Get Your Act Together!

I swear, tonight's the night. I am going to print out ALL of the emails that are supposed to tell me how to assemble a dossier. I'm going to find out where I am and make a game-plan to finish the rest. So much to do, I can just FEEL it! I read somewhere as I glanced at one of the emails that we have to have pictures made. I suppose they look at your pictures, and read your autobiography and figure out which child may fit with us. I guess? Whatever, we will make it through all of this and it *will* be worth it!

Our first change-giver!

Amazing Love

So we're at a stand-still with the China adoption. Frustrating, because we haven't even made it to the wait list yet, which is approx. 3 1/2 years long! However, I'm having faith that the perfect child for us will be born and available to us at just the right time, no matter how long we have to wait.

For now, I'm praying about a separate adoption. We are considering going ahead with a domestic adoption since we will already have a home study (eventually), which is a lot of the cost. I'm praying for God's will for this, since it is such a big decision. I find it hard to believe that adopting an unwanted child could EVER be against His will, but I'm praying still. I still have hope that we can have our own children, but I still have a heart for the orphans. If we decide to do a domestic adoption, there will be a separate blog allll about it :)

Catch Me I'm Falling

Still no home study. I just sent an email to GWCA to inform them of that fact and to also enlighten them to the fact that I have no idea what I am doing and have no idea if I'm ahead of the game or far behind! Right now I am assuming the latter. This is not fun. I need a person right here with me doing the paper-gathering WITH me. It's difficult to send email after email and hope that you're on the right track. Very difficult!

STILL WAITING

STILL NO FINAL HOMESTUDY DRAFT.

It's sad

Currently there are 50,000 children in Chinese orphanages, while the number of abandoned children shows no sign of slowing." "Official figures show that fewer than 20,000 of China's orphans are now in any form of institutional care." Chinese official records fail to account for most of the country's abandoned infants and children, only a small proportion of whom are in any form of acknowledged state care. The most recent figure provided by the government for the country's orphan population, 100,000, seems implausibly low for a country with a total population of 1.2 billion. Even if it were accurate, however, the whereabouts of the great majority of China's orphans would still be a complete mystery, leaving crucial questions about the country's child welfare system unanswered and suggesting that the real scope of the catastrophe that has befallen China's unwanted children may be far larger than the evidence in this report documents.

NEW STUFF

I AM SO EXCITED!!! Today I bought a crib and some other things for the kid-to-be. I had so much fun buying things for her!!! It keeps the whole situation in focus for me: I will have a child to care for. More importantly, one to BUY STUFF FOR! I love to spend. Of course I do, I'm spending over 20K for the child alone... :) When I got home with the goods, Tim hadn't been awake very long and still looked sleepy. He hadn't finished even one cup of coffee yet either, so I was on dangerous ground but I was so excited. When he found out the source of my excitement, he just walked over to me and hugged me tight out of understanding. It was enough for me that he did not say a word about my spontaneous expenditure. We will start working on the nursery soon. We have many years to wait, true. However, it's comforting to know her room has been carefully planned out and worked on. It will be ready just for her!