We’re adopting a little girl from China!
15 Nov
We wrote this post on November 15, 2009. We’ve finished our paperwork now and are in line to be matched with our daughter, Jade Rose Ford.
Jenny and I decided a while back that we’d both really like to adopt at some point…and we just recently made the decision to start the adoption process from China. We decided on China because we feel a connection to the culture having lived there for a summer together almost seven years ago.
Why China?
Before we were married, Jenny and I went on a summer trip to Shanghai with a group of friends from our church. We fell in love with the people and culture. We’ve always talked about going back to visit or even live there for 6 months or a year at some point – and we think it would be incredible to get to go back with our adopted daughter once she is old enough for it to really mean something to her. We both started learning to speak Mandarin that summer in China, and we plan to start taking classes in Austin to continue learning.
How the process works
We’re just getting starting with the adoption process. We can’t submit our “dossier” (huge pile of paperwork) to China until I turn 30 in May, but the agencies all say it takes around six-months to get the paperwork together anyway, so we are starting it now and will submit it to China on my birthday.
The process takes a long time – probably over three years from when we submit our dossier. So it will be a while, and she may not even be the first kid we end up having, but she is the first we started planning and praying for.
China’s Lost Girls
If you want to learn a little more about the adoption process from China, there is a great 45 minute documentary from National Geographic titled China’s Lost Girls that we bought on DVD, but that you can watch for free at the link below.
Telling Our Parents
We’re super excited about starting the adoption process. We wanted to surprise our parents and a few other family members and get their reactions to the news. We told each of them we wanted to take their picture and then counted down “3..2..1…hey, guess what, we’re adopting a baby!” The photos we ended up taking will definitely make it into a baby book at some point!
Jenny and I decided a while back that we’d both really like to adopt at some point…and we just recently made the decision to start the adoption process from China. We decided on China because we feel a connection to the culture having lived there for a summer together almost seven years ago.
