Our adoption path to Jadyn started out as a way to fulfill our dream of adding a daughter to our family. I will admit that before we started on our journey to adopt, I had no idea how many orphans there are in the world (about 147 million). I had no idea the condition of the orphanages and I didn't really comprehend the impact of what being and orphan meant. I didn't even really get the role that God played in matching Jadyn to us - until we met her. But then...our eyes were opened. We saw first hand what being an orphan meant. We saw firsthand the conditions of the orphanages, the massive number of children lying in their cribs not knowing what it feels like to be loved, hugged, or even touched. Our eyes were opened, and because of that, we have been blessed beyond measure to not only turn a dream into a reality by bringing Jadyn home, but we cannot imagine our lives and our family without her. Because our eyes have been opened, Jerry and I have been able to step outside of what we thought was our comfort zone and look at special needs that we would not have even considered 5 years ago. Because our eyes have been opened, we are adding two more blessings from God to our family ~
Our family is growing:) We are so very excited to announce that we will be adopting again in 2011! Wow, where do we begin??? During the LONG wait for Jadyn to join our family, we began to do a lot of research on special needs/older child adoption. We realized that this really is not as scary as we originally thought it to be. We knew all along that we wanted to add another daughter to our family - we knew that we wanted Jadyn to have another sibling with the same cultural background as her.
Well, last November, China made an announcement that effective immediately anyone pursuing a special focus adoption (a child waiting more than 3 months or severe needs) could use a copy of their previous paperwork if filed within one year of the previous adoption. This meant that we could use our paperwork that we used for Jadyn's adoption as long as we were matched with a child by April 19, 2011.
This would save us some money, but a considerable amount of time since we would not need to complete a new dossier. We happened upon a child's file right around that time, but it took us a little while to track it down and and lock it. Fortunately, we were able to get all of the pieces in place and we began our homestudy in late January. We received the official approval from China to adopt this child on January 25, 2011! We do have to do a new homestudy because we filed as pre-hague for Jadyn's adoption and were grandfathered, but now China is a hague country. Our new homestudy was completed in mid-March and we sent it on to the USCIS for the I800A process to begin. This is for the US government to approve us as adoptive parents (again) and allow us to bring a foreign-born child into the country.
Now, it gets better) We knew that China had been approving some families to bring two children home through the special focus process so we spoke to our social worker to have our homestudy written to be approved for two children. Fortunately, this proved to our benefit as we were given approval for our second daughter on April 12, 2011!
We can't begin to express how blessed we feel to be able to say that these two girls will be joining our family!!! We have the capacity in our hearts and home to grow our family and we know in our hearts that these two girls are meant to be a part of our lives!
Now, for the details, and of course pictures! The first daughter we were approved for turned 8 last December and resides in Fujian province. She will be named Lauren Yuhuan. Here is the first picture that we saw of her:
Here are two recent pictures of her:
Our second daughter will be 14 in September and that is why we have some urgency in completing the remaining processes - she will age out of China's adoption program if we do not complete her adoption by her 14th birthday. She will be named Kaitlyn Jinqing and she resides in Guangdong province.
Here are the first pictures that we saw of her:
Here is another that someone sent to me - it was taken when they were adopting their daughter from the same orphanage. She is the second girl on the left in the grey t-shirt:
We feel so blessed to be walking this path again! I will keep you posted on our progress, and as always - Jadyn updates:)
