The first Hitch

After arriving home from running the NYC marathon (which is a story in itself), I found an email entitled "bad news." Our adoption coordinator thinks that China is going to decline our pre-approval because we have not been married a minimum of 5 years. We can submit the pre-approval paperwork anyway, and hope the Chinese government overlooks our marriage date because we are adopting a waiting child, we can wait until our 5 year anniversary in July to apply, or we can switch to a different program (country). Hmmmm. We decided we are not ready to just switch programs, even though there are many waiting children all over the world who are equally in need. We do not want to wait until July to apply, because after the application is approved it is still usually a year before the child comes home. If we go forward now and then get rejected, we lose the time and also some of the fees ($500). After considering the options, we still lean towards giving it a try. IF we get rejected, which is likely, then we can move to a different program (such as Thailand) at that time. The risks we don't take are the ones we always regret. If we spend the time and the money now, and it doesn't work out; well, we gave it our best shot. So, I guess we know what to do. It won't be the first time we spent money and had the outcome less than perfect.