LOA!

We have LOA!

The stork (better known as the FedEx man) arrived at our house on January 8th!  (Happy Birthday, Aunt Tami.)  We finally got the Letter of Acceptance from China that allows us to mark the box "Yes, we accept this child."  We were actually approved on January 3rd which was my sister Kim's birthday and received it on my sister Tamara's birthday.  My birthday is tomorrow, I'd be very happy to accept the next step, I800 approval, as my birthday present.  With LOA in hand, it looks like we will probably have Gotcha day on 4/14/14.  The next day is Forever Family day (when you go back to the SWI and officially sign the adoption papers) and, interestingly, is my only other sister's birthday.  Weird.

Many of the agencies want you to wait until you have the LOA before you send any care package to the orphanage.  They have had too many (and I suppose one would be too many) cases of the adoption falling through before LOA and the child having to be told that they didn't actually have a family.  Since we have LOA, we were allowed to send a package to Katie.  We sent her things to try to prepare her for the adoption.  We sent her a soft photo album with some family photos and a silky pillow that also has a family portrait on it.

We thought it might help her be a little bit familiar with our faces when she met us.  Most of the children will never have seen an American face.  They say the Chinese kids often call Americans "big nose" because that is our most different feature to them.  I'm in luck, my pug nose should not intimidate Katie at all.  :)  We also sent cookies for the nannies and a memory stick (in hopes of them down loading some of her older pictures).  We didn't send any kind of toys or clothes.  In many (if not most) cases, the orphanages don't try to give the things to the children.  It would be very difficult on the other kids who own nothing at all to see a select few have things of their own and hard for the nannies to keep up with who things belonged to if many of them got gifts.  We know that at 18 months, Katie is probably not old enough to understand what is about to happen but once her package is delivered she will at least be introduced to the idea.  It is so hard to know what goes through their minds at that age.  What we do know is that in about 90 days, this tiny little girl is going to be taken from all she has ever known and flown half way around the world.  She will leave behind all of the people that she has ever connected with, all of the scents and sounds and smells of her birth country.  She will be loved, oh how she will be loved, but she will hurt and she will grieve.

I would ask all of our friends and family to be in prayer for her.  Pray that Tim and I know the right way to comfort her and help her make the transition that her big brother made look so easy.  Pray, too, for Jaden.  Tim and I will work to help him know and believe that this trip is not meant to give him back.  I worry that the the ayi's careless words (that we were bringing him back to the orphanage and had decided not to keep him) will echo in his mind.  His faith in us will be tested some on this trip.  In the long run, we feel that leaving him behind would be more detrimental and that by being there, his relationship with his baby sister may be stronger.  I hope we are making the right choice; we think we are. 

Jaden saying goodbye to his SWI, January 2013