It's a boy!

I am proud to introduce to you, Jiang Yizhan. He is a 21 month old boy who was born with mild abnormalities of his left hand and foot. (Missing a few fingers and toes.) For that, his birth parents abandoned him on the side of the road where he was discovered by some passers-by. Discarded like garbage, he was only five days old. The note pinned to his blanket indicated that he was born on September 16, 2006. It is our hope that he will be able to celebrate his second birthday in his new house with his new family- us! As of yesterday morning, our adoption agency was able to lock his file for us so that no one else can even apply to adopt him. They are sending a special petition to adopt to the Chinese authorities today and with any luck we will hear a final confirmation in the coming weeks. In our petition letter, we indicated that Bethany is an occupational therapist who specializes with helping people cope with using limbs and extremities that are injured or abnormal, so we think that will help convince the Chinese officials that the child will be in good hands with us. (His caretakers report that he is able to use his hand and is able to stand on his own, so developmentally he is doing well anyway.) Also, according to our agency, since we have already been pre-approved to adopt a "special needs" child (thanks to our social worker who had the foresight to convince us to consider that option), there won't be any reason to deny our petition. So, it appears that there will be one more Naughton boy in the world to stir things up. This should make a fascinating study in the old "nature vs. nurture" argument, don't you think?