The Care Package Is On Its Way!

For the past month or so, we've been gathering things to put in a care package to send to Sophie. Yesterday it began its journey to China. In the package was a Build-A-Bear panda that plays a recording of our voices, a security blanket, a photo album with our pictures in it, an Alabama onesie for her and one for her foster brother, an Alabama elephant for her foster brother, a disposable camera that we hope her foster family will use to take pictures of Sophie while we wait, Priester's honey-glazed pecans for the foster parents, a letter for the foster parents, and a map of the US that indicates where Sophie will be living when she comes to America in a couple of months. We hope it makes it there quickly so that she can see pictures of us and hear our voices enough that we will seem a little familiar to her on Gotcha Day. We have sleeping with the security blanket for a few weeks and hope that our scent will be familiar to her as well. As a friend told me one day, "Every day that passes is another day closer to Sophie". I hold on to that and remind myself of it daily. The time is certainly going by quickly, and before you know it, we will be boarding a plane to China!

Sophie's goodies

Foster Brother's goodies

Foster Parents' Goodies

Update.....

I emailed our agency rep today to see if she was still thinking we would travel in January or February, since it is already mid-November and we haven't received our Letter of Acceptance(LOA) yet. I thought that our LOA would come quickly since we were logged in back in 2006, and our file had already made it through the review room. She emailed me back and told me that since we changed agencies, things were a tad more complicated than that. It seems that when you switch agencies, someone has to find your file thas was with your original agency's pile and move it to your new agency's pile, and then your file has to go back through the review room again. Well, our file has been located and transferred to the new agency's pile, and it made it to the review room today. Our agency is hoping that we will receive our LOA in December and travel at the end of January. So.....we wait a little while longer, but we know what the prize will be in the end. It will be worth it! But it truly is harder to wait once you see your baby's face, and you know she is half-way around the world waiting for you to come and get her. On the bright side, there is a very good possibility that we will be celebrating Bo's birthday in China! This will definitely be a memorable birthday for him!!

We Have Sophie's Finding Ad!

When children are found abandoned in China, the police are contacted in order to help find the birthparents. As part of that process, finding ads are placed in the local newspapers that include pictures of the children, a description of the place where they were found, and the date on which they were found. This finding ad is usually the earliest information that adoptive parents can find about their child(ren). Brian Stuy, with Research-China.Org, provides a service to adoptive parents where you send him your child's name, birthdate, finding date, and finding place, and he finds your child's finding ad in the local newspaper and sends it to you. Today, we received Sophie's finding ad. We are so pleased to have this information to share with Sophie one day, and we are thrilled to have a picture of her at such a young age. This will be so important to Sophie in helping her to understand her past and the things she experienced as a baby.

She is the one on the left, #1306