Meet Merrilee!!!

Dear Friends and Family:

As most of you know, since March 2005 we have been in the process of adopting a baby from China. Today, after years of waiting, we finally got our referral. We got the phone call just after noon. This means the Chinese government has chosen a child for us, and that information has been passed on to us by our adoption agency (which is Chinese Children Adoption International in Colorado.)

Here she is:

Here’s what we know about our baby:

Her name is Pu Fu Na
Her surname is Pu. Her first name mean blessing/happy. Her middle name means feminine.

She is in the Hubei province of China, in the Chibi orphanage

She is 13 months old. She was born on June 15, 2007, and was taken into foster care on June 18, 2007.

As of April 18, 2008, she was 26.57” and weighed 18.04 pounds

They tell us she rises at 7am and goes to bed at 8:30pm. She is a good napper (perfect for us) and a good eater (again, perfect for us!) She is on formula. She is close to her foster mom and loves to play outside. Her favorite toy is a pretty toy that makes sound. She can hold up her head while on her stomach, she rolls from side to side, she can stand with support, can pick up small things, and can sit alone. She likes to tear paper, and she is crawling.

Since many of you will ask, here’s the process we will go through now. There will be a flurry of activity during the next 48 hours. We will receive an overnight package of information from our agency. In this packet will be our “letter of acceptance.” This is the document we must sign for the Chinese government accepting the child. We return that to our agency and they send it on to China. Upon receipt, the Chinese government will then send along a “travel approval.” Once that is in the hands of our agency, they then begin to schedule the multitude of appointments in China. It is likely we will go to the child’s home province for what’s known as “gotcha day.” Then, we will ultimately end up in Guangzhou, the home of the US Consulate, and exit China from there.

We don’t know anything about our trip yet, except that travel usually occurs between five and eight weeks after you get your referral. One big question everyone has now is what impact the Olympics in Beijing will have on travel schedules. Once our travel schedule has been put together by our agency, we will only get 7 to 10 days notice before we will have to leave. We are likely to be gone 17 to 21 days.

We have decided to name our little girl Merrilee Margaret Miller. Merrilee comes from Beth’s mother’s name (Mary) and her grandmother’s name (Lee.) Plus, we have a very dear friend named Merrilee. Margaret was the name of Mark’s grandmother.

We’ve started a blog to keep you updated on our progress and our trip. You can read all about it at:

http://www.merrileemakesthree.blogspot.com/

So there you have it – you know what we know. Thanks for hanging in there with us and expressing an interest in this process. We’ll keep you in the loop.

Fondly

Mark and Beth