Its been a week...

since I have posted. Do you want to see a new pic? I certainly cannot get enough of looking at pics. This is probably the first pic I have seen where Lail*a isn't smiling. I wonder what she was thinking! I cannot wait until I will be able to ask her what she is thinking. Several have asked us when that will be. We are getting our hopes up to travel by January and anything sooner would be so awesome. But realistically we do not know. There just isn't really an exact science to predict when it will be. For now there are things we can do. We are doing a lot of reading on attachment. If you aren't familiar with the adoption process 'attachment' is a pretty intense HUGE thing. Most people I encounter ask us about the language barrier we will have and most usually get all wide eyed when I tell them she doesn't know English! To be honest the language barrier is really not something I am worried about. It does however cross my mind every now and then and we do plan to learn some basic Mandarin to help in the beginning. But attachment is the big one! The one issue I think about often! We cannot expect that Lail*a will be happy going with 2 strange looking people who talk a language that is not what she knows. I myself at age 6 would have probably been pretty shaken if I woke up in a new environment with people who did not speak English. We are learning about how attachment issues can manifest in ways that you wouldn't expect and how we can recognize the signs. Our homestudy agency has been very efficient at getting us all the info we will need and we plan to use this time to prepare as best we can. We feel that we need to prepare for the worst but hope and pray for the best transition for Lail*a. We already love Lail*a wholeheartedly and unconditionally, but we know she will need time to learn to love us back and begin to trust us and know that we will always be her family!