We are currently waiting for our agency to let us know that we have a LID or log in date. Our dossier (well, a copy of our last dossier plus the three new documents we needed) was sent to China on June 10th. Should be any day now provided that there are no major glitches.
So, you are all probably wondering how we got to this point since we said we were DONE adopting when we brought Lily home. Mike and I were sitting at a table in Guangzhou with Owen and Lily and looked at each other, hot, tired, ready to come home and I said something along the lines of, "This is it. We are done adopting. We are too old for this." Mike responded with something along the lines of. "Yes we are." And, we assumed we were done. The financial and emotional costs of adoption are high and we have been in the middle of an adoption since were were married in 2004. And the paper chase (all the work you need to do before you actually bring a child home) is daunting. We really were done. So that was it, we were done...Well...Not exactly.
A friend of Mine, Maria, led me to a site (Reece's Rainbow) that listed children who were waiting for their families. Most of the children listed were children with Down Syndrome. With the needs of the children in our home, we knew we were not prepared to bring a child home that was listed on that site, but it did get us thinking about all the beautiful children STILL waiting for their families. So, an e-mail to our previous agency led to an interesting turn of events for us.
I asked if there was any possible way for us to be able to adopt from China again. We technically have the maximum number of children in our family that is allowed by China in order for them to permit a family to adopt. However, we learned that since we were only considering adopting a waiting child, or a child that is considered to have a special need, China makes exceptions for larger families. OK. This was good to know. And, we also learned that since we had adopted Lily within the last 12 months, China would allow us to reuse our dossier (huge stack of paperwork) and we would just need to update a couple of documents. BIG news here!
So, within a week of that e-mail, we were off and running again. Our search for our Matthew had started. We knew we only wanted to adopt a boy, and we wanted a child that would fit in between Adam and Lily. Lily is a good baby in the family and we are over the baby stages. We have gotten rid of the baby stuff twice now, so we do not want to have to go through that a third time! LOL.
We looked at the children that were listed with our previous agency, and they were not the right fit for us in terms of age or needs. So, we decided that we would probably have to use a new agency. One phone call to our new agency and we were convinced that we were supposed to have them help us find our son. We were sent files of several children, and at first none of them seemed to be a good match. I say "at first" because the file for the boy that will be our Matthew is one of the first ones we looked at.
I am embarrassed to say that I took one quick glance over his paperwork and said, "no" and put it aside. However, I could not stop thinking about that child. I went so far as to send his file to a specialist at the Children's Hospital for review. Something kept drawing me in. Our conversations about adoption came back to him. His information was old, like 18 months old. A lot can change in 18 months. That was like half his life. So, Mike and I called the agency and asked if they could get some new information on this child. We had no idea if we would get anything back, but we were hopeful we could at least get updated height and weight and how his overall health was. About a week later we were surprised with 8 new pictures of this boy and some really good information about him!
Later that day, we decided that he in fact WAS going to be our son and started the process to request to be matched with him.
So, here we are, waiting for our LID to bring Matthew home!
