We have BIG news!
We are adopting again!
We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome a beautiful new life into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign. It may surprise you to hear that adoption related costs can easily total up to $45,000 or more. This is why we have started fundraising to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents.
We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community we hope to build around our child as she grows up.
Adopting again has been something that we have talked about since Georgia's adoption but never actively pursued beyond those initial conversations. All of the credit goes to Georgia in being the catalyst that moved us forward this time around. At the end of last year during pickup time at school we were congratulated on exciting news regarding our family that we were totally unaware of. Apparently Georgia had been sharing with anyone who would listen that very soon she would be going on a very long plane ride to China to bring home a little sister. We laughed it off, explained to Georgia that is not how adoption works and moved on. In the subsequent weeks her narrative evolved into more elaborate stories of the things that she and her sister would do together and her artwork shifted into less blobs of paint and rough sketches and more detailed family portraits. Family portraits that included 4 of us, not 3. Her bedtime prayers included a sister, every shopping trip was accompanied by requests that we purchase items in twos so that her sister would have one just like her. As this continued, the adoption discussion between Jon and I became more of a reality and less of a hypothetical situation.
One evening as Georgia was going through her photo book that includes the referral pictures we received of her from her orphanage she turned to us and simply stated "I was so sad because I missed my family. I was waiting for my mom and dad to bring me home. My sister feels sad without us, we need to bring her home soon." At that moment a shift in our perspective occurred and there was no more waiting for "the perfect time" to start the process again. We contacted our agency the next day, filled out our application and settled in to get to work on our paperwork and the long wait to find our next child. We anticipated the process to take up to 2 years as there have been many changes in international adoption since Georgia came home and we were good with that. This would give us an opportunity to work at our own pace, prepare for this big change and to wait for "the call" notifying us that our family was about to grow.
And then the unexpected happened. After Georgia's adoption we "met" an amazing adoptive mom through one of the adoptive groups we are connected to online. Her girls are from the same province (and we share a connection through the same orphanage), and two of her girls share the same medical condition that Georgia has. As big as China is and as many adoptive families there are out there it was amazing to find someone whose child not only comes from the same orphanage but shares the same medical history. This mom started a non-profit organization a few years ago and does amazing work in China. Not only does she work with orphanage staff to provide for the needs of the children and medical training but her group is involved in the local communities providing much needed support to families.
Part of her work also involves advocating for children with some significant medical needs and working to find their forever families while providing support to these children. This is how we found our daughter. A simple post on her non-profit's Facebook page seeking families to sponsor medical care for a little girl who was in critical condition. We reached out and were surprised to learn that not only did this little girl come from an area not far from where Georgia is from but that she also has the same (although more severe) medical needs. All of the little details and similarities that we were finding between Georgia and this little girl were too big to ignore or call a coincidence. We stepped out in faith and said that we absolutely would adopt this little one. We reached out to our adoption agency to find out if they would be willing to help us pursue this little girl and were overjoyed when they agreed to work with us on this somewhat unconventional route to adding to our family. Since that day, many little details have come up that reinforce that this was meant to be. So here we are, racing to bring home our girl - our loved daughter, sister and little fighter who has already overcome so much. This turn of events is not quite what we expected and we are now working to cram what was to be a two or more year adoption process into an adoption that will be complete in less than a year! We look forward to the day (hopefully soon!) that we will be able to wrap our arms around our sweet girl and bring her home.
