Answered Prayers

God has been so faithful to us on this journey to our sweet Calli Fei Fei. We have been blown away by how we have seen him answer our prayers. Our faith has grown, we have learned about praying big, bold prayers, and we have fallen more in love with our Heavenly Father who delights in giving good gifts to his children.

I posted back in June about the specific things we have felt led to pray for related to Calli's adoption. I wanted to make sure I documented how God has answered those prayers here in her blog. We are so thankful to look back and see how God has answered each of those God-sized prayers!

1. The first thing I said we were praying is that we would be able to complete the adoption debt-free. DONE! Through a combination of our savings, ways we have earned extra money, selling puzzle pieces, the incredible generosity of our friends and family, and grants we applied for, we have a total of $30,500 for an adoption that is estimated to cost between $27-30,000! We received 5 grants, for a total of $15,500! That is unbelievable! We have finished our puzzle (pictures to come soon) and I can't wait to write about that in a post all to itself. So we should have everything we need for these last few steps and then for travel as well. Praise God! And, any funds we have remaining we are able to use for her medical care when she comes home. Calli will require several surgeries over many years, so we will be able to use any extra to help with the costs of those surgeries. We are so thankful and humbled!

2. We prayed that we would receive a referral by Christmas. DONE! We were matched from the shared list that was released on November 26. What a wonderful Christmas present for our family! We also were praying very specifically that our baby would be at least a year younger than Cooper, who was born on August 31, 2010. Calli's given birthday is August 31, 2011. That is just incredible to us!! She was found on November 7, 2011, and estimated to be 2 months old. We are not sure on the details of why she was given that birthday, but that was a very clear answer to us from God that she is our baby!

3. We have been praying for her attachment and bonding with us. We obviously won't know much about this until we are with her, but part of that prayer has already been answered. We asked God that she would be attaching to her care-givers or nannies, so that she would understand in time how to transfer that attachment to us. So many babies that are living in institutions are by themselves so much that they really don't know how to receive love: how to be cuddled, how to be fed by someone else, how to be rocked and held. We knew that even if it meant the separation would be hard, that we wanted our baby to be learning how to attach before we got her. That prayer has been answered even more than we expected! Calli is in a foster home with a foster mom and dad and we learned last week from our update that she is very loved by them and even sleeps in their bed with them! We are so thankful for the way they are caring for her. This makes me sad for her for when we go to get her - she knows them as a mother and father and I can't imagine the grief she will have while at the same time we have so much joy in receiving her as our daughter. We are praying very much for that transition time, that God will prepare her little heart for that and that as much as she can, she will be ready for that time. We are hoping the pictures we sent of us will help a little with that. Will you join us in praying for that as well?

4.  And we are still praying for the fourth thing, for when we bring Calli home. For our adjustment to being a family of five, for Kendall and Cooper, for energy and wisdom in how to best parent all three of them. Now we know we are also praying for issues related to her cleft lip and palate. We would love to have your prayers for that time as well!

Those are the big things! There have also been so many other answers to prayers we have prayed along the way. One of those was when we learned that we would be able to make the decision regarding whether or not she had her first surgery in China. We have been talking with Michelle's mom, Connie, who works for a plastic surgeon in Ft. Worth. He specializes in cleft lip and palate and saw Calli's pictures the first day we got her referral. We asked him his opinion about what to do about the surgery and his first response was that really both options were right. It would be fine to wait (wouldn't affect development any more) or it would be fine to let them do it and then repair when she got here. So that was fine, but we really needed some clear direction about what to do. Randy prayed about it with our friend Kirk the next morning at the office, and then I got a call from Connie and she said, "Is it too late? Have you already told them your decision?" I told her no, that we still hadn't decided or told our agency anything. She said that Dr. Schuster had gone home that evening and thought about it some more, then talked to some of his colleagues during surgery that morning and all of them agreed that it would be best to wait until she was here to do the surgery. Her gap is pretty wide, and there is risk of losing some of the lip that is there already. That was all we needed to hear! I called Randy and he told me about he and Kirk praying about it that morning. We were thankful to have that information from the doctor and were able to tell our agency our answer quickly! Also, we just got that update last week and the doctor saw her pictures and said again that we made the right decision in choosing to wait. Awesome!

"I lift my eyes up to the hills - where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth." Psalm 121:1-2

God, thank you for answering our prayers the ways you have. I believed that you were ABLE to do those big things we were asking, but I am so humbled that you CHOSE to do them. Thank you. May we be faithful with the sweet gift you are giving us in Calli Faith and honor you in the way we live our lives as a family. We desire more glory for you and more honor for your name. Teach us to have a big faith that trusts in you for big things!!

"Three cute flowers for your three cute girls!" From my sweet friend Chantel, the day after we received Calli's referral.

"Sorry ooosh in China, baby!"

We got our first update on Calli Faith last week! We are able to request updates through our agency at three points during the process, one being at referral, one at LOA, and one right before travel. Since we are in between referral and LOA, we decided to get an update another way, which is to send a care package through a service called Red Thread China. The lady who runs this site is named Ann and she is in China. You can order care packages through her, she puts them together there in China, and then she requests answers to questions and pictures when she sends the care package. I decided to do this without Randy knowing, in hopes that we might have an update by Christmas. Of course I couldn't wait when we did get the pictures and I showed him right away! He was so surprised and we were both so excited.
I chose a package called the "girl pajama package." It included pjs, a doll, a blanket, candies, and a flash drive for her caretakers to put pictures on of her. I also added an album of pictures that I emailed to Ann so that Calli can begin to see who we are. I was able to ask some questions and write a letter to Calli and to her caretakers. Here are the pictures of her care package! I was so pleased with the things Ann sent!

 

It was great to be able to get some answers to questions we had. Here are their responses:

1.Li Xiao Fei is called as Fei Fei.The orphanage has passed her new name Calli to her foster family .

2.Height :78cm weight :12kg Head:45cm Chest:47cm Foot:12.5cm teeth:6

3.She lives with foster family.

4.She sleep with her foster dad and mom in adult bed.

5.No ,her ears are fine.

6.She can not speak yet but she can make some noise now .

7.Her foster  family feed her with spoon.

8.She is too young to know what is adoption.

Love that we know she is called "Fei Fei!" We learned that is pronounced like "pay," so it sounds a lot like her middle name, Faith. We've been calling her Calli Fei Fei. :) 

Also, she is a big girl! Those sizes mean she is wearing 24 month clothes and size 5 shoe! And she just turned 15 months! 

We are very thankful that she is living with a foster family. Even though we know this will make separation harder on her, we are thankful to know she knows how to attach and bond and that she will eventually be able to transfer that attachment to us. Such an answer to prayer! 

And finally, here are her latest pictures! These were actually taken last week, so she is 15 months old here. Such a big girl! Still in love with those big brown eyes!

We sent these to the specialist we have been talking to and heard back from him today. He said that he still believes her palate is involved, even though her teeth are facing forward and there is such a small gap in between. He said he is glad we made the decision to have the repair done here. It is an incomplete cleft which does not go up into her nose, so that is good, but the area below her nose is pretty wide. We are confident that we made the right choice in deciding to wait to have her surgery and are thankful for helpful doctors as we navigate these decisions!
Calli's sisters could not be more excited about her and can't wait for her to be here! Kendall is ready to dress her in lots of girly clothes with big bows and lots of pink and ruffles. Cooper asks to see my phone and scrolls to Calli's picture at least once every day. She loves baby Calli. She talks to her and shows her picture off to anyone she sees. It is so precious to watch her becoming a big sister. We have a 5x7 picture of Calli framed on our kitchen cabinet. The other day Cooper was running around the house playing and she stopped in front of the picture, looked at it and said, "Hi Baby Calli! Sorry ooosh (you're) in China baby!" She talks about mommy and daddy getting on the "hairpane way up there" and asks us to go every day. All of it just melts my heart and I long for the day when Calli knows the love of these two sweet sisters!!

 

Calli Faith

We received our Pre-Approval from China this morning! It came so fast-we submitted our Letter of Intent on Wednesday, November 28 and got our PA on Tuesday, December 4th!

So we are finally able to introduce you to...

Calli Faith!

Calli's Chinese name is Li Xiao Fei.  We had decided on the name Callie already, but chose to drop the e when we saw that part of her name is Li.  One of the first questions we want to ask is what she is used to being called, and if they can start calling her Calli or not.

One of the very cool parts about getting Calli's file was hearing her birth date. We have been praying very specifically for a baby that is at least one year younger than Cooper. Cooper's birthday is August 31, 2010.  When Logan called to say she had a referral for us, she said that the baby's birthday was August 31, 2011.  Exactly one year to the day after Cooper's! Pretty awesome answer to prayer.

So, Calli is now 15 months old.  She has been at the orphanage since she was 2 months old (approximately) and we think that she may currently be in a foster home. We are trying to get some of that information soon.

Calli's special need is that she has congenital cleft lip and palate.  We have the option of having her first surgery done soon in China or of waiting until she is home with us.  She will have to have several corrective surgeries as she grows, and we will begin seeing specialists about this when she is home. We have actually already been in contact with a cleft lip and palate specialist regarding what we want to do about this first surgery.

Her file was just full of the sweetest details about her.  As it is all we have right now, we love reading it over and over and just stare at the four pictures we have of her. We loved hearing that her favorite thing is to be cuddled, that she likes to be warm (like her mama), that she is active and extroverted, she has a "ready smile," likes colorful rag dolls, has a good appetite, is not picky about food, and that she is a sound sleeper.

The last paragraph of her file is a section titled "Our Wishes." This is such a sweet note from whomever her caregivers are right now. They say that Calli is a quiet and lovely child. Their hope is that she will be adopted by a family who will give her a good education and will help her grow happily and healthily. They ask to be informed of her growth through notes and pictures, and they invite her to come back at anytime to the Child Welfare Institute "where she used to be raised."

Isn't that amazing?! It is obvious to us that Calli is very well-loved right now, which is something that we have been praying a lot! Her caregivers love her enough that they have wishes and hopes for her specifically, and they want to see pictures of her as she grows. We are so thankful for the people who are loving and caring for our daughter right now.

We told the girls about Calli and showed them her picture the day we accepted her referral. They are just so excited about her and can't wait to go get her! They aren't too happy about the fact that Randy and I are not taking them with us, but when we tell them they will be with their grandparents, that makes everything better. I have overheard Kendall telling her friends about Calli and that she has a boo-boo on her lip but it's ok, the doctors are going to fix it and she won't even feel it because she will be asleep. :) The first thing Cooper said when we showed her Calli's picture was "Her has no pants?" The picture is just of her face. :) Then she said, "Her has a boo-boo on her mouth?" Randy explained that she did and that when we bring her home the doctors will fix it. They pray for Calli all the time and love to talk about how when she is going to bed, we are getting up and when we are going to bed, Kendall prays that Calli would "have a great day today." We just love their sweet hearts for their new sister.

So one of the things PA means is that we are allowed to send care packages to Calli! And along with the care packages, we can send a list of questions and request updated pictures. We are looking forward to doing this very soon!! 

The Big Call!

One week ago today we received the call we've been waiting for since we started this process back in February: we got our referral! This past week has been a busy one and I have been so excited to sit down and blog and write out the whole story but there just hasn't been time. So here it finally is! We want to remember every crazy detail of this crazy process, so this may be a little long. But it's all important to us and we don't want to forget any of it!

I haven't blogged about this next part of the story yet either so I am going to include it here. As I was telling my friend Amy about this, she said, "I just can't wait to see what part all of this plays in you finally getting the referral for the baby girl who will be yours." At the time it was hard but as we have looked back on it, we have been able to tell God we are thankful for walking through it and for how he showed himself to us during that time.

On Monday, Nov 5 I got a call from our social worker, Logan. I was so surprised to hear that she was calling because she had locked a file for us and had a referral for us! I called Randy, he came home, and we opened the file of a precious 9 month old baby girl. We both were pretty emotional and thought that we might be finding out who our baby was that day! Her special need was a skin condition that we didn't know anything about so we immediately called Dr. B's office and he said he would meet with us during his lunch hour! When we met with him he told us about this particular skin condition and about the possibilities of what it could mean. We pretty much knew then that she was not our baby. It looked like she had the more mild form of the disease, but the more severe form was just more than we were ready for and we were able to determine that had this particular special need been listed on the child desired form, we would have said no to it. It was a hard, emotional day. We prayed individually and together and by the end of the day had decided we were going to call the following day and turn down the file. (I think I forgot to say that we had 48 hours to make our decision.). Tuesday morning I woke up feeling confident and peaceful about our decision. I told Randy that night that even though I was peaceful, I was still hurting. I wasn't sure how those two things could go together, but I knew we had done the right thing. I had read blogs of people who turned down their first referrals and knew that what we were feeling was normal, but it just didn't make it any easier! I prayed that week even more that we would see our baby girls' face soon and that when we did, that we would know she was ours. I just didn't realize that day would come so soon!!

Fast forward to this past week. The shared list was being released in China on Monday night, 8 or 9 pm our time. I knew many adoptive parents were anxiously waiting for that list to see if they would be matched, but I was just trying not to get my hopes up. The list has been small the past few months, and we have only been logged in since October 8th. This was only our second shared list to even be eligible for. I knew there were lots more people who have been logged in longer than us. We were fully expecting to be matched through our agency's partnership orphanages, so we really weren't expecting a call.

Randy and I were sitting in bed watching New Girl from the week before when my phone rang at 10:00! I didn't know the number, but it said it was from Mississippi. Our agency is in Birmingham, Alabama.  I answered and it was Logan! We immediately knew we had gotten a match that night! Logan told us that yes, we had been matched and that she had a file for us to view. She told us some specifics, and then asked if we wanted to see her file. Holy moly! We asked Logan if we could talk about it and call her back. This time, we were a lot slower to say yes to getting the email. There were a couple of parts of her diagnosis that we were unsure of and wanted to talk through. But, one thing that was very cool was her birthday. We have been praying very specifically that we would be matched with a baby that is at least one year younger than Cooper. When she told us her birthday, it was exactly one year to the day after Cooper's. They are exactly one year apart. Coincidence?? No way!

About thirty minutes later, almost 11pm our time, we called Logan and told her we would see the file. She told us again that we would have 48 hours to make a decision, so we needed to have paperwork turned in by Wednesday evening. We hung up and then just waited for the email to come through.

Can I just stop here and say how crazy unnatural this whole process is?! When you have a child biologically, the doctor holds them up and says "here is your baby!" But this is so crazy different! Here we were waiting for an email to come through that was potentially information and pictures of our baby! So weird.

So the email did finally come through and we saw her face. And we pretty much immediately knew she was ours. We were for her. She was precious. I am not allowed to give any details about her or her special need until we receive our Pre-approval, hopefully in about a week. I just can't wait to show off her picture and write all about her. Randy and I both just cried and cried, realizing that we were looking at pictures of our third daughter. We read every detail of her file, and stared and stared at her pictures. Then we tried to go to sleep. I think I finally fell asleep after 2am.

Tuesday morning we called Dr. B again and he said he would meet with us during lunch again. We emailed him her file so he could be reviewing it. When we met with him, he said, "Guys, she is just beautiful.  I don't see anything that would make me say you shouldn't move forward!" Oh that was all I needed to hear.  We talked about her specific conditions and learned a little more, but I can't even tell you how different I felt walking out of his office this time as opposed to the first time at the beginning of the month. And he said he was much happier this time to be able to give us this news instead of the other. He is so wonderful and we have been so thankful for him all along the way.

So then we called Logan that afternoon to say that she was ours! We started working on the Letter of Intent packet that night, writing a care plan for how we will care for her.  We had it submitted by Wednesday morning and Logan emailed us that afternoon to tell us we had officially submitted our Letter of Intent! So much happiness.

One thing Logan told me when I talked to her, after I told her we were accepting her file, was that the Lifeline representative in China had spoken with our baby's orphanage and told them a family was reviewing her file. She said that they told her that this baby is "highly recommended!" We thought that was so funny and Logan said she doesn't hear things like that very often! Ha!

So the question we've been asked most often this week has been, "So what's next? When do you go get her?" The process from here is that we wait for Pre-Approval, which could take about 2 weeks. Then we wait for China's official Letter of Approval, which takes anywhere from 2-3 months. After that, there are still a few steps before we can travel. Our agency estimates that it will be 5-6 months from now, but we are really hoping to travel sometime in April.  We'll see!

We are so thankful for how God has shown himself to us throughout this whole process and a big way He has done that has been through our family and friends loving and supporting us.  We can't wait to introduce you to our Calli Faith!