An Exciting Evening At The Harris House

On October 17, our agency requested an update on our son. Today, it came! It is awesome to see some new sweet pics of our precious baby! Awwwwww! This update will keep me going for days to come! It is wonderful to hear how he is doing and how big he is getting. We received two pictures and a short report on his personality and schedule. We also received his measurments. The most exciting news, besides the pictures of course is that he is WALKING and RUNNING! That makes us so happy to hear! He is able to play with the other kids! I was worried that he spent a lot of time alone because he could not keep up with the other kids his age because of his foot. So thankful I am wrong! We can still see where his foot is twisted a bit, but it does appear that the treatment he has been receiving has been helpful! Hallelujah! We love his haircut! Looks like he has a little mohawk and it is so cute! Finally, the other good news is that we know he has received our care packages! The sweatshirt he has on is from his Gmama and Pop! Yay!! We love to see him wearing it and it warms our hearts to know that he has been getting our packages! We will send him at least one more before we travel. Enjoy these awesome pictures of our son, Culyer!

 

Love his hair!

Look at him standing!

 

 

Home Stretch

Last Monday we received the next piece to our big puzzle! We got our I800A Provisonal Approval from Homeland Security! Basically this form allows us to wait on another form. Haha! The other form called The NVC letter came today! Hurray! So, now all our paperwork in China will be taken to the US Consulate in China and then in about two weeks an agency rep will go to the Consulate and pick up a final form called an Article 5. Once they have that, they will forward it on to Beijing where the CCCWA is and within 2-4 weeks we will receive our travel approval! So, if things go smoothly we should receive our travel dates in 4-6 weeks! Yay! We are in the home stretch of this paperwork journey and we are VERY excited! Tomorrow I will send off our Travel Visa applications. Awesome!

I finished cleaning out Cuyler's closet today and I am taking a bunch of stuff to consign tomorrow. I counted up all of the gift cards that we have been given in honor of Cuyler and we have received $460 worth of gift cards! We are so blessed and very thankful. This will help us to buy items for him such as a carseat, whatever things he might need for physical therapy and of course diapers. Thank you to all of you who have given gifts to us. We really appreciate your generosity!

We still have a lot of fun things to look forward to before we can travel to meet our son, but I am still very ready to see him and hold him.

What's In A Name

I have been super, duper busy doing paperwork! Can I just tell you real quick:

• Signing LOA and making copies
• Filling out I800 forms
• Filling out DS230 (application for Xue's US passport)
• Filling out travel companion paperwork for Kaori, Mom and Doug
• Filling out our Travel Visa applications for all of us
• Filling out a waiver for Dave because he works for Time Inc. Gotta make sure he is not going to China to do some reporting. :)
• Filling out some big fat checks

Because we had to submit his application for a US passport, we had to decide on his name! After many attempts at discussing this topic, we finally sat down together on Sunday night and decided on our son's name. Now, there is a story behind his name. Dave and I met in Chicago. We both love Chicago and would love to live there again one day. Well, Chicago was the city we fell in love in! I lived on a picture perfect street in Wrigleyville, right next to Wrigley Field in apt. 32A. Anyway, it was during this time that we picked this name. We thought it could work well for a boy or a girl. When Kaori came along it was not the name for her. But, now our son is here and it is the perfect name for him! We have named our son......Cuyler Xue Harris! Cuyler was the name of that picture perfect street in our city of love. Our son is perfect for our family and we are his family of love!

Yay!
P.S. I painted his room today!