handsful

We received official word today from our agency that we’ve been pre-approved to adopt Lainey! This means that the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) has received and reviewed our Letter of Intent paperwork (essentially asking to adopt her, explaining how we’ll care for her, etc.) and have agreed that we can be her family. Yeah!

They will now begin the process of matching her paperwork with our dossier that we turned in August of 2006. Our agency will let us know when this happens. Another milestone down in our journey to Lainey!

Look at our NEW picture of Lainey! There is a family in China right now, adopting their little girl from Lainey’s orphanage. During their visit to the orphanage, she managed to find our Ling Qing Qin and took some pictures of her. She looks so sleepy and a little upset that she’s been woken up! The nanny, though, looks thrilled that her family wants a picture of her! There are more pictures, but she’s only sent me this one for now and will send the rest when they return home in a little less than a week. I believe this was taken yesterday, 12/23.

We’re SO glad to have it and will forever remember this family for this precious gift. This is our first good-quality photo, and we’ve really gotten a good look at her lip repair when we’ve zoomed in. It looks so good! We are blessed.

Yesterday, we went to Build-A-Bear to get a special present for Lainey. We chose a bear with brown hair and eyes (just like her), picked out a cute pink and black outfit complete with hairbows (thanks to Granma!), and named her Laineybug. We also had a sound box put in that says “I Love You” when you push her paw, and Abbey, Marley, Payton, and Ethan each got to put in a little satin heart before she was sewn up. She’s waiting for Lainey in her bedroom, and keeping the rocking chair warm for her!

A care package is on it’s way to Lainey in Bengbu, Anhui province, China as of yesterday! She should get it in about a week. We chose a cute black frilly hemmed shirt, leggings and a purple hooded jacket for her outfit. The nannies are getting chocolates and there is also a gift of Andies candies for the orphanage director (forgot that one last time!). We also sent another photo album with more pictures of us, a mini see n’ say, soft book, frilly socks (see a theme here?), and another disp. camera labeled with her name and picture on the back. Hopefully, we’ll get these cameras back on Gotcha day full of pictures of Lainey, the orphanage, and her friends and nannies.

Today marks 1 month since we sent our Letter of Intent (LOI), saying we wanted to adopt Lainey. We’re still waiting on our pre-approval (PA) and hope it comes ANY day now! If nothing else, international adoption is a wonderful lesson in patience.

This is the back…Abbey designed it to show the true meaning of Christmas. Do you see the nativity scene? :)

The cookies that the boys made. I’m the one with the “N” (Univ. of NC) and Randy is the one with the “S” (NC State Univ.) Lainey is beside me. Not sure about the identities of the other folks.

More pics from today…

I had a wonderful birthday today. The kids wished me Happy Birthday about a zillion times during the day. Once Randy got home, it was present time :) Randy surprised me with a great new 2-pc. exercise outfit and the kids added to my Heartwood Creek nativity scene. I love it! Last, we all went out to dinner at The Melting Pot. It’s been years since I’ve been there and we’ve been wanting to take the kids…we called tonight on a whim and they had an opening. It was SO good…nothing beats a smores fondue dessert with pieces of pound cake, brownies, strawberries, cheesecake, rice krispie treats….oh my!!

Today, we received Lainey’s finding ad. When a child is found in China, an ad is placed with the child’s photo and identifying information. They do this in case the parents want to claim their child, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this happening. We acquired this information from a man named Brian Stuy, of www.research-china.org/index.htm. He and his wife have 3 girls adopted from China. He finds the ads and offers them to adoptive parents, believing that it’s vitally important to have this earliest link to our children’s pasts. We’re so grateful to have this picture of Lainey, at approximately 3 days old, as well as a little more information about her beginnings.

The paper contains a picture of Lainey before her lip repair. It appears to be a unilateral cleft, but it’s a little hard to tell for sure. She looks so young and quite sleepy :)

In addition to the enlarged photo that Brian made, he also sent us the whole paper that her ad was in. It’s called the “Anhui Youth Daily” paper and only about 5 pages in length. Here is a closeup of the ad page. Lainey is 2nd from the left, on the bottom row. I’m not sure how often this paper is produced…there are 12 abandoned children in this one.

Brian’s wife, Lan, is Chinese and translates the ads. Lainey’s ad says this:

An abandoned baby

A girl

We don’t know what her name was

She still had her umbilical cord on. We estimated she was about 3 days old.

She has small eyes.

She has a cleft palate and lip, thick hair, slightly yellow skin.

On July 7th, 2006, she was found on Nanhu Road, Bengbu City.

I would love to know a more specific spot for her finding place, and it’s possible that the orphanage will be able to tell us more. To think of her being left beside a road is difficult to understand…I imagine that there must be a very safe, yet obvious place on that road, where her birth mother felt she would be found quicky and taken care of. We’ll be forever grateful.