Mae day!

The past 24 hours have been incredible.  It has been nearly one day since we met the most amazing little girl, our sweet Mae!

Finally!

I am having trouble posting on the computer where most of the photos are, so I will post from my phone and update with more pictures and details later. 

She is so wonderful and she has so much personality! I can't wait to share more soon!

Okay, I am sorry I have been the world's worst blogger over here.  Today is Thursday and we visited Mae's orphanage today.  That is an entirely different post, so I will just stick to gotcha day for now.

On Monday we woke up after a surprisingly restful night (I think the 2 Advil PM didn't hurt).  We enjoyed a nice breakfast at the buffet and then met Miko at 10:30 to go over the paperwork for the week.  We met the other 3 families that are here adopting also.  They are so wonderful and we are grateful to be on this journey with them.

The meeting was exiting because it really felt like this was happening.  The meeting lasted less than an hour and then we broke for lunch before we were to meet up again at 1:45 to head over to the Civil Affairs Office.  Our nerves were on edge at this point so we headed over to Pizza Hut to have something familiar for lunch.  The pizza was exactly like at home. 

Finally, the time to leave and meet Mae arrived.  We were all so nervous and excited going to the office.  We drove for about 20 minutes and then got out of the car to walk through some side streets.  When we reached the building there were some little ones near the elevator headed up.  One of the families in our group saw their daughter.  It was so exciting.  

We made it to the 8th floor and situated ourselves in a corner of the room.  Off to the side was a nanny with some little ones and one of them was Mae!  She was getting her hands washed.  We could not believe she was right there and we could not hold her yet!  They still had to go over some paperwork and get us organized.  Mae was sent off to a small toy room to play.  About 10 minutes passed and then we were told it was time to meet our children and that our group was first.  We were the second family (out of about 15) to be meet our child.  

She came to us really well and did not cry.  We just held her and told her we loved her in Chinese.  We showed her some toys and gave her a lollipop.  After awhile I started to rock back with her.  She really liked this and gave us our first smiles and giggles.  It was wonderful! The time there is sort of a blur.  I think we were there about 90 minutes.  Here are a few more pictures that can tell the story better than I ever could!

leaving on a jet plane...

This time next week we will be hours away from meeting our daughter!  I am still trying to wrap my brain around the whole thing.

This weekend we are making our final preparations in between soccer games, flag football games, Church, parties, haircut appointments and about a half a dozen other things.  Somehow, it will all come together.

We leave on Wednesday the 6th and return on the 22nd.  We will meet Mae on Monday, November 11th.  We will be traveling to Beijing for a few days and then onto Guangzhou, where we will spend the remainder of our trip.  Beijing is colder this time of year, while Guangzhou should be nice and warm.

I am exhausted and still feel like I have a million and one things to do before we leave!

A little girl's room, part 2

We are almost done with her room. I thought I would share the pictures before I forget. I'm really happy about the way it turned out, especially the kitchen.

I can't wait to cook up a storm with her!

It was fun making the art for the room!

The little pelican is in his original spot.

It is so fun to see pink in this closet!

an update

No, not on the room, but on Miss Mae!  We got some new pictures and a video from her birthday. We were thrilled to see her amazing smile, but it is making the wait more impossible!  I can't wait to make her giggle!!

Does it get any better than this?

a little girl's room, part 1

I love decorating rooms for my little ones. When Andrew was born I was finally able to make a really beachy room!  His nursery looked like this.

I painted little pictures of beach scenes and bought some really cute surfer bedding.

After John came, it looked pretty much the same, except that it was Christmas time.

And again after Grant a few changes, but not too much.

As you can see I love the beach.  I love everything about the beach.  If it were possible I would be at the beach right now.  But, our lives are in Dallas, so I've tried to bring the the beach to us. Slowly, I have made nearly every room in our house have a coastal feel.  It just makes me happy.

So, when I was deciding on how to decorate Mae's room I surprised myself because I was not sure if I wanted to keep the beach theme going. I thought about all of the cute themes I could use or color combinations that would look adorable, but I was not feeling anything special.  That is until I came across this last summer.

The color hooked me!

I just fell. in. love. with this piece.  I knew I had to build her room around it. So, I got to painting once more and of course it is another beachy room.  I still have some more work to do, but a little teaser is that it includes a homemade kitchen.  Hopefully, I will have pictures to show you next week!

article 5 drop off

On Tuesday our Article 5 was dropped off in China.  During this process our letter from the visa center, our Letter of Acceptance (LOA), and Mae's visa application are all being reviewed to make sure she meets the qualifications for an immigrant visa. This is usually a 2 week process, but because of a holiday in China it will most likely take 3 weeks.  After our Article 5 is picked up it is sent to the CCCWA and we wait for travel approval!  It is looking like November travel!

l o a day!

Today I was at my good friend Amy's house visiting with her and talking about an upcoming trunk show she is hosting.  I heard my phone ring but ignored it.  Grant and I left Amy's house, we ran a few errands, and then came home.  After I was home for a few minutes I thought, "hmm, I wonder who that was that called about an hour ago."  When I looked at my phone I was shocked to see Anna, our social workers name.  I called her back quickly and when she did not answer I tried to leave her a message.  I was such a mess I somehow screwed that up.  Anyway, then I checked my email and saw those three wonderful letters, LOA!!!

I was really not expecting this!  I was hoping it was soon, but figured it would come on a Monday, not a Wednesday (since that is when they often come).  For those of you that do not  know what LOA is, it is China giving us the official green light to move forward with our adoption.  We had "pre-approval" but now we have the real deal!  It also means that we are about 2-3 months away from traveling to bring home sweet Mae!

Now we are busy again with paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork.  But it is so much fun to be requesting visas for your child and to be petitioning to classify and adoptee as an immediate relative!!

the call

If you are one of the three people who actually reads this blog you may recall how I was recently wondering what day will be "the day" for the big call, and how it was strange wondering when it would come.  Well, as it turns out it was that very day, only an hour or so after I posted that entry!

Before I go into all of the details of what happened I will share with you what you really want, the pictures.  So here she is, our amazing daughter Mae.

I just want to scoop her up and hug her! 

I can stare at this one all day!  

John loved that she is on the same rug that we have!  

Isn't she the cutest!!  We feel like the luckiest people in the entire world and we can't believe we will have the privilege of being her parents! The boys are so happy and excited. Andrew wants to go get her now!  I like his thinking!

Her full name will be Mary Laura Xiaoyu, but we will call her Mae. She will turn two in October (another fall baby!). She lives in Southeastern China in Dungguan City. It is located between Hong Kong and Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton). She was born missing her right thumb and her right arm is shorter than her left.  We feel blessed that we live in Dallas, which is also the home to Scottish Rite Hospital, one of the premier hospitals for pediatric orthopedics. She is tiny, even for Chinese standards, so I can't wait to see her next to Grant, our giant. She is, "active, restless, and easy to get along well" and she, "likes lying on other kid's back, does not like covering the quilt on herself, does not feel happy if not sleep well [sic]." I love it!  She will fit in perfectly with our crazy crew!  

So now that you have seen the good stuff, I will explain how she became our daughter.

It was a rainy day here and we actually had absolutely nothing on the agenda (thank goodness)!  I was writing and enjoying my yummy creamy coffee and the kids were playing in the house.  Then, at 12:01 a call came through.  I was in my room when the home phone rang.  The caller id said, "Lifeline" which is the name of our adoption agency.  My heart stopped.  Is this really it??  This can't be it!  There is really only one reason why my agency would call me during this time in the process, as most things can be done over e-mail.  I couldn't believe this was it!

With my heart racing I picked up the phone and it was our wonderful social worker Anna.  She then said the sweet words that every adoptive parent longs to hear, "We have a referral for you."  Total Shock!  I had already convinced myself that we would be waiting until the fall before we got a referral, so this was completely unexpected.

She briefly described the little girl for us and told me she would e-mail me her file and a couple of videos.  She said that the girl's file had been locked off the shared list and that we had until late tomorrow night to decide.  What!?!  My head was spinning now!  Oh boy, was this a lot to process!  I called Joe immediately and told him to sit down because we had a referral.  He didn't believe it either.

Excitedly, we both jumped in front of our computers and waited for the file to come through.  It felt like the longest minute of my life, but finally an e-mail from Anna popped up and we saw Miss Mae's little face for the very first time!  Oh. My. Word. She is so stinkin' cute!   We looked over the file and both of us realized that this could be it.  This could be our daughter!  We quickly e-mailed Anna and told her that we were really really interested, and that we were going to try to get some doctors to review her file for us ASAP.

We contacted the Dallas International Adoption Clinic to review the file and get back to us.  Shortly after they got all of the information they told us that they could talk to us the next afternoon.  This was great, but it freaked me out a bit, since that would only leave us with a few hours to decide after we talked with them.  I hurriedly contacted another doctor in Michigan to look over the file.  I knew that she usually looked at files overnight and then contacted parents first thing in the morning.  I know it was only a few hours difference, but I felt like we needed information as soon as possible, and it couldn't hurt to get a second opinion.

All the while we were falling in love with her, and realized that unless we heard something really scary, she was probably our daughter.  I think I watched the videos 100 times that day and looked at the pictures and her file every 5 minutes.  That night we prayed for guidance, we researched as much as we could about her condition, and we filled out more paperwork in case we proceeded with the adoption.  It was not the most restful of nights.

The next morning Joe had an early dentist appointment so he was not home.  Around 9 a..m. the doctor from Michigan called to go over the file.  We talked for about 30 minutes and for the most part she said our daughter looked healthy.  There were a few things that we should check up on, but there were no red flags.  HUGE relief!  I mean let's be honest, we were already in love.

When Joe got home from his appointment I went over everything the doctor said and we both agreed that unless the Dallas doctors give us horrible news, this is our daughter.  We e-mailed Anna, our social worker, and let her know that we were almost certainly going to submit LOI for this little girl.

A few minutes later Anna called the house.  She told us that with the new computer system (China instituted a new system in June) there have been some kinks and she wanted to talk to us before we heard anything from anyone else about the problems.  Huh?  She said that when Lifeline went in that morning to look at the files that they had locked for families there were some that had disappeared.  Apparently, more than one agency was able to lock a child's file with the new computer system.  This meant that multiple families were falling in love with the same children.  My heart stopped at this news.  I couldn't believe our file may be lost and that some other family might have her.  Anna continued to say that 2 families files had not disappeared, and that we were one of those families. With this news the tears just started rolling down my cheeks.  If I had ever wanted a "sign" that this was our daughter it was this news.  The prospect of having lost her file was devastating and made me realize that I did not want to give it up.  To be fair to Anna I am sure she said something in the beginning of the call to reassure us that we could move forward, but my brain did not processes that, causing me to have the moment when I did not know whether we had her file or not.

My heart really goes out to those families that this happened to.  I can't imagine if we had been told that another family locked her file first, and that we could no longer submit LOI.  Complete heartbreak.  I pray that those families find their children very soon, and that it was all for the best in the long run.

Later that day we did talk to the doctors at the Dallas International Adoption Clinic.  They agreed that for the most part she looks healthy and that there were no red flags.  Our talk with them was long and informative.  We were very impressed with how thorough they were.  They sent her file to doctors at Scottish Rite to review who said that she looked like a candidate for some possible procedures.  Oh my, we were so excited!

Just after we got off the phone we called Anna together to tell her we were ready to send in our LOI for Mae!  I really can't describe how happy we are. The more and more we think about her the more we have to pinch ourselves!