Why a second blog?

I've chosen to create a separate blog for our second child, rather than add her story to our existing blog, for a couple of reasons:

• I intend to create a book out of each blog and I thought it would make each story nice and neat if they were told separately in two distinct blogs.
• Also, as the sixth child in my family, there are few things that are my own. However, my mom was extremely diligent in detailing our childhoods in our baby books. We all have our books now, and every now and then, it is fun to read it through. I want my second child to have this blog as her own: her own story of becoming a part of our family. Of course, it will also include stories of Claire and us, but the focus will always be on her: our journey to her and our life with her.

At this point in time, I am assuming our second child from China will be a girl based on the social situation there and the resulting availability of girls. However, I hear in chat groups that more and more boys are being referred, so you never know .... In the event our second child is a boy, watch how fast I change all gender-specific references on this blog!

Here we go again!

After an incredible experience adopting Claire from China, we're ready to begin the process again. We know it will be a long wait - we hear it could be 3 - 4 years from our log-in-date in China - so we thought we'd better get started right away! We officially applied again on May 1, 2007. We hope to be logged in around February or March of 2008 (just after one year of receiving Claire).

We look so forward to meeting and parenting our second daughter. The wait for Claire was very difficult emotionally, and I'm sure it will be for this little one too at times. I think it may be a little easier on us this time around, though, because we now know from experience that whatever the waiting time, you come out at the end with the right child - the one meant for your family. Plus, we are parents now - a chapter in our lives we wanted to enter for so long - and we have much to keep us busy and our minds occupied.