And the children will outnumber us...

The cat is officially out of the bag.  Laura and Zack are getting a brother.  Kyle Chengjin Robbins will join our family sometime this summer. 

Kyle turned three on 10 Mar, so that makes him just slightly older than Zack.  In adoption circles, this is known as virtual or artificial twinning and adopting out of birth order.  Our placing agency and social worker did not have concerns about this, but there are different schools of thought on both of these things.  Normally the children most recently added to the family get to be the baby…not quite so with Kyle.  We don’t expect there to be any huge issues.  We are calling Kyle Zack’s “little big brother” since Zack is quite a bit bigger, at least at this point.    

The virtual twinning should be interesting.  We certainly don’t intend to tell them they are twins or present them to the world as twins, but we know people will probably make that assumption from time to time.  They will also be in the same school grade. 

FAQs
1.      Are Kyle and Zack brothers?  No, I mean real brothers. 

They are not biologically related and are from different provinces.  They are however, both from Northern China.  When Kyle joins our family, he will be Zack and Laura’s brother.  Their real brother.  No discussions. 

2.      Is it cheaper/easier to adopt a second child from China?

The adoption costs the second time around are a little bit less.  We have remained with both the same placing and home study agency, so that has helped with fees.  China allows some of the same paperwork to be used for a subsequent adoption if certain conditions are met.  So the short answer is yes, but we are still in the middle of the process.  Ask us at the end and we may tell you something different.  International adoption is still very expensive, tedious and time consuming and there is just no way to get around that. 

3.     Does Kyle have a special need?

Kyle is a healthy child.  Like Zack, he is being adopted through China’s Waiting Child Program.   Kyle had some intestinal surgeries when he was a tiny baby but he is perfectly fine now.  We don’t plan to discuss his medical history in any more detail than this.  We’ve been pretty open about the details of our adoptions but it’s time to dial back on some of the personal and medical info.  At some point in the not-too-distant future, our boys will have opinions about how much of their stories we share.  There are parts of this story that belong to our family that we will share but there are parts that belong to my children who are not old enough to make decisions on what they want to share…enough said. 

4.      Another one?!?  Wow!  You must be some kind of saint! 

Actually someone called me a nun the other day.  Yes...obviously she was not someone well acquainted with me.  At all.  Really…we’re not do-gooders.  While we respect that there are people who are on the same path that we are to “save orphans” or “rescue children”…that is not us.  We’re fairly selfish in our reasons for adopting and see bringing Kyle in to our family as a win for everyone. 

We look forward to sharing pictures and more detailed information soon.  For now, just be assured that once again, China picked their best looking little boy for our family.