IT'S A BOY!!

That's right--A BOY! We are adopting from China again and have identified a boy. Of course that means I need to change the name of our blog! I'll keep you posted about the new name of the blog when I make that decision.

Here is the story:

In September we had a visit with our Social worker because we need to keep our DCFS foster license active. This is required in Illinois for adoption families, but our file with DCFS is "Adopt Only". Anyway during that visit in September with our Social Worker we talked about our Immigration file needing updating as they expire after 18 months. Ours is set to expire on Dec 20 unless we work to keep it active. We decided that we needed to make a decision to speed things up a bit because we have had our file in China for over two and a half years now for the second child and things don't look like they will speed up any. We decided that we should either change to 'China Special needs' or move our file to South Korea. Either of those two options would be faster than staying with the 'healthy' China program. While on our vacation we thought about which of those two options we wanted to do. We talked to our social worker again and she recommended Spence-Chapin adopiton services on the East Coast as a placement agency if we were to do South Korea. I looked on their website on Wednesday, October 21 and found a webinar scheduled for Saturday October 24. However on Friday October 23 our agency sent an email to everyone on their client list about a boy in China needing a family and they had his file for only 2 more weeks. He was born with Cleft lip/Cleft Palate. We decided to look into it further. We came home that night and filled out the necessary paperwork to get us in the Special needs program with our agecy and then emailed the forms to them by 7PM that night. We were the first family to show interest so we were given the file about the boy the following Monday. All last week felt very busy. We faxed the referral info to a doctor to look at. This particular doctor is familiar with international adoptions and knows what to look for in the medical info given. Everything in the file indicates that other than the cleft (the lip has been repaired), he is normal both physically and mentally. On Thursday just last week we told our agency we would like to adopt him. We are waiting for "preapproval" from China. We should be traveling no earlier than Feb 1 but no later than May. We are really excited and so is Alicia. She has been asking for a brother for a long time now.



Chinese name: Dang Jian 'an (pronounced: Dung Jun-On)
American name: TO BE DETERMINED
Born February 19, 2008
Waiting for us in Jiaocheng County Social Welfare Institute, Shanxi province.
Our first description of him was:
He has a diagnosis of cleft lip and cleft palate. His cleft lip was repaired in September 2008 by the Tomorrow Plan program. He can sit alone and crawl on his own as well. He laughs aloud and has a ready smile on his face. He is an active little guy who does not like to sit still! He enjoys playing outdoors and playing with colorful toys. He is closest with his caregivers and gives them big smiles whenever he sees them. He appears to have normal mental and physical development. (I believe this description was written in December 2008).