Where we have been and where we are today...

Chris and I decided a couple of years ago that we wanted Kennedy have a sister from China. It finally took China changing their rules about who can adopt for us to get on the ball and get our papers in. Believe it or not, we are too fat to adopt from China now. We were able to get our papers logged into the adoption system a few days before the rule changed. Because we were "logged in" the new rule does not apply to us. We were logged in on April 26th, 2007.

Soon after we were logged in... a message was posted to our COFCC message board about a young lady that a mother was trying to find a family for. She had just adopted a child that remembered her friend in China very dearly and hoped that she would have a family like she has.

I looked at her pictures on the Yahoo group and felt drawn to her immediately. She seemed to have a spark that lights up her eyes. She seems very special to me. So, after talking to Chris, he agreed I could look into her situation and such. I sent a message to Barb S. and she told me some basics about her difficulties with walking. We would find out much later that Bai Hua has Cerebral Palsy. Anyway, I talked with our agency and they requested that no one else inquire about her as this could make the situation one where she could not be adopted.


While our agency was working on looking into her status, Barb found two wonderful individuals that have helped get Bai Hua's records into the system. I think of them as as angels. More importantly, they are Bai Hua's angels!

Fast forward to January 11th and I received an email from our agency CCAI with all of Bai Hua's records!!!! We immediately set up a meeting with Children's hospital to review her records and photos and then sent our "Letter of Intent" (basically a letter explaining medical and nurture plan for the child) to CCAI on January 14th. We received a "pre-approval " letter from the adoption center in China on January 25th!!! This letter is just an agreement that our files would be moved to the waiting child list.

Next... we had to get an addendum from our social worker that said we were approved to adopt Bai Hua with her special need of CP and age of 11. This document was delivered to our agency on February 20, 2008. Now, we wait for our "Letter of Approval" and then "Travel Approval".

Next Post... A bit about Bai Hua!