Surprise! It's a...

...Sister!

Yesterday, I posted on Facebook that we were adopting a 2nd child along with M. and asked whether people thought M. was going to have a brother or sister.

We ended up with 4 boy votes and 18 girl votes. The girl votes got it right! We are going to have "Sugar and Spice, and Everything Nice" along with our "Snakes, Snails and Puppy-Dog Tails!"

Meet E.!

Our daughter's name is E.! She is 11 years old. She has a huge, beautiful smile and cute, black, curly hair that she wears in pigtails or a ponytail! She also has Cerebral Palsy. And she has been waiting for a family for a long time. Too long!

Here's the scoop on how we decided to adopt E.:

A friend who works for an adoption agency (not the one we are using) saw her waiting child profile and emailed us about her because she thought E. would be a good fit for Andrew and I, and because she knew we were hoping to adopt a 2nd child. 

E.'s report described her as a bright, sociable, happy child. She has cerebral palsy, but the report described her as determined. She worked hard to overcome her difficulties. We were taken with the description of her personality. We thought that E. might be a good fit for our family and that our family might be a good fit for her! However, at that time, the most recent information about her was from 2012 - two years outdated. There was an even bigger problem. Our adoption agency didn't have her file, so we couldn't get any updated information about her. For months we urged our agency to find out all they could about her and to try to get her file. It was a long shot really. During those months of hoping our agency could find out more about her and get her file, we prayed daily for E. We prayed that she would receive family, whether it be us or someone else. We prayed for wisdom in making a decision about her.

It took several months, but our agency was finally able to get her file, and updated information. We prayed all the more. But after months of praying for her and looking at her picture, my heart was saying yes already! We wanted to adopt E.! The big question was, could Andrew and I meet E.'s needs? Cerebral Palsy is a incurable but treatable disability. We would be committing to years of speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy.

A second big question loomed in our minds. Can we handle adopting 2 older children at once? Make that two children who have never met each other? Could we not only handle it, but could we thrive as a family? Would this be a good situation for both M. and E.? We considered the pros and cons, and decided to say yes to adopting E.!