Communication (or Lack Thereof?)

Tonight's post is from the eloquent engineer of the family.  How do you like that flowing alliteration?  Most people probably don't know that I (Steve, that is) write songs and compose and record music.  It is funny how a lot of lyric writing techniques seem to creep into my writing and conversation even when I am not doing it musically.  My current music project is inspired by this adoption journey (a long story for a another time,) and I hope I can get it finished up before we leave so it can be placed here for your listening pleasure.
Ah, but I digress a bit too much.

Tonight we are waiting to hear back about what may be our only chance at communication with Juliana prior to her being placed into our care 24 hours before she officially becomes our daughter.  We have ordered a picture album from Ann at Red Thread China (.com) that will be sent to Juliana's Social Welfare Institute (aka orphanage) along with a disposable camera that has tag with her name on it.  Most everyone who is adopting or has adopted from China in the past five years knows of Ann and her business.  She is able to get packages to most of the orphanages and somehow manages to get you update information on your child when the official channels have come up dry.

The camera is meant for the caretakers to take pictures of her with friends and caretakers so we have some lasting trace of her first 10 1/2 yrs to bring back home with us.  The photo album will have 25 pictures of us, our home, and some of the things we do so hopefully she will get a brief view into her future life.  The letter (400 words max!!!) introduces her to her new family in a bit more detail than the picture captions.

The agonizing part is when adopting from China, you almost never know ahead of time whether your child gets anything from a care package you send.  Sometimes they get some things ahead of time, sometimes they get all or some of it on the morning when they are first told and taken for the car, bus or train ride from the orphanage to their new parents and new life, and sometimes they never get any of it.  We are hopeful Juliana will be given our album since it seems her SWI has given her good care and she is well liked and thought of according to our original referral report and the updates we just received last week.

While working with her new pictures tonight I discovered the three update pictures were taken on August 16 at about 10:15 in the morning.  We are still trying to figure that one out since we know our agency didn't ask for the update until the middle of September.  Could it be that once our dossier was logged in her SWI was informed that her pre-approved family was officially in the works so they should start getting ready to update her information???  What did they tell her on the morning they took these pictures?  We were so thrilled to still see those eyes that had so captivated us way back last February with that spark of life that really reached out to us from a few scanned photos in her original file.

The last paragraph of her update was also a thrill to read. 

Yang-yang has a big wish and that's to go home with her foreign daddy and mommy as early as possible, so that she can have love and care from her own parents, just as her peers do.  She is waiting for the coming of the day when she can call someone daddy and mommy forever, and live with them as a happy family.

Luckily she is old enough we will be able to determine if these are her words or her caretaker's, but either way we wish we could tell her we are 5 days away from Article 5 pickup, and then it is in the hands of the CCCWA to make this happen as "early as possible."

After staring at her pictures for over 8 months we are now more than ready for her to be a part of our lives..  Our hopes and fervent prayer is that she will be prepared and ready for us to be a part of hers.