AN UPDATE ON EMILY JEAN!!

Since Emily's was about seven months old when we received it, we requested an update on her through an outside organization that has relationships with and deals with orphanages on behalf of adopting families.  In just 2 days, we received an update showing her continued great progress and we received these pictures of our adorable and sassy little girl (if I do say so myself!)

 

 

 

I about flew out of my chair at work when I received the e-mail with these pictures!  It's such a weird feeling to have only seen baby pictures and then to receive these pictures showing her 7-8 months older!  We hate that we are missing all of these months with her, but we are thrilled that she is smiling in these pictures (sadly, not usually the case with orphans) and that she looks happy and healthy.  She is out on a playground and is clearly walking and playing and someone has cared enough about her to put her hair in a little "horn-on-head" ponytail and to give her sunglasses to wear in the bright outside light. 

INTRODUCING... EMILY JEAN ANAND

We received Preliminary Approval for our daughter on March 15 - the same day we submitted the Letter of Intent for her.   We decided - along with the boys - to name her Emily Jean.  Jean - after my mom.  We're not sure yet whether we'll call her Emily or Emily Jean.  We just can't believe that it's actually happening.  All of these months of paperwork and angst and waiting for phone calls and reviewing files and now we know who she is.  For three and a half years --- going back to when we first started talking about and investigating adoption -- I've I tried to imagine what our daughter might look like.  Now we know!  She's so beautiful!!

 

OUR GIRL!!!

WE KNOW WHO OUR DAUGHTER WILL BE!!!

After all of the discouragement and sadness of the past several weeks, we were trying to hold onto some hope that we would find the child meant to be a part of our family.  On March 11th, our agency rep emailed me to ask if we might consider a special need that was not on our special needs "list" (something the agencies ask you to research and "check" off so that they know best how to match you with a child) because she thought a child's file might appear the next night.  We asked for a day to research and ask questions and I remembered that a Facebook group had been asking moms to do short "tutorials" on their children's special needs.  One of the most recent posts was from a mom of a child with this particular need.  I re-read her post and e-mailed her for more information.  I also read more blogs, read health websites and medical documents, e-mailed some other moms on different Facebook and other groups, and we talked about whether this need might be something we could handle.  We were nervous about it, but it didn't really seem to be a big deal at all.  Overriding everything, though, was that we had just said "no" to two children and we did NOT want to ever do that again.  We were on the verge of telling our agency that we didn't think we could consider the file if it appeared when a friend of mine asked, "Would you say yes to reviewing the file if you had not said "no" to those other children?"  The answer was: yes.  We were just so worried about saying "no" that we were almost too scared to look at a new file.  Realizing that without risk, there is no reward, we told our agency that if the file appeared, we wanted to see the child's information.

The next night, I nervously watched the clock and the phone and, around 10 p.m., our agency rep called.  She had the file.  She told us that when she had seen the file pop up for a second on the "shared list" earlier in the week, our names came to her mind immediately.  She said that although the file disappeared from the list, she just somehow "knew" that it would come back Wednesday night.  We opened it cautiously and then saw our girl!  She was beautiful and big and SMILING.  Her file was full of positive information.  And she was born the VERY DAY that we applied with our agency in January 2013.   The day we took the big leap of faith, she was born!!

We sent her file to an international adoption pediatrician just to cover the bases, but we knew what he would say.  And, by the next morning, we had an e-mail from him that read:  "Lee Ann, we can talk more tonight, but I really just have three words for you:  GO GET HER!!"   "Nothing but positives" in her file, he said.  And we agreed.  I drafted our Letter of Intent and called our agency rep on March 15th and told her that she had found our girl. 

And with that decision/phone call, all of our worries and angst and discouragement and sadness of the past couple of months disappeared.  We called and emailed our families to tell them - and they were all so excited.  We showed the boys her picture and Graham kissed the Ipad and Jackson said that she looked like Elsa from "Frozen."   They immediately began discussing what specific things they would teach their sister.