Why China?

After Luke was born, we had a couple events occur that put the spotlight on adoption again.  We had a speaker visit our church who talked about adoption, and he left some books about adoption, one of which David picked up and started reading.  We also watched a family in our church begin the process of adopting a domestic newborn and end up adopting two newborns (not twins...it's a long story).  By the time we finished reading the book, we were both ready to talk about what kind of adoption we wanted to pursue.

Sort of as a caveat before I go through this...we certainly recognize that all children deserve a loving home and parents who care for them.  Deciding what kind of adoption to pursue is based on so many things, and there's no one type that's 'better,' just the adoption that's right for you.

There are basically two types of adoption--domestic (either newborn or older) or international.  We decided pretty quickly that domestic newborn wasn't the right one for us.  There are a lot of people waiting/wanting to adopt newborns.  We didn't want to join the list when there were so many children who were waiting for parents.  We considered doing an older domestic adoption, but with the age of our two kids (Katie had just turned 2 in February, and Luke was only 6 months old at the time) and wanting to maintain birth order, we weren't sure how long we'd have to wait.  We also weren't sure about becoming a foster family with such young kids at home (although in some states, you only have to register as a foster family to adopt, not actually work as a foster family first).  Truthfully, David and I were both drawn to international adoption from the beginning.  My grandfather was born in China, my dad grew up in Taiwan, my mom was born in India, and multiple siblings have spent time in China.  David lived in South Korea for three years, and his father actually served as an escort in the South Korean adoption program.  We both grew up surrounded by global influences, and we both have in-laws who are ethnic Chinese.  International adoption is more expensive, but God has blessed us with great jobs and the ability to save up the money we'll need.  Of course we still ran into the problem with young kids and maintaining birth order, but that just gave us more time to save money.  

We started looking at countries and quickly focused our choices down to South Korea and China.  We initially chose South Korea, but because they are only matching boys (we'd like to request a girl this time), we turned to the China Special Needs program.  

In way of a personal update, turns out an ear infection is causing the pressure/pain.  David has one as well (which is why I went in to get checked), and we're both into the coughing/sinus stage.  We're also both praying the kids won't pick this up; I can't believe they haven't yet, but I'm totally fine with it skipping them.  To add insult to injury, a week after Katie and Luke finished their bout, I finally have pink eye.