Info from Emily and update on our family

The nurse (Emily) that I am in contact with in Arkansas is so nice!!! I e-mailed her the new photos of Lili and she e-mailed me and said, "The hemangiomas on her scalp and back should not even be an issue, they are so small and not visible. The other two, I doubt will go away enough on their own, they are pretty good size. I agree, I think she has little bug bites, it doesn’t look like a rash or anything that has spread from a certain area."
It is so wonderful to have such a nice person willing to give us advice and help us. It will be fun to meet her in person.
Scott is headed back from Texas today (and I'm up early today because nice Delta called at 4:30 am to let me know his flight had been delayed). He has been there working since Monday. He will go for the whole week next week and then a week or so after that he'll go for another week. (We love this client :) )
The kids are doing well. They are loving school. We got the temporary permit yesterday so the kids will be able to go to school today in their actual school building (they have been going to a church down the street for classes). Davis cried and clung onto me tight yesterday. His teacher pealed him off of me and told me to leave. She craddled him on her lap and loved him and they told knock, knock jokes. It is nice to have a sweet teacher who is willing to cuddle the child when they are sad. He did really well after that and she told me in no way could I take him out of kindergarten and hold off a year (she is a good mind reader .:) )... anyway, of course I could but she really thinks he will be fine... (he might be but I may not be :( ). Reese, and Mckenzie are well and Meili (knock on wood) is enjoying her 1 1/2 hour toddler lab (2 times a week)... yeh!!!
Hope all is well.
Melanie

New pictures.......

Well, I guess we are going to have to wait for Leslie and Tavis to take some good pictures of Lili. Each time we get an updated photo of Lili I hope to see her cute face.... this is making me practice patience. :) I am sending all of the photos we get to the nurse and doctor who will take the hemangiomas off ... so hopefully, these will show her what phase they are in... to me it looks like they are resting because they have not changed much since the first photos... so, I'd guess soon they will start going down. I'll post more when I get an e-mail back from the nice nurse/doctor. She also has lots of dots on her face so I have asked if she has chicken pox or if they are just bug bites. I can't wait to get her... I'm starting to get impatient!!! 3 or 4 months to go.

Lili on 9/20

I received an e-mail from a lady who is in China on Friday. She said that she visited the orphanage and saw Lili. She told me, " I smiled and said hello to her while her caretaker was holding her. She seemed happy!" This was great to hear from this nice lady and hear that Lili looked well and is being taken care of.
We are getting a package ready to send to Lili. I made a small fleece blanket, a photo album for her (and the caretakers) to see what we look like, candy for the caretakers, a camera and I need to find something small enough to fit in the package for the other children. Hopefully she will get this... we sent one for Meili but we don't know if she ever got it... sometimes, you get the stuff back and sometimes not. Hopefully we will see soon.

Login Date (LID)

I'm so excited!!! I just received an e-mail from our agency stating that our dossier was logged in with the CCAA (Chinese office in China in charge of adoptions) on August 28, 2007!!! It was sent to China on the 24th of August - this is really quick turn around.
All this means is that the next step (2-4 month wait-we'd love sooner :)) will start with the date from our Pre-approval (PA) (9/6/07)and not our loggin (LID) (8/28/07)date. I was starting to worry that we would get a late loggin date which would make our wait much longer (they start the wait with the last date - so 9/6/07)- but, we didn't and all is well!!!
Come on Letter of Acceptance (LOA)... We are now into this wait 12 days!!!
We can't wait to bring Lili home!!!

1st day of school

It finally happened... after only a nine day delay the kids started their first day of school at Xavier Charter School. We are so excited for this opportunity and are very excited about the amazing teachers and wonderful curriculum. Mckenzie is in the 5th grade, Reese 2nd grade and Davis started Kindergarten (and he loved it!... can't believe he is old enough). Scott has worked his tail end off getting the school ready.
The kids are all well. Mckenzie is busy with violin, piano and swim team (starts tonight). Reese is doing soccer and just started piano lessons. Davis is enjoying soccer and some speech therapy (not really enjoying that). Meili goes to a toddler lab that is at the college for an 1 1/2 hours twice a week. This is really good for her ... she needs to learn that we will always come back for her :) .Anyway, the house is pretty quiet. Time to add more activity.. hopefully by Christmas we'll have Lili .

Current wait time

1-10 weeks for Pre-approval (PA) (before ours it was 3-7 weeks-ours was fast & one was really slow)
2-4 months from PA to Letter of Acceptance (LOA)
2-4 weeks from LOA to travel approval (TA)
2-4 week from travel approval - actually traveling

So, the earliest from these time frames that we could travel would be early December and the latest would be sometime in January/February. I'm trying hard to not hope that our LOA will arrive in record time like our PA... even if it does not early December - January is not that far off. I keep wondering what we will do if we need to travel over Christmas... there is no way I'd put off traveling to get Lili.... as soon as they say we can go, we are going... I keep coming back to Reese being obsessed last year that Jesus really wasn't born on the 25th... so, I guess we could celebrate as a family on any day we choose.

FTIA's summary of Lili

Our agency lists all of their waiting children on a site that is password protected. Here is what they say about Lili:
"Born May 2006, Yuan Xiu is diagnosed with hemangiomas on the right side of her face and back; she also has an umbilical hernia. Yuan Xiu likes to be entertained by adults and likes to watch other children play games. She is a pretty girl who enjoys looking into a mirror; she is active and enjoys the outdoors!"
I thought it was cute.... we may have to buy some more mirrors and she'll have lots of opportunities to watch her siblings playing (hopefully, she'll prefer to participate).

Arkansas Children's Hospital

Today I had a nurse who works at a hospital in Arkansas contact me via e-mail. She had read my post on the same group that I found the pictures of Lili on yesterday. She works in the Vascular Anomalies Center at the hospital. Anyway, she gave us her advice on treating Lili and had the doctor look at her photos as well. We are going to continue sending pictures (if we receive more) so they can keep current with how Lili's hemangiomas are doing. We will probably make an appointment with them as we get closer to bringing her home and have this amazing team work their magic on Lili. Both the doctor and nurse thought that we could show up on a Monday for an appointment and have a surgery Tuesday and fly home either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. This facility has a team that only deals with vascular anomalies... they are (from what I have read) one of the best facilities in the world!!! Here is the link to the hospital http://www.archildrens.org/medical_services/clinical/ent/vascular_anomalies.asp and a link to the amazing video of the doctor and the surgery of her little girl. I remember seeing the story on the Today Show or something... she did the surgery and became so attached to the girl that she adopted her... quite amazing story. Here is a link to the video about her surgery...
http://www.archildrens.org/spotlight/gong_lu.asp (this is the doctor that will probably do Lili's surgery)
They think that we can have the hemangiomas surgically removed only leaving a small scar on her face that will eventually go away and if it doesn't we can have a plastic surgeon take care of it in a few years. Also, I had another lady e-mail me that works with this hospital. She told me that her organization pays for these sugeries that Lili will need for children who have been orphans and then adopted, if the child does not have insurance or if the insurance company won't pay for the surgeries. WOW!!! Our insurance will cover Lili and any pre-existing conditions but will not cover cosmetic surgeries... if they are necessary they will pay for them (just like any one else in our family)... so, we are not sure if it would be covered or not but it looks like there will be a good chance that birthmark.org will help if they don't. Did I say wow!!! What an amazing day!!! I can't believe how kind these ladies have been to help!!!

Lili and Nanny on August 9, 2007

Look at these cute photos of Lili!!! I am so excited to have these!!! I recently joined a yahoo group and noticed a post a month ago referring to a bunch of photos taken at the orphanage Lili lives in... I thought I'd just get to see what the outside looks like so you can imagine how excited I was to see her in two of the pictures. I needed to see someone touching her... looks like she can't walk yet as she is really leaning on this nanny.
When I found these tonight I certainly felt like my prayers have been answered. I have been so worried about her. I feel like I have just experienced one of those loving moments from Heavenly Father when He lets me know He knows my needs. This nice lady (that posted the pictures) also e-mailed me and told me this, "Those two photos do not fully capture the warmth the nanny showed to your daughter. She clearly favored YOUR baby above all the others." What a miracle!

Pre-approval!!!

WOW!!! Just after I posted the last post I received a phone call from our agency. We have officially been pre-approved to adopt Yuan Xiu!!! This was much faster than they or we expected!!! This is wonderful!!! The more I look at her recent picture the more I realize she needs a love from her momma!!! Hopefully we will now be able to travel by January (worst case scenerio!!!)

New picture of Lili (9/6/07)

We received this darling picture of Lili today. She looks so big... she is not a baby anymore like our other photos... she is definately a toddler. She looks tired or like they just woke her up or maybe she is sick. A sweet friend (whom I've just met through this process) said this and I couldn't agree more..."Lili has such beautiful soft eyes but is lacking the sparkle that only a family can give her. She looks like she is ready to come home." I can't wait to get her to kiss her cheeks and touch her coarse looking hair. Her hemangiomas should start to flatten out sometime soon... they look so sore but they are not suppose to hurt.

Our agency told us yesterday that we probably have at least 5 more weeks until we know if we have been pre-approved to adopt her.

We learned on Tuesday that her hemangiomas are not inside her body. We had a CT and MRI done on her brain and liver and all the MRI saw were the ones on her face (and she has a small one on her scalp and back) and the CT said everything looked good. So this is great and exciting news.

She looks healthy (other than she may have a cold or really sleepy) and like she needs some siblings to run and play with.