Once Upon a Time…You Were Just a Tiny Stack of Paper

On May 11^th, last year, I received a call at work from our agency rep letting me know that she had two brand new files for little boys needing homes. One was a boy with cleft lip and palate, which was one of the special needs we stressed preference for, but the other was a boy who fit our specified "age range" and had a special need relating to his ear. She wasn't going to offer his file, but thought she would ask since, as she put it at the time, "not many families are willing to view his file". Of course we would look at it. Just because it wasn't on our "checklist" for special needs we were comfortable with didn't mean we couldn't do the research and decide for ourselves later. I left work 15 minutes later and drove the 30 minutes to the agency office to pick up the files.

I tried hard to wait until I got home to open the envelopes with Shawn, but just couldn't wait that long. I pulled into a Starbucks parking lot and began reading. These were not our first files to review. Months before our paperwork was logged in, I had begun asking for files on Waiting Children, and although I had promised Shawn that I wouldn't, I fell madly and deeply in love with one boy in particular with cleft lip and palate. For months, I stared longingly at his pictures, practically memorizing his statistics. I had secretly mapped out the location of his orphanage and knew exactly what sightseeing we would do in his province.

The problem was that we had promised each other to wait to make decisions until we were logged in. I was born with a condition that could have disqualified us if we didn't get our paperwork in by May 1^st, 2007, and were horrified at the prospect of committing to a child only to be declined by the Chinese government.

Once we were logged in, we sat down and looked at that boy's file again and Shawn voiced some concern about his age. He was afraid that he was too old… he would be 3 and a half by the time we travelled to him, but man did that sound ancient when considering parenting our first child. I tried to convince him that he would be closer to "hockey playing age" and surely younger than his calendar months given typical orphanage delays…but in the end, we decided to let go of that little guy's picture and wait for our agency to get a new list of files. It seems so silly to us now, but there must have been a divine reason for our trepidation.

Before our agency received a new batch, I saw another little boy on their Waiting List…much younger also with cleft lip and palate. We decided to ask for a complete file to take to an International Adoption pediatrician for review… but by the time I was able to reach our rep, his file had been accepted by another family. I was happy for him, but sad for us. Could that have been our son? I only hoped that I would never see their little faces on the street or at an agency function. I didn't think I could handle it.

So we went about our lives, wondering when a new group of files would come in. This brings us back to May 11^th, 2007. The day I got the call.

While we were familiar and comfortable with cleft lip and palate, something kept drawing us to that other little boy. Was it his chubby face in the picture, or the fact that he was located in a coastal town in a desirable region for travel? In a weird kind of way, it could have been an allure of a special need we had never heard of before, or maybe just something about his name. It could have been anything, really. We don't know.

So we took both boys' files to the Adoption Medicine clinic in Seattle and had a wonderful phone consult with one of the pediatricians there. He had great things to say about what he thought about both boys. We researched Microtia/Atresia, got to know other families in Yahoo groups, read, scoured the internet, asked questions, talked…talked some more. Finally, it was clear that little Xiang Xuan was our son. We felt like we knew him already and the thought of never holding him was difficult to accept. So we let go of the other boy's file and told our agency that we wanted to send a Letter of Intent for Xiang Xuan. As it turned out, the other boy had several families interested in him…and not one family (other than us) had come forward for the other boy. Our boy.

So the story continued, and you know the outcome. Ian (incidentally the middle three letters of Xiang) came home just over 5 months later. Below are the first pictures we laid eyes on… for the first time, May 11^th, 2007. One year ago today.

The first picture I saw when I opened the file envelope. All I could think was "look at those lips!".

Ian as Xiang Xuan Dec. 06 (8.5 months)

Only a year after seeing his picture for the first time... 17 months after those first pictures were taken.

Ian today. Bigger boy... Same cute lips. What will the next year bring? (note: We confess. He had a sip of soda and thankfully didn't like it.)