Thursday, June 29 --- This just in from China!! Mia Xiaohua has one tooth now!! How cute is that to imagine?! She likes her walker and she is described as "a busy baby" with "a sweet personality." We just can't wait to meet her!!!! At the most recent measuring she weighed 9 kg/19.8 lbs. and was 68cm/26.5 inches long if my math is correct.
Kate

June 27 - Introducing the future Miss Mia Xiaohua Morgan!!! Yesterday Kate received the long awaited call from the Barker Foundation. The referrals for the three families in our travel group had arrived from China. The documents were translated overnight and this morning we met with Colleen at Barker. We first reviewed a medical record which shows on-target physical and social development. Then we wept with joy on seeing photos of Xiaohua. We are so grateful to her caregivers that Xiaohua appears very healthy and happy. She was born on September 3, 2005, in Shaanxi province in central China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaanxi ). It is amazing how much two photos have affected us. They bring a lot of sunshine to very rainy Falls Church!


We are still looking at mid-August travel. We will be going to Beijing, Xian (the capital of Shaanxi Province and home of the Terra Cotta Warriors), and Guangzhou (where the US consulate is). Yes, Dorothy, we will be visiting your old stomping grounds! (:
Kate and Neil

June 22, 2006. The day started with a routine check of the China Center of Adoption Affairs website. We've looked at it to see what date of last year's adoption applications the Chinese have placed. Our application was logged in on June 27, 2005. For what seems like eternity, the placed through date on the website has been listed as June 15, 2005. Today, however, was VERY different:

"The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before June 28, 2005."

... June 28, 2005!!! We can't believe it!!! Our adoption agency contacted us this morning and let us know that we are likely to receive health information and a picture of Mia next week and travel in mid-August. We are ecstatic!!!!

Neil and Kate

June 17, 2006. It seems summer weather has really arrived. To this point we have been blessed with an extended period of warm days and cool nights. Our houshold companions, Max & Smoky, are disgusted with this new development. They now spend their days lying around in an overheated funk. Being cats, they attribute this state of affairs to us, the omnipotent ones, and for the moment we are politely tolerated. I can't imagine how we will be viewed when Mia moves in on their turf.


The Big Construction Project is progressing. I feel confident in finishing before we travel to Mia. We shall see...




Meanwhile Kate has taken on most of the yardwork this year and is starting new landscape projects, including a Zen garden. Our pick-up truck has been quite busy ferrying carpentry supplies, sod, mulch, rocks, topsoil etc. to our "jobsite".

Construction and Gardening Therapies have been very helpful in the Long Wait!
Neil

June 8, 2006. After twenty months and eleven years, the end of the journey to our daughter Mia and to parenthood seems real and within reach. We anticipate getting a letter of referral and photo of Mia next month and travelling to China to adopt her in September. There are many tasks to attend to --- among others, renewing our fingerprints (yes, they expire!), completing The Big Construction Project, preparing the house for an infant, getting travel vaccinations, consulting an adoption medicine specialist, and making work and travel arrangements. More to come as the details unfold.
Neil and Kate