We Need Your Help

The time has come where we need to ask for your help to raise money for our adoption.  We are close to emptying our savings account and we still need quite a bit of money.  We feel very strongly that God has led us down this adoption path once again and we know the money issue will work out somehow.

We have done quite a few things around our family to save money.  We have drastically lowered our cable TV and cell phone bills.  We rarely eat out at restaurants.  We have drastically cut our "fun" spending.  We are willing to use every penny of our savings to get our daughter home.  (Although, we do live in a "money pit" house, so hopefully this won't backfire on us!)

If you can help in this way, any donations will be greatly appreciated.  We need to raise around $20,000.  This would include everything .... adoption agency fees, US Immigration fees, document processing fees, Homestudy fees, mailing fees (we should own stock in UPS by now!) and our travel expenses.  There are a few ways you can help:

1.  A direct donation.  Checks can be made out to Aaron or Sherry Wolfe and be mailed to us (email us at wolfeadoption@gmail.com if you need our address).  If you'd prefer to use Paypal, send a donation to wolfeadoption@gmail.com and make sure to indicate it is a Personal Gift payment so that fees aren't taken out.
2.  Shop at Just Love Coffee http://www.justlovecoffee.com/TheWolfes  We get half of the cost of whatever you buy and the coffee is really good!!!

For any donation made, we'd love to include quilt squares in our daughter's quilt.  See THIS post for the details.  It's $10 per square.  So if you donate $100, that's 10 squares.

We so appreciate any help you all can provide.  It's hard for us to ask for money.  For Jacinda's adoption, I (Sherry) went back to work full-time and we refinanced our house so that we wouldn't have to ask anyone for money.  This time, refinancing the house again is not an option.  Regarding going back to work full-time, by the time we paid for day care for 2 kids, it wouldn't be worth it.  So here we are.

We love you all!  Please know that if you can't donate, we certainly understand and please don't worry.  We are confident this will work out somehow.  We know that a little girl is waiting for us in China and God knows how this all will work out.  We are excited to see how He provides and we are beyond excited to find out who that little girl will be!  We're really hoping to be home with her by the end of 2011.

Please let us know if you have any questions!  You can email us at wolfeadoption@gmail.com or post on Facebook or here in the Comments.  Thank you for taking the time to consider helping us!

Update on Jacinda's Progress

Today, February 15th, we had a meeting with Jacinda's Cleft Team.  We scheduled the meeting because we were concerned with her lack of progress with her speech.  So here is who we met with and the results of each appointment:

Her palate surgeon:  He says her palate looks perfect.  There are no complications with her palate repair at all.  He says there is no physical reason for her lack of progress in speech.
Her ENT:  Her ears look great, except for lots of wax.  Her last hearing test was perfect, but we should schedule a follow-up just to keep an eye on her hearing.
The Orthodontist:  Her teeth look great.  She will get orthodontic work and work on her jaw in a few years.  He said it will not be before she is 6 years old.  It depends on when her 6-year molars come in and she's getting bigger.

Speech Pathologist:  We finally got some answers here.  The Speech Pathologist agreed with us that Jacinda should be progressing much quicker than she is.  Finally, someone agreed with us.  Honestly, that was a HUGE relief!  Her speech teacher (and a few others before this one) has just been saying "it's a slow process.  Be patient."  But all along, we've felt like Jacinda should be saying more than she is.

So today, we learned that we were right.    The speech pathologist asked if anyone had ever mentioned Apraxia of Speech to us.  Apraxia of Speech is a motor speech disorder and is diagnosed by a Neurologist.  This would be unrelated to her cleft lip and palate.  Basically, it's a disorder where a person knows what they want to say, but it will not come out the way they want it to.  We're not certain that Jacinda has it, but she has several symptoms of it.

The plan is for Jacinda's speech teacher to call the Speech Pathologist we saw today and hopefully they can work together to come up with an aggressive treatment plan.  Apraxia of Speech requires a specific speech therapy treatment plan.  For 2 months, we're going to pursue that.  Then, if things aren't improving, we'll make an appointment with a Neurologist and start looking at some other options.  There are some other Auditory Processing Disorders that we will investigate if we get to that point.

We have a plan and we feel very good about it!!!

Adoption Update

I know we haven't posted much lately.  We've been waiting on our Homestudy to be completed.  Our Social Worker told us this morning that it was done and she was sending it to our placing agency to be reviewed.  They will likely ask for a few changes to be made.  Our social worker will complete those quickly (hopefully) and then it will be done.  This is a HUGE milestone in the paperwork process.

Once the Homestudy is officially done, we can apply to US Immigration (USCIS) to adopt a child.  USCIS will then send us a letter with our appointment time to be fingerprinted.  Once we are fingerprinted, we will wait to be approved.  This approval is taking up to 90 days right now.  During that wait, we will complete our documents for our Dossier.  Immigration Approval goes in our Dossier, so once we get it, we want our Dossier ready to send to China.

Once our Dossier gets to China, we can be matched with a child.  Our agency is telling us that can be anywhere from a day to a couple of months.  We have decided to request a girl, so that will likely increase our wait time a little.  But we are open to quite a few special needs, so hopefully it will be quick.  Once we are matched, it will probably be around 6 months until we travel to China to pick her up.  We're still hoping to be home with her by the end of 2011!!!!!

Our Homestudy getting done also means that we can apply for several adoption grants.  The fundraising really kicks into high gear very soon!  We are still planning to do the fundraising quilt, so keep an eye out for more details.  We're also hoping to apply for a matching grant very soon.  We most definitely appreciate any help our friends and family can provide to bring our little girl home!