Hi there!

I just wanted to pop in and say, "Hi!"

We sent our I-800A form off the to the USCIS office for approval on June 14. In this step we get approval from the US government to adopt a foreign child. We will wait for our appointment to get fingerprinted, and then we wait for the actual approval, this will take about 2 months. Please don't confuse this with another form we have to fill out later, where we ask the US government to give us permission to adopt a specific foreign child. Many times it feels like you are doing the same thing twice, or three times, but we know if we follow the rules we will have Lyla at the end.

One of those days

I'm having one of those days when thinking of Lyla brings an empty feeling to my heart. Before today I have spent many days dreaming of meeting her face to face, kissing those sweet chunky cheeks and finally holding our little girl for the first time. Mostly, those days are fun, happy and full of anticipation. Today is the first day that I am aching for her, I mean really aching. I don't know what it is about today, but when I look at her picture I get sad, sad that she is not with us, and sad that I'm not sure when she will be.

Please don't feel sorry for me, I am blessed beyond comprehension. I've got two very active two year olds who keep me on my toes. If they were the only two children God was going to give me, I would be SO lucky, truly! But there is this strange feeling, when a child, that you know will be yours (well, actually she already feels like ours) is half way around the world and you can't get to her.

Before Macey was born (before we knew she was Macey), I didn't have these feelings. I think it was because I didn't know what I was missing. She was to be our first child, so we didn't know what to anticipate. Sure, I wanted to know if we were having a boy or girl, I wanted to hold our baby for the first time, I wanted to know what he or she looked like, but I didn't ache for her. Maybe because she was literally with me...all the time! Waiting for Xander was just pure joy! There were days when I longed for him to be home, in fact there were many days like that. See, I knew what I was missing. I had one at home, who was his same age, and I could look at her and realize that he was doing the same things, only half a world away. Watching Macey made me excited to think of the things that Xander was going to add to our family once he came home. Counting down to bring Xander home was fun and exciting.

Waiting for Lyla is different. I am so busy, although I think about her and pray for her every day, I just don't get caught up in all the waiting as easily. We have speech therapy to attend, fights to break up, gymnastics to go to, fights to break up, play groups, fights to break up, and somewhere in between all of that we have to eat and sleep.

So today caught me off guard. One of the scary parts is that we are only at the VERY beginning of our wait. I anticipate this will not be the last day like this. While looking at her picture I cry while I smile, and I pray the same prayer that I prayed over Xander, "Lord, help her to know, in a way that only You can, that she has parents that love her."

Boring, yet exciting!

So, this is only note worthy because it seemed to relieve a little stress from me. Our home study visits are finished! All documents (except one, which I will deliver to our social worker on Monday) have been gathered! The report is VERY close to being completely written! This means that we are SO close to submitting our I-800A! To all of you not in the adoption community, and do not know what I am talking about, this is a big step in the right direction. We have to submit our I-800A in order to complete our dossier, which is the big pile papers that China wants, so we can adopt Lyla.

In my mind I thought we would be doing good if we could submit our I-800A by the middle June, and it looks like that will happen! Our social worker is going out of town on June 15th and her goal is to have everything ready so we can submit it by then, yippee!!!!

No official documents in hand, no approvals received, but a little less stress for Mama to carry around!