Pre-Approval

We received our Pre-Approval from China today! We were told that from the time we turned in our Letter of Intent (7/11/08) until we received or PA (pre-approval) would be anywhere from 2 - 10 weeks. We received it in 1 1/2 weeks!!
At this point, we figure we will travel anytime between Thanksgiving and the beginning of January 2009. How will we ever be able to wait that long knowing that our daughter is somewhere on the other side of the world in an orphanage!
Now that we have our PA, we feel comfortable sharing the name we have selected for our daughter (it's kind of like waiting until you are through your first trimester). We have named her Layla Nora Si Feng Wolfenberg. Nora is Justin's grandmother's name and Si Feng is the name Layla was given by the orphanage. I know, it's a mouthful.
Now we wait...

New pictures and info from the orphanage

We received an update today! These pictures were all taken at Layla's orphanage on 7/18/08, just a couple of days ago! We were also given her most recent height, weight, and other measurements. She's only 15 pounds. That's less than half of what Henry weighs.

Match Day

This morning I received a very unexpected phone call from the adoption agency we are working with (FTIA). To my shock, they were calling to let us know that we had been matched to a little girl with a cleft lip and palate. I was told that we had until 5:00 to turn in a bunch of paperwork, get the child's file reviewed by the International Adoption Center at Children's, and make a committment to proceed. After an insane day of running around town, making phone calls, writing out answers to essay questions, and sending lots of e-mails, we made our decision and turned in our paperwork. If all goes well (they make no guarantees), we will travel to China in 5-10 months and pick up our little girl (DOB 8/10/07).The crazy thing is that we were not expecting to be matched for at least a year (3-5 years if we stuck with the non-special needs program). We told our agency that we were looking for a female child (there are more boys in the special needs program) under 18 months (also pretty rare) with a cleft lip and palate. Because we were so specific in our desires and because we were told that we were the 40th family on the waiting list (only a few children are matched per month), we had no expectation to hear anything so quickly. I asked our agency how this happened and they said that they are as shocked as we are. They said that it makes no sense why we would have matched us right now. The other awesome thing is that the doctor who reviewed the child's file, raved about her health. She couldn't get over how healthy the child appeared and told us that the cleft didn't look that serious.We couldn't help but take those things as signs from God and move forward!