Another daughter (brought to us by our very own Canadian fairy godmother)!

When we were matched with Eliza (aka: Tao Bao'Er) a year ago, I found a yahoo user group for people with children from her orphanage, the Nanjing SWI. I wanted to know as much as I could about the place our daughter was living. About a month before we were to travel to China a woman named Alicia from Canada posted that she was looking to connect with the orphanage to find out what size shoes her son wore, because she wouldn't be traveling until winter and wanted to bring him shoes to wear. I wrote back and said I'd see what I could find out when we traveled in August.

I had no idea at the time the chain of events that Alicia's simple request was about to put into motion. On the day we toured Eliza's orphanage, I asked about Alicia's son and they said I could go and visit him. Our guide and I took the elevator to the 3-6 year old room where the children were having their lunch. Jiesheng, Alicia's son, was more interested in his lunch then me but he was very sweet (and so darling) and I took lots of photos of him and of the room, so his mom could see where he was. I was even allowed to talk to his nanny and ask lots of questions about him.

The room was full of children and I told myself that surely they were all waiting for their forever families to pick them up. But I couldn't help looking at them and thinking how much we had wanted to get matched with a second child when we were matched with Eliza. I even told my guide this on our way back down the elevator. We laughed as she said that "Bao'Er" was like having two children! Quite true. But secretly I was hoping she'd say, "as a matter of fact there is a child in there you should also take home with you".

I was anxious to let Alicia know what I'd learned about her son, and that I actually got to meet him!...I emailed her pretty quickly after we got back to the hotel and sent her a couple of photos and the update. When we got back to the states I sent her all the photos and she was so grateful. When we are matched with our children, the wait to get to them is torture and updates and new photos are very rare so I knew that this little thing I'd done would mean the world to this waiting mama.

From there Alicia and I became Facebook friends. In January of 2011 she and her family traveled to China to pick up their son and I was able to follow their journey. It was very exciting as I felt a special connection to this family since I had met their son even before they did!

It was during this same time that Walter and I were trying to figure out whether or not we could financially pull off a second adoption. It was in our hearts but we knew it wouldn't be easy. We were eligible for a significant tax refund because of Eliza's adoption and we knew that that was the only way we might be able to make it happen but even so, there was much to consider. But we were also under some pressure to make a decision as we had one year from Eliza's "Gotcha Day" to be matched with a second child in order to "re-use" our original dossier (no small thing considering how long they take to put together!).

We both wanted to go back to Nanjing. We got such a great feeling from the orphanage, the staff, the fact that they are connected to the Half the Sky Foundation. We loved Eliza's nanny, she cried when we left. Our guide was wonderful, the orphanage was clean and the children seemed so loved and well cared for.

And then Alicia posted pictures from her visit to the orphanage. The very first picture that I saw was of a beautiful little girl in a light pink coat. Alicia's caption read, "I can't believe this little girl is waiting for a home".

I remember turning the computer towards Walter to show him the photo and his eyes widened and he said, "can we find out anything more about her?".

We found out that her name was Jin Fanrou and she was three years old, exactly one year and one week older than our Eliza.

Alicia holding Fanrou

Of course we fell in love with her immediately but we needed to be practical. We hadn't figured out any of the logistics, let alone the financial. We had to believe that if she was meant to be our daughter then she would would still be available by the time we were ready to proceed. But she sure lit a fire in our hearts because we worked all the harder to figure out how we could possibly pull off the impossible; a second adoption.

No matter how we told ourselves that adopting THIS child was a long shot, especially given that other families were interested in her and we weren't ready yet, the seed had been planted. I couldn't stop thinking about her. Alicia and I shared many, many messages to one another about her.

By the time we were ready to move forward, her file was gone from the list. This usually means one of three things. The child was being adopted, the child was designated to a particular agency, or the child was removed by the CCAA with no reason listed.

So our agency called the CCAA and found out that she was indeed now designated to a particular agency. The CCAA said that if we were 100% committed to adopting her they would pull her file from that agency and allow our agency to give it to us.

And so on March 7, 2012, we were officially matched with our second daughter, Jin Fanrou!  She is known as Rou Rou, although I've taken to spelling it as RoRo.

Once we made it official I was anxious to let Alicia know. She was, after all, the fairy godmother in this story...the one that connected us to our new daughter. Alicia was thrilled with the news and not long after that she tagged me in a photo that I had taken in China of Jiesheng's room at the orphanage. But Jiesheng was not in the photo and I couldn't understand why she had tagged me in it. When I asked she said to look closely at the little girl sitting directly in the center of the photo, looking at the camera. That was RoRo.

Photographing my soon-to-be daughter without knowing it.

Inadvertently I had taken a photo of our soon-to-be daughter. She had looked right at me through the lens of my camera. Her bed was located right next to Jiesheng's and I suddenly remembered kneeling at his bedside and getting up and turning around to see her looking at me. And I smiled and waived. Later in the elevator I told my guide about our desire to be matched with a second child -- I was feeling a tug at my heart in that instance and now I know why. 

There is a proverb in China that says that an invisible red thread connects us to the ones we are destined to meet, and nothing can break the thread. The tug at my heart that day, as I left that room, was that red thread pulling at me as I left the bedside of my destined daughter. That same red thread that was first woven when adoption was originally planted in our hearts. It led us to Eliza who brought us to Nanjing. It wove it's way through the virtual world and connected us to Alicia and to her son Jiesheng and to his sweet little friend, who slept in the bed next to his.

God is in the details (and He's a pretty good weaver too).