Paperchasing is how adoptive parents “lovingly” refer to all the paperwork and bureaucracy you must go through to adopt internationally.  Believe me, if it were this much effort to bring a baby into the word biologically, there would be many less children!

Here’s our basic adoption timeline:

October 2004
One night, Kevin and I went on a date to see Bill Cosby in concert.  We arrived too early so we had a chance for uninterrupted talk (a rare treat for us!), and Kevin brought up the subject of adoption. Kevin was adopted as an infant, so adoption has always been close to our hearts.  But since we already have a five and three year old, we hadn’t given it much thought lately.  He asked out of the blue, “I’ve been thinking about adoption again lately. What do you think?”  I answered, very sincerely, “Putting our kids up for adoption?  I think that’s a great idea!”  Of course, that wasn’t what he meant and the seed of adoption was re-planted in our minds.

November 2004
One of my good friends, Cheryl, from my MOPS group, had adopted a little girl from China in 2003 and was in the process of going back for her second little one.  Upon listening to her stories and blessings from the adoption experience my heart became more and more open and excited!  Kevin was immediately on board with the thought of adopting from China and after much prayer and consideration, we decided this was the route for us.  We choose Bethany Christian Services as our adoption agency and went to the first informational meeting on November 11.

January 2005
We completed our 20 page formal application for Bethany over the Christmas holidays and mailed to Bethany on January 2, 2005.  We also attended workshops about intercultural and international adoptions and the unique opportunities and challenges they provide.  During January and February we also finished the three required visits by a social worker to complete what is called a “Home Study” (basically proof that we are fit parents – good thing we passed since we already have two kids!).

February – April 2005
I could bore you with all the paperwork we completed, but you’d probably fall asleep.  Just let it be said that birth certificates, marriage certificates, complete medical examinations, police letters of clearance, fingerprints, and letters from employers, friends and clergy (as well as a bunch of other stuff) were all notarized then sent to the state level to be given the “Great State” seal.

April 2005 – Little Maggie puts a new spin on all our plans
Early in April I went to visit my above-mentioned friend Cheryl (who was home with her new daughter by this time) for a morning play date with her children and my Logan.  She had also offered to baby sit two other little Chinese-adopted girls for a friend who was sick.  One of them was little Maggie, a two-year-old who had just come home from China with her new mom a few months earlier.  Little Maggie was what China called a “special needs” (SN) child, because she had two deformed fingers on her left hand.  I cannot express how my heart was captured by this child.  Here were these four little Asian girls and Logan playing (five children total, all under the age of three).  One child would snatch something from another one, and he or she would scream bloody murder, as to be expected with two-year-olds.  But not Maggie.  Someone would take something from her, and she would just quietly turn and find something else to play with.  It was obvious that for her entire life others had been taking things from her and she had just learned to live with it.  It really opened my heart to adopting a special needs child from China.

After discussing it with Kevin, and prayerfully considering the whole situation, we decided to pursue children with special needs from China.  We did not feel equipped to handle any major SN or mental delays, but we did think we could handle minor physical issues such as cleft lip/palate, and missing and/or deformed digits or limbs.

May 2005 – A disappointing setback
For “regular” adoptions from China, you finish all your paperwork here (called a dossier), and then send it to China.  Then about 6-8 months later the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) matches you with a child and you go to get her about a month later.  With special needs it is a little different.  China releases the files of about 15 special needs children to agencies about every three months.  Agencies then try to find parents for those children.  We got the call on May 2 that our agency Bethany had their new list of special needs children.  After looking through the files we decided there were three little girls we were interested in whose SN we could handle.  Unfortunately, a week later we found out we hadn’t been matched with any of them.  Although it is really great that Bethany had more than enough families to adopt these children (they were all matched with families further along in the paperchasing process than us), Janie in particular was discouraged.  We had really felt that we were supposed to go the SN route, but it hadn’t worked out.  What she didn’t know was that it just wasn’t our turn yet…

June 2005 – Finishing the Paperchase
Since the SN route didn’t seem to be working out for us, our social worker suggested we just complete our paperwork and carry on as usual for a non-special needs child.  At lease we knew we would be getting a child at the end of this process, even if it wasn’t special needs like we thought.  On June 2^nd, all the paperwork was finished on our end and we sent our Dossier to Bethany’s national office in Michigan.  They then sent our paperwork to the Chinese Consulate in D.C. to be translated and officiated one last time.  And on June 28, 2005, we were officially “DTC” (Dossier to China)!  Everything was out of our hands!!!  Our Dossier was officially received and logged-in to the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs on July 11^th, 2005.  The clock would begin ticking from that time.

August 2005 – The Most Important List Ever
On August 2^nd, 2005 we got an email from our social worker stating that a new list of special needs children from China had been released.  Bethany calls this list “Children of Promise” – which we think is a beautiful and affirming name.  But of course Kevin and I just call it the COP list.  The list they email you just contains names, ages, and a 2-3 word description of the special need.  Janie rushed in to Bethany the next morning to get the full information about the three girls that we thought would be a good match for us.  One with a club foot, one with a cleft lip and one with a cleft lip and palate.

They all would have been welcomed into our family, but there was only one in particular that Janie looked at and knew this was her daughter.  She was almost exactly 22 months younger than Logan (who is 22 months younger than Bekah).  She was the only one whom an Internet search provided the meaning of her name: Xiao = morning, Li = strength, beautiful.  And like a beautiful morning inspires an entire day, we are sure our “Beautiful Morning” will inspire all our lives.

We received the official call from our agency that JacJac had been match with our family on Thursday, August 11, 2005 at 1:30pm.  We had a daughter!!!

The Real Paperchase Timeline 1/2/05 – Sent in formal application to Bethany 1/20/05 – Required adoption workshop #1 2/2/05 – 1st Home study visit 2/3/05 – Required adoption workshop #2 2/10/05 – I-600A (Petition to adopt internationally) filed with USCIS 2/21/05 – 2nd Home study visit 3/9/05 – Final Home study visit (at house) 3/21/05 – Home study mailed to USCIS 5/11/05 – Fingerprinting appointment with USCIS 6/2/05 – Dossier to Bethany’s national office 6/28/05 – Dossier to China 7/11/05 – Log in date with CCAA 8/2/05 – August Children of Promise list released 8/3/05 – Saw a picture of our baby JacJac for the first time!! 8/11/05 – Got the call, she’s ours!!! (hang on baby, we’re coming!)