We're adopting!

FROM CHINA!!!

All of our family and some of our friends already know, but I wanted to make the announcement "official!" (This is NOT our little girl - we don't even know who she is yet - but I thought she was a perfect symbol of Chinese adoption)

We are about a year (give or take) out from being able to bring her home ... and obviously there are definitely no guarantees, but we are super excited! We had always assumed that Angel and Lovebug would finish off our family, but it looks like God had other plans :-)

When the Earthquake in Haiti hit, our hearts really ached for all of the little ones displaced ... no parents, no food, clothes or shelter ... it just made us so sad as I'm sure it did for you as well. We started talking about how we could help them and both kind of came to adoption at the same time. We thought about all of the blessings we have ... all of the love in our lives, our amazing kids ... we just knew it was something we wanted to do. Especially after being set on a family of four, we just felt that God was telling us adoption was meant for our family. Unfortunately though, adoption in Haiti is closed indefinitely. And when we really started talking about the possibility of adopting, we felt that China would be a better fit. Although the country is certainly not in shambles like Haiti, there are thousands of orphans there that don't have families because of China's family laws. There are plenty of little ones there that deserve a chance to be loved too.

The typical wait for a child in China is 3-4 years and it's exponentially growing. They have another program that is significantly faster also - it's called the Waiting Child Program - it takes about 12-18 months instead. It's for children with "special needs" ... these are medical conditions that are usually minor and easily correctable in the US (cleft lip/palate, club foot, hearing issues, heart problems, skin discolorations, etc.). Waiting Child moves much more quickly because these little ones are already logged into the system - so we will be pursuing this program :-) We decide which medical conditions we're comfortable with, so we'll be meeting with our pediatrician soon to discuss what everything means. I'm leaning more toward cleft lip/palate because it affects a large majority of the Waiting Child kids (about 25%), but we're open to other medical conditions as well. Our pediatrician will also review any of the medical files that we are interested in - he's had lots of experience with this, so we feel really comfortable that he'll catch anything that our untrained eyes won't see.

Sooo ... we're hoping we're about a year out :-) We *just* started the process ... we still have a 5-6 month journey to put our "dossier" together to be sent to China and then after that we'll get the chance to start looking at files and be matched with our daughter! We we originally hoping for a little girl around 12-18 months ... past the baby stage but still young enough to be easily assimilated into our family. But after thinking about caring for medical conditions, we realized that the earlier we could get out daughter here, the better off she'll be. So I think we're going search for a baby as young as we can bring home (which is about 7-9 months now I think). Once we're matched, DH and I will actually travel to China for about 2 weeks ... I'm excited to go but at the same time am totally dreading leaving Angel & Lovebug behind. We'll be leaning heavily on family to help out then :-):-):-)

So we are super SUPER excited and really can't wait to become a family of 5. Funny how your view on what you think your life is going to be can change so quickly. We sort of told Angel, but I honestly think she thinks it's kind of a game. She says she wants 10 sisters. Hehe. We're currently chasing down every certified document that ever existed for all of us, including the dogs (seriously). It seems like a full-time job almost! I'm underway though and am trying to take care of the documentation as early as possible.

PS - I copied ALL of these images from China Pictures. I want to make sure I give credit where it's due!