An Announcement, Part 2

Where was I? Oh, yes, preparations...

Our dossier was sent to China on September 9, and logged in the following week. At that point, I literally thought we would be matched any day. There are well over 1500 kids waiting on the shared list. Wonderful, amazing kids. Boys, girls, babies, toddlers, big kids, and teenagers. Kids with heart disease, cataracts, birthmarks, limb differences, cerebral palsy, and things you have probably never even heard of, but really aren't that big of a deal. I poured over the list, praying to find my child. We were open to either gender and several special needs.

But I can remember telling our agency back in 2009, Oh, how I would love to have a little boy from Jiangsu Province, like Kate!

Then, the day after my birthday I got an email from an agency I had contacted back in January. Actually I got about 20 emails from them that day. They were pulling files off of the list and advocating for them. Among the many emails, I saw the subject line of one said, "Su Yin Tao." And I thought, huh, it's a Su kid.

In case you didn't know, Kate's name is Su Xu Na. The Su part indicates that she is from the city of Suzhou. Not all kids with Su in front of their names are from Suzhou, but all kids from Suzhou have it, so I perk up when I hear that name.

Anyway, I open up the email, to see if this really is a Suzhou kid or not. And I saw this face.



Yes, he was a Suzhou kid. He also had cleft lip and palate on the left side, just like Kate NaNa. He also has hearing loss, just like Kate did (although we didn't know it until we brought her home). At the time, he was 13 months old, which I have to admit, freaked me out a little. I had it in my head we would bring home a three year old, who was potty trained. Diapers? Are you kidding me? But honestly, could I turn down a child because he was too young and I was scared of a little thing like a diaper? No way.

I skimmed his file and realized that it was 5:05 on a Tuesday afternoon. Immediately I picked up the phone to call our agency, but it was 5:05 in the afternoon. And of course, my computer picked that exact moment to freak out, and my keyboard quit working. Not one key stroke did anything. So awesome.

Later that night it started working again, of course. I emailed the other agency to find out if this child was on their agency specific list or if he was on the shared list that all waiting families have access to. They responded quickly that he was on the shared list.

OK, I thought, I have an appointment to go in and meet with the SN coordinator in the morning anyway. I will just have her pull up the file, we can lock it for 72 hours, and then we can pray about it and make a decision.

But when we pulled up the website at 9:15 on Wednesday morning, he was gone from the list. OK. Fine then. That could mean that someone else has locked him in for 72 hours or that he has been placed on an agency specific list. Either way, there is nothing I can do about it. I guess I will let it go.

But of course, I didn't let it go...