Hello all! Welcome to our blog! We're not really the blogging types but due to popular demand (from family and lots of other PAP's /potential adoptive parents/) we've caved in and put ourselves out there on the world wide web... eeek!
So I'm sure you saw the picture and video of Tessa Jane. Cutie huh? But I know you're all wondering how we got here. I'm going to put a timeline on the blog soon but in the meantime I can tell you we've been extremely lucky! Bear with me, this story will take some time.
We decided to adopt a child in July (2006) and began researching our options. After looking at several International programs we decided on China... we have a niece adopted from China and thought that our daughter (all the children available for adoption in China are girls) would feel more comfortable in her own skin if she had a relative/friend/cousin who had the same kind of background, the same dark hair, the same eyes. And, our niece came to her parents only 9 months after they got their documents to China!
We signed with an adoption agency and began the "paperchase." We collected every document you can imagine to prove we are who we are and that we are upstanding citizens. We had several meetings with our social worker and, after we were deemed OK, we received a favorable home study (the social worker put together a 10 page document explaining that we would be good parents). All we have to do now is send our documentation to the FBI (Homeland Security), get fingerprinted and get that official document that says we're not harboring terrorists or printing some underground newspaper in Afghanistan.
Now we find out China has changed their regulations and the wait will be at least 18 months and rumors say 3 years. We CANNOT wait that long so we look into other programs.
Lucky, lucky, lucky (did I say lucky?) for us we found a brand new program adopting babies from Taiwan! We were placed on the waiting list within a month or two of the progam's existence! We feel very fortunate to be among the first 10 or so families from our agency to get this opportunity!!!
There you have it in a (big) nutshell! Tessa is now in a nursery (hospital) environment but will be moved to a foster family soon. We hope to bring her home next Fall... it all depends on the Judge in Taiwan. In the meantime, I'll post update photos of her (we should get new photos every four weeks or so) and when we travel this will be the place to see it all come down!!!
Now go look at that video!!! Honestly, don't you just want to scoop her up????
