The "Whys" (a very brief and short version...)

Sometimes (okay, lets be honest, most of the time!) when people hear we are adopting they look at me like I am crazy...I can just see the thoughts racing through their brains: "Did I hear correctly, did the mom standing at my counter with the double stroller just say 'we are adopting two toddlers'???"  Then I get the "oh! You mean you are adopting these two!" (pointing to my stroller), I:  "oh, no, they are not home yet! we are adopting internationally, these are my two other sons!" :)  (and I go off and chortle to myself, all the while contemplating that indeed, they are right...I am probably stark raving mad...)
I'd like to give a little background to why we are adopting,  and as I'm obviously no great blogger ;) here is an excerpt from an email we sent to family

"First then, our reasons for adopting. Probably the core reason is that the Bible makes it clear that God has a special love for orphans. We do want to be passionate about the same things our Father is passionate about. Of course, the Lord is passionate about many things, but a love for children is something specifically that God had been working in our lives. We have wanted to adopt for a very long time (long before we were married). We know that we love children very much and we wanted to make a home for a child who would not otherwise have a family. When the Lord moved us to our current location, he put us with a lot of other Christians who are passionate about adoption. That brought the desire back to the surface and got us to researching it in more detail. We found out that in many ways right now is an ideal time to adopt for our family. Some of those are:

• Big Brother and Little Man are young, this will give them a chance to grow up with their adopted brothers as a natural part of the family.
• We have a tremendous number of resources to help us right now, with many families around us who have adopted and friends who are adoptees.
• In international adoption, there are lots of rules about how many children you are allowed to have when adopting, how much money you must be earning, age of parents, length of marriage, etc. We are in what may be a narrow window to meet these requirements.

But why China? We first researched foster care adoption here in the US, but due to the nature of foster care adoption, we felt it was not appropriate for us while we have small children already in the home. We then looked into domestic infant adoption, but realized that there are many loving families who are eager to adopt a healthy baby from the US, and we knew we wanted to adopt a child who had little chance of a family. So then we began researching international adoption. Conservative estimates of the need show that there are over 130 million orphans across the world (see UNICEF's report 2008). However, in many countries there are also legitimate concerns about child trafficking or unethical adoption practices. After serious research, it appears that China has both a significant need among their orphans who have medical and or special needs and the government is working hard to avoid child trafficking. In addition, we have many, many Chinese friends, which has given us a love for the Chinese and their culture. I (doctormommy) grew up among the Chinese, and consider it to be a home culture.
After settling on China, we then began to research in more detail the specific needs of the orphans there. We found out that some 90% of all prospective adoptive parents are only willing to accept a healthy baby girl. Others have opened their hearts to accept a girl with special needs, but the boys with special needs are statistically the least likely to be adopted (any country, any agency!) and are left with little hope of ever having a family. God leads each family differently, but again our goal was to seek out the children who needed help most, and we love little boys! So we pursued adopting a boy with special needs.

We should insert a note here about the adoption agency we are working with, as some of you have expressed concerns about stories you have heard about unscrupulous agencies. We researched agencies carefully as well. We found that Chinese Children Adoption International (CCAI) is consistently rated the highest among adoptive parents. The Chinese government also rates them as the number one agency working with Chinese orphans. CCAI also works hard to care for and provide opportunities for children who will never be adopted. Finally, CCAI, has the among the lowest fees of any agency (their fees are also published up front and they do not add any hidden fees later), this is because they are genuinely committed to finding families for orphans, not just skimming money from parents.

So in April of this year we began the application process. Our agreement was signed, paid for and accepted on July 10th along with a list of special needs (Medical conditions) we were willing to accept. At that point, we got started on compiling our adoption dossier (a huge collection of legal documents) and applying for our home study (we had been able to do a little of this prior to approval). The general process for special needs adoptions is the preliminary application, followed by home study and dossier, and after all of that is done, a family begins to wait for a child match. We were told that a child match generally took between six months to two years. Imagine our surprise then, when on Friday, July 27th we received a call from CCAI! They had a 15 month old child who had been up for adoption since he was a couple months old. However, we were the first family who had listed his need as one we would be able to consider. We spent the weekend researching Little Lion's  file and praying about him. Our agency would have given us more time, but we were confident that the Lord intended this precious boy for us. We called the agency on Monday, and a week after we sent in our letter of intent, We received pre-approval!
Before CCAI had called us, we had been looking at another child on their list that we thought would be a good fit for our family. After accepting Little Lion, we still couldn't get Little Monkey off our hearts. After considering and praying about him, we asked to see his file on Sept 7th. We reviewed his file very carefully and consulted with many physicians and other adoptive families. We spent another week praying about Little Monkey and seeking advice. We came to the conclusion that while we know adopting two children at once is a tremendous amount of work, and while Little Monkey's needs appear to be very extensive, we believe that he too is our son and that the Lord has called us lay down our lives and our comfort to extend His love to these two precious boys. We received pre-approval for Little Monkey, 8 days after our letter of intent"
For us it has been a whirlwind...as a physician who has cared for many children in the foster system, I originally thought years ago that this was where we would find our children, and maybe someday it will be! What a big change then to go to adopting internationally "one infant" to "hmm, make that two toddlers!"  However, for us this is the exact right place we need to be now, and we feel so honored and privileged to be pursuing adopting these amazing little boys! 
PS: What about those bloggy names??? Well, our dear nanny dubbed the 4 boys, and so far they have stuck...we will see as they grow! 

Chuāngkǒu làzhú

Chuangkou lazhu: literally "window candle" a sign of welcome home, a light that says "come in, there is warmth, there is shelter". But for us it also says, "we'll keep the light burning till you get home!"  This is a peek in our window where the light shines till our sons get home.