this week

Nothing new to update really. We're moving through the paperwork cascade. Our I800 was approved on 10/17/16, which probably means nothing to you, but basically it is Mary Carson's immigration documents. Now we're waiting for her information to be logged in at the National Visa Center.

So as we wait (and wait, and wait some more), we're doing things like, practicing our 'Chinese food' which I say in quotes because it is totally the American version of Chinese food. I love how Caleigh is so excited about the food in China. She hopes we will have honey chicken (no) and, then she hopes that if they don't have that, then she wants orange chicken (no again). Insert crying laughing emoji here, which is my favorite one by the way. So anyways, we're working on our 'Chinese food'. Here's the latest recipe. It was awesome! I will absolutely make it again. It's a sweet and sour chicken as requested by Adam with a hearty squirt of sriracha into the sauce before it baked (and lots more upon eating, because, the hotter the better, #duh #itsnotgoodunlessyourecrying). Here's the recipe though, would definitely recommend it.

And we've been working on our Asian baby love (and building our collection of Asian baby dolls).

That's our week!

after the park

After the park, where Adam and I opened the email together and found out about Mary Carson...

what do you even say or do when you're trying to wrap you head around this life changing event but the rest of life is supposed to go on... dinner, homework, baths, etc.

We choose to proceed with a medical review of her adoption file which meant we had 72 hours to review her file with any physicians we choose and use that to help make our decision about whether to proceed or not. We submitted her information to two physicians that night and another one the next day, Tuesday.

We got the first report back early Tuesday morning and everything was pretty straightforward as we had expected after our initial look - no huge red flags. As we were waiting for doctors reports, Adam and I just kept dialouging and I so wanted to just decide yes it's her. But Adam, so wisely, said, let's just wait until we get everything back and then we'll decide for sure. A friend asked me during this time period, what would make us say no? And even then Adam and I couldn't really put our finger on anything major that would make us say no, now that we had seen her precious face.

We decided not to tell our kids or families or really anyone during this time except for our prayer triad, because we didn't want to get anyone's hopes up if this wasn't 'her' and because this just felt like a private thing that Adam and I would decide on and we didn't want to be swayed one way or the other by others.

By Wednesday we had gotten all the doctors' reports back and there were no major red flags and we started letting ourselves get more excited and we decided to move forward. That day we wrote our letter of intent (LOI) which is a letter that you send to China stating that you intend to adopt this particular child. Basically in the letter you state why you think they will be a good match for your family, and that you promise to love and care for them always and to give them every opportunity you can, and that you will never leave or abandon them. I almost cried writing the letter.

One neat thing about the letter is that you are supposed to use something particular from their file to explain why you think they would be a good match for our family. In her file, which was prepared last January when she was about 10 months old, there were a couple sentences about her personality and one part said. "She likes noisy place, and likes playing together with other children." Well... our house is quite the noisy place and there are lots of littles for her to play with! This felt so much like God confirming to us that she was indeed the one that He had chosen for our family.

We sent the letter to our agency along with the other requirements for them to send it to China and the next day, Thursday 9/15/16 we were LOI. After that the next step was to wait to receive the letter of acceptance which is an official letter from China, which is basically China saying an official yes to us adopting this particular child. We received our LOA from China on 9/23/16! As of that date, it was official that Mary Carson would become our daughter! And after that date we were able to post pictures of her and tell publicly about her. So exciting. So many intricate steps. A whole world of adoption and paperwork and politics that I never knew before.

how did we come to be matched with our girl?

I'm going to try to give some details as to how we were matched with Mary Carson, mostly for my own memory, and for her to look back and read one day. So we found out about her on Monday, Sept 12th. It was just a regular Monday, I had just picked Caitlin up from preschool and I had Hudson in the car with me and we were on the way to Caitlin's gymnastics that she takes on Mondays. I got a phone call, and since we're in this waiting stage - I looked to see who was calling (because normally, I almost never answer the phone - my friends know this! - amiright? textplease) and AWAA (our adoption agency) popped up on the screen. Which I thought was weird because...

Rewind to Friday, Sept 9th. I'm working at the hospital and I get a call at work and see AWAA pop up on the caller ID. My heart starts racing, I start sweating, I can't breathe properly, I start shaking. THIS MIGHT BE THE CALL... is all that was running through my mind. Since you're reading this after the fact, you know that it was not in fact the call. Our agency did call us that day about a little girl who was 38 months old. Our family coordinator (agency worker) called to tell us she had a little girl we might be interested in, but she was 38 months old and we had stated that we would accept a referral for a child 0-36 months old (we stated this because Hudson is 34 months, and we thought it would probably be around his birthday that we'd get a referral, and we were hoping to keep the same birth order). My heart immediately dropped, and I immediately felt sad, a feeling of this is not her. Adam and I had discussed another little girl (not a referral but a waiting child with more intense medical needs) a month or two ago who was 4, closer to Caitlin's age and Adam really felt like we shouldn't disrupt the birth order of our kids. So since Adam and I had already discussed not adopting out of birth order, I felt confident with saying to our family coordinator- "no, we would not like to view her file." But I felt awful. I was so sad and basically prayed that day and all weekend that another family would say yes to that little girl (they did, I found out later). It was such an emotional roller coaster, that day.

So back to Monday, Sept 12... since I had just been called by AWAA on Friday, it didn't seem like that big of a deal that they were calling back. We were expecting to wait several more months before getting a referral (we had only been waiting almost three months to the day since our log in date, and we expected we would wait 5-6 months after the log in date to get a referral). We had been praying we would know who our baby was before Christmas. So to get another call from AWAA, I honestly thought our family coordinator might just be calling back about the child that we said no to. So I answered the phone, without the accompanied adrenaline rush, and she says, "is this a good time to talk?" and I responded with something to the effect of I'm driving and I have my two younger kids in the car but, sure, why not. And she says, we have another file for you to look at and I think this one with her age might be a much better match for your family. (ohmygosh - seriously! I'm dying. Can't believe it. So excited but kindof in disbelief.) She told me that she had the file of an 18 month old girl with cleft lip and would we like to look at her file? Well... seeing as that's almost exactly what I pictured our little China baby like - I said definitely! She sent me an email with Mary Carson's picture (the two pictures that exist of her in America), along with all of her referral documents (her medical form, etc) in Chinese and also a PDF of the English translated version of what we know about her. Adam and I had agreed that we would wait to open the email together and see what she looked like at the same time, etc. So I got an email with all of this info around 1:30 on Monday but Adam wasn't available (because of work meetings) to meet me until almost 4:15 that afternoon. All I knew was what they told me on the phone was her age, and the area in China that she is which is Guizhou. It took an inordinate amount of self control to not open that email and so I just read everything I could about the area that I knew that she was in while I waited. There was lots of texting Adam, like are you sure you can't get out of that meeting?!? 

But alas, 4:15 rolled around and after I had dropped off Caleigh at ballet, I met Adam at a little park near the ballet studio that we frequent and he opened up his computer. He opened the email and there she was. I think I expected that there would be some super magical feeling, a super emotional response, like - she looks like a Dyer, or an immediate knowing for sure, a light beam shining down from heaven or something. But there wasn't that. Instead there was just peace. As we read over her medical information and details about her there was just this thought of, yes she could fit in our family, yes we have room for her, yes we can do this. I think in this culture, emotions are everything and often what we want from God is an emotional experience. We want to really 'feel' it, we want to be in the moment, etc. But that's not always how God works. I wanted that big emotional response, and I'm not even an emotional person. One of my closest friends asked me, as I described this to her, how did you feel when you saw your biological babies for the first time? Did you have a big emotional response then? And I said no I didn't. There was a thankfulness that they were here (and not inside me), and a love that grew as I looked at them and took care of their needs... and I had been bonded to them for 9 months while they grew inside me, so I shouldn't be surprised that with this finding out about Mary Carson, I didn't have a big emotional response. But there was peace. And as I looked back on that day in retrospect, I saw in my journal that the Psalm that I read that day (I read a Psalm every day before my Bible time - I just start that Psalm 1 and read it and then go through them all one day at a time and then start over) as the Lord was preparing me to find out about Mary Carson was Psalm 23.
Which is just so fitting. A passage that to me has always brought comfort. My grandmama's favorite passage, one of the Mary's Mary Carson is named after. The Lord was preparing me to find out about her.

After that afternoon of reading her information, my favorite part of which said (the few sentences on her personality that were included in somewhat broken, translated English), "She likes noisy place, and likes playing together with other children. If she plays outdoor she can share her toys and food... She likes the cell phone and remote control best." The Lord planned that she would be in our family, that this would be her story. And I love that He made her as one who likes a noisy place and likes playing with other children - let me tell you our house is quite noisy, and we have lots of other children for her to play with. I love that she likes the cell phone and remote control best :) - so developmentally fitting for an 18 month old. I feel like since September 12th when we found out about her, as we've started 'nesting' for her - putting her picture up everywhere, talking about her so much with our kids and with others, etc, the Lord has been knitting my heart to hers from far away. I'm thankful for that and would love if you would pray that that would continue to happen. How has it been almost a month since we've known about her?? Feels like we've known forever, and also, like we hardly know her at all.

Next up - after the park...