And Now we Wait

This morning, Caroline, who is 2 1/2, climbed into my bed around 7:00. This is an every morning occurrence. Generally she rests while I am still waking up. Most often she will ask when her sisters are going to get up or if she can watch videos of her baby cousin on my phone.This morning, however, she asked a new question. One I wasn't even sure I heard correctly at first since I was still half (okay, mostly) asleep.

She asked, "When is my sister coming home from China?"

I was surprised that she was beginning to grasp the concept that she has another sister and that she is in China. Of course, we talk about her little sister all the time. We pray for her every night. We look at pictures of children from China. And the more we do all these things the more it has been revealed to little Caroline that she is missing a member of our family. It was a very special way to start the day.

I'm sure Caroline has asked the question that so many of you are also thinking about. I had a wonderful conversation with our matching coordinator from our agency yesterday. She will be the one who receives files from the dozen or so orphanages that have partnerships with our adoption agency. As far as time frames go, she can only give me her best guess, or what they commonly see based on the trends in China currently, the age we are open to, and the special needs we are comfortable caring for. Right now our agency is placing little girls with minor special needs in about 6-9 months from the time the dossier goes to China.

We are officially waiting. Since it is very important to us to keep the birth order in our family, we will likely be on the longer end of that 6-9 month waiting time.

After we accept our referral (which is just the official way of saying that we will indeed agree to parent the child the agency has found for us) we will still have another 5-6 months before we will travel to China. Based on these very rough estimates, our sincere hope is that we will be traveling to China by the fall of 2017.

I have heard that this waiting to be matched with our daughter is the hardest portion of the whole process. I certainly believe it. I am grateful that I have a lot to do to keep me busy. Like Caroline, we are all starting to feel we are missing someone in our family. We can't wait to see her face and eventually bring her home.

More than likely there won't be much to share for the next several months while we wait. We have our big fundraiser coming up on August 6th. Then later in August we are having a large yard sale with many items donated from friends and family.

If you have specific questions I'm always open to answering them as best as I can. We can't imagine going through this without the love and support of our family, friends, church, and community. We thank you all!
xoxo,
Mama Hess