He Had Us At Ni Hao

And now for the real reason why I didn’t blog in May…..

Introducing our son!

On May 5, 2011, while playing at the park with Molly, I got a phone call that changed our lives. Judy from our adoption agency called to tell us that she had a file of a little guy that she thought would be perfect for our family. She told me that his date of birth was January 5, 2010 and that he was currently in a foster home in Henan, China.

My first thought was, “Oh my! He’s so young…and we are so old!” but I was anxious to get home and review his file. I quickly scanned his medical information to get the basics and then opened his picture, which simply took my breath away. He was beautiful. He was perfect. He could be our son! Molly, who was sitting next to me,wholeheartedly agreed.

The next step was to call Tony and share the news with him. He was traveling for work, and I caught him right in the middle of a big project. Needless to say, he was as shocked as I was. I mean how can you prepare for this kind of call coming from out of the blue.

I forwarded all of the information to Tony via email. He finished up his work, and quickly returned to the hotel to look over the file. Together on the phone, we went through all of the paperwork and made the decision that this little guy, a half a world away, was indeed our son.

Of course we did our due diligence over the next few days, having his file reviewed by doctors and talking with a variety of specialists. We got all of the information needed to go into this adoption with our eyes wide open.

The positive feedback on the part of the professionals was reassuring, but you know what?

He had us at Ni Hao!

When we looked into his big, beautiful eyes, we knew without a doubt that he was our son. And we were madly in love with him!

On May 9, 2011 we submitted a Letter of Intent (LOI) to adopt our precious baby boy. On May 12, 2011 our LOI was through review/translation and was sent to China. And on May 20, 2011 we received Pre-Approval from China to adopt our son. Praise God!

We actually began the adoption process on February 11, 2011 when we submitted our application to Chinese Children Adoption International. We spent the next several months paper chasing and going through our home study to adopt another child.

We decided to wait until we received our referral before sharing the news with family and friends. Since then we have been overwhelmed by your love and support. Thank you! It means the world to us.

When we got the call from CCAI we had just completed our entire adoption dossier and had just submitted our application to USCIS (US Immigration) which will allow us to adopt a child from a foreign country. This is the last step in the process before our dossier is sent to China. We are still waiting for that USCIS approval. It should be another 3 or 4 weeks for that to happen.

Even after we receive USCIS approval, there are still many steps to go through before we can travel to China to meet our son. In fact we don’t anticipate traveling until some time between January and March of 2012. That’s an eternity when you know you have a child waiting halfway around the world! We would appreciate all of the prayers and positive thoughts that you can pass our way!

You may have noticed that we haven’t share our little guy’s name. It’s not a big secret. We plan on telling everyone. There is only one problem…we haven’t chosen a name yet. We have narrowed it down to a couple of names, but I just can’t decide which one I like best. I look at him, and either one fits. I am usually so decisive, but for some reason I am having commitment issues.

At this point, we call our boy Baby Brother. And for right now, that’s the name I like the best. It seems to include Molly in this whole process. And that just warms my heart. She is so proud to be a big sister. I have much more to say about that, but it will have to wait for another post.

For now, I will leave you with an updated picture of Baby Brother. It was taken on May 13, 2011 when he was 16 months old. (If you are any good at math you will have already figured out that he is currently 17 months old!)

We love you, Baby Brother!