What is PA?

In the world of adoption from China, there are many little abbreviations which you learn quickly. To others these seem like their teen's texting gone bad, but to we waiting families it means little mole hills piled onto one another that form this great mountain we painstakingly must climb to finally reach our child.

Some of these abbreviations are just skips to the next ledge and others are like sheer rock with hardly any foot or hand holes so you must take very small, deliberate steps. During these parts of the climb, you may fall back a few feet, but you'll find a new foot hole and keep climbing.

During this time I have felt so many emotions already. I felt I was climbing sort of alone because of all the paperwork, phone calls, runs to the bank, to the post office, more phone calls and just running in circles gathering everything needed for our paperwork. Tim has been wonderful, working his tail off to provide for our family and being there whenever I asked to get the things done we needed. His attitude is always, "Tell me where I need to be, what time, and I'll be there." But I had felt sort of alone in the paper climb (this isn't Tim's forte)...until tonight.

I came home from picking Carmen up from swim. Richie was doing his thing, Savannah was doing hers and there sat Tim on the couch with my laptop laughing. When I asked what he was doing, he said, "Come here, look at this." He was watching "Gotcha Videos" of other families on Youtube. He found a little guy who resembles the little guy we have put in our LOI.

As he sat on the floor I sat behind him and we watched one last video together and we both had tears in our eyes. Then I knew I may be climbing the paper mountain, but he's climbing the tree where the paper starts. We're completely in this together and we pray that our next ledge is a PA, this stands for "Pre-Approval" from China saying they pre-approve for the little boy we are asking to adopt.

Blessings,
Francine