Expecting #4!!!

We are so excited to announce that we have been matched with a 2 1/2 year old girl in China! We had taken a break from considering the children on the special needs list since we had sweet little Cody. Now that he is a little older we started to view the list of waiting children again. We were still also in the healthy infant program but with a long wait still ahead of us. We researched conditions, prayed, and decided to consider children with minor needs under the age of 3. Our agency called us late in March with a little girl for our family! She turned 2 October 1. She was abandoned soon after birth, was found, and taken to an orphanage. She had cleft lip and cleft palate but was otherwise healthy. It took great care to feed her because of her special needs and she bonded well with her caretaker. Through a government initiative, her cleft lip was fixed at 2 months of age. Her palate remains unrepaired and will be fixed soon after we bring her home. She will also undergo surgery at some point to help reduce the scarring from her first cleft lip surgery. A year ago an organization called Love Without Boundaries provided the funds needed to place her in foster care. Foster care greatly improves the quality of life of a child living in an orphanage so we are so happy about this. I will talk more about Love Without Boundaries in another post. Because of child protection laws we are not able to share with you her name or where is from in China. We will probably use her Chinese name as her middle name but we have not decided what her first name will be yet. The kids have always called her Kate because we all love that name but we haven't decided for sure. It will take 3-6 months for us to gain approval from China to travel and bring her home. We are really praying we will be able to travel during the summer. We will be in China for about 14 days. The plan is for Rob's parents to travel with us and possibly Cole. She is 1 year older than Cody and 1 1/2 years younger than Julia. It will be nice to have the girls in the middle and Cody does really seem like he was meant to be the baby of the family!
Please don't feel obligated to keep up with our blog and our lengthy posts. This is a journey that we want to share with family and friends but I must confess that the blogs main purpose is therapy for us as we wait to bring our little girl home!