Immeasurably More

Our Family Is Growing!!

That's right! We are expecting another baby from Korea! WE ARE SO EXCITED!!!

We actually started the process back in June. We sent in our initial application to the agency we worked with last time. Unlike last time, they had a pretty long waiting list. But, we still needed to finalize Riley's adoption and update our homestudy so we weren't too concerned about having a longer wait.

In September we finalized Riley's adoption; in November we updated our homestudy and had our physicals completed; in January we were fingerprinted again. Now we were definitely ready and starting to get a little anxious because we still hadn't even be able to fill out the official application. In February we got a letter from our agency that said that things had really slowed down and there were about 23 families whose documents were in Korea waiting to be matched and there were about 23 families (like us) who were still on the waiting list just to apply. The letter was very upfront about the fact that they have no idea when we'll be able to apply but that it really could potentially take a much longer time. We were pretty discouraged at this point.

On one of my online Korean adoption forums I posted that we were in this situation of limbo and several families suggested we look into another agency. I emailed the director and explained our situation and asked if they would work with our local homestudy agency since our homestudy was ready to go (and this was the only part of our process to this point that we had put in a lot of money). The director emailed me back and said that they would be glad to work with our agency and that we needed to start with our application. Within a week we had completed the two applications, taken an online course, and mailed everything in.

This past Tuesday the last piece of paperwork was approved!!!! So, what this means is that now we are on "the list" and can be matched with a baby at any time!! We did not choose gender--even though we could this time--we will be thrilled with a boy or a girl. There is still about a 99% chance that we will be matched with a boy. The estimated wait (again this is always changing) for a boy is about 0-5 months. So, we are hopeful that by the end of the summer we will be matched and our baby would be home about 3-4 months later!

We are so thrilled to have the opportunity to adopt again! It is such a hard process with so many emotional ups and downs but it is so worth it in the end. Riley is definitely proof of that!