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.  

Post-Home Visit

I opened this draft up last night to begin writing, and then realized I was kidding myself.  The latest manifestation of my cold is a blocked Eustachian tube, and it was pretty painful last night.  I tried a neti pot, hot shower, steam bowl, decongestant, warm washcloth, earwax removal treatment, went running (David's suggestion), and even ate some hummus generously laced with buffalo sauce.  Nothing seemed to work, but thankfully the pain subsided enough for me to fall asleep.  It's still blocked this morning (it feels/sounds like I'm underwater), but it's not painful at all.

Our first home visit went great!  My hero husband set aside all his Saturday projects and cleaned the whole house yesterday.  I didn't get as much tidying done as I'd hoped, but I don't think she noticed.

Our case worker (social worker? agency worker?) started by asking some biographical questions about our siblings and parents, then moved on to why we are adopting from China.  We went through how we met, got married, where we lived, what we thought of each other, what our typical week was like, what we thought about our jobs, and a few things from our childhood.  We did write out a long self-assessment that went over a lot of similar questions, but I think she has some specific things that she's supposed to cover in a home study for China.  She also look at the house and checked a number of things that are on the state requirements list.  As far as I know, we passed everything in that regard, but if not, she'll let us know so we can fix it for the next visit.  We have one more individual interview each, then one more joint one...I think the most exciting thing was that she hoped to finish the home study by the end of the month. 

Our first home visit

As part of our dossier, we have to do a homestudy.  Basically a local agency gives us all sorts of paperwork to fill out (including 15 pages of questions ranging from childhood to marriage to parenting to adoption).  After the paperwork is all done, a social worker comes to our house to do some interviews and check out our place.  If birth parents had to do all this work to have a baby, there'd be a lot fewer kids in this world.

Our first interview is this Sunday, and while I probably should have asked to be sure, I'm guessing she'll want a tour of the house.  I was all geared up to do a thorough cleaning (starting on Friday)...until I got hit with the nasty, awful viral (of course!) cold of some sort.  I was totally wiped out on Thursday (my fever hit 101.7) and even ended up calling David home early.  Thankfully this Friday was his day off, and I was feeling a little better yesterday, but we haven't made quite as much progress on the house as I'd planned.  Which means she'll probably get a much better picture of the reality that is our house, rather than the scrubbed up version.  It's probably better that way anyway. 

Why Adopt?

So, why adopt?  It's a huge question with a pretty multi-faceted answer...but here's the short(er) version.  

I think adoption was always on the radar for me, but I remember a specific incident after David and I had been married for a few years. I was driving home from work (a 70 mile commute) and tuned in to a Christian radio station where they were discussing adoption. I can’t remember the specifics of the program, but I do remember feeling a deep desire to adopt someday.  David and I talked about it then, and he told me that he’d always been open to adoption as well.  We still had a ways before thinking about kids, so it didn’t really come up again until after graduate school, when we started trying to get pregnant. I remember wanting to talk about how many biological and how many adopted kids we’d have.  David, being the practical person that he is, figured we should just start with getting pregnant.  :)  During our second pregnancy, we discussed it more and decided that we would probably try to adopt next.  Before we even got pregnant, I kind of had 3 biological kids in mind before looking at adopting, but I also kind of wanted to adopt two kids.  Between scaling back our plans of having 5-6 kids and having two not-so-easy pregnancies, we were ready to talk about it while I was pregnant with Luke.  Of course, we didn't know he was Luke at the time, but when he came out a boy (giving us one of each), I kind of took that as a sign that we were on the right path.

Catching Up

I've been trying to think about what I'd like to share in the way of catching people up--here is what has come to mind:

--the road map (what happens between now and bringing our baby home)
--why adopt/why China
--how we're feeling right now
--a few stories about what we've done so far

Is there anything else you want to know?  Of course my hope is to update the blog at least once a week with where we are, things we've learned, what we're feeling, etc., but I already feel a little behind.

I'm actually feeling a little trepidation about starting this blog again.  As you can see, my last post (before this morning) was before Katie was born!  We are so excited about doing this that we want everyone to know how it's going, and of course we would appreciate your prayers.  I also know that God is guiding this adoption, and I want a venue to share about how we see him work through this process. 

Feel free to share this blog with anyone else you know who might be interested.  We've really appreciated reading other adoption blogs as we begin our process.

God Provides

Apparently, the Chinese government likes to see paperwork that has been notarized.  Most of the items for our dossier have to be notarized, so we've been getting familiar with the ins and outs of the notary public service.  Did you know that most banks have notaries and will usually do it for free (even if you aren't a member)?  Most of the items are pretty easy:  fill out/type out paperwork, go to the bank, sign it in front of the notary.

Some of them are a little more challenging, because it's not our signature that has to be notarized.  We each need a notarized letter of employment, but thankfully we both work at places that have notaries around.  The physical exam paperwork has to be signed and notarized by our doctor...and it's been a bit of a trial to obtain. 

We tried our regular doctor...one we've had for about two years, and one that I wasn't super fond of.  Perhaps I've been spoiled by my (ER doc) sister's over-the-phone triage where she patiently explains all the things she thinks it could be, why she chose the diagnosis she did, and what to look for in case she's not right.  Our doctor was more of a 'this must be wrong, here's your treatment' kind of guy.  Plus his nurse is super strict about showing up for appts 15 minutes early.  So when I a) called about a notary and the front desk basically asked if we were planning to bring one to the appointment and b) discovered he'd cut his hours way back and we wouldn't even get in for 6 weeks, we started looking for a new doctor.  Bleh.  We tried to get some recommendations, but between not taking new patients or not taking our insurance, I wasn't having much luck.  I finally just called the first one listed on our insurance website and made the appt.  And God really provided for us!  Our new doctor is very nice, she was able to do the physical at the new patient appt, and she's very familiar with the notary public at her bank.  We're still waiting for the paperwork back, but I guess that's a good sign.

It's No Joke

(So, I was going to write this post yesterday for April Fool's Day.  Here is another example of why blogging isn't my strong suit.)


Yesterday was April 1, the day we had planned to begin our journey.  Our adoption journey, that is.  The 'no joke' part is that we're actually about 2 months into the process.  Here's the timeline so far:

Mid-June, 2012:  Send in a preliminary packet to AAC (our agency in Colorado).  Find out that it's really too early to start the adoption process.*

2/5/13:  Email our wonderful counselor at AAC to find out if teaching this fall would cause any problems.  Check to see if we should still wait till April 1...and hear "why not start now!"

2/14/13:  Send off our formal application packet to AAC.  Start looking through the MOUNTAIN of paperwork for our dossier.**

2/22/13:  Submit our application for a homestudy.***

3/25/13:  Submit our completed homestudy package.  And...get more paperwork.  :)

*We're supposed to have at least a year gap between Luke and our next child (we're going to request a girl).  The way the adoption process works with China, we probably won't be able to match with her until she's about a year old.  We've been told 6 months for the paperwork in order to match, so we were shooting to start when Luke was 18 months old.
**The "dossier" is all the paperwork that gets submitted to the Chinese government.  We're getting very familiar with the notary public.
***Our homestudy is part of the dossier, but it's done by an agency here in town.  There's a lot of paperwork for that too, plus some interviews/home visits.

When I do talk to people about the adoption, it's about how many different pieces of papers we have to collect.  We do have our first interview for our homestudy scheduled for this Sunday (something different!), and we've also been taking classes online about adoption.

I'll be sharing more stories this week (in an effort to catch everyone up), but something everyone has told us is to prepare for delays and lots of waiting.  So don't expect this pace or length of posting for the long term!