Aaron's Story

So if you have made it to the blog then you obviously know that this is about our family’s process of adopting our daughter from China.  While a main purpose of this blog is to provide all of our family and friends with updates on where we are in the process, I (Aaron) realized that some of you may not know why we are adopting.  So this will be my first post on this blog (or any other blog for that matter) with some of my reasons for adopting.

 

Let me start out by giving you a little background about me.  Growing up, I always knew that I wanted to eventually get married and have children.  However, I was never really around children until I got into high school.  During my Junior year, I had my driver’s license but I didn’t have a car.  So my parents decided that on days when I had to stay late at school I could drive my mom’s car to school and then I would go pick her up from work when I was done.  At the time my mom worked at an elementary school where she was a teacher’s assistant for the Special Education teacher.  Most of her day was spent working with two children in particular who were mentally disabled and one was a little boy named Matthew.  When I would go pick her up I would usually get there early and wait for her to be finished.  After a while I would try to help my mom out and this eventually turned in to me volunteering several afternoons a week with these two children.  Matthew got to the point where every day he would ask my mom where I was and why I wasn’t there.  I volunteered at the school and watched Matthew grow up for several years.  My mom still occasionally talks to Matthew’s mom and to this day he will still ask about me sometimes.  For the next several years I didn’t have much interaction with children.  The closest I came was playing bass in a worship band for the children’s service at our church.

 

One of the last things I did before I moved from Virginia Beach to Maryland was to go on a mission trip with my church.  The trip was to Atlanta and the purpose of the trip was to work with a church for homeless people in Atlanta.  While we were there, we attended church on Sunday morning where we got to serve homeless people by providing them with clothes and toiletries.  We also worked at a house that was going to be used to get homeless people back on their feet by providing them with a place to stay while they started new jobs.  We also were going to be helping the church at one of the housing projects in Atlanta.  At the projects we were going to be setting up a computer lab for the children in the projects to be able to use and we were also going to be running a summer camp for the kids while we were there.  I was fine with helping at the church on Sunday morning and working at the house.  I was really excited to be able to set up the computer network because that is something that I feel more comfortable with. 

 

However, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to helping at the summer camp.  I was asking myself, what do I have to offer these kids, how am I going to relate to them?  I was asked to help with 4 and 5 year olds with one other person and I was more than willing to let her do the work and just tell me how I could help.  The first couple days went fine and I was even able to make the kids laugh, but one day one of the little girls got really upset at me and left.  I don’t remember why she got upset and left but the rest of the day I was pretty upset myself.  That night God took the opportunity to point out something obvious but hard to hold on to.  If I was so upset and saddened that one little girl that I had met only days earlier was mad at me then that is just a small taste of how he feels about all of the people that he created to love him that don’t even know who he is.  Of course the next day the little girl returned and had a great time and everything was fine.  I may have thought that I was going on that mission trip to help others and teach them about God’s love but in the end I was really going there so that God could teach me something far more important and valuable than anything I could have done in Atlanta.

 

When I first started dating Sherry, she was living in Pasadena, MD and I was in Virginia Beach, VA, so we would have to travel the 4 hours to see each other every couple of weeks.  On one of my trips to Maryland, Sherry was going to be babysitting her nephew Sam and niece Laney.  Since we only got to see each other every couple of weeks, I had no problem offering to spend the evening with the 3 of them.  I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal and we would just get to hang out and watch kid’s shows with them or watch them play and Sherry and I would be able to hang out and talk.  Little did I know that my night was going to be spent sitting in front of a computer with a 5 year old Sam sitting on my lap telling me about a couple hundred of the Lilo & Stitch experimental monsters for an hour or two.  It was only a couple of months later that Sherry and I got married and Sam and Laney were now my nephew and niece also.  We lived about 5 minutes away from them for a couple of years and got to see them at least once a week.  They both acted like I had been their uncle forever.  I got to experience both good times and bad times with them.  But I will always remember that almost every time I would see Laney she would run to me, saying Uncle Aaron right before she would give me a great big hug.

 

Before long some of our friends were having children and I can remember being in the hospital looking at my friends’ baby and hearing the question “Do you want to hold her?”  Up until this time I had plenty of chances to hold babies and was always more than happy to say no thank you.  But on this occasion I decided that I should.  I’ll be honest, I was pretty scared.  I had never held a baby before (at least not that I can remember) and I was afraid I was going to hurt her.  Of course, nothing bad happened, the baby was fine, and so was I.  I still didn’t offer to hold her very often but a little at a time I became more comfortable with it.

More to come .... Sherry's Story will be next, and then we'll post Our Story! 

We're Buried Under a Mound of Paperwork!!!!

We are currently in the process of completing 2 important parts of the adoption process.

1. Dossier - This is a collection of documents that China requires in order to place us with a child. The documents include things like our birth certificates, marriage certificate, physicals, financial statements, employment verifications, background checks, passports, etc. Sounds easy, right? Ha!!! Each document has to be notarized. Then, each document gets sent to the state it was notarized in to be Certified. Then, each document gets sent to one of the US Embassy/Consulate locations to be Authenticated. So completing our Dossier is a lot of filling out forms, waiting on letters, and writing checks for each document to be certified and authenticated!

2. Homestudy - This is an investigation into our family to make sure we are able to appropriately care for a child. There is a lot of document gathering here as well, but none of the notarizing, etc. Our social worker will meet with us in our home at some point to make sure we have enough room and that our home is safe.

Working on all of this is taking up a lot of our time. We're hoping to have all of this completed in the next 2 months or so and then the real waiting begins.

To help pass the time, we thought we'd share with you some of the reasons we're adopting and how we got to this point. So be on the lookout very soon for that!

Also, we'd like a new name for our blog. We are NOT creative in this respect, so if you have any ideas, we'd love to hear them! We'd like the name to reflect China somehow. Thanks in advance!

As always, if you ever have questions about any of this stuff, please feel free to ask! We're very open and would love to answer questions as best we can.

Aaron, Sherry, and Luke

And We Have a Decision!!!

Well, we finally made a decision on the country we will be adopting from ..... drum roll please ...... We are planning to adopt a little girl from China!!! Since this might be our last child, I (Sherry) really want a girl. So China is our best bet.

We have sent in our application, and we'll be starting the homestudy process very soon. That should be completed in approximately 4-5 months. Then we're probably looking at a wait of at least 2 1/2 years once our homestudy is complete. It's a long wait, but we're looking at the positive side of things. Luke will be old enough to understand the process more and will be able to really be a part of it. We're even planning on him traveling with us to China to bring home his little sister. He'll probably be 4 or 5 by then, so he'll be able to understand a lot and hopefully remember most of it.

Also, the wait is a good thing for us because of the money. We'll have plenty of time to save up the money we need. I (Sherry) am planning to go back to work full-time this summer or fall. I'm not sure yet what I'll be doing. I'm interviewing next week with the school district here. My teaching license is still good for a while, so going back to teaching high school is an option. I'm also looking into some corporate jobs as well. Each has pros and cons, so we'll see how all that plays out. I'm so glad we have such a great home daycare that Luke goes to part-time right now. They are willing to take him full-time whenever we need them to. They really love him and they take such great care of him. He loves going there and playing with his friends. They do all kinds of fun activities and he learns a lot there.

One more thing about the wait and money issue ...... we are also looking into the possibility of a special needs child. We are willing to accept special needs that are correctable and that would be covered under our health insurance. We don't know a lot about this yet, but a pretty common special need that falls into this category is cleft lip/palate. Typically, the wait is much shorter. But of course it depends on if we are able to save up the money by then.

We are so excited about all of this and we're happy to answer any questions, so please feel free to ask! Adoption is not an easy road, and we'll need everyone's support and prayers! Thank you in advance!!!!!

Sherry, Aaron, and Luke

Decisions, Decisions .......

So we've completed all the Information Sessions we signed up for.  Now we need to choose an agency and a country.  We didn't anticipate this part being so difficult.  Choosing an agency is not too hard.  We've compared the pros and cons and we're pretty close to making that decision.

Choosing a country on the other hand, is a completely different story.  There are so many factors to consider ..... how long it takes, how much it costs, age of the available children, gender of the available children, predictability/stability of the country's adoption program, how the children are cared for, special needs .... just to name a few.  So we are praying, thinking, and talking about all our options.  I think we're getting close to making a decision, it's just harder than we thought it would be!

We're still very excited about the process and I think we'd both like for it to move quicker than it does!  The entire process will take a couple of years.  We can see 2 major benefits to this. 

1.  Luke will be older and he'll be able to participate in the process more and understand it more.  He is definitely our first priority and we think it would be great if he was able to understand what was happening.

2.  Money.  I've mentioned this before, but it's a big deal to us.  Mainly because we don't have much!  I (Sherry) will be looking for a full time job soon.  The longer the process takes, the more likely it is that we'll have no problem raising however much we need to raise.  This is actually a relief.  It's stressful to wonder how you're going to come up with $20,000 (or more, depending on the country) when you have nowhere near that in savings.  But knowing that I could work for a year or two and then we could pay for the adoption and replenish our savings account is a good thing.  We can probably also start college savings accounts for both kids with that money.  Then, when we bring our next little one home, I could go back to working part time so I could be home with both kids part time!

So anyway, that's our update for now!  Hopefully we'll be posting soon that we've chosen a country!!!!

Sherry, Aaron, & Luke

Webinar

We participated in a Webinar last night with an agency in NC.  Luke was alternating between crawling around, wanting to type on the computer, and being tired, so it was an interesting evening!  We got some good information, though.

Our next information meeting is next week and this one is one where we actually go to the office and meet there.  That one is with a larger agency, so that should be interesting.

Sherry

Our First Adoption Agency Meeting

We met with a social worker from a local agency last week.  She was great and she answered all of our questions.

 This agency deals with China, Vietnam, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.  They also deal with India, but we'd have to have some Indian heritage, so that one is out for us.  We have to choose a country before we send in our initial application.

 We really feel that international adoption is the right thing for us to do.  Our plan now is to go to a couple of other information meetings before the end of the year.  We also have to work out a plan to save up some money.  Thankfully, the money is due in increments throughout the process  But we still have a lot of money to save.  We're trying to think of some creative ways we can add to our adoption account. 

I (Sherry) will probably end up going back to work full time at some point.  I've already committed to teaching at the community college part time for the Spring semester.  So I'm thinking I would hopefully start something full time in the summer or fall.

November 8

We couldn't make one of the Info Meetings at an agency here in town, so we scheduled an appointment with a social worker for November 8th.  And then we'll participate in a webinar on November 13th about International Adoption.