The meeting place will be Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province in China.
The little girl is Yunhong. Born in January 2008, Yunhong lives with other children in Datong, a city of 3 million people, a few hundred miles southwest of Beijing.
Yunhong has started standing and walking on her own. She draws lines with a pen. She likes to knock blocks against each other. And she can say “ah” and understands “no.”
When her caretakers play with her, she smiles. She also likes to watch TV, listen to music and play with balls. Medical personnel describe her as “very adorable.”
But Yunhong is missing something: a mother and father.
The husband and wife are Lynda and Elliot. They live outside Cincinnati where the suburbs meet the farmland.
Lynda and Elliot like to take walks in the woods and ride their bikes. They enjoy vacationing near lakes and mountains. Lynda works at a Cincinnati university, helping students develop their careers. Elliot has started a public relations business after a career as a newspaper journalist.
They, too, are missing something: a child to love and nurture.
On October 21, 2009, Lynda and Elliot will travel thousands of miles, across an ocean and two continents, to meet Yunhong. Lynda and Elliot will take Yunhong in their arms for the first time and become a family.
We're Lynda and Elliot, and you'll be able to follow our story on these pages.
* * * * Our story begins on a snowy weekend day in December 2005. That's when we hand-delivered our first paperwork to Welcome House, our Pennsylvania-based adoption agency, triggering the adoption process. It didn't matter to us that the offices were closed. We wanted the agency to get our application as soon as possible.
Since then, we've filled out stacks of paperwork, mostly for the U.S. government, Chinese government and Welcome House. We've also had our fingerprints taken a half-dozen times, to check for criminal records.
In October 2006, China officially accepted our paperwork. We'd been waiting ever since, hoping China would match us with a child.
Then in August 2009, China and Welcome House told us about Yunhong via email. Lynda saw Yunhong's photo and medical report before Elliot. Immediately, Lynda knew this would be our daughter. When she couldn't reach Elliot by cell phone, she sent him this text message: 'Baby.'
Yunhong has a cleft palate and lip. After some discussion and research, we concluded this was a problem we could handle. The experts at Cincinnati Children's Hospital cleft team already know that Yunhong will soon be their patient.
We will be leaving for a two-week trip to China on Oct. 21. We will spend a few days in Beijing sightseeing and adjusting to the 12-hour time difference. Then, we'll head to Taiyuan to meet our daughter. The next day, the three of us will head to Datong for more paperwork. We're hoping to briefly visit Yunhong's orphanage.
Our last few days will be in Guangzhou, where the Chinese government will finalize our adoption and the U.S. government will grant Yunhong permission to travel to the United States. When we touch down on U.S. soil on November 5, Yunhong will automatically become a U.S. citizen.
* * * *Want to read more? Want to add your comments?
click here: http://elliotlynda.blogspot.com/
