We are going to try again!

Well sometime into the summer after having Alexis home for about five months, my husband and I decided that we would really like to do the adoption thing again. So I started researching our options.. knowing that China has changed their "rules" I looked into the other countries. I am stubborn, (wonder where my kids get it from) but decided that I wanted another child from China. I did my homework on all the options and countries but really felt that was where Jay's and my heart was! So we started calling the agencies to see if we could find one that would work with us, to advocate for us and maybe, just maybe, we could convince CCAA that we were a good family for another child from their country.
There were many, many disappointments along the way. We started gathering our dossier paperwork again in August, spoke to an agency that works with Taiwan that said we would not qualify for a program called Birth Mothers for Taiwan, applied through an agency for a special needs girl in China that no other family had asked for- but got turned down at the last minute because another family turned up that fit the CCAA's rules, we checked out Vietnam but just didn't think we could swing that amount of money... tears, tears and more tears...until we call our new agency, ASIA, out of Portland, Oregon that said they would advocate for us and they had a little girl they wanted us to take a look at.
When we got her file we sent it to our doctor, who looked everything over and said this was a "special need" we could handle. So we jumped with joy and rushed to get our letter of intent sent to China. This little girl was even more special and more perfect than we could imagine, her birth date was the day after Alexis' but she was one year older and that made her born the day after Jay and I got married. God sent us this kid! So the paper chase began. Along with the wait.
After not hearing from CCAA for weeks and weeks my hopes started to rise that they were going to approve us.. why turn someone down after keeping them on edge for so long??!!
And we waited and we waited and we waited for CCAA to give us our pre approval for this little girl, saying they would accept us even though we didn't meet the new rules,and we waited and we waited until one terrible email day in December when we got a message from our agency saying that CCAA turned us down for our Martial Situation (we hadn't been married long enough under the new rules) The only thing to do was to cry. It really felt like we had loss our child.

After a few days I decided that I was being selfish. If I couldn't have her I needed to find her a family, so I started sending emails out on the special needs yahoo groups to find her a family. A few have called, but here is it six weeks later and not one family has sent another letter of intent for her. She sits in an orphanage in China waiting for a family.

What was our next option to complete our family? Our agency had just opened a program with an orphanage in Taiwan called Chung Yi and they felt we were qualified under the rules of Taiwan to adopt a non special needs baby from Taiwan. So I pushed my poor social worker and the agency to get my papers done and sent to Taiwan to get in line. The agency would only take four families at a time and at that moment only had two. A few days before our Home Study was complete a third family got in line. We were waiting on the child abuse clearance for the state to get back to our social worker so she could give us a good report. I was getting upset and frustrated that I was waiting and waiting again, so I stirred the pot and started making phone calls and emails.

Well thank the good Lord we found a wonderful woman that worked with Child Services that could complete our clearance and send it over to Marci at our agency. (Marci was helping and pushing for us and she did a GREAT job in getting that clearance to our social worker!) and then the next day we got our HOME STUDY and off to Taiwan it went on December 21, 2007!!! So we are now in line as family number four!!

What the future brings we don't know. We could still be rejected. Taiwan wants families that don't have kids.. .we have many kids. Taiwan has a different system then China, there is a Judge you have to go through and we just pray we get past that point. How long it will take we don't know. Family #1 got their referral on December 28, 2007 just five weeks after sending in their Home Study but we could wait for a year before getting ours (but we are now family #3!!!!) So I wanted to continue with this blog of our life with Alexis and our other children and think how lucky I am today to have the children I have.

And in my heart I pray that China changes the rules back and we can still apply for the child we fell in love with. Maybe that is why another family hasn't come along because she is being saved for us!