Wow! It is hard to believe that it has been over three months since my last post, but the date confirms it is true. A lot has happened in those three months, and some of it was not so great. Actually, some of it was horrible. And, some of it was so amazing and wonderful that it truly takes my breath away to think about it. You might have noticed that I even took the blog down for the majority of that time. I am not going to go into all of the details of what happened, but I just wanted to say that we are back on track and where we are supposed to be which is pursuing the adoption of our little girl, Lucy.
Lucy is not the name she was given at birth, but the name we have chosen to give her. As many of you who are familiar with international adoption will understand, we are not a liberty to disclose her real name until we have passed court and she is legally ours. Until such time, we will be referring to her by the name we have chosen for her, which is Lucy Rose.
A few weeks ago, we actually received new pictures of Lucy and new video of her from our agency. I was astounded at the changes. She has grown so much in the last six months! This makes me both happy and sad. I am happy that she is doing well in the orphanage and that she is being well taken care of, but I am also sad that I have missed this time with her. Hopefully, some day she can tell me of her adventures while she waited for her family, and I can tell her what our family was doing as we waited for her.
You see, I have been writing letters to Lucy over the last few months. They are not the kind of letters that you stick in the mail and send across the sea. She is only two years old after all and is not reading just yet. I am writing these letters in a special journal that I plan to give to Lucy some day when she is older. Each entry is dated and tells her how much we love her and yearn for her to be with our family. These letters also detail the every day happenings of our family.
One recent entry in the journal of letters to Lucy was about how we finally told our extended family over the weekend about the new addition to our family. I also shared with her how I found her brother Yuli talking on his play phone to her. He told Lucy that he loved her and that she was going to live with us always. Tonight's entry will be about Yuli as well. During his Thanksgiving Day play at school today, Yuli's teacher asked him what he was thankful for. He said, "My mommy, my daddy, my Julia and my Lucy." Did I mention that I love that little boy, and he is going to be the best big brother ever!
So how close are we to Lucy? We have had all of our interviews for our home study and have turned in our paperwork. Our caseworker is waiting on a couple of references and then she will be ready to write the home study. We are hoping that our home study will be approved by early December. That would put us at the half-way point. We would then begin working on our dossier for Albania, which I have heard from reliable sources is much smaller than our dossier for Bulgaria that we completed for Yuli's adoption.
In the mean time, I shall keep busy of course getting ready for the holidays and writing more letters to Lucy.
