Are we crazy!?! I'll let you make your own decision on that one. Why would we do this? The answer is simple for those that understand us and our Faith. We feel that we are being called to add a specific child to our adoption. Let me backtrack a little bit, and help you understand:
For quite a long time now, Jason has said that SOMEDAY we would adopt and/or foster older children. The idea honestly scared me a bit, but I could go along with it because it was SOMEDAY, not right now! You see, there is a very inspirational couple who recently adopted a young boy and older girl from Eastern Europe, their story is a beautiful one and I encourage you to read through their blog: http://tinygreenelephants.com/ The stories they tell on their blog about their adoptive daughter are beautiful and take away much fear when it comes to adopting an older child, they make it sound doable. I am not saying that older child adoption is easy or that it is always rainbows and puppies, but I am saying that it is not always a horrible situation either. Yes, there are horror stories about older adoptive children, but that does not mean that older kids don't deserve a chance! The Tiny Green Elephants blog is truly inspirational. I think that this blog is what opened Jason's eyes to adopting/fostering an older child. I'll admit that it did put it on my radar as well.
Anyway, fast forward several months... Jason and i were knee deep in adoption stuff for Chance, we were submitting our I800a, things were going good. Then God. I don't remember what exactly was the catalyst but Jason and I got to talking about older child adoption again. Still, it seemed to be something for the future. I did take a few peeks at the older children in Chance's country and we discussed them a bit, but that was it. Then, little by little there were signs. Stories, blogs, pictures of older child adoption. Were we meant to do it now? No... not us, not now... right? Then a few older children were listed on Reece's Rainbow and again I felt heart pings, not for me to adopt those children, but a compassion towards them. It kept me heart and mind open. Were we being called to do this? OK, now we were listening, looking, waiting for an answer. IF we were going to do it, there were only a few children we could.would consider. We narrowed that down to 2 children, both older girls. We discussed the possibility, but logistically we could not see how it would work out. Even though I was started to become more accepting of adding an older child, I think Jason we being more logical and getting cold feet. OK, if Jason is not on board, then we won't do it. End of story. Right? Nope, not by a long shot. Just a few days after I got it out of my head Jason comes to me and says, "we might as well look into it." Famous. Last. Words.
From there we continued to pray, to seek guidance and council from friends and family and pray some more. Could this REALLY be happening? We narrowed it down to ONE child. If we were to do it, it would be fore this one child, a little girl who was 10 years old. Somewhere in here we received our USCIS I800a approval. We knew we had to make a decision quickly. If the answer was NO, she is not meant to be ours, we needed to press forward with Chance's adoption. We contacted our placement agency and got as much info as we could. There were 2 hurdles the first was finances, to add a second child would nearly double our costs! This is not something we could overlook, an additional $20k+ for a second child is a huge pill to swallow, BUT it is not too big for OUR God. We put that hurdle aside temporarily. The other hurdle came down to the age of the little girl we were considering. The country we are adopting from requires that prospective parents be no less than 18 years older than the child they wish to adopt. The child we were looking into was supposedly born in 2003 which, depending on her date of birth would either make us eligible or not. Could this be the ultimate deciding factor? The placement agency was on it, they contacted the Ministry of Justice in the county to find out when her date of birth was. We waited, and waited...
All the while that we were in contact with our placement agency, we were also working on updating our homestudy. We wanted to be moving forward as if we were going to adopt this little girl even if we were unable to in the end. We contacted our social worker and waited. And waited. Finally I called and found out that she had never even got my email. Two days later she was at our house, updating our home study. We discussed all of the challenges that can arise with older child adoption and also what it would mean in terms of our family dynamics and Claudia. The social worker actually feels that adding this child to our family will benefit Claudia's development and that adopting out of birth order will cause no problems. We agree that Claudia will greatly benefit from having siblings. We felt pretty good after discussing things over with our social worker, we had thought most of these things through already and felt more prepared, like we could actually do it.
We continued to wait to get an actual birth date. Then, it came. Not only was this child born 5 days later than we needed, but now we were being told that she was only 7 years old! We did not care if she was 7 or 10, just that we could adopt her, however finding out her abilities and that she was 3 years younger than we originally thought gave us high hopes for her future.
We pressed on, submitted our commitment fees and are now on our way to adopting a #2! Since committing to our #2, I have since been in contact with someone who has likely met this little girl before, several years ago. Through some brief conversations we are now unsure of her actual age. We are being led to believe that she may indeed be 10 years old. We don't know for sure, and we may never know. Such is the nature of international adoption. We don't care, her age does not matter to us. What matters is the date they gave us gives us at least 5 days of wiggle room.
Introducing "Callie" Just like "Chance" we are unable to share any new info or pictures we receive of her. What can we tell you? According to her profile:
"Callie is the funniest child that loves to sing songs, make bread, attend camp and ride ponies. She has Down syndrome. Callie is such a smart little girl who also loves her dolls and cell phones. Callie can speak and understand two languages, including English! If you like to have fun, make puzzles, build Legos and read books, Callie is happy to join you!
Callie is a beautiful and funny girl who likes to sing and dance and who easily makes friends. Callie is communicative, speaking clearly in two languages, one of them English. She has an extensive vocabulary, tells stories, recites poems by heart, and remembers places and names.
Callie eats and drinks, dresses and undresses, and brushes her teeth independently. She is potty-trained and a very tidy, organized girl who makes her own bed and puts away her toys without help. Callie attends school and her teacher describes her as an attentive and good student. She recognizes numbers and 30 letters as well as colors."
As you can see, she is doing very well whether she is 7 or 10 years old! We will be resubmitting our I800a soon! Children, here we come!
Please continue to join/follow us on our journey to these two beautiful Children from Eastern Europe.
Please continue to join/follow us on our journey to these two beautiful Children from Eastern Europe.
Lord willing, about a year from now, Claudia will become both a big sister and a little sister! Yes, we are disrupting "birth order" and we are not worried.
Our financial needs are great, if you are willing and able, please consider making a donation to our FSP, your donations are tax deductible: DONATE HERE Or you can click the donation button on the right of our blog.
