We got our referral! And other joyous news.

Back in the beginning of May this year we received the file and photo for a little boy as a possible match. He was 18 months old and has a cleft palette. I was instantly smitten with the alluring brown eyes in his photograph and wanted to exclaim then and there "YES!". But we remained cautious and spoke with a couple of doctors about his file. With their assurances that, despite the cleft palette, the little boy seemed very healthy we called back our agency and accepted the referral for the little boy who is to be our son, Samuel.

There is of course more paperwork to complete. While we were waiting for referral one of our government documents, I-800A, expired. We knew this was going to happen with the ever increasing wait times of Chinese adoptions. But there general advice is to reapply closer to ones referral date or after. So before we can proceed with getting the paperwork submitted to bring this boy home, we have to reapply for the I-800A. And we are close to getting this completed as we had our official fingerprints done last week. Fingers crossed that we will be bringing our son home in late fall of this year.

We also have a very lovely, very independent, one year old girl that I delivered in May of last year. Her father named her Abigail.

I often pause now and try to imagine what having two toddlers in the house will be like. And I know my imagination is falling short. But that it will be wonderful and delightfully full of hugs and kisses if not a little noisy and messy now and then.

You should expect to see more frequent updates about the adoption here as this begins to draw to a close.