Good Question

I got a good question on one of my recent posts. It was.. "Are you still adopting the little angel with Down Syndrome?"

Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for asking. I don't blog much about our little daughter because I get so discouraged. We have been wanting and waiting to adopt her for well over 2 years now. Our little girl has still not been cleared for international adoption. We did not know she was not officially cleared at the time we committed to adopt her. We have had a very hard time lately deciding what to do. Our options as we see them are:
1. Continue to wait for the beautiful girl we have loved and waited for, and continue to pray that she will someday come home to us.
2. Go to the same country to adopt a different child. This is the easiest and the hardest choice. easiest due to paperwork- we are already approved for adoption in that country and wouldn't have to re-do any paperwork. Hardest because we would be in the same country as the girl we already consider our daughter, and not be able to bring her home. We consider this choice only because we hope we would get to see her, hold her, tell her we love her, and continue to hope that SOMEDAY we'd be able to come back for her. We don't really feel this would be so fair to the new child we would adopt from there. Our focus would be split. If we felt a strong pull to another child in the same orphanage, we would consider this option, go for the new child, and hope to someday go back.
3. switch countries all together and start over again. We have strongly considered this option. We feel a pull to Ethiopia, but so far have not found a child we are pulled to. We feel like we will some day adopt from Ethiopia, but so far, that day is not today.

So far, we have opted for #1. We'll see what our future holds. For now, we continue to grow with adoptions from the US. We are still working on "N"s adoption. His severance trial is tomorrow, and hopefully the adoption trial in a month. He does not have Down Syndrome. He will be 4 in about a week and a half. After his adoption is final, we'll post his name and pictures.

And I will be making an announcement very shortly about another upcoming adoption in our household! Stay tuned.... (I'm waiting until I have more details about when this child will be coming home before I make the official announcement).

Plus, we are still a foster family, so we still have borrowed children from time to time. I do not post about them much due to privacy issues.

Updates on our boys-- N and Luke are in preschool and doing very well-- 3 afternoons a week. They love it. Landon is also doing amazing in school. I love watching him blossom. His favorite thing to do is draw, and he is getting quite good at it.

And Dylan. Our sweet angel with Down syndrome that is already home. HE IS WALKING!!!! well, starting to anyway! he is up to about 8-10 steps at a time. AND he has a tooth, finally-- a molar! AND he is climbing up the stairs all by himself. AND he can climb onto all the furniture. Oh, goodie! another little monkey boy around the house! He is such a doll. He is by far my busiest child. I thought Luke was busy, but Dylan puts Luke to shame. I chase him around all day, getting him off furniture, off the stairs (Scott installed a gate last night), out of the cupboards, etc. He loves watching Signing Time videos, and is learning! He signs "more, eat, ball, music, and all done". "more and eat" are the only two he does perfectly, the others are his version of the sign, but that's okay for now. He is a little smarty pants. I will try to get a video of him walking soon and post it. so cute.

Oh, and about the last post-- our mommy bird flew away and never came back. I'm sure something happened to her. so no baby birds were able to hatch :o(