Jack

Life has gotten away from me, we've been so busy, I haven't had the chance to go back and tell everyone a little bit more about our baby boy and how the adoption is going.

First of all his name is Jack. We have not decided which of his Korean names to keep as his middle name, but his middle name will be one of the names his birth mother gave him. I like very unique names in fact I made up Kylynn's name in hopes that she would always be the only "Kylynn" in her class. But the more I thought about my unique boy names the more I thought about how our son is so unique already. He will most likely be the only Asian child with White parents in his class, maybe the only adopted child, and definitely a minority throughout life because of his heritage. So I wanted a name that was not the most popular but a name that would never be mis-pronounced or made fun of. I also wanted to honor Kyle's grandpa Johnny and his uncle Rick (who's given name is John), who were some of the most important men in Kyle's life and shaped him into the great man he is today. So Jack it is, Jack is a variation of John, which means God is gracious.

Indeed God is gracious. Our son is almost 6 months old now and was 5 months when we received the referral, this is a huge blessing as many of the children were not being referred for adoption till they were older. We are being told to expect 3 to 6 months to get him home, that would make it somewhere between November 2008 and February 2009, we are praying that it is very soon, even sooner than expected. We have filled out the paperwork that is to go off to different agencies in the U.S. and the country from which we're adopting. The paperwork was tedious to say the least, but after a week we got it all straightened out.

One of the common questions I am getting from people currently is whether or not he is "healthy". This is not something Kyle and I took lightly, we have spoken with a doctor twice regarding his medical records and in general yes he is healthy. He like me is not perfect though and we never set out to get a perfect child, just our perfect child. Jack does have a cleft lip and palette and his mother did not receive prenatal care for most of the pregnancy. All that to say we believe that he is healthy but you can predict very little about a person's future from the way they are at 5 months old. I can assure you that we prayed about this child, spoke with experts, received counsel and are sure of this: This is the child God has chosen for us. And that is all we need to know, the rest we will find out as we go.

So many of you have come up to us in the past few weeks and congratulated us and told us you are praying for us, I just want to say thank you. I love the look of joy and celebration on your faces, you make me more excited, you assure me that we will be well loved and supported throughout this journey of adoption we're on. Your prayers are more valuable to me than most anything in my life, I feel you holding me up when the journey has been especially challenging and tiring, as it has during these past few weeks.

I have a million things to do, so hopefully I'll stop with my procrastinating (which I do when I'm scared) and start preparing to be a mother of two, Kylynn and Jack.