Kylie Referral Info and Photos!

We received our full referral and photos this morning! It has been a very emotional and exciting day. We are thrilled to have our pictures of our beautiful little girl and to finally be able to share this with you.

Kylie is a happy, healthy, and playful little girl. She is already standing up and getting ready to attempt her first steps. Check out all that hair!! We love how it is all "poofing" up!

Here are her stats at 10 months:

Height: 27.5"

Weight: 20 lbs

She enjoys baths and playing with toys, especially colorful ones with sounds. Her favorite activity is "to play games with other children." She also sometimes teases her caretakers by intentionally dropping toys out of her crib and then "asking" them to pick them up. The caretakers wrote, "If tell her no, she put up her hand in front of her and close her eyes, very cute." We love that she already has a good sense of humor and loves to interact and play with others.

Her attachment to the caretakers seems very high as they state that she is "most close to: caretakers." This is a really good sign that she will be able to attach to us and form a bond easily.

Kylie is currently residing at the Xuwen Social Welfare Institute in Guangdong. It looks like a very new facility in this rural farming area. Though the orphanage is a bit sparse (other adoptive parents have shared this info) it seems that she has received good care and nutrition, which we are so thankful for. They estimate that she was only one day old when she was found in a "carton box" at the entrance to the Xuwen Telecommunication Building.

Jackson has been very excited all day and when he and Lisa stopped at her store, he showed everone the picture of "my sister" and asked them, "Isn't she bootiful?" He then asked mom on the way home if they could stop "to get her some things". He picked out a stuffy and plastic photo album to send to her, purple blankets with butterflies, some bath toys, and some towels and face cloths (he was very concerned that she have pretty ones!). He has just been so concerned and loving.

On Monday of next week we are attending a pre-travel meeting to discuss our trip to China in relation to the Olympics in Beijing. We are hopeful to travel before the Olympics, but we will not know for a while. Our agency had begun some plans before our referrals even arrived, but there is so much "unknown" at this point about how quickly China will send us our visas to travel with the Olympics planned to begin in August. The worst case scenario is that we must wait until after the Olympics, possibly September, to make the trip.

Thank you all for your wonderful notes and well-wishes! We will be sure to keep you posted on our travel plans. Please feel free to leave comments on this blog as we will be saving this to show her someday.