Once more unto the breach!

It's official!  We're adopting again!
On Friday we got PA for our little guy and hope to be traveling to bring him home around August.  We've gotten quite a few questions of how we got here, how we found him, and what we know about him, plus I want a record of how this adorable little boy came to be our son, so I suppose I better start at the beginning.  I'll probably have to break this into parts since it's a bit long and convoluted.

We have truly been enjoying being a family of three and have had so much fun with Nora.  We knew we wanted more children, but figured it would be a while until we were ready to have another one and we felt comfortable with that plan.  We were planning on selling our house and getting settled in before starting any paperwork, but someone had different plans for us. 

On November 4, 2012 we were sitting with our extended family at church while our newest nephew was blessed.  Nora was sitting between us, and her cousin who is only a few months older than her decided to come share the chair with her.  I looked at my little girl squished next to her cousin gabbering about crayons to each other and got a unexpected revelation.  It was time to start paperwork for another adoption.  I was not expecting this at all.  I thought we would wait another 6 months at least before even discussing the possibility.  Nora's adjustment has been tricky and she still doesn't like to let me out of her sight.  How would she deal with another child vying for my attention?  How would I handle being outnumbered while Kevin was at work?  So many questions popped up.  The only question that really mattered to me was how could I ignore this feeling?  I couldn't and wouldn't try.  It was time and I trusted (and still do) that this is how it should be.  I turned to Kevin and said, "How would you feel about starting paperwork after we move?" (at the time, we were planning on listing at the beginning of the year).  He was surprised, but said he felt good about it.  For a few days I was sure this was the plan, but I kept getting a nagging feeling that while waiting to move was more convenient for us, it wasn't what we needed to do.  We needed to get started right away.  Soon after that we contacted our agency and social worker to get the process started.

In many ways it's been easier this time around.  I knew what papers went where, who I needed to talk to about what, and where I could push and where I had to just deal with it.  China allows families to re-use their dossiers, but only if they get approval for a specific child by the anniversary of your previous adoption.  Since that was coming up in February it wasn't really a possibility.  Sadly, we had to start from square one.  New homestudy, new social worker (some changes had been made in requirements after we got Nora, so our social worker from that adoption wasn't able to do our homestudy), new fingerprints (because those change?).  Lots of paperwork and mundane stuff that no one cares about.  The good news is that we had our dossier ready in about 3 months vs. the 7 months it took last time.  I kept pushing for it to get done faster because I kept feeling like it was a time-crunch to get done.  Why?  Well a little baby from Eagle's Wings was getting paperwork ready to be placed for adoption and, though it was a long shot, I knew there was a chance for us to be his family.  We were about a month away from our paperwork being sent to China when he had his final physical prior to his file being sent to be placed.  As it turns out, his heart defect had healed on it's own and he was getting such good care that he was no longer considered part of the special needs program.  I was sad for about 3 seconds and then had to smile thinking of his family waiting 6 years for the file of a little girl from China and getting a phone call that it was actually a boy.  Talk about surprises!  Ultimately, I knew that our boy was out there and we needed the motivation to get our paperwork done quickly, but that this little guy was not ours.

Things seemed to be going (relatively) smoothly.  Little did I know the drama that was coming.

If you recall from all the paperwork last time, one of the last things a couple needs to get done is an approval from US immigration to bring a child in as a citizen.  Our dossier was complete, save for that paper, and we new it was a matter of days until we had it in hand.  Our placing agency has a website where they post pictures and information of little kids who have not been matched with a family and I looked at it quite frequently to say the least.  I saw so many adorable little boys who seemed to match our needs so well.  Unfortunately we were not yet eligible to look over any files since our dossier wasn't completed.  I was disappointed, but not heartbroken since there was no one file that really stood out to me as "ours".  That is, until we were about a week from sending our dossier to our agency...