A little change of plans

I will admit, I had an official hissy fit the other day. It wasn't pretty. And I wasn't happy! I got an email stating that our Immigration Approval for our adoption was approaching expiration and we needed to start working to renew it. That may sound like no big deal to you...but if you knew how much work went in to getting that approval, and all the other paperwork we completed to get registered officially for our adoption, you'd understand how the prospect of doing more just makes me nauseated. The original approval involved 5 months of waiting after submitting our paperwork. This time, an extension involves MORE medical stuff, MORE tax forms, MORE copies of birth certificates, and marriage certificates, and fingerprints....ALL of which the government already has!!!! Seriously, in the past year, have my fingerprints changed??? I mean, they were taken electronically for goodness sakes! Pull up the file!!!! *Deep breath....deep breath....*

It just makes me sick to learn more and more about how many roadblocks are in place for families pursuing international adoption. It is an understatement to say that I am not a fan of big government, and this is a perfect example of why (and it's certainly not helping their case). I just wish they would get out of the way so that we can get on with expanding our family through this means. I know certain systems have to be in place to assure security, etc., however, it really is absurd to see the hoopla around bringing a BABY home. She's not a terrorist...not on any banned visitor list...won't even remember her native country. And all this mess goes for China too...don't even get me started on their government in terms of adoption. There are all kinds of kids just rotting in orphanages desperate for a family, and all kinds of red tape keeping them there, along with people seemingly more concerned about opinions and image than the good of some of these kids.

Ok...let me get off my soapbox and share our news.

The most recent time frame for a referral of a child is approaching 3 1/2 years. That's 3 1/2 years from your log-in date with the Chinese government. Although we started this process 15 months ago, we have only been logged in for a little over 6. That's a LONG way to go. We started investigating ways to shorten our wait time to see if there was anything we could do to speed this process up. The only thing we really discovered is that to shorten the wait, you either must increase the age of the child you request, request a boy, or apply for a waiting child (special needs). We really felt like we wanted to stick with our age range (under a year) mostly because of its effect on Jonah and Reagan, and we wanted to stick with a girl. So, that left the waiting child option to investigate. There is a HUGE range of what China considers special needs....it could be as simple as a birthmark or as complex as major heart anomalies or severe spina bifida. Without going into too much detail about our decision, I wanted to share that we have chosen to go down this road. We have said we would consider a variety of conditions, most of which are fairly mild because we still have Jonah and Reagan to think about. Anyway, we certainly covet your prayers in this area. We don't know what God has in store for us, or what child he has selected for us already....but we do know that we wanted to provide every open door we felt we could handle that could be used for our daughter to come to us. Maybe it will speed the process up...maybe it won't. I know I definitely feel better about things though now that we aren't putting such narrow limits on the blessing we are hoping to accept. Who are we to give God such guidelines anyway? We'll keep you updated on the progress (or lack thereof!).

Now...off to do some paperwork....again!