfare Center
Jiangxi Province
Our package is being Fed-Exed, so we won't have pictures until tomorrow. Our agency director told me that she is very pretty and has very funny expressions in 2 out of three of the photos!
So happy beyond words!

Maybe tomorrow?

Well, it is getting down to the wire. Referrals are supposed to arrive tomorrow at our agency, so we may get "the call" tomorrow or Wed. One of my massage patients predicted last week that everything would happen on the 21st (as in tomorrow), because good things always happen to her on the 21st day of the month. Let us all hope and pray that good things also happen to us on the 21st! It feels very surreal right now to be typing the words, "the call" after waiting oh, so very long for this day.

Matching Has Begun?...

So, the past 2 weeks have felt like the longest weeks of my life! I can imagine what the wait for travel approval will be like once we actually receive our referral. The current information(as of last evening) is that the CCAA has "Begun Matches". What this means, if we are in this group, we should hear something within a week. There will be no sleep in the Becker household until then!

Our Long Wait...

Our adoption journey began in July, 2005 after attending our first adoption information meeting at Children's Hope International. I think I knew subconsciously long ago that I would someday adopt. After working in social work for a number of years, the seed had already been planted, unbeknownst to me. I must admit, Brad was a little cool to the idea at first. On Labor Day, 2005 he gave me a card that had on the cover the symbol of a man + woman=baby carriage. Of course, I cried! And so, our real journey began on that day. We started our paperwork in early October, 2005 and eventually sent our dossier to China and were officially
"logged in" on March 22nd, 2006. At that point, the wait time from start to finish (beginning of paperwork to child) was 10-12 months. 3 years and 9 months later, we are FINALLY next! We are all excited beyond words to meet our new daughter and Quinn's little sister.