Here she is!

This is Lucy Corinne ZiFang Clements! She just turned 6 years old on May 13. Her Chinese name is Long Zi Fang. Long is her family name, it is the name of her orphanage and all of the children at her orphanage have this same family name. Her first name is Zi which is a white blooming Chinese tree. Her middle name is Fang which means fragrant. We have chosen to keep her first and middle Chinese names as her 2nd middle name. Her English first name is Lucy. This name is special to us because both my grandmother and Daren's great aunt are named Lucille. Corinne is name that I have always loved.

Lucy lives in the Longgang Orphanage in Shenzhen, China. We live in the very north of China and she is in the very south, so we are really no where near her right now. We have never talked to her or seen her in person because this not allowed with international adoption. We have sent her 2 care packages with lots of clothes, toys, and pictures of us. Hopefully, she is being prepared for her adoption. Jude and Will are so excited to meet their sister....Will has already decided that he will be the one to teach her English. They both talk about her all of the time and may be more anxious to meet her than we are....although, I doubt that!

Lucy has a tumor on her cheek that we think is a result of a blocked lymph node. We really have no idea how serious it is because the Chinese translations that we received were very sketchy. I have contacted an expert in the medical field who deals with this type of tumor and we feel like it shouldn't be too much to worry about.
Lucy is described as out-going, talkative, and energetic with a ready smile. We have requested an update with new pictures from our adoption agency and I will post those if and when we receive them.

The Long Wait

We decided to begin the adoption process in October 2008. It took a few months to find an agency which would accept expats and deal with the extra paperwork that entails. On December 31, 2008 we were officially approved by Great Wall China Adoptions to move forward with our adoption. We spent the next 5 months collecting the mountain of required paperwork. Most of the documents had to originate from the states, so our friend Marilyn took on the huge responsibility of collecting those documents. We also completed our home study during this time. By June 2009 we had officially turned in our dossier to China and begin waiting for our Log-in-Date which is an important date in the adoption world. We were notified 4 months later that our Log-in-Date was September 3, 2009. Now all we had to do was wait.
Because we live in China, we were given an expedited status. This meant that we would receive our referral in half the time as the usual wait; however, by this time the China adoption program had drastically slowed down its rate of referrals. It was estimated that we would wait at least 3 years for a healthy baby girl.
In November 2009 we made the decision to adopt an older child. It wasn't a hard decision to make. We immediately told our adoption agency that we were open to adopting a little girl, age 5-6, with a minor special need. Two months later on January 25, 2010 we were matched with our daughter. We received Prior Approval to adopt her on January 29 and our Letter of Acceptance on March 22.
Our I800 was approved by USCIS on May 14. We are finally on the last leg of our wait! We hope to travel to pick up our daughter from her orphanage in Shenzhen, China around mid-July.