More paperwork!

Remember how in the last blog post I said I would write about the weekend course we had back in October? Well here I am, and now it is December. Oops.
The two day course in October was a mandatory session held by our adoption agency. Although it was a crazy weekend of driving to Newmarket and back twice (we came back to attend a beautiful wedding on the Saturday night), we found the session to be very informative. Most of the information provided to us was specifically related to international adoption which meant that everyone in the room was also adopting internationally. The part of the session that I enjoyed most was how to prepare for your trip. The two people running the session have each adopted two girls from China so the information they provided was very helpful for us. I know that I am providing a very broad overview of the session but I feel like the next part of my post is much more interesting...I hope.

Last week I went to the post office to send a very large package to our adoption agency which included all of our documents needed for our application to China (this is separate from the package we sent to the Ontario Government). When I was preparing the package and asking to purchase the waterproof envelope (because I am crazy like that) I started to get emotional. I felt like I was sending our lives away in this package. This is another huge item to check off of our to do list and it felt amazing to have it done, but also scary to think that the Chinese government would be basing their decision on the stack of papers and photos in the water poof envelope. Just to clarify, I didn't send the package to China, first it goes to our adoption agency where they get notarized copies of everything (but not before they receive a large sum of money, which also made me cry, but for different reasons). Our agency is hoping that they will get back our approval from the Ontario Government before everyone goes on Christmas holidays. So we were in a bit of a rush to get the documents to Children's Bridge in order for them to send it to a lawyer for notarized copies (which apparently can take 3 weeks). Everyone keep your fingers crossed that we receive our approval within the next week or so.

Here is a list of the items that were in the China application package:
Letter of application to adopt
Home Study - the same one that went to the Ontario Government
Guardianship statement - included in our homestudy
Letters of employment
Financial statement
Physical examinations - these were different physical exams than the ones required by the Ontario Government, we were required to get blood tests, they also look at our body mass index
RCMP Interpol Clearances
Local Police Clearances
Marriage Certificates - notarized copies
Birth Certificates - notarized copies
Photocopies of our Passports
4 additional passport photos
Application form of Notarization/Legalization
5 more adoptive applicant reference form letters - thank you to all of those who filled out a second reference form for us
Photos - we had to create a photo collage I guess you could call it but it had very specific requirements. It had to include a photo of the exterior of our home, lifestyle photos, and a 4x8 family photo. We weren't supposed to submit photos with sunglasses or hats on and no photos that included alcohol (duh). The photos had to fit on 8.5 by 11 paper and we could not submit more than 5 sheets of photos.

Yesterday we sent two forms of payment to Children's Bridge. One was a Cheque payable to The Children's Bridge in Trust and the other was a US bank draft payable to the Children's Bridge in Trust. The cheque paid for our balance of agency fees and notarization, visas, authentication and disbursements, coordinators disbursements (which basically means adoption facilitation). The Us bank draft was our fees for the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA). As far as I know we will not have to pay any more money until we travel to China (which gives us a little breathing room). Right now it seems like an impossible amount of money to pay back (I will not hide the fact that we had to get a loan from our bank). But I know in the end it wouldn't matter how much money it was, it will all be worth it in the end. We are one step closer to adopting our little boy. Just typing that makes me start to cry.

And so with that I am going to sign off and wish everyone a Merry Christmas from the Palmer family. You probably will not see any posts on here until the new year unless something really exciting happens. Have a safe and happy holiday everyone.

Adoption Awareness Month

Happy November everyone! Did you know that November is Adoption Awareness Month? The Adoption Council of Ontario website https://www.adoption.on.ca/adoption-awareness-month provides some great ideas on how to celebrate National Adoption Awareness Month, check it out. This month offers us a special opportunity to celebrate, promote, educate, advocate for, and create dialogue about adoption. Please join my family in celebrating adoption this month. Thank you!

Home Study...check.

I promised all of you that I would post about our Home Study process after it was completed. So here I am, keeping my promise. Thank you everyone for being so patient.
Back in July I wrote about all of he paperwork my husband and I had to fill out  in preparation for our Home Study. Most of that paperwork would be submitted along with our Home Study Report to the Ontario Government (Police checks, medicals etc) but the two surveys we filled out (one about our upbringing and family, the other about our relationship) would be the basis of our discussion when we met with our Adoption Practicioner Kim.
Before our first meeting with Kim my husband and I were very nervous. We had talked to her on the phone once and communicated a few times through email so we weren't entirely sure what to expect. We went around the house and scrubbed it from top to bottom and we installed additional childproofing throughout the house as we knew there would be a home inpection. When Kim arrived we were both pleasantly surprised. She was laid back and very friendly which immediately put us both at ease. She stated from the beginning that she thought that the Home Study would be a very straighforward process and since we already have a child living in the home the home inspection would be a breeze. Phew!
Overall we had 4 meetings with Kim in our home. Each of the meetings lasted around 2 hours and consisted of candid conversations about our lives, our history and our future with an adopted child.
Our daughter was present at only one of the meetings and luckily she behaved like an angel. Another Phew! She even offered Kim one of her plastic cupcakes from her play kitchen to eat. :)
I think that the easiest way to tell you about the Home Study is to outline the end result, which is the Home Study Report. This report will be sent to the Ontario Government by the end of this month.

The report is 17 pages long and contains the following information:
Applicant information - our names, address, phone numbers and email addresses
Dates of contact - outlines the dates we were interviewed and where they took place
Further applicant information - including information like my maiden name, our birth dates, religion, education, languages, occupation, racial origin, ethnic origin, and citizenship
Date of our marital partnership - the day we were married
Names of children and birth dates
Medical report information
Motivation - this was a one page report on our motivations to adopt and where we want to adopt from. It outlines the steps we have taken already in the adoption process etc.
Extended famly members - lists our parents, siblings and their spouses and their children as well as where they live.
References - lists the names of our wonderful family and friends that filled out reference forms on our behalf
Criminal Record Check/Child Welfare Check/RCMP Finger Print clearing
Profiles - there is a half page profile for each of us - our hair and eye colour, physcial appearance and fitness level, personality, occupation, character traits, family make-up and extra curricular activities
Family Lifestyle - this outlines our lifestyle and activities we participate in together, it touches on things like childcare for our children, guardianship (if needed), our household routines, and how we discipline our children
Home and comunity - describes our home in detail and how it is decorated (she said tasteful and modern, woo hoo), it also outlines the neighbourhood we live in.
Legal/financial rights and responsibilities - here is a little quote from that section "Applicants have been advised of their duty of honest disclosure and candour along with their ongoing duty to disclose of new event or information, which may require an updated or amended home study."
Historical information- this was a full page report on each of us individually outlining our family make up, our upbringing, and our childhoods.
Personal characteristics - outlines our communication skills individually and how we handle stress etc.
Marital/Domestic Partnership - discusses our relationship from the beginning until now, this was also a full page report.
Children - discussed our daughter and the person she is as a result of our parenting (the cupcake helped in this section)
Extended family relationships - this talks about our relationships with our families together as a couple
Physical/Social environment - outlines our income, home value, RRSPs and savings etc.
General Parenting - discusses our parenting style and techniques we use and will continue to use with our adopted child
Specialized parenting - states that we have completed PRIDE Training and are aware of the challenges that come along with th role of being full-time parents a second time to an adopted child. This was a long report as it talks about challenges with children who are adopted from orphanages and with medical issues etc.
Family Preparation and Training Activities - this was a report on what we learned at PRIDE Training.
Adoption issues - outlines our desire to expand our family through adoption and our willingness to discuss our future as adoptive parents
Psychological evaluation conclusions - outlines things like providing an open atmosphere to our daughter and our adopted child about their history and appreciating that  by adopting from China we will become a bi-racial family etc.
Placement considerations - says YES, we are reccomended to adopt!!!!

Okay so I know that is a lot of information, but I wasnt really sure how else to show you the amount of information that was in the report. I thought about scanning the document and posting it here but it does include information about our parents and siblings and since this isn't a their blog I didn't think that was fair.
Now I can hear most of you asking..okay, so now what?
So now Kim will send this report to our Adoption Agency (Children's Bridge) where they will approve it and then send it to the Ontario Government. Then we wait.....approximately 6-8 weeks to hear if we are approved by the government. Keep your fingers crossed everyone.
While we wait for our approval we have a mandatory two day training course to attend that is put on by our Adoption Agency. The course is this weekend so you can expect another post about it fairly soon.
Talk to you soon.

Don't worry we are still here....

There has been a lot of people who have been asking us about our adoption lately. I started thinking, when was the last time I wrote a blog post? So I took a few minutes today to check. JULY! Oops, sorry everyone. Don't worry I didn't completely forget about our followers, life has just become very busy. Not really busy in the adoption world, but busy with back to school, and sports, and back to daycare etc. I was waiting to finish our home study before I wrote another post so that I could summarize the whole process. I am still going to do that because we only have one more session to go and it is in a couple of weeks. So I apologize for the delay, but I promise the wait will be worth it.

Happy Fall Everyone.

Just the beginning...paperwork.

Summer is here and we are busier than ever with our 2 year old daughter. So, I apologize for the delay in posting this update.
After our PRIDE Training we were in contact with our Adoption Practitioner Kim to set up our first meeting. Once we set up a date for Kim to come and meet us she sent us a very large package of documents to fill out. I know that this is just the first of MANY papers we will have to complete so I tried to keep an open mind as checked off boxes on a variety of surveys. Here is a list of the documents/information we needed to provide to Kim. Keep in mind this is just the documentation required for the Ontario Government. I will have to write another post about the China paperwork.

• References - both of us had to provide; 1 relative, 1 long-time friend, 1 current friend who knows both my husband and I
•  General application form - provided general information about us and our desires for an adopted child
• Release of information forms - Doctors release form, three forms for Kim (Adoption Practitioner) to release information to Children's Bridge, Children's Aid Society, and the Ontario Government
• A memo to adoptive parents - outlined  the roles of our Adoption Practitioner, Children's Bridge, and the Ontario Government
• Financial information - we provided our employment income, monthly disposable income, monthly expenses, and our assets, liabilities and net worth
• A child welfare record check release
• Survey #1 - This survey asked questions about our upbringing. Relationships with our parents, their parenting styles and abilities, their discipline techniques, and personal values. We also checked boxes that described our spouses characteristics and their roles in our relationship. The last section of the survey dealt with our current relationship with our parents and any medical information about our family that would be considered important (depression, drug/alcohol abuse etc) This survey was very intense, it asked a lot of personal questions that were sometimes awkward to answer.
• Survey #2 - The second survey asked questions about my husband and I. Specifically questioning if we have any past criminal records, bankruptcy issues, and drug or alcohol abuse. It also asked if we have received counselling or therapy for a number of issues.
• Medicals - each of us require our doctors to fill out a medical for both the Ontario Government and China.
• Police Checks - we are required to have a local police check as well as a RCMP Interpol Security clearance (for this one we have to be fingerprinted)

And apparently that is just the beginning! It felt very good to send back a majority of the information to Kim. It made me feel like we accomplished one more thing on a very long list of "to do" items. Once I get a little more time I will write about our first meeting (Home Study) with our Adoption Practitioner Kim. Stay tuned...

* I apologize for the lack of excitement in this blog post, unfortunately I feel like a lot of posts in the future may be like this :(

PRIDE Training Day #4 - We did it!!!

It's official (according to the certificate pictured above), we have completed PRIDE Training. Woo hoo!
Our last day was full of useful information and was probably the class we enjoyed the most. We spent most of the morning talking about our SAFE Homestudy Assessment (the next step in our adoption journey). We were able to ask a lot of questions about the process which eased our minds a little bit. Basically, the Homestudy is an assessment of the two of us and our immediate family by our Adoption Practitioner. Sounds intrusive doesn't it. On top of helping us to prepare our documentation to apply for our adoption, our practitioner will be making sure we are ready, willing, and capable of providing a home for an adopted child. Although our house is already equipped with child locks and safety features there will be a lot of other things that she will need to know about us before we can send in our adoption application. There will be reference checks, and physicals, and police checks (apparently my husband will also need one from Australia since he lived there for 7 months, that should be fun) etc. But I promise I will explain this process more once we are actually in the middle of it.
Our afternoon was filled with information on topics that will be important once our little boy is home with us. Topics like how to create a healing and nurturing home and how to use positive adoption language with everyone we come into contact with. I know that positive adoption language will be especially important for us since we will be adopting a child of a different race. We will need to be prepared for difficult questions from family, friends, children, and strangers about our child. It will be something our family will face our entire lives. Hopefully we will answer those questions in a way that all of our children will feel equally loved by their Mom and Dad. Because no matter how our family was made, all of our children will be our own.
Something that really interested me from our discussion on Saturday was creating Life Books for your adopted child. Life Books are a way for children to learn about themselves. They are essentially a photo book about their story on how they came into our lives. I love photo books and always have since I was a child, I think I will really enjoy making one for our boy and I am sure it will also strengthen my connection with him throughout our journey. It is a book that I hope he will refer to and be proud of his entire life.
I feel like I could write this post forever, the information we received in PRIDE Training was so beneficial and important and I'm finding it hard to fit it all into one little post. We are also very excited, we are now one step closer to adopting our child. It is crazy to think that after 4 years of talking about it we are now actually on our way!

PRIDE Training Day #3

Last weeks training heaviness felt like it lasted most of the week. Luckily we went to a great concert on Friday night with some good friends. The concert gave us a chance to relax and recharge in preparation for another training session on Saturday. Unfortunately, we stayed out far too late on Friday night. I mean it seemed like a good idea at the time, but our drive to Burlington the next morning ended up being a little more rushed than we had hoped.
The first half of our day we discussed cultural heritage. We shared stories about how we have learned about our own heritage and discussed the importance of learning about our adopted child's background as well. I really liked one of the concepts that was brought up by our leader Anne. She said that if you adopt a child from a different heritage or culture you then also adopt that culture. So once we adopt our boy from China our family will be Irish, Scottish, English, Canadian, and Chinese. Whoa that's a lot, but you get what I mean.
In the morning a guest speaker came in to talk about her experience when she adopted her two girls from China. At first we were very excited to hear her story but then quickly realized that her experience was much different than ours will be. She adopted almost 10 years ago when adoptions from China were a quicker process and when there were less restrictions on the parents applying to adopt. It was nice to hear a more relaxed approach to an international adoption. It gave us a bit of hope that maybe our adoption wont be very complicated, and that someday we can come and share our story to a training class to ease their minds about international adoption.
A majority of the afternoon was spent talking about openness in adoption. This is a subject in adoption that admittedly my husband and I are very scared of. We learned about the importance of keeping an open relationship (if possible) with the birth family of your child. Since we are adopting from another country and the likelihood of having information on our child's birth parents will be very slim, this topic didn't interest us much. We do know that someday our child may want to try and search for his birth parents. We will support him in any way we can to help him in his search if necessary. If he has a specific caregiver from China that he is attached to we will do anything we can to keep the communication open between them. At first by sending photos of him once he is home, and then possibly going back to visit where he lived once he is a little older. The openness that we will have will likely differ from most of the adoptions of our "classmates", as most of them will be hoping to adopt infants from Canada. In order to provide us with an example of an open adoption, a couple that finished their PRIDE Training course in 2013 came in to speak to us. They have just finalized their adoption of their now 10 month old, and they spoke of their relationship with the child's birth mother. They have ongoing contact with the birth mother and they have had two visits with her and the child already. They even talked about inviting her to the child's first birthday party. The concept of open adoption makes sense to me, and I can see the benefits for the child in the future by having open communication with the birth parents. But, I do know that it is not for me. At least not in the same way it is for our guest speakers. This is a difficult thing to admit because it is a selfish reason to adopt from another country but I am glad that I know and understand this about myself.
We have only one more Saturday left of PRIDE Training. I don't know how they are going to fit the remaining information into the final session because it seems like there is still a lot to cover. I guess we will see, stay tuned for an update after our last session.

PRIDE Training Day #2

The only word I can think of to describe our PRIDE training yesterday would be 'heavy'. It was a long day of some difficult topics that left both of us a little drained and in some ways discouraged. We know that adopting a child comes with many challenges but we came out of the class yesterday feeling like all of the knowledge we have gained over the past two years while raising our daughter will be useless. Of course we know that this is not true but it doesn't change how we were feeling at the end of the day.
The three main topics that were covered yesterday were human development, attachment, and loss. A guest speaker arrived in the morning to talk more about child development, specifically speech. She is a Speech Language Pathologist and she talked about the services that are available to any child with delays in development. We know that our little boy will have some degree of a cleft lip or palate and she touched on the process that we will likely need to go through in order for him to receive speech therapy.
After lunch we watched a video that made us both very emotional. It featured a young girl and her baby brother and their journey through the foster care system. I found it very difficult to watch a video portraying the horrible things that some children witness and experience in their lives when their parents aren't able to take care of them and when the foster care system fails them. I ended up leaving the room as I could not watch any more. Chris stayed to watch the end of the video so that once I returned he could tell me that the story ended well. It left both of us feeling scared, helpless, and very sad. No child should have to go through something like that and it made us realize that there are very real problems and complications that come with adoption no matter what process you go through. We have always been so focused on our international adoption that we sometimes fail to see the problems that are happening right here. It made us think about being foster parents in the future once our children are older (this is something we have talked about before) and it created some really good conversations between us on our drive home.
As I said in my last post, there is one other family in our training group who have a child already. They asked our leader that has one biological child and three internationally adopted children for recommendations on integrating siblings in the adoption process. This ended up being another topic that we talked about a lot on our drive home (good thing we have an hour and a half drive, gives us lots of time to talk). One thing she recommended is that one really good way to include your child is to bring them with you when you go and get your adopted child, especially if it is an international adoption. This is something that we have always struggled with as we weren't really sure what was the best thing to do. So as crazy as it may sound, we have decided that Maeve will travel with us to China so that she can meet her little brother at the same time we are meeting him. That way she will feel completely involved in the entire process and we can start to connect as a family immediately. So now comes the fun part of teaching a 2 year old that she has a younger brother that lives in another country. And that we will someday travel on a very long plane ride to pick him up so that he can be in our family forever. I think its time to hit the children's section of our local bookstore.....

PRIDE Training Day #1

Yesterday was our first day of PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education) training. PRIDE training is a mandatory training course for anyone who plans to adopt in Ontario.
We didn't really know what to expect when we arrived in Burlington at 9 am yesterday but we were both excited to get the process started. Our training session was lead by to co-leaders. One is an adoption professional and the other is an experienced adoptive parent. There were 9 other couples in the session with us. We introduced ourselves and our reasons for choosing adoption fairly early on in the morning. That is when we felt much more at ease. Although most of the people in the room have chose adoption because they cannot have children on their own, we still felt some comfort knowing that most of the people in the room are likely going through the same things we are and are probably feeling the same as well. It was hard to listen to people who have struggled with infertility share their stories. It made me feel bad at times because our reasons for adopting are so different. It's hard to explain what I mean but because our story of adoption has always been a happy one I found it hard to listen to couples that have tried for years to have children and have now turned to adoption because some of them have no other choice. It doesn't make any one's reason for adoption any better or worse it just makes our journeys a bit different. We didn't discuss what types of adoption the other couples were pursuing (whether private or international etc) because some of the people attending are still not sure what they want to do and the sessions are designed to help people make an informed decision. We do know that the couple that was sitting with us also have a daughter and are adopting internationally. Although our stories are a bit different it was nice to know that someone else in the room is just as focused on the international adoption information as we are.
The information we received yesterday was more of an overview of the different types of adoption and the processes and laws surrounding the process. Some of the information was relevant and some was not but overall we felt that the session was helpful and we weren't dreading coming back for the next 3 weekends. I am personally looking forward to the next session because we will be talking about attachment and loss issues in adoption. These are issues that come with any adoption whether international or not so it should be very interesting.
I will try to keep everyone posted as we proceed through our training. For those of you who are following us please let me know if you received an email when I updated the blog.

Follow Us

I have added something new to the Blog that I know will make some of you very happy. Below, on the right hand side of the page you will see "Follow by Email". If you type your email address in the box and then press submit...Presto.... you will be following our blog. That way you shouldn't have to worry about missing a post.
Thank you in advance for all of those who follow our journey.

Congratulations?!

Recently a few of our friends pointed out that the child we will be adopting has likely been born by now. To be honest, I hadn't thought about it in that way (at least not recently) as I have been so caught up in paperwork and upcoming training.

Somewhere in China a little boy has been born and has likely been given up for adoption already. It is so sad to think that we wont even get to meet him until he is over a year old. That is something that I am sure will make this process very hard to understand sometimes. I am also hoping that having this in mind will keep us motivated and strong throughout the endless paperwork and bills while we wait to be approved as parents for this little boy.
Being prospective adoptive parents is very different than going through the journey of getting pregnant and having your own baby for many obvious reasons. I think about this fact often. How if this was our birth child we would have received dozens of cards from family and friends congratulating us on baby #2. People would be asking  "how are you feeling" each day as my belly grew larger. (Not that I miss that, as most of you know I did not enjoy pregnancy, although it was completely worth the end result!) Having a child somewhere across the world feels so different. Some days it is exciting to think about, other days overwhelming, and some days it is just sad. I am not saying this so that more people ask how we are doing, or ask where we are in the process. People are doing that all the time and it is wonderful. It is just an observation that I have had. Something that weighs on my mind now and then.

Update: Last month Chris and I registered for PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information Development and Education)Training. PRIDE Training is essentially a prep course for adoptive parents. For more information please click on this link: http://secure.adoptontario.ca/mobile/pride.main.aspx#&ui-state=dialog
Our training takes place over 4 weekends in Burlington, Ontario in May and June. One full day each weekend (9 am - 5 pm).
Once our PRIDE Training is complete we will start to work with our Adoption Practitioner (approximately July). I promise I will provide an update before then.

Somewhere Between

Last night as I was flipping through the TV channels I noticed a documentary on TVO called 'Somewhere Between'. I think it was luck, or fate that I stumbled upon this movie just as it was starting. The film starts off by showing a family that has recently adopted from China. The mother in the film is talking about all of the questions that her adopted daughter will someday have and she reflects upon the fact that she may not know all of the answers. From there the mother turns into the filmmaker stating that she is making this film for her daughter so that someday she can watch this and have some answers to her questions.
The uniqueness of this film is that instead of following the parents who have adopted the child from China, it follows the lives of four teenage girls who were adopted from China. I found the film very moving and eye opening from a prospective adoptive parents point of view. Although the film takes place in the U.S I thought the issues the girls experienced were globally relatable.

I would recommend watching this film to anyone that has questions about our adoption. It may clarify a few things for you or it may bring up more questions or concerns.
Watch for it on TVO or search for it to tape on you PVRs. I think I might even download it on iTunes to show to our families. It is just too good not to share.

Here is a link to the website for movie if you are looking for more information. http://www.somewherebetweenmovie.com/directors-statement

Happy New Year....again!

I know that people have been anxiously awaiting a new post from us. This will just be a quick one as our family is getting caught up on everyday life after my daughter and I took a quick trip to Florida. While I was away Children's Bridge sent us a waiver and request for first payment for our adoption. My husband and I haven't even had a chance to look at it. This could be because we are too busy, or it could be because we are afraid to see how much money we already owe.

Tomorrow, February 19, 2015 is the first day of the 2015 Chinese New Year. 2015 is the year of the Sheep. In China sheep are considered lucky animals. Hopefully this Chinese year will bring our family luck in our adoption process. I look forward to learning more about Chinese traditions and celebrating this day in the future with our family.

Happy New Year everyone.

Thank you!

Yesterday was the big day, the day that we finally sent out our blog link to our family and friends.
The response has been overwhelming! So many people took the time to write back to us and send us well wishes for our journey. The encouraging words brought more than a few tears to my eyes. Thank you everyone for being so supportive, it is nice to know that we will have family and friends cheering us on throughout this process.

Happy New Year

Back in March of 2014 we completed the first step in the adoption process. We paid a yearly Children's Bridge membership fee and we contacted the Program Manager for the Waiting Child (WC) China program. The phone call with our Program Manager covered information such as; age, gender, and special needs of the children in the WC China program. We discussed timelines for the program and the next steps for us.
After the phone conversation we were emailed reading material pertaining to cleft lip/palate, an information package outlining the adoption process, and the contact information of a family who has been through the WC China program. We were required to contact the family to hear their adoption story and ask them questions about the program. The purpose of the reading material and contacting the family was to ensure that the process was really right for us. We found the conversation with the family very helpful. It provided us with information that was not in any of the printed materials and gave us a contact to use throughout the process.

Once we felt confident that we wanted to proceed with the program we called back our Program Manager to be placed on the callback list. The callback list is for families that have paid their fees to be in the WC China program but do not have their paperwork complete (i.e. home study, background checks etc). We have also been placed on this list because the Chinese government requires that there be an 18 month age difference between the child we have and the child we adopt. That means our daughter needs to be 18 months older than the little boy we bring home from China. At the time of our initial conversation, the youngest boys with a clef lip/palate what were being adopted were 16-18 months of age. At this time our daughter wasn't even a year old yet so even if we had our paperwork complete we wouldn't  be able to move to the active families list (a list for families who are waiting for their paperwork to be accepted by the Chinese Government). Our Program Manager advised us to wait until January 2015 to start the next step in the process. The next step is finding an Adoption Practitioner (Social Worker) and doing PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education) Training. http://secure.adoptontario.ca/mobile/pride.main.aspx#&ui-state=dialog

 

 

So here we are, it's January 11, 2015 and we are starting the next step of our journey. Happy New Year everyone.

A little more background..

Years before our daughter was born my husband and I attended an information session held by Children's Bridge. At the session we learned that there are a number of countries that you can adopt from. At that time China was already one of the countries we were interested in adopting from. We learned that China offers an adoption program called the "Waiting Child Program".

This program is for families that are interested in adopting children with special needs (minor handicaps and/or health problems). Some of these minor health problems were correctable, and by accepting a child in this program your wait for a child was sometimes cut in half. We heard that life for the children in this program was often quite horrible. As an example, in China, children with a cleft lip/palate are seen as being cursed. They are not accepted in society and are not able to go to school or get a job. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A common medical condition that can often be fixed was seen as a curse? Right then I wanted more information about the program. The next thing I remember was seeing the cost of an adoption from China in our information book and I looked at my husband in disbelief. I thought right then, we might as well go home because there was no way we could afford to do this. But then, Children's Bridge popped in a little video documenting one family's journey to adoption. Of course this family was adopting a child from China and by the end of the video I was weeping all over the budget information sheet that I had been fretting over only a few minutes prior. I looked over at my husband and this time we both knew there was no turning back now.

Here is a link to the Waiting Children adoption page on the Children's Bridge website. This will give you a better idea of the requirements from us as adoptive parents, the timelines of the program, and the process. http://www.childrensbridge.com/pages/china_wc.html

Our Journey Begins

Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of adopting a child from another country. When I was younger I thought that meant sending $20/month to Alex Trebek  so that the little girl or boy on my TV screen would have clean drinking water and school supplies. As I grew older and I learned what adoption really meant my passion grew even stronger. I was also lucky enough to have two positive examples of adoption within my family as two of my Aunts were adopted.
 

 Luckily I married someone who agreed to share in my adoption dream. He knew very early on that I wanted to adopt, and I knew that he wanted to have a biological child. So we agreed to meet halfway and now we have a beautiful little girl who turned one in May 2014. We both adore our daughter but we know that our family will not be complete until we adopt a child.

 

After many years of research we have decided to adopt a boy from China. The company that will be facilitating our adoption is called Children's Bridge. Here is a link to their website if you would like more information. http://www.childrensbridge.com/
Welcome to our adoption journey.