MEET OUR LITTLE BOY!

We would like to officially introduce you to Benjamin Xia Yang Varner.

Now I know we may be just slightly biased but, good gracious, he's adorable.

We first learned about Xia Yang in June on RainbowKids.com.  Rainbow Kids is an amazing resource that compiles the waiting lists of multiple adoption agencies.  Xia Yang was, indeed on the waiting list of an agency other than ours and our caseworker was able to work with that agency to allow us to see if Xia Yang would be a good fit for our family.

This was actually one of the first photos we saw of him:

I mean, COME ON!!  Who could resist!?!  And there was my heart, big puddle on the floor.

When we first 'met' Xia Yang, he was a month shy of two years old.  As we continued to pursue him, a particular prayer of mine was that, if he were to be ours, that the Lord would allow us to be matched with him before he turned two years old.  I wanted to be able to tell him years from now that he had a family before his second birthday.  Low and behold, just three days before his birthday, we signed the papers to be his forever family.  God is good.

Below is us on the day of his birthday.  We went to Mountain Mist, got ice cream, and attempted a birthday photo with two candles sticking out of a sundae.  Now, anyone who's been to Mountain Mist on any evening in the middle of summer knows that the ice cream melts fast, the wind keeps the candles from staying lit, and the sunset on the dock burns your retinas (see photo for proof, poor Andrew), BUT we did it!  Even though it didn't go perfectly, it was pretty special; kinda like when only you and your husband know you're pregnant in the first few weeks.  It's something that's just yours.

We'll do better next year, Benjamin, I promise.

But after those first few weeks with your secret, you get itchy to tell....  and boy (no pun intended), were we itchy!  At the point of matching, we were only pre-approved by China.  While we had no fear of losing our match to Xia Yang, we were not allowed to post anything on the internet or social media until we received our LOA (official, permanent, match by China) thus our wait until now.

Xia Yang has a congenital heart defect called tetralogy of fallot.  The orphanage arranged for him to have the surgery needed to correct it when he was just 8 months old (more on that in an upcoming post).  The other details of Xia Yang's history, we'll let be his.  We want to respect his story and let it be his to tell one day when he wants to.

We decided when we were matched with Xia Yang that we wanted to name him, Benjamin.  Benjamin means "son", or "son of my right hand".  Brad and I wanted it to be inherent even in his name that he has a permanent place in our family; a father, and a mother, that he is someone's son.

We learned in August, that his orphanage-given name, Xia Yang, means "summer sun", likely linked to the time of year he was born.  We loved that his Chinese name meant s-u-n, while his American name meant s-o-n, and are excited to keep both: Benjamin Xia Yang Varner.

Abi and Andrew are over the moon.  And we're pretty excited too 😉 For those praying, thank you, and please keep praying, but now with a face to a family 💛

Talk more soon,
Brooke