It's A Girl!!!!!

We are sooooo excited to announce that we have been approved to adopt a little girl, Finally!  We found her on a list of waiting children on Labor Day and requested more information on her.  It took two weeks to get information on her but only about two days for us to decide we wanted to adopt her.  We waited two months for the ICAB in the Philippines to approve us.  It took so long I was beginning to question if this is what God really wanted for us, fearing that I had once again pushed ahead of His timing.  I prayed and prayed that we would be approved by Thanksgiving if this little girl was really supposed to be a part of our family.  When Thanksgiving came and went, I thought "Well, that's my answer."  Then we got the call the Monday after Thanksgiving that we had been approved.  When I got the paperwork, it was dated November 25, 2010.  Do you know what day that was?  You guessed it....Thanksgiving Day!  Do we serve an awesome God or what?!!!!  Now you are asking why has it taken me so long to post since we've been approved for two weeks.  Well,  Satan's last scare tactic for us was to throw some new things on her medical updates that were not diagnosed before.  It took us a couple of days of praying, crying, and seeking  advice from medical professionals to be sure that we had peace and were understanding the needs of this little girl.  It's quite a different process than just waiting and being matched with a "healthy" child.  (I put healthy in quotes because you never really know for sure with adoption anyway.)  I want to give a big thank you to my sister, Amy, for letting me cry and ask questions and cry some more =)

  So here is the scoop:  She is 17 months old (which is at least a year younger than we thought we would be getting).  We are naming her Shelby Rebecca.  I won't posted pictures until she is ours after we go get her.  Sorry but some countries get a little funny about blogs and posting pics before things are official.  She is developmentally behind due to chronic malnutrition.  She also has a lazy eye so will probably need glasses when she comes home, at least for awhile.  She has a heart shaped face, light skin, dark brown hair and brown eyes.  She is cute and oh so TINY.  She only weighs 17.6 lbs and is about 28 inches tall.  That will be quite different for us since Hunter was really only small the first six weeks of his life. Right now we think she is about at the 10-12 month mark in meeting her developmental milestones.  She is sitting up, crawling, and standing with assistance.  She also can walk sidesteps holding onto things.  As far as we know she is not saying any recognizable words yet but is babbling quite a bit like "ba,ba,ba".  Language is probably the area that is furthest behind for her (also quite different for us since Hunter is and always has been very verbal).  She is getting physical therapy now and will also start occupational therapy after the first of the year while waiting for us to come get her.  We are really hopeful that with a loving family, good nutrition, and early intervention programs like First Steps once she's here, she will "catch up" quickly, but we know that that too is in God's hands.

As far as time frame goes, we have been told by our agency that it will take 4 to 6 months until we can go get her.  Some of that depends on how quickly we can get paperwork completed for immigration visas.  We are hoping that we can go as early as late April but understand that it will probably be more like May.  Actually that is not a bad thing because it may take us until then to get Hunter's and her bedrooms finished in our new addition =).

We really feel grateful that God has moved so quickly in bringing us a daughter.  Wait times for adopting children from the Philippines just seem to get longer and longer.  The Philippine adoption yahoo group I am part of has families that have been waiting since fall of 2008.  Our agency has told us that the time from when you are approved until you are matched is now 18-24 months, but realistically families are waiting more like 30-36 months to get matched with a child and then another six months to travel.  I know mentally it is always worth the wait, but emotionally I just don't know if I could have done it.  I didn't think it would happen this fast for us, but I am very thankful just the same.