A child's story

I'd like to tell a story of a child in China.

I've been very busy researching the different special needs of children in the orphanges of China. While looking at an agency specific list there was this child. Only 3 1/2 years old. The picture was so captivating to me. Just something about that child. Well, this was on November 23rd and we weren't in any position to be locking a child's file for adoption.  I can picture them as part of our family but hadn't even started our home study. I talked to D about this child's special need that we had never heard of and we decided to start looking into it for matching our daughter later. I was drawn back to that picture every day.One day an advocate posted that the child had found their family. Super. I was very glad and stopped checking with that agency. Its not like I ever considered us being that child's family.

Fast foward a couple of months. The first of February I saw a post on one of the support groups about this child, still waiting. What? Trying to find out what had happened with the agency was so unhelpful. They would be released to the shared list on February 23rd, or sometimes CCAA never gives the kids a second chance. Off handedly I mentioned to D that this child was waiting. "Isn't that the same one you talked about a couple of months ago? I've been wondering about them too." Well, now we are further along on our paperwork but this child's need is much more complicated than we are looking to match. Every day I checked for progress. Searching the support groups for any mention of the family that will come forward. Watching the advocates post online any info about the child that might attract a family.

Someone had talked about this child. It was hidden in a conversation about another child with the same need. Another parent who has adopted a child with the same need said they had addtional information. We emailed her right away thinking she would contact us the next day. (thanks Nicole) Just a few minutes later we were looking at an email of the child's file. I tried to help find the family. I posted descriptions and photos on every adoption site I could find.

My mom asked me "Do you think you will know?"

I've known since November and so has D. 

I have fought this feeling for months. Can something be fated? This is our child. This isn't the need we knew. This isn't the age we expected. This isn't a girl....

Right before we started our home study CCAA changed the rules of adopting in China. You could now adopt two children at the same time, same trip. I thought we were keeping our options open when we chose an agency who was familiar with these new rules. D told me, "I always knew we would be bringing two home." This should not be a complete surprise to anyone who knew of our desire to adopt a sibling group before we signed with China. We didn't think it would be possible in China though because they don't have sibling groups. But the CCAA ruling changed that right before we started. Yes, you heard me. Two.

When he is released off the agency list will he be allowed to be adopted still? CCAA could disappear him. I contacted everyone. A group of advocates with a mission to find this child when his file leaves his current agency. February 24th his file was moved to our agency specific list for us. He turned 4 on February 23rd. We still waited another month. Making this decision is huge. Finally we decided we would wait until we had our daughters referral to send our LOI for him. If after having him in our hearts for these months he was still waiting he was our son. It would be at least until June before we received our referral. I called CAWLI about my feeling to check the list Monday for our daughter as you know. What you don't know is CAWLI also said they were only going to have his file for one more week. They never knew we had decided to wait until our daughters match to lock his file. The rest you know. We are now his family. I'm not sure what I think about fate, but it seems you can worry all you want but somethings truly are destiny.

We are considering Robert or Joseph as his first name. Both are family names and his middle name will be his chinese name. 

He will have his own page at the top of the blog next week.