It feels strange having a little girl in our family after having only boys ...

Our daughter, Lotus Blossom, aged six, came last month after over two years of waiting and worrying: for a while, we didn't think we'd ever get through the maze of red tape that is so commonplace in adoption, particularly international adoption, and we didn't think we'd be approved.

We fretted.  We prayed.  We cried.  We raged.  We felt nothing but frustration.  Then came The Call from our adoption agency, telling us that the adoption would go through.  We would have our daughter!!

It was nothing short of a miracle!

We then found out we had to go to China to pick her up.  More expense. 

For over six months, we scrimped and saved every penny until our wallets and our savings accounts whined, begging for mercy.  We also had to have the preliminary health checks, to make sure we wer healthy.  No problems there.  We held bake sales.  Car washes.  Cakewalks.  Anything to raise extra funds for our upcoming trip to China.  It was madness, friends, nothing but pure madness!

Last month, we flew on a big silver airplane across the ocean.  We were terrified.

When we first saw the orphanage where our (soon-to-be) daughter was housed, it was all I could do to keep from throwing up.  I was that nervous.  All sorts of crazy thoughts kept ricocheting through my mind: what if she was disabled (the orphanage didn't mention anything about her bieng disabled or unhealthy)?  What if she didn't like us?  What if she had been abused?  What would we have done then upon finding out these things?

Happily, our daughter was without defect or disability: she was perfectly sound.  An answer to prayer.  She was, however, extremely scared (who wouldn't be? She was about to be placed with strangers who didn't speak the same language), and she was not potty trained.  She wore diapers, even though she ws six years old.

We knew we had one task to take care of upon arriving back home in America: get her potty trained, or else she couldn't enter pre-school.  (The local pre-school had a standing rule that all children had to be potty trained upon admission.)

The Chinese women who had taken care of Lotus ever since her arrival cried as the little girl, now trembling with fear, was placed into Chadd's arms (Chadd is my husband).  I was crying so hard I couldn't see, for all the tears that were falling from my eyes.  It was a defining moment in our lives.  We were now, at long last, a family.  A forever family.  We had a new little girl; the little girl, in kind, now had a mommy and daddy who would love her and take care of her.

It was an answer to our dreams.  Our six boys back home would have a sister to call their very own.

Lotus is now here with us.  We are back home in America, helping her to adjust.  It isn't easy, but the boys are more than thrilled in having a little sister.  She might not look like them, but she's still their sister, just the same.  They are extremely protective of her (excepting for Zachariah, the youngest at two; he could care less) and are having a ball trying to teach her English and about life here in America.

We are having a time trying to help her with her potty training skills (not getting anywhere on that; one wonders if she has some hidden developmental delays ... ), and trying to make medical appointmnts for her.  We have decided to call our new daughter Lotus Blossom, in celebration of her Chinese heritage; we've also given her the middle name of Grace, which is my mom's name.  Lotus Blossom Grace Neimann.  That is the name that has been officially stamped on her adoption papers.  She is legally a Niemann, forever and ever.

*to be continued.*