Overwhelmed and Questions Answered

Wow. First of all, we are so overwhelmed and thankful for all of the sweet, encouraging, and supportive comments and messages we received after announcing our adoption news. Thank you, thank you! It's such a blessing to have so many people in our lives who love us and are truly excited and supportive of this!

I also wanted to take a few minutes to answer some questions that we have been asked the last several days. I don't always have a great answer for all of the questions that come my way...I'm still learning so much about it myself...but I'll do my best to answer what I can.

Why adopt from South Korea and not the US? ~My answer is simply, Why not Korea? There is no fiber of my being that feels that any one child is more important that another. It doesn't matter what country they were born in. Brent and I feel led to adopt internationally, just as some people feel led to adopt domestically.

How did you choose Korea over all of the other countries? ~ We simply went through the requirements list for each country that our agency works with and found the country that best worked for us. China was out because you must be 30 to adopt from there, and I'm still a couple years away from there. Many of the European countries, such as Russia, require you to travel to their country for two or three separate trips, each trip several weeks in length. With three small children at home and with Brent's job, this just wasn't the best option for us. Some countries don't want you to have more than 2 bio children already in your home. Ethiopia is only accepting families who are adopting a child over the age of 5. So after going through all of the lists, we just narrowed it down...and South Korea was the best fit.

Why do we think that our child will be a boy? ~ Most of the children (about 85%) that are available for adoption from Korea are boys. Although in-country adoption in Korea is not popular, when it does occur, girls are adopted more readily than boys. So, that leaves many many little boys available for international adoption. And we say, why mess up our routine any? ;)

Why does the process take so long? ~ I really wish I knew exactly. Between them making sure we are fit parents, wait lists, legal procedures, immigration and citizenship procedures, government regulations, etc, it's just a really long process. I'm
sure we will learn so much about this aspect of it as we go through the process, so hopefully I'll have a better answer later!

Have we lost our minds?! ~ Haha. Actually, I won't deny this. With the three little monkeys I have at home, my mind is probably mush a lot of times anyway. But all joking aside, people can't believe we are starting this while Levi is still so young. But if you take into consideration all of the time frames, Levi will most likely be between 2 1/2 and 3 when our little one comes home...that's actually the biggest gap we've had! :)

Those are the main questions that come to mind right now. I'll answer more as they come along!