Beginning...

I am officially dipping my toe into the ocean that is ... blogging!

Hmmm... what to say?

I guess I'll begin with just a quick note about our family and why I wanted to start a blog. My husband and I are the very happy parents of a 3-year-old girl named Ruby, whom we adopted from China in January 2008. We quickly knew we wanted to adopt from China again, but we were unwilling to sign up for the years of waiting for another healthy infant. Somehow I knew we would adopt an older child.

Fast-forward 18 months. I received an email from our adoption agency in July '09 about a group of children currently living in Shanghai who had recently been made available for adoption. The majority of the kids were older, age 4-11, and with minor special needs. I was overwhelmingly drawn to them. So I went home (I had been at work when I saw the email) and I told my husband, Dave, to look at these kids. We were on the same page immediately! I emailed our social worker with the names of 2 little girls, asking if we could be considered to adopt them.

Little did I know that Dave also sent in his own email... with the names of 6 more girls... without telling me!! When I found out, I was a bit taken aback, but I laughed and said, What are the chances anyway? We don't have any paperwork done; surely these kids are all going to go to families who are further along in the process than we are.

Famous last words...

We were told our agency would be making the decision on August 4th. I got home from work at 1:30 and waited. When 4:00 came and went, I figured we had not been chosen to be the parents of any of the girls we requested. At 4:30 I called our social worker's cell phone and left a message. She called back a few minutes later. I had so convinced myself that it was bad news that I probably sounded like Eeyore when I answered the phone. "Hey... how are you...," I muttered, and she said "Not as good as you're about to be!!"