Adoption, Adoption, Adoption.....

As we have almost completed the birthday celebration (birthdays last quite a while in this family) of my oldest turning TEN, our attention has turned more directly to our adoption journey this week.  We officially started the process in late July and have been patiently and slowly working on paperwork ever since.  With the news this week that our homestudy is complete and we should receive it in the mail any day, the adoption gear has been cranked up a bit; both tangibly and emotionally. 

Tangibly, the paperwork stack is high.  Lots and lots of letters to write, references to obtain (thanks girls.  you know who you are!!!), documents to gather, forms to fill out, mail to be sent off.  It's the stack of papers, that when complete, is called the "dossier" that we will send off to China.  Looking at the list of paperwork could be very very intimidating and daunting.  But working on it together (as Marc and I do.  He's the greatest!) and doing just one thing at a time, it is manageable.  Not to mention the obvious fact that we have done it all before.  And so far, that has been a great benefit to us.  It still seems to be just as time consuming but at least we don't feel so naive and clueless this time.  While we still have to do every stinkin' piece of it over again, most of it is exactly the same.  And so this week we have spent every spare moment (which indeed are hard to come by) at the computer downloading documents, running around town having papers notarized, filling out many forms, and just trying to do all that we can to get our part done.  We are in the THICK of paperwork right now.

Up until this week the adoption has emotionally somewhat been on the back burner.  Just because there has been so much else going on in our lives.  But this week, that has all changed.  I see it in Marc as much as I feel it in myself.  This week, we FEEL pregnant!  Not the kind of baby that is growing in my tummy but the kind that is growing in our hearts.  And indeed, it feels JUST the same in the emotional arena. 

We are adopting a special needs child again from China.  We are going through the same process and using the same fabulous agency again that we used with Mei.  We have told our agency we are open to a boy OR girl this time, aged 1 to 4.  We HOPE to travel to China to bring home our much wanted and already much loved 5th child sometime in late 2012.

May God be greatly glorified in the journey!  Let's do it!