What else can we tell you?

Hoping parenting is easier than trying to get these two to sit together for a picture

Thank you everyone for sharing in our unbelievable joy of being matched. We are still somewhat in shock!

So what comes next?

We are currently in another wait for yet another piece of paper (shocking right?). This paper is called an LOA (letter of acceptance) and it makes it official that the Chinese government says it's ok for us to adopt this little guy. We are very hopeful that we will get this before Chinese New Year begins at the beginning of February because the Chinese government shuts down for a few weeks. So any prayers and good thoughts you would like to throw our way are appreciated!!

Until we get this approval, we unfortunately can't share pictures or a lot of specifics about our new son.

Here are a few things we can tell you:

1. He recently turned one.

2. We have 2 pictures and they make us melt every time we look at them. We hope to get an update with more pictures as soon as we have our LOA.
In the mean time, he looks kinda like one of these. See that one right there? He looks just like that.

3. He lives in an orphanage in a province somewhere around here

4. He does have a Chinese name that was assigned to him by his orphanage. As far as we can tell the name doesn't have significant meaning, so we are planning giving him an English name. We may or may not have decided on one. We may or may not have been debating names for the last year and shockingly when we saw him we both knew what his name should be. Maybe. 

5. He has a special need that we will post about at a later time. It will require some extra doctor's visits, but it is very manageable and we are comfortable with what his needs will be in the future. 

6. We hope to travel in April or May. Three or four months might seem like a long time, but considering the fact that we are new parents and have NO idea what we need or how on earth we are going to pack for our trip, I think we will need every day of this wait to feel prepared. I'm an overpacker by genetics (just ask my mom) so I think it will be a challenge for me to feel like I have everything and yet not have suitcases that weigh 1000 pounds. I'm guessing Brian will be in charge of packing as he is much more level headed about this and doesn't buy into the notion of needing 2-3 outfit choices for every day or needing our entire medicine cabinet (I blame my family for that too, the nurses in our family have impressively stocked purses). 

That's about all we can tell you! 

If you have any questions please feel free to ask. We already love talking about him!