Introduction

Hi everyone, I am creating this blog so that friends and family and others who are in the process of adopting from China can follow our journey to our daughter in China.

I'll begin with an introduction, we are Jimmy and Shay and we reside in SE Tennessee. We have been married for almost 7 years. Jimmy and I both have children from previous marraiges....3 between us, but only 1 living at home, Zach who is 14. We have always wanted to have a child together, won't go into the complicated history, but fertility treatments did not work for us. We have both always had open hearts for the idea of adoption. After a lot of soul searching and research we chose to adopt internationally from China. We began paperchasing in '06 and have a LID (Log in Date with China Adoption Officials) of 4/05/07. When we first began the process the wait times for a heathly infant where 12-14 months. shortly after our dossier was logged in the wait times began to grow to more than 3 years. I won't go in to all the many reason that are believed to have impacted the wait, it is complex and mostly speculation but you can check out a site that I frequent and look through archives if you'd like they talk about it a LOT and are much better at it than I am http://chinaadopttalk.com/

I digress....I felt from the beginning that Jimmy and I could easily handle many of the minor special needs that often make children from China more difficult to place, this would also significantly reduce our wait time. We are so ready to bring a child into our home, it is really tough to wait years, and we are not spring chickens....so we switched to the Waiting Child (special need) Program through our agency last August and are currently awaiting referral. We expect to hear something this summer some time and travel to China before years end to pick up our daughter. We have requested a girl 0 to 18 months in age, and have indcated that we are open to a variety of minor correctible or medically treatable health conditions. That's it for now.....