Panic and Mickey Mouse- Confirmation

I was so excited to her yet another updated photo of our Adalynn. But, with it came some concern. First, I realized why her hair had not grown. They have been shaving it! Secondly I was worried about her head shape. It appears that she has a ridge on the top of her head. I had myself convinced that it was something serious. I panicked! Immediately I sent her pictures to the best Pediatric Infectious Disease doctor that I know, Dr Robyn Schmucher.Robyn got back with me right away. To my great surprise, relief, and joy Robyn was not concerned and thought this was normal, just more obvious because of the shaved head.

Here is the crazy story of just how creative our Creator is...Find the hidden Mickey:) ....

Back way up...Spring Break 2009. What a year. Landon was just learning to walk again after spending most of the past 9 months in a wheelchair. He had surgery in December to attempt to remove his tumor and prevent it from coming back. We had 3 failed referrals for our Ethiopian son. I needed a break from it all. So we took the kids on our first ever trip to Disney World. No Internet all week.

Before we left we were feeling discouraged, and apprehensive about our adoption. I had prayed Lord, please send me ONE picture of Eli where I know he is my "son." I had always heard adoptive parents talking about seeing there child's face and how they just "knew"...We had lots of photos of Eli to this point, but, none of them gave me that confirmation.

When we got home a week later I checked my email, there is it was. I was almost too nervous to open it. Sent on the day we were at the Magic Kingdom was an unopened email from our adoption caseworker, with an updated photos of Eli. There he was..adorable..looking like MY Eli, for the 1st and only photo where he was not wearing something pink..He was wearing Mickey Mouse bibs!! It's just like he was there at Disney with us that day! Too this very day Eli LOVES, and I mean LOVES Mickey Mouse.

Eli was the first too notice the Mickey pillow in the photo of Adalynn that day where I was so concerned. Yes, God is creative with the way he shows me confirmation and he also has a sense of humor!

So of course, the story of our daughter doesn't stop there, we wouldn't say yes for another month. In fact, we almost said no...

Matt had sent me the email at 7:00 am, that Monday morning, June 25th. I had to wait until the agency opened and finished morning prayers to call. So around 10:00 that morning, I opened the email and saw her face for the 1st time. It was almost too good to be true. Her special need was quite minor compared to what we were expecting, her age, though younger than our request is much better for attachment. She had also been in foster care, which is far superior to living in an orphanage. Perfect. Unlike the other referrals we had looked at before, I had a peace that this was indeed our daughter.

I quickly looked through the photos, read her detailed developmental reports, scanned all of her medical reports and blood work. Everything checked out. I was getting ready to forward her file onto the International adoption doctors for review. As I converted her measurements from metric, I noticed her head circumference was low...really low, not even on the charts low. Which would not have been a big deal, except we had reviewed another child and the doctor found this issue and said it was a problem, after requesting more information from the orphanage of that little girl, it confirmed his diagnosis. The complications were something that we were not opened to.

I was sad, but, forwarded the info on to him, fully expecting a dire response. The 1st line of his reply, said.."She's a keeper."... He said that developmentally she was right on target, but, of course, he could offer no guarantees. I was still not convinced. So we requested new measurements to be taken by the orphanage.

I prayed that God would make this clear. It had been 4 months since the original measurements were taken, so I asked God that they would either stay the same, and we would decline this little girl, or they would have increased and we would make her our daughter. 

About a week later, I received the call at work. Our caseworker telling us that they got the new measurements, and unfortunately, not only had they not increased, the size was actually smaller. She also added that to their surprise she had had her lip repaired. Now of course, her head could not have actually shrunk, so I had to take in account the margin of human error, (especially in another country, where they often think American medicine is to concerned with numbers.) But, still it was a risk we were not willing to jump into. I told our caseworker we would likely decline, but, I would review the info anyway. And here it is the picture of our precious sweet daughter. God didn't like my conditions, he wanted us to trust on HIS terms, which are way better than my own. 

Here is how this story shows just how Creative our Creator is!! ....

This is our friend, Amber, and one of my favorite memories of our trip to Ethiopia, this is the moment that Amber became a mom for the first time! Yes, that is 2 little boys, Emet, and Jamin. They just handed them both to her practically at the same time. God has weaved our stories and our adoption journeys together in the most miraculous ways.
We met Amber and her husband Jesse, almost 4 years ago at our home study agency adoption training. We were late, which yes, is unlike me, but, I made Matt stop for Starbucks on the way:) When we arrived there were only 2 spots left, right up at the front with Amber and Jesse. We discovered that they were also adopting from Ethiopia and were with the same adoption agency as us! We enjoyed getting to know each other through email, and an occasional phone call, they lived in Lafayette at the time. God had big plans for us. It turned out we received our referrals at similar times, our court date was earlier than theirs, but, since we were going Amber decided to travel with us to Ethiopia to pick up her older son and start the attachment process a little sooner. She would then stay until Jesse would arrive and they would have their court date and take custody of their 2nd son a couple of weeks later. It was a great experience to share our time in Ethiopia with Amber.

Fast forward to December 2010, we were planning to adopt from Ethiopa again, and Amber and Jesse were planning on adopting from Rwanda. Neither of us knew that the other was changing plans, and that God had daughters for both of us in China. Rwanda was closing and Amber and Jesse were not allowed to continue in the program. Ethiopia adoption had became too unstable for us.

Last winter after we had already been waiting a while in the China Special Needs program, I saw on Amber's blog that they had found their daughter on a different agency's list. I was excited for them, and thought it was great confirmation that our daughter was in China too.

Ok..are you with me? Fast forward back to the day I got the call that Adalynn's head circumference had been confirmed smaller than the small measurement before. I had been emailing Amber back and forth. But, she felt led to call me. What we discovered next gave us both chills. Our Adalynn is from a remote area in China, a province that not many kids are adopted from. We are not with the same adoption agency either. I tell Amber where she is from, the other end of the phone is quiet for moment. Then Amber tells me, that her little Glory is not only in the same province she is also in the same city in care of the same orphanage!! What are the chances?!! Not only were Eli and Jamin from the same remote orphanage in Ethiopia, here our girls were in the same place, the most unlikely place in all of China! They may not have been the signs I asked for, but, God was making it clear that these signs were way better, and they were from HIM!

We were still uncomfortable with the facts, but, through some research I found that this is a minority province. Which explains Adalynn's looks which are not distinctively Chinese. I called our agency and asked if they could share with me the other measurements of the children adopted from this province. I plotted them all on a Chinese growth chart, and guess what? A common denominator in all cases..small head circumference!

A week later we received yet, another set of measurements, that actually showed some growth. One full month after laying eyes on our sweet girl we said YES!

Happy Anniversary!

Here is our little girl as I layed eyes on her for the very first time. As I looked at her I had a complete peace that this was indeed our daughter. But, the next month would be full of questions and confirmations.

Just gettting to the point of looking at this picture was quite an accomplishment. We had grown very frustrated with our adoption process. We had waited far longer than we had ever expected to wait for a "waiting child." Our request was for a little girl age 3 to 5 years old, we were open to many special needs. Just like Eli was not our 1st referral, neither was our Adalynn..in both cases they were number 4!

I will remember the day I got "The Call". It was our 15th Wedding Anniversary, June 21. The kids and I were getting ready to go swim at a friends house. When my cell phone rang, I wasn't totally surprised to see the adoption agency number on the ID. I knew that they were expecting a large number of agency specific child referrals. Our case worker told us that they wanted to discuss a baby girl with us, that didn't quite meet our description. She gave me a brief overview of the child and shared that her age was 14 months.  Realizing that we had requested an older child, they would not allow us to review her file until we agreed to change our age request. She was giving us until Friday morning. I called Matt at work, ad he said "No she is a baby, we aren't adopting a baby." I shared how perfect this little girl seemed for our family, but, agreed she was really young.

God was changing my heart regarding age, but, seemed to not be having any effect on Matt. I called the agency and got a little more information, and asked for an extension. A dear friend, who is also adopting from China, said " What an odd predicament, Only you guys would have this dilemma, a child too young..."..Our agency agreed to let us have until Monday morning. You would think we would have discussed it all weekend. WE DID NOT! I was tempted to nag my husband, and probably would have had it not been for the advice from an adoptive mom friend. Here is is a good lesson for all of us nagging wives..."My other suggestion would be to take Matt's lead. While it is hard to know God's plan in some areas, in this area it is not. "Wives Submit to your husbands..." Eph 5:22, she adds, "I know that you will find peace in obedience."  OUCH! But, on second thought, I didn't have to be in charge, the OUCH is for Matt. I told Matt about this, and he said, "Well that's a lot of pressure on me don't you think?" He wasn't really liking the idea. Hum? Yeah, pressure for him, peace for me..I liked that deal.

Monday morning, at 8:58 he sent the email saying, "Call the agency and get her file. I can't believe we are going to have a baby! "

Welcome

Welcome to our blog. I must admit I really don't know what I am doing with this blog, but, I hope to learn. We are anxious to share what is going on in our family and have you are friends join us on our adventure to China to adopt our baby girl, Adalynn. In future posts I will backtrack and tell the story of how God has worked to bring this sweet little girl into our family.