Mei Mei's story ~ part 4

For just over a week I prayed intently for this little girl, not having any idea how Ian was really feeling.  He had said that it was early to start thinking again and voiced concern about her age, but he also hadn't said that I was crazy.  Imagine my surprise when (on March 28) while we were out on our first "date night" since Caleb came home that he was ready to start talking about this little girl.  Pretty much our entire dinner conversation centered around our family, how we've adjusted, how we've bonded, and if we were "ready" to expand.  

I knew that despite his reservations of creating a second set of virtual twins that he was agreeing that she may indeed be our daughter when he told me to contact Dr. D and set up a conference call to discuss her medical information.  

But before we paid for that medical input, it came time to see if this new agency had a policy about virtual twins.  This was our first "fleece."  My prayer was that if she was not our daughter that the door would be shut at this early point.  Early that Monday morning I sent an email to my contact at the agency, asking if they had a policy about how far apart children were to be spaced (because she was a mere five months younger than Caleb, who is a mere seven months younger than Kylie ~ effectively creating two sets of virtual twins though we only would have three kids).  After what seemed like an agonizing wait we got word that they had no policy against twinning, they simply left it up to the prayerful discretion of the families.

**By the way, it's funny to me that we are pursuing a child so close in age to Kylie and Caleb.  I distinctly remember (in the height of the "Random Acts of Violence between our two kids ~ which only occur on no nap days or "full moon crazies" now ~ during our initial months home) telling another mom at OAKS that while I was thankful Caleb was with us, I probably wouldn't do (or recommend) the virtual twin thing again.  Ha ha!  This time our set will even be in the same grade, something that was so important to us to avoid last time...**

The next thing we realized could be a major road block was the fact that the agency website stated that they had the files until the end of June.  At this point it was almost the end of March and getting the dossier finished in time was a daunting task.  So again we prayed that if she was not our daughter that the door would be closed.  I questioned our agency contact and she replied that there were ways to work around that problem.  

This was the same day that I found out ~ rather randomly ~ that immigration clearance (something that had taken four months to wait for previously in NC) was now taking just under a month.  Suddenly collecting our dossier seemed like a "doable task."

In the meantime we spoke with Dr. D. He had done some research on the "big fancy medical words" that I didn't understand in her bio and presented us with the range of possibilities of what that could mean.  He stated that yes, there were many uncertainties about the full extent of her conditions.  In the same breath he reminded us that God never promised "easy" but that He'd be with us and sustain us in any challenges that we accepted in His name.  Then he recommended that we request some updated information (her file was already 13 months old at the time) and then seek God's counsel.  (Oh how we miss Dr. D as our pediatrician!)

We were getting ready to head out on our road trip (providing LOTS of time to talk in the car) to Indy and Ohio, but both knew that it was time to face the final "fleece issue" ~ our timing.  I knew that our previous agency had a pretty strict policy of waiting one year after the most recent adoption before submitting another dossier.  Waiting until October seemed like such a long time, and quite frankly, if we were going to have to wait that long, maybe we weren't her forever family after all ~ what is best for the child is to get "home" as quickly as possible.  So I wrote the email that I had been dreading.  The one that said, "So I wasn't sure about the agency timeline on submitting a dossier, you see, we have our six month post placement tomorrow night..."

I said a quick prayer and hit send...