Three weeks from today...
...we'll be a family of six!
...my girls will have a new baby sis!
...Nathan and I will be parents of four!
...there will be one less little girl going to sleep alone!
We are going to China!!!!
We finally got our official invitation from the Chinese government
allowing us to bring all 10 of our American feet to their soil and leave with
12. We will have our sweet girl in our
arms and lives forever on Sunday, March 9.
We could not be more excited right now.
With the knowledge that this will be our last adoption and child, there
comes a greater mindfulness and an even deeper appreciation for the
opportunity. As excited as I am to get
to her and bring her home, I find myself pausing throughout this adoption to
simply enjoy it, trying to remember how much the completion of each step means
and writing everything down for her. As
much as adoption paperwork has driven me nuts for the better part of the last 8
years with 3 adoptions, I will admit that a small (and clearly very sick, twisted)
part of me is going to miss going through the process only because I know the
treasure that lies at the end.
Our more astute blog readers may have noticed we’ve chosen
the name Tallulah for her, which means “leaping water” but honestly, we really
don’t care what it means. We’ve always been too shallow for name
meanings. We just loved the name. Her middle name will be Mei Wen, which is the
name she is known by now in her orphanage.
We have no idea what it means, but promise to find out while we’re in
China. Yes, we do realize her initials will be
TB. As long as she doesn’t actually have
it, we’re over it, and hope you can be too.
We’re thinking since tuberculosis is nearly eradicated from the US, we can
invent a new moniker for her initials.
The Best? The Brightest? The Beautiful? Cast your votes now.
Nathan, the girls and I will depart for Hong Kong on March
4. We want to give the girls and
ourselves a little time to get over jet lag before we pick her up. So we will sightsee in HK with them, then
catch a flight to Lanzhou (pronounced lon-joe) in the Gansu province on
Saturday. Tallulah’s orphanage is actually
in a city called Pingliang, a 5 hour car ride away from Lanzhou. Through the snow. Uphill.
Both ways. With no shoes. Or car seats.
Ok…I’m kidding, but only about some of that. She will be escorted to us on snowy mountain
roads sans a car seat, which is making this expectant Mom a little nervous, but I'm trying not to think too hard about the parts I can't control. She will be brought to our hotel room like
Evie was. We’ll spend 5 days there in
Lanzhou waiting for her passport, then we will head to Guangzhou (pronounced
guang-joe) in the Guangdong province to finalize the paperwork. This is the same city we finalized Evie’s
adoption in and I, for one, am excited to be able to go back. Guangzhou is really pretty and has lots to do. From there, we will head to Hong Kong on
March 20 to travel home as a family of six!
Speaking of family going along, we are SO incredibly
lucky that my aunt and uncle have decided to come along and join us also. They’ll be meeting us in Lanzhou and will
come along the whole way. We feel so blessed that they would make this
long journey with us, not only because they want to help us, but also because
they are equally excited to meet Tallulah and welcome her into our family. For them to jump at the chance
without us even having to ask really warms our hearts and reminds us how lucky
we are.
I will probably post one more time stateside before we
leave. We’re getting a VPN this time to
hopefully get around the Great (fire)Wall of China. If that works, I may be able to post updates and pictures on Facebook while we are there, but for the most part, I will just be
journaling here. Thank you for following
along!
