Everybody's doing it!

In the year or so after we started the process to adopt Daniel, I started following the blogs of six families who were also adopting an older (10 +) child from China who would become the oldest child living at home (some families had already raised children to college age or beyond).  It was neat to follow their journeys in parallel with ours.  Most of the families traveled before us, one traveled after us, and one we met up with in China.  :-)  One of the kids was from Daniel's orphanage.  Two of them have albinism.  Most of them are boys.  So I feel a certain kinship with these families that I would otherwise never have known.  That made it all the more astonishing to me when a whopping four of the six announced that they were adopting again, within less than a year of the Big Upheaval.  I feel like such an outlier!  ;-)  Of course, I'm thrilled for them and for the children they are going to be adding to their families.  But wow, it is hard to picture us with another one right now!

Part of what is going on, I feel sure, is that shortly before we started the process to adopt Daniel, China added a new rule that adopting families could re-use their dossier (the set of documents submitted by families to China showing the the family does, in fact, meet China's requirements for adoption and that they are capable of caring for a particular child) within a year of its being logged in by China.  This rule means that if a family applies to adopt a second child within a year of their dossier being received by China, they can bypass a great deal of hassle in producing official documents, and also save a significant amount of money (like, one or two thousand dollars).  When we were doing our paperwork for Daniel's adoption, we asked for immigration approval for two children, just in case we decided to re-use our dossier.  But with an unexpected surgery, an unexpected vehicle purchase (and the attendant rise in car insurance), and higher grocery bills...we don't exactly have the money to adopt again internationally right now!  And while I do know families who have started out with no more money than we did and managed to complete their adoptions in miraculous ways...I also don't think Daniel is ready for another sibling yet.  (Although he did surprise me the other day by asking, if we adopted another child, could it be another 14-year-old?)  We are really pleased with how Daniel is attaching to us, but he does require a lot of attention.  Partly, he wants a lot of nurturing to make up for what he didn't get earlier in life.  That is fine, but it does take up a lot of time.  (As in, his bedtime routine is at least three times as long as Esther's!  And it could easily be longer if I did everything for him every night that he would like.)  And partly, he is still a little...I think "insecure" is a good descriptive word.  We don't have super intense sibling rivalry (thankfully!), and he has gotten pretty good at home about allowing me to finish my sentence or listen to a sentence in a conversation with somebody else before he butts in with his own question or need or request for translation.  He does pretty well at church, too.  But in other environments, he hangs all over me and monopolizes my conversation.  And he does not entertain himself at all, except when he's on the computer or doing a home maintenance project, so most of the time that he is home he requires at least one parent to be giving him attention.  Which means that if we brought home another child who was also very needy (as most children would be during the trauma of transitioning into a new family and culture!), I think that would be really difficult for him.  In a year or two he could be a huge asset in helping a new sibling transition, but right now, barring a voice from heaven that knows better than we do, we can't justify stressing him out that way.  I do think he would survive the stress--he is a pretty resilient kid--but it would be much easier for him (and for the rest of us!!) if he could get really and truly settled first.  So as hard as it is to read about other children in need of families and to know that we could make a difference to them ("X desperately wants a family of his own!  He needs somebody who is paper-ready to step forward and adopt him before he turns 14 and loses his opportunity forever!"), the sad truth is that there will still be children aging out and in need of families when the time comes that we are ready to start this adventure again.  Not to mention children who could be adopted young and not have to grow up with the pain of not belonging to anyone.

I have to make a confession here.  While thinking about this topic, I went into my e-mail to check the date our dossier was received in China.  It was April 19.  So we have about two and a half months to make up our mind if we want to re-use this dossier.  I don't think things are going to change that dramatically in two and a half months, so we are probably going to remain outliers.  :-)  But to those who are adopting again:  I am so excited to see more children coming into families who want them so much, and we will be following your journeys and cheering you on!!