Thankfully the home study portion of our newest adoption is DONE and is now off to Immigration/homeland security. A lot of people have been asking if we were able to reuse any of our paperwork from Matthew and unfortunately we had to get all new documents. Our last homestudy agency closed last year due to lack of funding, so we even had to start over with a new agency. Once we get the next round of paperwork approved at every level of government (literally), our dossier can go to China. Based on our last timeline, I am thinking that it will be around the end of September before it even gets to China though.
We have been gradually preparing Matthew for the idea of having another sibling. I know he can't even begin to fathom what that means, but it's good to give this little seed time to grow. Last week as I got him ready for bed he asked me "tell me about adopting baby sister". This was the first time he ever used the word "adopt", so that was neat. It is kind of a hard concept to share with a preschooler, but my thought is to use the word in everyday conversation and for him to know that it is a wonderful word not something negative. We have begun to talk how his new sibling will look like him and will also come from China like he did. We have also talked about how he might get to go back to China with us on a big airplane.
Our hope is to be able to take the whole family back to China with us, but we will just have to wait to see how schedules and finances work out. Jeff and I both feel strongly about our big kids seeing China. Matt (and our newest little one) will probably be too young to remember this visit, but at least his older siblings can be one more person that they can talk about China with. Seeing China in person, is so different than just seeing pictures. Visiting an orphanage is unforgettable. Let alone, meeting their new sibling for the first time will be pretty amazing. We feel a lot more comfortable bringing everyone along this time, I think I would have been too nervous last time, but boy did we ever miss them.. Ideally this time around we would also get the chance to maybe visit the birth cities of both littles, but that is just a hope at this time.
If you caught it in one of the above paragraphs, I used the word "sister". This time around we asked to be matched to a little girl around Matt's age. Quite frankly, we would be ecstatic if our next child is a boy or a girl and we are approved to adopt either gender, so we will see what God's plans are. So the next couple months will be moving slowly along in our eyes, but we are excited to proceed to the next step.
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