New Pictures!

SADIE - 2 years old!

The amount of connections that happen in this China adoption community never cease to amaze me! You would think I would no longer be suprised as many times as I hear it happens and it's even happened to me. By way of the internet, with Hannah's adoption, I was able to connect with a family in California who was adopting a son from her same orphanage just 2 months ahead of me. They were able to meet Hannah and get updated pictures. When I traveled to get Hannah, I was able to take updated photos of a little girl from there who was then living in North Carolina. Then, I was able to send updated photos of Hannah about a year post-adoption with a local area family who was adopting from her orphanage. We know several families that have adopted from that same orphanage that live around our state. We've even met one of the families in "real life". But, that orphanage was BIG. Really big. And my agency has had several kids from that orphanage on more than one of their special needs list. And their yahoo group (yeah - there's yahoo groups for families who have adopted from specific orphanages) is fairly large and fairly active.

I joined Sadie's orphanage yahoo group to see what I could find out. It's a fairly small group and turns out it's actually for 2 orphanages in the same city with *almost* identical names (one is an "institute" and one is a "center"). The "center" is fairly big and most of the people on the group adopted from there. The "institute" is small and there is not a lot of information. That's where Sadie is. Well, I posted an introduction..and it's yielded big stuff! I heard from a family in NC who adopted from there (though she didn't visit the orphanage). And then I heard from a family from The Netherlands. They adopted their little girl in Dec. 2005 and she thinks she met Sadie. She would have only been 2 months old at the time, so we can't be SURE..but she really thinks it was her. There were only 6 kids at the orphanage at that time. She said she was tiny but very alert. THEN, today I came home to find an e-mail from someone fairly local (in the state) who adopted less than 3 months ago from Sadie's orphanage. She said there were about 10 children there at the time. She met Sadie and she has pictures! Turns out her daughter and Sadie were best friends and she sent me about 8 pictures of the two of them together. She said Sadie was sad and the director said she was sad that her best friend was leaving. poor baby! But how amazing that these little ones will have that connection. These toddler best friends from an orphanage in China will live only a couple hours away from each other!

Look, Sadie's best friend is trying to feed her a cracker! Sweet!!