Our Journey Begins!

I am so excited that our adoption adventure is finally beginning! Derek and I have decided to adopt a special needs child from China instead of doing a traditional China adoption. To adopt traditionally, it would be about 2.5 years before we get our daughter home. Adopting a waiting child means she will probably be home next summer! Special needs in China are not like special needs here in America. The majority of them are cleft lip/palate and other minor correctable conditions. Our agency has told us that because of our experience with our two preemie sons that we are quite eligible for a waiting child. About every three months our agency gets a group of about 30 kids that need homes. They have many more families than children now because lots of families like us are switching over from traditional because of the long wait period. As I understand it, they will send each family a few profiles of children waiting and ask them if they are interested in those particular children. The families respond and of course they end up with more than one family for each child. The agency then decides which family is best suited for that particular child. The next list comes out this month. The agency said that if we don't find our child on this list, we will for sure find her in November. It would be okay if we don't find her this month. We can't submit our paperwork until October anyway. China's new regulations state that you cannot have a child under the age of 1 at the time of your dossier submission. Since our sweet little Landon won't be 1 until October 16, we have to wait until then anyway. Once we send our dossier off to China in October or November, it will be about 8-9 months until we travel. We are hoping to adopt a little girl somewhere around Landon's age. We are glad that our children will be so close in age. I have posted pictures of our kids when they were born and current pictures. I will post pictures of our daughter as soon as we get our referral!