Announcing Margot Songmei Zainea!

Yeah, I know you really only want to see the photos!

We believe these photos were taken when she was about 8 months old.  She is in the southern part of China, not far from Hong Kong and Guangzhou.  We were very lucky to get our PA (Pre Approval) and LOA (Letter of Acceptance) in about 2 weeks, as the average wait for LOA right now is about 77 days!   We still have more paperwork to complete so we don't know when we will be able to travel, but we are hoping it will only take about 3-4 months.  Check back for new info and updated photos soon!

Three is a Magic Number

On May 24th, 2011 we got the call that we had been matched with a child from China!

We were so anxious and scared opening up her file to review.

Right away we knew she was the one, even before seeing her photo.

Her file described her as "quiet, pretty and lovely"

It also stated that she was a deep sleeper, fond of music and sitting in the baby walker and that she stares at strangers passing by as if she were thinking something.

And then we looked at her photo.  And she was it.

We celebrated that weekend at our favorite Asian Bistro "Chinn Chinn".

Our Blog Name Inspiration

With Six You Get Eggroll

Sorry Tom Petty, the Waiting is not the Hardest Part

It's hard to write, when there's not much to share.  We went through a hard couple of months in our adoption process.  Our agency was working so hard to match us with a child that they gave us a few referrals that we felt were beyond our ability to parent.  Our whole goal in this process was to adopt a child that would grow up to be an independent adult.  As adorable as these 2 girls were, we were not able to adopt either one of them.  We have a few physicians lined up to review files for us and we have really trusted their opinions.  They felt the first girl might never be independent and that the second girl might have such a severe condition she may only live a few more years.  Needless to say, it was still heartbreaking to have to say no.  I pray that they will find families that are more qualifed to handle their special needs and to love them as they deserve to be loved.

We prayed that May would be our month and we are happy to say that it was!  More to come in my next post!

How We Got Started Part II

We started in the China adoption program thinking we would do what everyone did, adopt an infant girl.  As we were working on our paperwork, the wait for an infant girl was growing longer and longer.  As of right now that wait is about 5 years.  Now, we're not getting any younger and even though we had hopes that the time would decrease, we knew that we needed to investigate other options.  We were still really drawn to China and didn't want to start over with a new country, so we decided to look into the "Waiting Child" or "Special Needs" program.  Our agency had just completed what they call a "Camp" with some of the waiting children in China and it really made us curious to find out more.  These are children (both boys and girls) with minor to major special needs of all ages.  When an agency does a camp, they visit a specific SWI (Social Welfare Institute or Orphanage) take photos, videos and interview the children and then share that info with their clients in the hope that these children will be matched.  We saw quite a few children in that camp that we were really drawn to but having only been logged in for a couple of weeks we knew we were pretty much last on the list to get matched with any of them.  It did, however help us to decide that this was the direction we should be heading.  We ended up meeting with a pediatrician to discuss what special needs we might be open to and get her advice on what she felt might be right for us.  As of June 2010 we have been in the line for a special needs child and are hoping for a match any time now!

LID Anniversary & How We Got Started

Today is our one year anniversary of being logged into the China Adoption Program.   
2-26-10 is our official LID (Log In Date).  Basically, that means that China received our Dossier and entered our info into their program on this date.  I never thought we would still be waiting at this point, but it sure has been a learning process. Chris and I knew pretty early in our relationship that we wanted to adopt a child rather than have our own biological child.  It just always felt right to us and China always stood out as the country we wanted to adopt from.  We spent time talking to our Social Worker about all of the countries that were available to adopt from, but we always came back to China.  We originally sent away for the info packet at the end of 2006, but it took us a long time to actually feel ready to move forward.  We started out thinking we would be adopting a baby girl from 6-12 months old.  What we didn't know at the time was that China was changing the way they did adoptions.  To be continued...

Ladybug Alert!

There is a popular myth in the Chinese Adoption Community that if you see a ladybug, your referral will be coming soon.  We have seen 4 ladybugs in the last 4 months, although I'm thinking it may be the same ladybug each time.  Either way, I've spotted it twice in January, so I'm hoping that this is our month to get matched!  Keep your fingers crossed!