Hi Friends,
I was going to start a new blog for our adoption process. For my sanity on this slow computer I am going to blog everything on the same blog. It's been my personal hope to adopt an Asian child since I was about 23 years old. When I met Bob he was open to adoption as well. In June of 2010 I was looking at the Rainbow Kids website. It's an adoption info site that has waiting children with photo listings. I viewed a profile of this precious baby boy and I felt like he was going to be my son. You are never supposed to do this because obviously other families can be in the process of adopting the children. "Don't fall in love until your paper work is finished"
Long story short, his picture spurred us on to start the adoption paper work. In the back of my mind I have always known that our paper work could be for another child. I'll try to make this part short. He is listed with an agency in Michigan. It's easier to adopt a child through a local agency for obvious reasons. However, he was on our hearts and so we felt lead to try all options for him. The first problem we ran into was that we could not find someone here who would qualify for a Michigan home study. We were searching for about 2 months. The director of AIAA (the agency in Michigan) was out of the country and so we were a little on our own. We finally found Dillion (in Oklahoma) who could do our home study for $4,000. I am including all the money information just in case someone out there is curious about adoption as well. $4,000 is a lot considering that is on top of $23,000 and travel expenses.
There was another lady we chatted with named Eileen. She had done studies for AIAA in the past but wasn't on their list at the time. She owns her own smaller agency and has two adopted Korean children of her own. About 3 weeks ago she called and let us know that she was approved to do our home study as well. We weren't too far into the process with Dillion so we switched. Lucky for us her home study cost is $1,500. Since we are not rich $2,500 savings is great :) Just FYI you don't have to be rich to adopt.
She came to our house and visited with us for four hours yesterday. It was very fun and comfortable. She is coming back on the 15th to interview us again. Another long story short, I think it takes 4-6 weeks for a home study to be complete. Eileen said that she would call AIAA and let them know she didn't see any reason why we wouldn't be a great family for out little guy. With waiting children you can sometimes get a referral before your study is finished. Waiting children are children with some kind of problem that makes them "not perfect". It can be small like birth marks or big like down syndrome. The range is huge. So that means you aren't waiting for a perfect child to be born. The child is born and waiting on a family. This means the referral process is much shorter. Our little guy has a heart condition. That was part of the reason I fell in love with him (long story, I'll save for another post).
From now on I'll try to blog weekly so you can know where we are at. It may be small happenings but I want whatever child we adopt to have a record of how he or she came to be part of our family. Below are some pictures of Molly. She helped me clean the night before the home study. We were listening to the Jackson Five and dancing at the same time.
I know "baby boy" is in God's hands. If God has intended him to be part of our family then it will happen. I'm thankful either way because his little face helped us get started.
