IT'S A GIRL!!!!!!!!

Yes, a girl!

I got the phone call at 12:36pm today. Brent, the agency director, asked if we were open to a referral of a girl and I said we were (we had requested a boy, and C was not home to discuss this with, but he has never said he just has to have a boy). She was born in July '08 which makes her 9 months old. We have one little photo of her and are not sure when it was taken. She has dark hair (quite a bit of it), dark eyes, and ivory skin. She was born a few weeks premature and weighed 5 lbs 6.5 oz at birth ( I was born a month early and weighed in at around 4.5 lbs.). She is now 15.43 lbs and 27 inches long. As soon as I wrote down all the info I hopped in my car to go find C at the gym. He knew as soon as he saw me that the agency had called. We immediately rushed home to wait for the e-mail containing her photo.

She is precious. Truly, her photo is so small...it is the only one we have and on the screen it comes up about 2" x 3". She has a flower shaped pacifier in her mouth...so we can't see her little mouth. I want to see her whole face! I don't feel comfortable posting her photo here...she is not yet my child. And there are reasons I won't divulge the region we are in out here on the blog or her name. I do plan to set up an adoption website with a company that specializes in that...they will assist us with posting photos and updates during our trips overseas. That will be password protected for friends and family and I will be able to share more information there.

C needed to take the afternoon and figure out where he stood on not getting a boy before we accepted the referral. I think he had developed an attachment to the idea for playing sports with his son. But he has never been highly attached to the idea of a boy and we were hoping for a child under a year at referral. And did I mention her photo? We were discussing names within minutes of seeing her. Her health and her age are the most important factors for us, so we are going for it. There are many reasons why this might not work out. During our visit we will need to evaluate her and have our doctor review the information and photos and video we get. And it is possible, right up until we visit her, that a Russian family can sweep in and adopt her out from under us. But she is standing and walking with assistance, crawling very fast, and babbling. She sounds to be active and healthy and happy. Her caretakers describe her as a "gorgeous princess".

We are submitting what little info we have on her to a local international adoption doctor for review and if all goes well with that, we could be travelling before the end of April. I can't get over there fast enough. It's a different sort of waiting game now.