We have been accepted!

Yeah! What a blessing! We have been accepted into FTIA's China Waiting Child program!

For China, most agencies have two programs that you can choose to adopt from. The first is what I look at as the healthy and typically as young as possible program. The other program, for a waiting child, has children on it because they have a special need. Many have cleft lips or heart problems. There are children with spina bifada, club feet, blindness, deafness... some of the children have been blessed already with an operation to correct their special need, but China doesn't remove them from the list - they keep them on it. Other children may be on the list simply because of their age. If a healthy child is getting older and still hasn't found a family of their own, China may put them on the waiting child list.

Kevin and I have given a lot of thought to what age range of child would fit best into our family. We decided that we didn't want to go out of birth order and that we want our children to feel like they can really help in taking care of their new little sister. We are interested in adding another lovely, little girl to our family who is up to 3 years old. We are one or two steps into the process of adding her to bringing her home already.

This last Friday Kevin mailed out our application to our home study agency so we are waiting to hear back from them. And just a little while ago we all went to the courthouse to pay for everyone's passports. Mine is still good from when we went to Ukraine, Kevin has to renew his, and we had to get the children their own.

We are taking the children with us when we go - for a few reasons. One is that we have family in China. Kevin's brother Brad lives there with his wife, Jieying, who is Chinese. Two, is that we have spoken with many, many parents who have already adopted from China. They said that if there was any way at all that we could bring our children with us then we should bring them. It helps the child you are adopting to see how your children interact with you and it helps with the attachment and bonding process. And third, we love our kids! We have have a blast with them, and are totally excited about this opportunity to travel to another country with them!

So how long will it take for us to be able to go to China to pick up our new daughter? About a year for a waiting child. Of course, we are aiming for a 9 month "labor" :) It's on God's timing though, which is a lot better than ours could ever be!

In His name,

Karen