No TA yet, but here's a story.....

Dear Ling,

Here is the story about why we decided to adopt, and how we came to find you.

Daddy and I felt we wanted to have a third child. Approaching my 39^th bday, I felt woozy with the thought of another pregnancy and breastfeeding and newborn sleepless nights….. One day, I woke up with the urge to explore adoption. I talked with Daddy, and he was willing to learn more about it, so in my usual fashion, I started reading books. In four days I had read five books and “knew” that we were meant to adopt from China. So we started the process, and then “the wait”. Early on, I had looked at Waiting Child lists, which are lists of available children who are either older and/or have special needs, but the lists gave me way too much anxiety, so I stopped for a LONG time. Then Great Wall (our agency) stopped putting the pictures of the children on the lists and without that, it was too scary and daunting. Then we went to the Great Wall conference in Tampa in November 2007. I met a woman there who was just about to travel to her daughter who was 4 ½ and was diagnosed with Hydrocephalus. She explained what it was and I found it amazing that she was able to deal with all of that (as well as her 11 year old autistic son).Through her experience, she gave me courage and inspiration and I thought "maybe I could do that, too". I went to a Waiting Child session at the conference and learned more about the program.

Shortly after that we had to renew our home study because our I-171H was going to expire (we had been waiting 18 months at that point). I talked with Daddy (who is a such a great guy) and he agreed to allow me to follow my heart and expand the language of our update to include mild special needs as well as a healthy child. After the final copy of the update was delivered, and I read it, I was very stuck on the fact that it stated ages 0-2 years old. Again, I told Daddy that I felt the need to change that, and asked if he minded if I called our agency and asked them to expand it to age 6, which they did and I had it in my hand by the end of that day.

About two weeks later, I received a link to a new Waiting Child list. I was interested because one had not been posted in months, and I had recently felt like looking again. As usual, after I opened it, it filled me with anxiety, so I deleted it. A few days later I got the same link again, and again I deleted it! The weekend went by and the next week I felt I was supposed to look at it again. I pulled it out of the delete box and clicked, and found you, 3 ½ year old Ling! I knew at that moment that you were my child. I don’t know if I just didn’t see you before or if you had been added to the list since I had looked last, but there you were. I was applying for more info before I could even think about it. It was scary, because you was on a “shared agency list” and your file could not be locked until we had reviewed all of your medical records, made the final decision and gotten our Letter of Intent accepted by the China Center for Adoption Affairs. But it all worked out and we had our Letter of Acceptance on Daddy's birthday a day or so later. Since then, we have fallen in love with you, little sweetheart and cannot wait to see you and hold you. What on earth is taking so long??