"Tell me when you win the lottery."

H. did well in surgery yesterday and it was successful. The doctor moved the port that was causing so much difficulty, removed the too thin and inflexible scar tissue that was splitting, and generally cleaned things up. There was absolutely no sign of infection and he thinks if we let things rest for a couple of weeks, we can resume our expansion schedule and save these expanders. It does mean we will be cancelling the surgery in early February and moving it later, but that is still better than having to remove the expanders and then start all over again. H. is feeling quite well this morning, which is a significant difference from how she felt right after surgery three weeks ago. I am giving myself permission to have a day where I don't leave the house and we can all just relax. We need it. I cannot tell you how very, very tired I am of writing about hospitals, doctors, and medical issues. Even more tired than you are of reading about it, I assure you.

So let's not talk about hospitals and doctors and surgery and such. Let's talk about something happy and exciting. That would make a nice change, wouldn't it? But first we need to back up and I need to tell you a cool God story.

You all know that I have been advocating for this little girl for a while now.

Tina has the same special need as H. and really needs a family. She would thrive in a family who could give her the constant love and support she needs to blossom. But no one seems interested. Everyone agrees she needs a family, but I'm afraid she had fallen into that "poor little girl, someone should adopt her... just not me" category. Her list of needs sounds a little scary and no matter how much I tried to reassure people that they were manageable, I guess they still seemed to overwhelming.

I was kvetching to J. one night about this problem... that people were just too scared, she seemed too different, no one would look and see the worth of this child. At least not enough worth to bother bringing her home. I was worried she would languish in care until her 14th birthday at which time she would lose forever her chance of having a family. I was a little upset. So he says, "Well, let me know when you win the lottery and I'm in." You see, as my husband so eloquently puts it, we don't have two nickels to rub together and coming up with the adoption expenses was not even a remote possibility. That winning lottery ticket would have to flutter into my hand.

The next morning, I open up my computer to do whatever it is we do when we open up our computers. One of the very first things I see when I look on Facebook is this astonishing fact. All of a sudden, little Tina has a $25,000 grant to go towards her adoption. If you are not in the adoption world, you have no appreciation of exactly how rare this size of a grant is. It truly is the adoption equivalent of a winning lottery ticket floating into your hand.

J. and talked about it. My mother and I talked about it. As crazy as it seemed we decided we would take the next step and submit our Letter of Intent to Ch*na to ask their permission to adopt her. So we did and settled into wait. We had heard that Pre-Approvals, the next step in the process, were taking two or three weeks. So we settled in to wait hoping we would hear before Christmas.

Imagine my surprise when, on the Monday after Thanksgiving, with our Letter of Intent being submitted just the day before Thanksgiving, to open up my email and see that we had been granted Pre-Approval to adopt this precious child. All week I have been sitting on this news, just dying to tell everyone, but between needing to let family members know first and then coping with all the medical surprises, it had to wait until now.

We are thrilled and delighted to announce that we have been given permission to continue working on adopting Tina.

Of course, Tina is not her name. We haven't even had the name discussion yet, so she will need to wait a bit in order to get her official initial for the blog. But that is going to have to wait until after I dig out from underneath the paperwork which has piled up around my ears in the past five days.

One thing you can all do right now is start praying that our homestudy be approved by IL DCFS. If you weren't around for H.'s adoption, then you missed the drama. I have been warned that it could be even worse this time around. I'm gearing up for a fight I desperately hope I don't have to fight.