It has been almost 4 weeks since I’ve blogged . . . and what a crazy 4 weeks! We finished off summer with a family vacation to the coast and then started 2nd grade with Firstborn and preschool with the twins. Along with a bunch of new teaching opportunities and the fall re-start of extracurricular fun.
In the midst of all that, things have NOT been silent on the adoption front. In this instance, though, I am going to tell you the end of the story first . . . we are basically back where we started, although a little more experienced from the detour.
Again, I want to stress, we are not the norm when it comes to the beginning of this journey. Most of the time, you complete mountains of paperwork for a country from which you qualify for adoption. But since our hearts are still with China, we are reversing the process to find the child BEFORE the main bulk of the paperwork. No easy task indeed.
To make the new information a bit less confusing, I am going to borrow a method from another adoption website and use the first initial of the American names to talk about a child while respecting confidentiality.
Confirmed: Child A ‘I’ and Child B ‘M’ are both in process of being adopted. Their families have received pre-approval from China. For the moment, our interactions with that agency are ended as they have no other girls meeting our parameters.
After receiving the confirmation that ‘I’ was officially no longer available, we moved forward with contacting another (third) agency regarding a little girl ‘B’ for whom I had seen a video. Before we even got the communication ball rolling, ‘B’ disappeared from their online listing. They confirmed that she is being adopted.
We then inquired about 3 other little girls on their list that were possible matches. Two of them were already in process of being adopted. But ‘Iy’ was available . . . and they were willing to let us review her file! After waiting for months to get to review a file, it all seemed to happen rather quickly, actually. The email arrived . . . medical papers and caretaker questionnaires and (eventually) x-rays. We were considering a condition that neither of us was really familiar with, so we spent time researching and reading and discussing and considering (and watching her sweet little face on the 1 minute video that we had).
And then the moment of truth . . . after many tears and hours of discussion, it became apparent that this was not the little girl that God has planned for us. This was the WORST part of this whole process to date! Losing the opportunity to review the file for ‘I’ takes a close second, but saying “No” to ‘Iy’ was absolutely heart-wrenching. We are trusting her to God's sovereign hands and praying for her forever family to find her soon!
So, here we stand. By the numbers, we have tried to review files for 6 little girls, saw 5 little girls move forward with other forever families (mixed emotions indeed), and reviewed 1 file for a darling little one who is not for us. So we wait for the little one who is.
In the midst of all that, things have NOT been silent on the adoption front. In this instance, though, I am going to tell you the end of the story first . . . we are basically back where we started, although a little more experienced from the detour.
Again, I want to stress, we are not the norm when it comes to the beginning of this journey. Most of the time, you complete mountains of paperwork for a country from which you qualify for adoption. But since our hearts are still with China, we are reversing the process to find the child BEFORE the main bulk of the paperwork. No easy task indeed.
To make the new information a bit less confusing, I am going to borrow a method from another adoption website and use the first initial of the American names to talk about a child while respecting confidentiality.
Confirmed: Child A ‘I’ and Child B ‘M’ are both in process of being adopted. Their families have received pre-approval from China. For the moment, our interactions with that agency are ended as they have no other girls meeting our parameters.
After receiving the confirmation that ‘I’ was officially no longer available, we moved forward with contacting another (third) agency regarding a little girl ‘B’ for whom I had seen a video. Before we even got the communication ball rolling, ‘B’ disappeared from their online listing. They confirmed that she is being adopted.
We then inquired about 3 other little girls on their list that were possible matches. Two of them were already in process of being adopted. But ‘Iy’ was available . . . and they were willing to let us review her file! After waiting for months to get to review a file, it all seemed to happen rather quickly, actually. The email arrived . . . medical papers and caretaker questionnaires and (eventually) x-rays. We were considering a condition that neither of us was really familiar with, so we spent time researching and reading and discussing and considering (and watching her sweet little face on the 1 minute video that we had).
And then the moment of truth . . . after many tears and hours of discussion, it became apparent that this was not the little girl that God has planned for us. This was the WORST part of this whole process to date! Losing the opportunity to review the file for ‘I’ takes a close second, but saying “No” to ‘Iy’ was absolutely heart-wrenching. We are trusting her to God's sovereign hands and praying for her forever family to find her soon!
So, here we stand. By the numbers, we have tried to review files for 6 little girls, saw 5 little girls move forward with other forever families (mixed emotions indeed), and reviewed 1 file for a darling little one who is not for us. So we wait for the little one who is.
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