James, the Big Brother

James was pretending with me the other day and told me he was a race car driver who had to go pick up his baby in China. He talks about "his baby" a lot. We talked about "Emily" as being her name and he said there was a train on "Thomas the Tank Engine" named Emily. So if we do choose that name, we'll have quite a connection to the show (James, Thomas, and Emily). James is so bossy and jealous of Tommy so I asked him one day how he thought he could take care of his sister if he couldn't even be nice to his little brother. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Because I'm waiting for my little sister. I didn't wait for Tommy; he's already here!" Quite the logic.

Home Study Visit

Our home study visit went well. Today we went to the adoption agency for another visit. The social worker was very easy to talk to. The boys were wild when she was at the house, but they didn't go with us today. Most of our paperwork is done. China has gotten very strict lately on who qualifies. Does this mean things will speed up? We're doing some reading on attachment issues. Mostly it's for older children, but we need to learn as much as possible.

Decision Time!

Well, two agencies that I checked into showed that Mike is too old for us to request an infant from Korea. One agency that I talked to said we couldn't request a girl at all since there's such a long list of people wanting girls. So we have decided on China. It will take at least two years, but we can start saving miles on the credit cards! We picked an agency and sent in our preliminary contract. We have a list of things to put together for the dossier and the home study visit will be in the next few weeks. It's a little overwhelming. No wonder if takes several months.
We started telling some people, but the other day, our daycare lady asked me why James was talking about a baby sister coming. Apparently he's telling people, too! He's so excited and said he could sleep in the same room with her so that he could take care of her in the middle of the night. How sweet! It's funny, though, especially considering how jealous he still is of his little brother!

Korea or China?

We're looking into whether we can adopt from Korea. Now that we're actually looking, we're assuming it will be an Asian country, but I don't think we really care. I'm doing some agency research online to see what the requirements are. Since Mike's in his 40's, I don't know if we qualify to get an infant from Korea. It's exciting!