Three Years with Isaac

Here we are celebrating three years as a Forever Family on Friday, October 14th. It's hard to believe that three years ago we found ourselves in China having just become parents to the most amazing little boy in the world. It's hard to describe the changes we experienced and the depth of love I feel for my son. I know some people claim that they could never love a child that wasn't "their own." I think they feel as if they are praising me for my "selflessness" and my "ability to love" but in reality I find that comment to be so... so... so limiting to their belief in the power of love. I find it to be insulting to the power of love and to children everywhere who are in need of people to open their hearts to love a child in need of a family. I do not think it would be possible to love either of my children more deeply than I already do, even if they had been born of my body. So this weekend we celebrate three years with an amazing little guy who has taught us so much about love.

Shortly after submitting our paperwork to adopt a child in August of 2006 we learned about the special needs program, but at the time we kept being turned down because many, many families were also requesting to adopt these waiting children. The lists were competitive and it was heartbreaking not to be chosen. Finally we stopped requesting to be chosen. We stopped for several reasons really. 1) It was too painful to receive the call that said, "We're sorry, but we selected another family to parent the child or children you requested a match with." 2) After a while, our paperwork had been logged in so long, that well, we weren't even going to be considered. And 3) Well, we figured a waiting child wasn't God's will for us.

But something amazing happened in the spring of 2008, China changed their rules affecting the waiting child program. Instead of many, many families looking at the children and the agencies having to choose only one family for the child, only one family was allowed to view a particular child's information at a time. Instead of competing against other families, we would be the one and only family who would be able to decide on the child. And if we felt that the child was to be our child, then that was it. No one else could view the child's file, the file would be locked. So we watched and waited for a while to see how that progress would go, and at the end of July just a few days after we sent our paperwork for the new program we got "The Call" that would change our lives.
So today instead of haunting some of the rumor sites to see when our log in date will come in with my arms still longing for a child, my heart is full and I have celebrated 1098 days as a Mama! With a minimum of three hugs a day, that's 6588 hugs in in the past years and at least 6588 kisses! Of course on most days I average way more than 3 hugs and kisses. Then to make things even more intoxicating, we added a beautiful daughter 9 months ago today so that is another 274 days with my sweet girl and another 822 hugs and 822 kisses if all I got were three a day, and I must confess I've gotten way more than my three a day quota as I've sat here typing this blog post, and to be honest I've always gotten more than three a day! :o)

So, where is China now? Well as of September 29, 2011 The CCAA has finished matching families with children who were logged into their system as of July 28 2006, some families have waited 62 1/2 months to recieve thier referral, while still other families logged in for the month of July will wait at least another month.. There still 32 days ahead of our log in date. Amazingly it will have "only" taken the CCAA five months to match the month of July 2006, earlier months have seen it take up to 9 months as it did for November 2005 and March 2006. Why the speed up now? I'm curious. I know many families like ours have moved on to other avenues like China's Waiting Child Program, while sadly other families gave up the hope of becoming a forever family to a child from China. I don't know that we'll ever know how many families took the wait as a sign of a closed door instead of a segway to another opportunity. I do know that many families still wait and our prayers are with those families. As we get closer to the date when our original log in date would have come up, I wish that I would have stayed part of the groups I had joined of families from August 2006. I wonder how many of them will celebrate in the coming months and how many, like us celebrate each day.