Family Stories

Larry and Shannon Duvall

After many years of trying to have a baby, we had resigned ourselves to not having children. That all changed on Sept 11, 2001. My husband had just started work at the Pentagon the week before. After that horrible day, we began to realize how important family was and began pursuing international adoption. For some reason we only considered China. I sent away to some of the local agencies and liked the Cradle of Hope brochure the best! I became really convinced after talking to the staff. They took the time to answer my initial questions, and would continue to do so for the next 15 months. The paperwork was tough, but Kate Morin helped me every step of the way. We all think we are the only ones with problems, and Kate acted like there weren’t 20 other “parents to be” with a million questions. In fact, the first time this all became a reality was when our paperwork was slowed for some reason, and Kate simply told me “your daughter isn’t ready yet.” WOW! 

We managed to get through the paperwork, and just began to wait. To keep ourselves sane, we really didn’t dwell on it much. There was nothing we could do to make it go faster. We did have to move during the process, and had to update our Homestudy. This is where having an agency like Cradle really paid off! The local agency that did our update wasn’t exactly helpful. We didn’t know how good we had it with Cradle. 

At the time we submitted ours, referrals were coming in at the 13 to 14 month point. We amazingly got a call on Jan 23 – after only 9 months! We had a daughter, Yu Min, age 16 months. We were ecstatic…and not ready! It was a Friday afternoon when I got the call on my way home from work. We had to wait until Monday to see her picture. On Monday, a computer virus crashed our systems at work. I had Cradle send it to my Hotmail account and went across the street to the library.  Their system wasn’t able to handle the picture. I forwarded it to my husband at work. He opened it, and I could hear the quiver in his voice when he described her. I had to leave work and run to Kinko’s – our computer didn’t survive the move – where I opened the picture and immediately began crying. The employees didn’t know what to think of me. It is truly possible to fall in love with a picture!

We left for China on March 5 and spent a wonderful three days in Beijing with Lifeng. We met her at the airport in Guangzhou, and from there went straight to the White Swan Hotel and had about four hours to get ready. We were all glassy eyed – there were babies everywhere! We went to the local government offices to get the babies, where we sat in a room and everyone sort of just took deep breaths. You can read 100 stories about “Gotcha Day”, but it will never prepare you. We heard commotion outside and in walked a women holding one baby. She was beautiful. They said her name, and I caught my breath. That beautiful child was mine! My husband and I just looked at each other for a moment. They must have thought we were nuts. We looked to our coordinator to verify that the child was indeed Yu Min before we went up to her, and then we held her.  It is truly a wonderful way to meet your child. We went back to the hotel as families! 

Anli began the process of taking care of all the paperwork. We just showed up whenever she told us to! She also arranged for a variety of trips to the zoo, a local village and preschool, the temples and a fabulous shopping market. She made plans for us to visit local restaurants each night as a group if we chose. As we were a small travel group, it was easy to do all these things and made for great bonding with the other parents. We began calling Yu Min by MonMon, her nickname.  We then added Carly to that, and within a week we left off MonMon. She was wonderful, well behaved and she ate everything. Of course, we now realize she was most likely in shock, but so were we!

The paperwork was finally done and we were going home! 

Since arriving home our daughter has thrived. She is doing better than I ever expected. She sleeps as long as I let her – except on the weekends! She is becoming a picky eater, which unlike most parents I am grateful for. She is very active and can climb anything! She is making up for lost time. She definitely knows what she wants and when she wants it, and I am grateful for those tantrums too, as they remind me of how far she has come.