Finding Ad

Today we received a copy of Miah's Finding ad. Before a child can be placed up for adoption the government runs an ad in the local paper. If no one responds to the ad the child is deemed abandoned and is eligible for adoption. This ad ran in the "Jiangsu Legal System Paper" in January 2008. We are guessing Miah to be about 5 months old in this photo. This will probably be the youngest photo we ever get of her.

Where is Miah?

Miah Fu Ni (just trying out her new name) is currently residing in Taizhou city. Taizhou City is situated in the Jiangsu Province, near the mouth of the Yangtze River and a four-hour drive from Shanghai. Taizhou belongs to the sub-tropical monsoon climate region. It covers a continental area of 9411 square kilometers, a sea area of 80,000 square kilometers, with 745 kilometers of coastline and a population of 5.36 million.

Today we have been waiting 18 days for our travel approval to arrive. Last week we heard from our agency that all referrals and TA's were being held due to the swine flu concern, but yesterday new referrals came out and many families did receive their travel approvals....so maybe things are looking up.

From what we understand, we will fly from Vancouver to Beijing to Nanjing. Nanjing is the capital city of Jiangsu and Miah will be brought to us at the Civil Affairs building in Nanjing. It is there that Miah Fu Ni will become officially ours! We will probably spend about 4 days in Nanjing and fly back to Beijing for 10 days to complete more paperwork for the Canadian government....and then back to Vancouver!!!


Fingers crossed that our TA will arrive soon!!! (If you click on the photos you can enlarge them)

Split Pants

We received some more treasured photos today of Miah. Here she is sporting her famous Split Pants.

God has a sense of humor

Today we received photos of Miah (wearing the red sweater) and her friends enjoying the cake we sent as part of her care package. With all the worry about how this Swine Flu might affect our travel I found it ironic that the cake we had purchased was decorated with the photo of a pig! It is such a treat to open up the morning e-mail and find new photos of our daughter! I treasure each one of them!

Signed and Sealed!!!

Today our Letter Seeking Confirmation arrived at our agency. We quickly went down and signed it, so now it is off to the CCAA. At this point, travel usually happens within 6-8 weeks. Depending on what happens with the Swine Flu we could travel as early as mid-June. The latest rumor is that travel may be delayed for 20-30 days depending if there is a increase in the number of new cases. Hopefully our travel facilitator will have a better idea of how this might affect us in the coming few days. But for now we are one step closer to our daughter!

Today we also had our first meeting with the Cleft team here in town. They gave us some cleft bottles to try with Miah (if indeed her palate has not yet been repaired). We are feeling confident that we will be able to care for her needs and there is a great team here in town to support us. God is good!