We Finally See Her Face!!!

I am thrilled to introduce our newest daughter...

Caroline Collins

Our sweet Caroline Collins, whom we will call Collins, is *seven* months old and living in southern China in the same province that Lia Kate is from. We are so in love with our beautiful girl already and we can't wait to travel to bring her home forever.

Here is the story of how we were matched with her...

We have been waiting for 6 months now to be matched with our daughter. Our dossier was logged-in in China on March 1, 2012, and we have just been waiting for files from our adoption agency's new orphanage partnerships to come in. But nothing really moves fast in the adoption world. We thought the files would be here in July, but they weren't. Then, August, but no. Then September rolled around and I was getting anxious. 

On Thursday, September 6, our awesome social worker, Karla, called and said she might have a file for us. She told me a little bit about her. I told her we were definitely interested and I asked how old she was. Karla hesitated and said she needed to check and would get back in touch with me. We were really wanting a young child (under 15 months) because we want some space between our older two and the next one. When she hesitated, I thought she might be older, but we were not going to pass up looking at a file. That afternoon she called back and said she had gotten the file together and was ready to send to me. She told me a little bit about her and then said, "Now, hold on to your socks because she is SEVEN months old!" I was in the car driving two sleepy children to gymnastics, and all I remember saying was, "No way! Holy cow! No way!" over and over. Seven months is *very* young for medical needs adoptions from China. She told me she was emailing me the file right then. I happened to be stuck in a massive traffic jam, so I checked my email and there was the file. I opened it up, saw her sweet face and started screaming. I immediately called Danny and told him I had just seen our daughter's face. This is verbatim what happened when we got Lia Kate's file. Danny is a little more even keel than I am, so he was like "Okay, send me the file." I did. Then I texted our social worker back and said "Oh, Karla. I'm done. She's the one. Hope my husband is on board!".  Just like with Lia Kate, I knew right away. No doubts.

The first picture I saw of Collins.

Danny must have known too because he came home a little bit later with Chinese food and a bottle of prosecco.

We sent her file to be reviewed by the International Adoption doctor who had visited her orphanage in April and did a physical on Collins, and waited for her to call back. Since we were going out of town bright and early the next morning, I spent that night writing a care plan so that our agency could send our Letter of Intent (LOI) as soon as we were ready to officially say yes. I may have gotten about three hours of sleep that night. I was just so giddy and excited. The next day at noon, even though we hadn't talked to the adoption doctor, we decided to go ahead and have our agency send LOI. We knew she was our daughter and there was nothing the doc was going to say that would change our minds.

One week later on September 13, we got our Pre-Approval from China. We have a few more months of paperwork to get through before we can travel. We are hoping to have her in our arms some time in December, but after Christmas/January may be more likely. She will be 10 or 11 months old. I can hardly believe it. Praising God for our sweet girl. She was so, so worth the wait!!!