Today we heard the best news - we got our referral! Finally, finally, finally at very long last!
We are absolutely thrilled as you can imagine. We got the phone call this morning on our cell phone, thank God it was on. Saw the 301 number and actually picked up the call thinking it might be our friend Todd (but hoping because you never know, it might be from our agency, but not wanting to think it might be our agency, no it's definitely not our agency).
Lo and behold it's our agency director Jennifer and she sounds pretty excited. Okay, be careful now, and she asks if I'm at work and no I'm at home. She says she has the referral and hold on so she can conference in Junji. I run to go get Greg who's home too and cleaning out my Halloween pumpkin so I can carve it, whispered that it was "the" referral call. Ask Jennifer to call us back on our regular phone. I'm stammering and stuttering and can't get my words out.
Turns out they want to fed ex the referral letter for us to sign and don't forget to check the box with "acceptance of this referral". We'll meet Junji later and hand over the papers to her.
Jennifer calls us back an hour later and says she can't fed ex to receive on Saturday. So Greg says we'll go pick it up and sign in person. So up to Columbia, Md we go and sign it we did and now we are finally back home and starting to get excited. Because the shock of receiving the call is wearing off and we are starting to believe it's real and actually happening...
We hope to send this referral or LOA (letter of acceptance) on Monday and from there we wait for travel permission from the gov't of China. We hope to go by the first couple of weeks in December. Won't this be the world's best Christmas present?
So now, we prepare for travel, fill out the visa applications and buy the stuff we need for a little baby. We'll post more pictures later, some early ones from the first few we received. The picture posted now is the latest we have, taken at some point in September. As you can see his cleft lip has been repaired. When we return from China, we'll get our little man surgery on his cleft palate, hopefully about a month after he returns. The palate is how we are able to talk, so it's important to get repaired as soon as possible. He'll need a lot of surgeries over the course of a few years.
His birthday was October 9th, 2007, so he's almost 13 months old. He weighs about 18 pounds. He's a little little guy. Isn't he adorable? Doesn't he look so sweet?
Here's a bit of the back story for those of you that may not know it:
We were trying to adopt from Vietnam when the bottom fell out - lots of problems between the US and Vietnamese governments. Although we were third on the list from our agency to adopt a child (the orphanage also works with multiple families from other agencies) things did not look good.
So our agency asked us if we would be interested in adopting a baby from China with a special needs. We said sure! and they sent us information about three little boys, all with cleft lip and palates.
After a heart breaking decision we choose Qing Xing. He's a tiny, tiny little guy.
Originally we were told we'd probably travel in July. Then it changed to you'll receive your referral in August. Then it was September. The latest was "we just don't know". So, I was pretty surprised, but thank God.
