Our daughter is 1 Year + 2 months....

1 of our 3 referral pictures we received in May 2012

Our sweet girl is 14months old today. And I can not help but to wonder how much she's developed already. I wonder if she's grown a few more strands of hair...or is babbling a few more Chinese words...or perhaps even walking. This particular milestone is a little bittersweet for me for obvious reasons, as her Baba & I will most likely not get the opportunity to watch her take her first steps. So when I think about this I can not help but to shed a few tears of sadness for us, but I also shed tears of Joy for her. Walking is one life's most amazing milestones. The possibilities of where we as human beings will walk through within our lifetime are endless. I know in my heart our little Madeline will walk to places far beyond what we could imagine.  

At this time she has no idea how her life is about to change in just a few short months, as she is still too little. Right now she only knows of her caretakers and of her orphanage sisters & brothers. She has no concept of the Love only a mother and a father can bring. We pray that she will attach to us and learn to trust us & receive our love so that one day she too can give all the love she can. Our plan is to send her a care package filled with a few goodies as soon as possible & hopefully she can receive it by next week. I'll post some photos of the contents in her care package as soon as it's ready to go. I'm just waiting on the letter we wrote to her orphanage director to get translated to Chinese. We have a few questions for him & for her nannies. But one of the main & most important thing in her package will be the small little album that will have our photos, so that her nannies can begin to show her & tell her all about her mama & baba. We've heard she loves picture books...so we're hoping this can become one of her favorites. 

God, I wish we can see this.....but for now we'll just have to settle for starring at the few pictures we have of our sweet daughter's little face and just continue to wonder. 

Reviewing Madi's Referral

About 3 days after receiving Madi's official referral, we were invited over for dinner by our good friends Lian & Jack who just recently returned from a trip back to their homeland of Taiwan. Although Lian has returned more recently, Jack had not been back for over 30 years! 

"So different now" he would say. They were really happy they got to spend almost a month in Taiwan visiting with their siblings and friends.  

After getting a chance to read over "Xing Yao's"  report and medicals, they both shook their head in agreement and said:

"You are very lucky there!" "You will get a very pretty baby". 

We couldn't agree with them more! We are indeed very lucky to have a beautiful little girl waiting for us in China. We hate the fact that we will still miss out a few more months of watching her grow. Hopefully it will not be more than 2-3 months.

We've never met her, or held her....but we already love her so much already. We wish we can just hop on a plane tonight to go get her! But there's still so much to do. 

This past Sunday night, we just dropped our i800A forms & payment to our Homestudy agency in Oceanside, while returning from a day in San Diego. This Thursday we will meet with our Doctor to formally review her medical report. And very soon after, we will be officially signing off on her referral & mail it to our international adoption agency in Ohio. And then, a few more immigration papers, more fingerprinting, then wait for an approval from USCIS so we can then apply for our Visa's as we wait for our travel dates. 

 Here's Baba Kris showing Jack a map of where Madi's currently residing. She's in a province called Jiangxi, China, which is more Southern China, almost North West of Taiwan. North of Hong Kong. We're still not certain if we will be flying straight into Hong Kong and go directly to Jiangxi. Our agency has recommended we go to Beijing a day or two prior so we can do a bit of sightseeing, as is traditionally done prior to picking up an adopted child. But I'm not sure how much I'm going to enjoy sightseeing knowing we will be just hours away from picking up our daughter. Personally, I think it would be nice to explore her province, so that we can collect as many photos and video, and anything else we can so we can share with her one day as she wants to learn more about her birth land. 

And here's Baba Kris enjoying dinner with Lian & Jack. Funny thing... our meal was Mexican, which is hilarious!  They used to own one of our very favorite Chinese restaurants for many years, but they recently sold it as they were ready to retire. 

Lian says "I don't want anything to do with Chinese food for a while....too much time to cook". So one of her hobbies lately has been trying out some new easy Mexican recipes. 

Too bad you can't taste how delicious these carne asada burritos were, & the salad was just as delicious!