What a Day It's Been!

Today has been an emotional rollercoaster!!! We saw a little (and I mean little) girl today at a very nice, clean, well run orphanage. She is 29 months old with blonde hair and blue eyes and has been there since she was 3 months old. We heard all good reports from the psychiatrist that we met with before meeting her. The only issue was that she was born premature and very small. We then entered the room where the children played. The others were escorted into the lunchroom so that we could play with this little girl alone. She giggled when we tickled her and threw her in the air. We watched her walk and eat and were impressed with her fine and gross motor skills for such a little one. We thought that our meeting with her went very well, but we wanted to go back to our apartment to chart her growth over these couple of years and pray about this HUGE DECISION. After realizing that she didn't even come close to the growth charts especially for her head circumference, we started to get very nervous. For hours we e-mailed her photos and videos to doctors trying to get some answers. During that time, we had our doubts and were thinking that we might have to say "no" to this precious one. Then after talking to a few doctors (a BIG thank you to Melanie Walker, MD, Tim Jordan, MD and Sharon Foster, MD), we felt that her size was "proportional" and that she would hopefully catch up developmentally once we got her home. She does have strabismus "crossed eyes", just for Paul and his colleagues to fix once she gets home. Isn't that something the Lord would do? Also I asked the Lord that she have a name that we were considering using in the U.S., which is both Ukranian and American. And she has one of those names, which is incredible considering how many possible names there are in the world!!! I'd tell her name and post her photo, but we are not allowed to until after the court hearing. I'm not sure when that's going to be so we'll have to post that later. We miss our kids terribly and don't know what we would do without skyping and getting to see them every night. What a day it's been! God is faithful in bringing us to the one He has chosen for our family. We will go visit her again tomorrow and learn how long this process will take to get her home:)