We Really Can't Believe it!!!

Jia Yi Wei

will soon be

KimberLei Anne Cook!!!

We call her Kimi around here. We can not believe that after 5.5 years we have finally seen our first baby Girl!! Her file is securely "locked" for us and we have applied to China for her. We now wait for our Pre-Approval (PA), after that a Letter of Confirmation (LOC) and finally Travel Approval (TA). This should all last 2-4 months-ish, if you know what i mean! haha!

Her Chinese name: Jia (Beautiful) Yi (Happy) Wei (Brilliant/Valuable) Wei is the name that all children from her orphanage are given (think Last name), Jia is the name that all the girls there are given and Yi is her personalized name. So far we know the other two names describe her... we are just waiting to see if she will be happy! We hope so!!

She is in Tianjin City Children's Welfare Institute. Tianjin is in the NorthEast near Beijing.Tianjin is one of 4 Municipalities in China... Basically it is Classified as a City and it is the size of a small province... I mean 12 million people live there and there are Counties within this "City"! Some of the babies live in Foster Homes, but as far as we know Kimi does not.

She was born December 15, 2008... so she is just one year younger than Anthony!!! He was born on the 16th! go figure... Maybe someday i will get a Spring baby! haha! Our whole family's birthdays are in the winter! So she is about 18 months old right now... but the info we have on her is from 11 months old! So we have requested an update, but we may hire someone to call and get an update. Because apparently CCAA doesn't always like to get updates done.

She was about 15 lbs and 28 inches tall. Kind of small. When I talked to our International Adoption Doctor, she classified her as "Failure to Thrive". Guess why she is listed on the Special Needs Waiting Child list... the diagnosis... Lagging Motor Development!!!!! What!!? And she was on the list for over a month and no one snatched her up!!!! I can't believe it! Alex and Anthony both had worse things on their medical reports! Hopefully the update will tell us more about what she is able to do at this age. She was not standing or walking or sitting at 11 months, but was crawling so that must be why they classified her as SN. Who knows!

Apparently she is a deep sleeper, sucks her finger, she crawls, uses her index finger and thumb to pick things up, laughs out loud, responds to facial expressions of adults, active and closest to a caregiver. There are some other things, she knows her name and responds... can hear and see. Her favorite toy is a rattle and is happy playing with toys. She had 2 teeth. Loves juice! Holds her milk bottle TIGHTLY! (that sounds like the boys) Her hands are "powerful" the report says! haha!

It also says that she will fall asleep in her caretaker's arms after drinking her bottle... so it sounds like someone has time for her! Oh! I hope so! She cries when she is hungry... Sounds like she is a lot about food, like the boys were. We can deal with that!

I almost forgot... I joined a yahoo group that advocates for the special needs children on this list... I was browsing through the pictures last week and saw Jia... The first thing i said to myself was "she is wearing the boys' pjs!" Alex had a pair of these pjs and then Anthony wore them! Alex says that we will have to get her some girl ones. She definitely should fit in around here... with all these tool pjs!

We are praying for another little girl that was on the list who was missing an entire arm... If they would let us, we would get both of them!! But we are told only one at a time!! We hope she will find a family VERY soon!

Going to Keep Waiting...

So apparently this list was full of boys. I hope that a lot of them find homes soon!!! Our Agency said that this was a really hard matching process this time... problems with the website and not sure what else... when i was chatting with Lindsay i was in the grocery store and the cell phone was being sketchy so i couldn't understand everything she was telling me, but i think i got the idea anyways. So they were unable to find us a match this time. There's always the "off" chance that Kimi will come back on the list after being "looked" at by another family, but i am not counting on that! New lists usually come out every month and a half or so... I hope the agency was at least able to match some of the others waiting on the list. She told me about a little girl that did not meet our match requirements that has both arms and legs that are deformed... Lindsay thought that she was a little beyond what we thought we could take on at the moment, and she was right, but i am glad that she mentioned her to me... we are going to pray for this little one to get a family soon... it makes me so sad to think of this baby being ready for a family and not getting one right away to help her! If we had more money available right now we might consider her, but as it is, we are going to have a sale to raise money to go.

So... its not like we aren't used to waiting...

FREAKING OUT!!!!!!!

In August, we will have been logged in for 4 years!! Which means we started the process to adopt a baby girl a year and a half before... We were in process with Kazakhstan for a year to adopt Alex and Kimi when Kaz changed some rules about adopting unrelated children at the same time... so we applied to China and good grief has it been a long time coming...

I don't regret any of it, because we now have Anthony and will have the "Kimi" that God planned for us. As well as so many of the other great things that have come from this long wait. Many of you know that for us... when God calls us to adopt we jump on it! And in the last couple weeks we have been "hearing" God call us to finally switch to the Waiting Child program with China. Many people call it the Special Needs program, but i have not liked the response that i usually get when i say it. We filled out a form last week listing special needs that we will consider if given the opportunity. Some of course are very minor, but some are not so much... although none of them have life long health concerns. Missing limbs is an example... most likely she would be perfectly healthy otherwise. Then there are things as minor as a birthmark! For a few days i found myself quite consumed with the thought that her body might not be perfect and how that will affect her life and i worried about myself seeing her as special needs when she was my daughter... it is hard to explain, but then i think i settled with the fact that she will be "just" our Kimi!!!! FINALLY, after all this time.

Our Agency told me that they would call me before a new listing of Children were put on the CCAA's site. Our Agency, you see will log into that site and "MATCH" us with a child, then send over the info... two days later i saw on the RQ site that a new SN (special needs) list was to com out on the 22nd! Yay! Then when the Agency called to talk with me about it, Lyndsay said that they only have a few people right now waiting for matches and that most likely they will be able to match us, too... talk about my heart stopping... or leaping out of my chest... something!! Oh my word... i have been able to think of nothing else since (hardly)! The 22 in China is actually the night of the 21st here!!!!!!!!!!!!! So Monday night some one may be matching us with Kimi!!!! I can hardly breath!!!

THAT IS TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my!!!! All day long, my heart has been freaking out!! I can hardly function! I just had to share with all my bloggy friends! Please Pray for God's hand to lead our "Match-Maker" tonight!!!! I can hardly breath normal! Good thing i have a ton of stuff to do today and really shouldn't even be blogging, but how can i resist!