The adoption

Many of you know that Amy and I are adopting a girl from China, which is one of the reasons we're so excited about our opportunity to live in China for 3 months and learn a bit about the culture of our future daughter's homeland. We're now expecting the adoption to be finalized sometime around March 2007. Amy, Andrew and I will all fly to China and spend a few weeks there before we bring Andrew's little sister home.

We're adopting through an agency called Chinese Children Adoption International, which fortunately for us is just a short drive from home. They're the largest, and one of the first agencies to arrange adoptions from China, and they now arrange over 1000 adoptions per year. It's a great organization, and if you're considering adoption, I highly recommend them. We decided to adopt because we want 2 children, and we hope to provide a permanent home to a child who otherwise would grow up in an orphanage. Foster homes, and especially adoption, are very rare within China itself, so thousands of abandoned children end up in orphanages across China.

What's the adoption process like? In a nutshell, we start by finishing tons of paperwork, which the agency translates and sends to China. We also jump through a bunch of hoops for the US and Colorado state governments to prove we're acceptable parents. A social worker had to visit our house on 3 occasions and interview us, and we're also required by the state to complete 24 hours of training on parenting. Our "log in date", the date when our paperwork was accepted in China, is January 27, 2006. At some point, the Chinese government will match us with a child, and then it will be 6-8 weeks until we go to China to meet our new daughter. As long as Amy and I both go to China, she will be a US citizen when we return home.

At this point, it's a just a waiting game.