Our new baby Girl!

We finally got "the call" as they say a week ago on Friday 28th August 2009. Snowbell and I were driving to her piano lesson in late Friday afternoon traffic - I had given up expecting to hear and was feeling glum and flat after a very emotional week of waiting - when the phone rang and it was the Manager of the dept who arrange adoptions. I didn't have my ear piece in to go hands free so after some panicked attempts to find them I handed the phone to Snowbell in the back of the car while I drove into a side street and parked.

The wonderful and amazing news was (after a nearly 6 year wait) that we have been allocated a less than 5 month old baby girl (unheard of in Australia to get one so young from China and I don't remember hearing anyone getting one so young from China anywhere else!). She is residing in small and very caring orphanage in the Jiangxi Province. Her name has strong links to the name my elder daughter uses and she has my late father's birthday. I feel he and my Mum are looking after me on this one. I had been expecting and preparing for a 2 - 3 year old so this was a big surprise. As I am older I had felt an older child would be more practical but in my heart I secretly hoped I would still get a baby - but I NEVER imagined such a little one. Mind you she is a bonnie healthy baby with her weight steadily up at the 75th percentile on the Growth Charts for Chinese Girls.

So since that amazing moment a week ago I have been very busy with emails, phone calls, planning and doing paperwork. All our documents went to China today. We had a big meeting with our batch last night and then I took all of our completed paperwork to Docs and then Dept of Immigration. We got an email later this afternoon to say that another families paperwork had arrived from interstate and all the documents have been sent to CCAA - specifically our acceptances of the babies!

We are hoping to meet our babies on 19th October. They will be brought to us in Nanchang which is the Provincial capital. We will also strongly request to travel to visit her SWI and finding sites but that will possibly depend on swine flu restrictions. It will be very disappointing if we can't.

We will fly in and out of China through Shanghai as that is where our Consulate is which is lucky as the Trade Fair in Guangzhou is making it very difficult for Americans to travel as that is where their consulate is. The fun part is that we will know people in Shanghai and a friend may travel down from Beijing to see us too. My daughter has her birthday on 17th October so we may be able to rustle up a party for her in our week in Shanghai. We are very excited and longing to get to our darling baby Belle ( her name in this Blog)