It's a...Boy?!?!

We asked to see photos of what Kyrgyz kids looked like, as we were curious to see the differences between Kyrgyz and Kazakhs. We were not ready for a referral and were not expecting to select a child until we were much further along in the process. Our agency sent us photos of a few kids and it turned out the ones they sent us were children available for adoption. As expected they ran the gamut from Caucasian to Asian, and were all older as that is what we had expressed an interest in adopting. We felt that keeping Josh as the baby of our family was important, and we were now 40 and 42 (Dominick is OLDER! Hahaha!) and that we were now beyond the stage where we wanted another baby. We had already had the good fortune of experiencing most of the "baby stuff" and had no real strong craving for another infant. Additionally, each time we adopted we had attempted to adopt older children, much the opposite of most families, but somehow ended up bringing home 1 year olds. Dominick and I both felt very strongly there was an older child waiting for us out there somewhere. So here we were, looking at these photos of Kyrgyz kids just to get a sense of what our new addition might look like, and suddenly we saw a Kyrgyz boy whose smile lit up the screen. He was so handsome and his inner joy and softness shined through his eyes....for me it has always been the eyes that have captured me each time we have adopted. T. had a repaired cleft lip and palate and a grin that spread from ear to ear. And suddenly all thoughts of a daughter flew out the window. Matthew walked by and asked who I was looking at and after I explained he exclaimed "He looks just like me when I give you my crooked smile when you try to take my picture!!". Dominick took one look and I knew he was hooked when later that evening he was coming to me with weather reports for Bishkek and costs for airfare. I actually had to stupidly fight my initial reaction a bit. I was too busy listening to what other people thought was right for my life (i.e. If you don't have a daughter you will always regret it!) rather than listening to God's guidance for my life...and my own true secret desire that it be a boy rather than a girl.  So, after a couple of weeks of internal warfare, I gave in and grinned, put aside other's desires for my life and recognized the simple fact that I had indeed found my new son. We have since learned a bit about his personality, and I doubt we ever could have found a better fit for our family...he is described as being calm, thoughtful and kind...a mellower boy than average which is definitely a good fit for our boys. It is so odd, and those who have adopted might understand, but it was as if he was always intended for our family, I have a peace about this that tells me regardless of the challenges I won't deny we will face by flying in the face of conventionality (adopting out of birth order, not having met him, having virtually no medical information, special needs with cleft issues), ultimately all will be ok. There is something reassuringly familiar about him, and when in my mind's eye I see a mental photograph of all 3 boys together it as as if this was always meant to be. I would love to post his photo here, but due to issues in the past with other countries and information posted on the internet prior to finalizing the adoption, I have decided to use some discretion and keep his real name and his photo off the blog until the adoption is final, which will be prior to us traveling to bring him home. Also, sorry about these run on paragraphs, I can't yet figure out how to have a line break in the blog! It isn't because I don't know where a new paragraph should be created :-)