We got a call from our adoption agency, A Helping Hand, in the afternoon on March 19th. We'd just returned from Spring Break, and I was getting caught up on my schoolwork. The call was from our advocate Dana. She was referring to an email we should have received earlier in the week letting us know that a Special Needs list was coming out Thursday night. We never received the email and had no idea that we had just been matched with our daughter! The only problem was that China's servers went down before they could download the children's files, so they thought that they'd matched us with a 4 year old girl with a heart defect. They had no idea if China would give us an extension since technically we would need to give them an answer and submit paperwork within the hour. How could we give an answer with no particulars? We ended the call with an understanding that we would hear from them first thing Monday morning after they'd had a chance to request an extension from China. Mike and I wanted to get excited about the prospect of finally having our second daughter, but we were also trying to be cautiously guarded in case the whole thing fell through. We decided not to tell Evan and get her hopes up. What a long weekend!
Monday morning we finally got a file and a few pictures of Li YunLi - a 2 year old with a repaired congenital heart defect from DongGuan, Guangdong Province. She's a tiny little thing and favors Evan a little. I thought Evan's eyes were round, but Li YunLi has rounder eyes. (I will post a picture as soon as we get the official approval from China.)
Because of our work schedules and Evan's gymnastics, we had to wait until about 7 pm to tell Evan. We made her eat dinner first since she probably would be too excited after we told her. Mike started out by telling her that we had something very important to talk to her about. She got a look on her face that said she thought she was in big trouble. I told her she was not in trouble that this was something that would change her life. Mike asked her what she would wish for if she could have ANYTHING in the whole world? She immediately responded "a scooter! " When we told her this wasn't it, she somehow thought we were telling her that Big Girl (my grandmother) was about to die and got very upset! We assured her that Big Girl wasn't going anywhere. Finally, she got a huge smile on her face and asked if it was time to go get Sydney, her sister. She was so excited and fell in love with her picture.
She immediately wanted to call her grandparents to share the news. I've never heard a more excited conversation. She is going to be such a big help.
We hope to travel to get Sydney Pyper in August or September and plan on taking Evan with us. We'll go to Beijing and do the tourist thing so Evan can see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Sydney will be about 2 1/2 by then (her estimated date of birth is 3-12-08). I can't wait to see how they interact. I'll post more as we get it.
17 years ago
