Not as well as we thought

We received news that Hui is having some issues relating to her surgery. Her body is "spitting stiches" and a couple of the spots on her chest have becaome infected. Fortunately, CHI has just last week completed another adoption in Lanzhou. Their coordinator on the ground in Lanzhou, Lina, spoke directly with Director Yan and had photos forwarded to us of the sores on her chest. We called Children's Hospital in St. Louis and made an appointment for her with the pediatric cardiology department the day after we return home from China, and e-mailed the photos to them so that they can see what is going on. The cardiology folks have consulted with a thorasic surgeon. We also reminded them that since we will be one day back from China, Olivia will speak NO English. Hopefully they will have a Mandarin speaking person available to tell Hui what is going on. We do not think this is serious but we need to have it checked right away as there may be secondary infection in her heart. Think positive thoughts! We need to get Olivia out of China and into a place where she can be cared for. Children's is a state of the art facility. Dang.... we really never wanted to see the inside of that hospital.

Here We Go!

We have received final approval for travel, our visas are all done, the airline tickets are purchased and all we need do is complete our imunizations, pack, make sure we have all the documents we need, get all the medical supplies etc.... "All we need to do...." Wow. A ton of stuff left. We bought a beautiful yellow dress with pretty flowers yesterday guessing at Hui's size. She is 40 inches tall.... we drew a line on the wall at that height and held the dress up to where we think it will go... PERFECT!. Pretty silly, we know, but fantisizing is a pleasant passtime. It is two weeks from today that we will depart. The travel time is almost unbelieveable... we will leave St. Louis at 10:30 AM, connect in Detroit then Tokyo, arriving Beijing on Friday at 9PM ish (8 AM Friday morning St. Louis time.). Almost 22 hours of travel. Good grief. We plan to bring several books for the trip over (and Barb's sudukos of course) as well as a backpack chock full of fun stuff for Hui for the return trip. Maybe she'll sleep?

We continue to believe that this is a blessed trip. It has all gone so perfectly. All the parts coming together in just the right time. We are humbled and honored to have a part in this. We know that Hui will bring much joy to our lives and that we are the lucky ones for having found her. We hope to be worthy of her.

We Have A TA!

We have not been on blog for a while as there really was nothing to report. We are now up and rolling. We received a TA yesterday and are looking to travel on 23 August! More later!

Mother's Day

Here we are on Mother's Day, 2007. Hui will be with us next year for this important celebration. In the meantime, life goes on. We returned home from Georgetown, Kentucky and Matthew's graduation yesterday. Here's the smiling grad all decked out.

Letter to Olivia Hui

PA!

We just received a call from Julia that we have received our Pre-Approval from the CCAA. A Big Day! We are now allowed to send Hui a photo album, a litte stuffed toy and a camera. The most important part of all this is that she will be told that she has a Ma Ma and a Ba Ba. I can only imagine what feelings she will experience when she hears that news. I am sure she will be happy but also scared of the unknown and sad to be leaving her friends. There had been some discussion about moving her to a CHI foster facility because of her slowly developing speach but the SWI Director has asked that she stay in Jiayuguan. Apparently, she loves her preschool experience and is doing well there. He would like for her to have as few disruptions in the next few months as possible, keeping in mind that a HUGE disruption is about to occur for her. That makes sense. In the several conversations we have had with others who have adopted internationally from this SWI, and there are very few, they all said that the director seemed quite caring and took a personal interest in each of his children. For that we are most grateful. We will be getting several updated photos soon. Receiving our PA makes this all VERY real.

Referrals

We are very happy for those seeing their children for the first time. One can only imagine the difficulty of the wait. We are impatient over the average four month wait for a waiting child. I am reminded of the prayer "Dear God, please give me patience and GIVE IT TO ME NOW!" All the best to everyone wating, those receiving referrals and those preparing to travel.