Searching

Early correspondence from me to the agency - "We were alerted to a boy, whom no one has inquired about, 10 years old, healthy (which seems odd that no one would) but perhaps I am being more optimistic about the chances of 10 year old healthy boys being adopted than real life gives.

He has been on the shared (special focus?) list for over 2 months."

This means he was on the shared list for over 6 months before having his status changed to special focus.

An early look up of the characters of his name hero (handsome or talented)! The handsome part is certainly there.

This search though was not just about searching for this boy's file but also some soul searching. We had in the past few days just brought home our 3rd child, home just 9 months after child 2 had joined our family. Knowing the process for a 4th child would likely take a year more or less, that was not the issue. The issue though would revolve on how well child 3 would integrate into our family of four - now home, not the honeymoon period in China where some things were still her society.

The agency found his file, one day before his 11th birthday.

His file was created in April, 2010 and sent up the line. Reading his file, which we received 12 days after first hearing his name, we had a question and thus requested an update.

We decided based on a change in the rules of adoption from China to reuse the dossier we had used to adopt Star, our 3rd child. We wanted to make sure everything was a go as far as China was concerned, that we could get a waiver for age for us, to adopt him, since he was listed as healthy.

The update came, on January 26th, answering the questions we had about his status of the moment, that a waiver could be had and yet we seemed in limbo.

On the 27th I wrote, "As of last night we are inching forward to saying yes to go ahead with the adoption. This adoption is taking on a surreal feel to it - in that advocacy for it came from an unexpected source."

Milepost 0 - (DTA) ie - Decision to Adopt - Then the balance shifted on the 29th, when Tian, our oldest went to Mama and asked her to please adopt this boy to be my brother. He will be her virtual twin. (Defined as birthdays less than 6 months apart.) The last doubt crumbled. With the update in hand, more pictures - this adventure picked up steam.