Our Family is Complete

We are so happy to share our news that we have finally been matched!  And not with one child, but two!  Yes, we are about to be the parents of four children!  And we couldn't be happier about that. 

It was quite an emotional path that lead us to these precious children.  We were quickly growing frustrated with the wait and were losing faith that our agency was going to be able to match us due their limited number of orphanage partnerships and the shrinking shared list.  I sought the advice of the adoption community on Facebook, who counseled us what was involved with switching agencies to find our child.  One woman pointed us towards her agency who I ended up really clicking with during a call with them to discuss our options.  Although I had a really good feeling about them, we couldn't switch agencies unless we were switching to match with a specific child.  We reviewed the files of a couple of boys on their Waiting Child list, but the children were either older than Oliver or had more needs than we thought we could handle.  A week later the new agency called asking if I wanted to review the file of a little girl from southern China. I remember thinking, a girl?  A girl was never on my radar.  I would have bet a lot of money I was going to be a mom of all boys! But as soon as I read her file, I knew she was our daughter.  So Chris and I made the decision to switch agencies. (And that was quite a drama-filled experience, but that is a story for another day!) 

Growing our family didn't end with being matched with our daughter.  The new agency allows families to adopt two children, something that Chris and I had wanted to pursue, but hadn't been able to because our old agency didn't allow it.  We talked to the new agency about adopting a second, but given that we had a short window to work with and our second child needed to be at least a year younger than Soren, the new agency couldn't guarantee they would be able to match us. 

Only days after we said yes to our daughter, our agency called with another referral, this time for a little boy.  The social worker was very surprised when a lone file arrived that morning from a partnership orphanage (files usually come in batches), and when she read the child's file, she immediately thought of our family.  She quickly went through the file before e-mailing it to me, but I just knew before reading the file myself that this child was going to be our son.  When I finally received the file, my heart just melted when I saw his picture and I could have cried from happiness because I knew that our family was complete.  Throughout our relationship, Chris and I have talked about our dreams for our family and although we could never have predicted that our desire to have a family with four kids was going to look like this or be formed in this way, well, obviously life is full of surprises.  Beautiful surprises.

We don't know exactly when we'll travel to China, but we're shooting for January.  The adoption process is unpredictable and we have yet many more hurdles to clear, including official approval from China.  We're basically sitting on pins and needles waiting for this final approval.  The best we can do at this point is keep moving forward and hope for the best in our desire to adopt these two beautiful children.  We ask you to keep our children in your thoughts and prayers.  We're honored we'll eventually get to be their parents, but our hearts are also in a precarious place when we are in love with children we consider ours, but can't be with them and take care of them.