We had a plan, God laughed!

Here, on his 12th birthday, begins this record of the road to Sean.

In October 2011, we completed our second adoption of our sweet Claire.  Changing the family dynamics are always challenging and with three children 10 and under we had decided that our family was finished growing.  We made a plan, God laughed!

Then, in early April 2012, while I was at work I received a message from my husband.  He wanted to know why I had sent him an email.  I had been in court all morning and had neither seen the email nor forwarded it to him.  I asked what it was about and he told me to open it.  It was an e-newsletter from Madison Adoption Associates, the agency we had used to facilitate our adoption with Claire.  I was perplexed because my husband had never been on their email list, or on any list serve and so it was strange that he received this particular email.  As I scrolled through the email, my husband drew my attention to the featured child.  

He said "It just breaks my heart that this little guy doesn't have a family".  My first thought was "Welcome to my world.  I've been looking at files of orphans for at least 2 years."  I don't remember what my second thought was.  I also vaguely remember my husband saying something about our son saying he thought this boy would be a good addition to our family.

The conversation ended and I went about the rest of my day.  I headed home and almost immediately it was clear that something was afoot in my house.  The family sat me down and told me that they had talked about it and taken a vote.  They wanted to adopt this boy!  I was stunned!  My husband talked about being drawn to this child, feeling like he was meant for our family.  It was at that point that I understood what it meant to be called to an action.  I said yes and our third adoption journey began.

Since we had just adopted Claire, only 6 months before, China allows the reuse of a dossier.  This mean I didn't have to redo all the paperwork, but merely update most of it.  The process has been a bit shorter than with Claire and I've been so much more trusting of the timing.  Knowing that our son will come home at the perfect time.  We received our Letter of Acceptance from China in October, our I800 approval from US Immigration and our Travel Approval on February 1.  We leave for China on February 28!

We have received very little in the way of updates but did get a few pictures from our agency and one from China as part of a brief update.  These are the pictures.

He was at a camp sponsored by our Agency.

A pretty picture probably from last summer.

There has been much debate over what we shall name him.  My husband has long loved the name Evan.  He thinks it's a cool name because it is Nave backwards.  I just couldn't go there.  I didn't like the name to begin with but after that reasoning I just couldn't.  I wanted to name him Joseph after my great, great grandfather who immigrated to the United States from Ireland.  We agreed on that name but it soon became clear that my husband wasn't totally on board and a little bitter that I didn't like Evan.  Ultimately we agreed on Sean Calvin.  Sean is the Irish of John, the name of my husband's father.  Calvin is my father's middle name.  So our son is named after his grandfathers.  We are also keeping his Chinese name as a middle name.  

Sean knows about us as we have been able to send him letters and some gifts.  We have not received anything back but this is not unusual.  Looking back it is absolutely clear to me that the Hand of God has really guided us to Sean.  We eagerly await the next 16 days until we leave for China and the time Sean will finally be with us!