Apparently, the world really is small

We had a couple pretty cool things happen this week. I had forgotten (and I don't know if Kevin even knew) that once you receive pre-approval, the agency sends you the physical file that China sent them including original documents and pictures. Some families will go so far as to have their picture taken with the UPS guy since he is essentially playing the stork for them. Yeah, I don't quite get it either.
Friday I arrived home from work and found among the typical letters offering me credit cards and amazing interwebs service our referral packet. Cool! I figured it would be kinda neat seeing the original Chinese documents and it was. What I didn't count on was two pictures that had not been sent to us. The first being a tiny black and white pre-surgery shot. Sadly, the lack of colors doesn't properly display the majesty of the blue sweater, and she almost looks like someone made a part in her hair with a bandsaw. Still, we take what we can get.


Then I turned to the back of the file where the color photos were and wasn't I surprised to see this.

It may not be the most amazing shot, and I'm sure it has a different effect on other people, but when I saw it I immediately started crying. The thing is, if this picture had been included with the original referral, I doubt it would have taken me so long to recognize her. Its those eyes.

Anyway, that is not the coolest thing that happened. I was advised to join a Yahoo group or two, so I did some searching and picked three groups: The FCC (Families with Children from China) which gets together for picnics and Chinese New Year and stuff, Adopt Cleft which is a support group for families adopting cleft lip/cleft palate kids, and a group that is devoted to adopting from Zhengzhou (basically pronounced jeng joe, for those playing at home) province. Fun fact: I tried to join our local FCC about a year ago and they turned me down. I'm tempted to bring YinCi around and shout hysterically, "Am I good enough for your group now??" while weeping and wailing. Maybe not.

I posted a pretty boring and standard into into the groups and got a very quick reply from one of the other newer members of the Zhengzhou group welcoming me. I was glad to see that it seemed like a friendly bunch and figured it would be fun to connect with people whose kids are from the same area and YinCi, maybe even her same orphanage. The next day I got a message that I was certainly not expecting:

Welcome, Jen! Your little girl is totally adorable, healthy and a lot of fun. I will miss her very much, but still wish you could get here next week. Congratulations! PS - And she has about the best lip repair I have ever seen thanks to operation Smile.

Yup, her orphanage director is a member of the same group. She knows our girl, she is there with her and can tell us first hand that she is healthy and happy. I wanted so badly to just write her a huge email with tons of questions and request some more pictures as well as updated measurements and who knows what else, but I stopped myself.

Here's the deal. Our agency has sent us instructions on how to proceed as far as care packages, etc. and one of the big things they have stressed is that we are not to make any direct contact with the orphanage. It could jeopardize the adoption, the agency, and the orphanage as well. There are procedures for these sort of things, and you don't make friends with China by going against the rules. Rather than take a risk, I chose to send a simple message letting her know how much I appreciated her taking care of our girl and assuring her that I didn't want to do anything that could jeopardize anyone's standing with those in charge, so I wouldn't ask any questions or request more updates. It was hard, but I figured it would be for the best. We'd have plenty of years of pictures when we got her.

I got a response from her that night (yay 14 hour time difference!) basically saying that she is in close contact with our agency and told me to feel free to send as many questions to her as I want through our agency contact. In addition she said she would be sending pictures very soon since the ones we had were months old. She sent great info about sending care packages and just further emphasized how awesome she is and how indebted we feel to her and her organization. Seriously, guys, they are an amazing charity and I can't say enough great things about them. The fact that they doubled our daughter's low weight in only 3 or so months should give good indication of how much time and effort they put into these children.

We're so excited! It's finally feeling real. There are actual baby clothes in our house. There are pictures on our fridge. There is a little girl halfway across the world who has no idea what a miracle she is to us and those around us. Hang in there, sweetie! We'll be there as soon as they let us! Zaijian women de bao bao.