Our Little Boy

Here He Is! Our precious little boy. He turned 3 in November and is now waiting for us in China. We have not officially chosen a name for him yet but we are certain that we will not be using his Chinese name. As we have been searching for names and hoping that we could find a Chinese one that we like we found a few that we thought may work. However, while trying it out realized that the name just wouldn't work for one reason or another. The latest one was Bo. I thought it was a good name until someone asked how you spell it. I said "B.O." Well at the laughter I realized that was not going to work so well. So goes the Chinese name this cute little boy has. It is not a name that any good mother would allow their child in America to have. No his name is not BO.

We found this little guy through a Yahoo Group that advocates for the waiting children in China. We had found our little girl but knew that we still had a boy to find. After much consideration and a deep urge to go and find him I began to look. I was a bit afraid to ask Doug what he thought, because at the moment one was still a bit uncomfortable for him. I couldn't blame him though. We are a family with 10 children still at home asking a country that has already turned us down in the past to adopt a second child. China had just opened up their policy to adopting two children at one time and we knew it could be a no. We have had enough no's in regards to adoption that we were very gun shy. I still couldn't get the desire to go away to bring two children home at once. This time however I decided to go with what I desired. My desires were to find a child that was being helped or supported by an organization in the US. I had no reason for this, that is just what I wanted to do. I started to look at some web pages of these organizations and requested information from people affiliated with the children. Because of the Advocacy Group I had been keeping up on the blog for Love Without Boundaries I had previously seen a little one they named Brenden. He was adorable and I saw a light in his eye. What really caught my attention was the post they had written on him. They titled it Prince Brenden. Our family has focused for many years on the reality of each child being a child of God, which makes them a Prince or Princess. So I am naturally drawn to those terms. I read through his bio and thought what a cute child. We were still in process with the paperwork for Pre Approval from China for our little girl when I saw him so I just put it out of my mind, or at least I tried.

When I went on the search for a son I contacted someone on our Yahoo Group that works with LWB, Love Without Boundaries, about any little boys that were available that their organization supports. I sent her a list of all the children we would be interested in. She very quickly sent back a short list of names and amazingly Brenden was on it. I was surprised. I read through the few bios again and decided to request the file on Brenden. My Social Worker at our agency was out for a week so we had to wait. I was getting very anxious knowing that others had expressed interest in Brenden as well and anyone in the world could request this child at any time. I had to tell myself that if he was mine then the Lord would make it all work out. The first thing Monday morning when the Social Worker got in she locked his file for us and sent us the info. She was awesome, we had not talked with her, just sent a simple email. As we read through the little bit of info that we were given, and most of the time it is a year old, we decided that his need was something that we could handle. I talked with Doug but didn't want to push. To my surprise he was open. I had been giving little hints about a second child and how much I liked this one, but nothing big. The next day I was walking out of the room and I just couldn't hold it in anymore. I turned around and said "I want Brenden". Doug smiled and said "OK". My reaction was "Really?". I got a yes and that was that.

I emailed the contact person I had with LWB and let her know we were going forward. I was so excited but a bit reserved because we still had to get China's approval. Before we even sent our letter to China requesting to adopt Brenden we had more pictures and updates from other people that had recently been to his orphanage. Our agency warned us to expect questions from China and that it may take some work for our approval. 6 days after sending our letter in, and not questions asked, we heard back from China that we had been pre approved to adopt this little boy. I had feelings that he was the child we had been searching for but now I could let myself really feel and I admitted to myself that he was the little boy we had been longing for and I know with no doubt that he is ours. You can see Brenden's bio by going to lwbcommunity.org and typing in Brenden in the search at the top right.

The whole family is so excited. When we see little children the kids will ask if we can go pick up our kids. It has been hard for them to understand that we have to wait. It has been hard for me to know what is going on in the orphanage and the lack of nurture and stimulation that is there. My children need us and it is hard to sit back and do nothing.

We are hoping that we can go get the children before the summer is up. We will be picking both of them up at the same time. If all works out well Ressa will be coming with us. She will be a great help and I am excited to share this journey with her. This journey began partially because of her.

Tomorrow I will post about our little princess and add a picture as well.

Deanne