When Half Your Heart is Half a World Away

Dear Vivi -

The last picture of you that we received is just beautiful.  You are so cute, and you keep getting cuter all the time.  It was definitely the last picture that we will receive before we meet you in person.

We hope it's soon, because we can't wait to hug this girl.

We signed our Letter of Acceptance.  We got so excited that we had it delivered to Daddy's work and he brought it to Mommy's and we signed it right away so we could send it right back to our agency.  (Sorry to our respective places of business for taking a few minutes out of our days to do this!)

You are ours, Vivi.  The letter proves it.

What we didn't know was how difficult the process of adopting you would be.  Not the paperwork, although that's been a big chore.  Not the wait for the Letter of Acceptance, although that was l-o-n-g. What has been the most difficult has been watching you grow up over the past year without us.

From the minute we saw your face, we knew that you were our daughter.  And we knew that we wouldn't have you for months and months.  But we didn't know that half of our hearts would take up residence in a Chinese city where our baby girl was rapidly becoming a big girl.

It's been challenging, maybe even more so now that the light is at the end of the tunnel.  We just want to go already, and bring you home!  We want to get to know the little person behind the big eyes and contagious smile.

We know we will be there soon, but until then we wait - sometimes patiently, sometimes not so patiently until we can get you and put our hearts back together!

Love,
Mommy and Daddy