A little over one year ago, Tony and I submitted our application to Holt International.  As we enter into the next stages of our journey, we feel compelled to capture and share certain aspects of it with our family, friends, and colleagues. 

On Tuesday, December 27th, after nearly a year of what we'll call "the paper chase", we received the phone call we had been waiting on!  We had a second son:  Wei Le Wen.  From the moment we saw that first picture, he had melted our hearts.  He was 10 1/2 months at the time of that phone call, with three teeth and a dimple on his left cheek!

I had made a comment to our pediatrician, the week before Christmas, as to how nice it would be to receive "the call" prior to our Christmas holiday.  She was the one who pointed out the date/time stamp on his photos:  12/25/2011.  In the end, we did get our Christmas baby after all!

These are his pictures, taken on Christmas Day, 2011:

I'm not quite sure what's in his bottle!

Such a sweet smile!

If you look close, you can see the dimple on his cheek!

He's mobile!  Lookout Tony!

I just love his expression in this pic!

He's so alert and curious about his surroundings.

We are currently awaiting our LOA (letter of acceptance) from China.  The "average" wait time is around 90 days.  Once we receive that, we can move into next steps of our journey.  Best estimates, are that we'll be heading to China sometime in June 2012.  This is certain to be a long and difficult wait.

Thanks for all the well wishes thus far!  We sincerely appreciate it.

Judy