School, A Care Package, and We're Almost There......

Well, we have certainly been busy. The school year has begun and we are slowly getting back into the routine. Colby is now in Second grade! Amazing! I am still at the same school this year and it is as crazy as ever. We have begun a new assessment system so I was back early for training on our new iPads. Then I had to give the professional development. Change certainly is tricky but I think this new system will be much more helpful than the old DRA reading assessment we gave previously.

Anyway, as for our little peanut. She still waits for us in Beijing. I did order her a care package through Ann at Red Thread. It was easier to order a few things through her than send them through customs. I was able to order a stuffed panda bear, some cookies, a thumb drive so the orphanage can give us a few photos of her, and a little photo album. Hopefully she will get them soon and she can see who her mama, baba (daddy) and big brother are.

As for paperwork, all of our paperwork is at the US Embassy in China. It is waiting for an Article 5 which really gives us permission to take custody of her. The I800 that we got at the end of August gave her permission to enter the US as a legal immigrant now the Art5 lets us take custody of her. It is the last piece of paper we need to get our travel approval. All the paperwork was dropped off on Tues 9/2. It takes 10 business days to get an Art5, not counting holidays. There was a Chinese holiday on the 8th so we won't have our Art5 until this Thurs 9/18. We are praying for a quick travel approval before the Chinese government shuts down for the first week in October for another holiday. We should have it before then but it will be close. Hopefully we will get it and we can then ask for the first available Consulate Appointment (CA). Just a few more steps and we will be in Beijing holding our little peanut. We are so close but yet still waiting. It is getting harder and harder, especially knowing we can't hurry anything along and that a holiday is what is keeping us from her.

So, please continue to pray that we get our Travel Approval quickly and we get a CA in October. I don't think I can wait much longer to hold sweet Madeline Mae!

Another Hold Up

I must start by saying that it has been a crazy week or so around here. Finding out that our I800 paperwork was misplaced was devastating. Thankfully I am such a control freak and found the error. Our agency worked quickly to recopy the paperwork, making sure a copy of our signed application was ok, and sent it all overnight. USCIS has had it since 8/13. The agency also has worked with USCIS to get our paperwork through the"lockbox" quickly and it was already on an officer's desk by this Monday 8/18. It can take up to 2 weeks to get through to an officer. So.... great news right!!!

Well...... our paperwork was given to one officer who was away for the week. Ugh! Then it was sent to another officer right away. At first I was a little upset because that officer doesn't answer her phone. But I was able to get her email and she responded right away. She told me on Monday that she would try to get it done on Tuesday. She looked at it Tuesday and.... issued an RFE, or request for evidence. She sent me an email saying she requested the evidence but not what it was. I tried to get her back but she had already left for the day. This morning she replied very early to tell me the evidence is a letter from our agency that hadn't been signed. Ugh! Another mix up. However, she emailed the agency and they are sending the new letter to her today, overnight. Great! However, the system is being shut down for an update on Friday and she probably won't be able to work on our approval until Monday. Monday will be 4 weeks since our LOA, approval from China.

4 WEEKS!!! Others with our LOA date have their I800 approval and are well on their way through the next couple steps. They are lined up for October travel. Us? Please pray it will be October. Hopefully these 2 setbacks will be it and we can move this along. We still have a bit of a wait after this approval as we wait for our little one's Visa to be issued and a Chinese Consulate appointment to be issued. That is my worry, that the appointments will all be given and we'll have to wait for a later one. I'm still praying to travel around Mike's birthday (10/11) but it will probably be later. Just pray it isn't in November. I just can't wait any longer. Our sweet pea needs to get home. Oh, and we just might have a name for her.......

Paperwork Blunder... Not on My Part

Well, yesterday certainly was a mixed bag of emotions. I was so excited to receive the update and 2 new photos of Little Miss and then....ugh!

I am so grateful to be a part of many Facebook groups of parents adopting from China. There is a group of us who all logged in our paperwork in China in May. Having such wonderful people around who are going through the same experience has been a huge help. I have also been able to "stalk" their timelines to see how we are progressing through our paperwork. Well, through that stalking I KNEW our I800 paperwork should have been received and ready for approval early this week. I called Immigration Friday and again yesterday to see if it was received and they couldn't find it. The officer tried to locate it but it wasn't even in the system. So I called the agency. Long story short, somehow our paperwork was sent to China instead of to Immigration. 2 weeks have passed. 2 long weeks in which we should have received our approval. The agency has been great about trying to get the paperwork resubmitted, and they sent it last night. It is now at the "lockbox" waiting to be dealt with. Our officer has been notified and the file has been "tagged". Hopefully they will bump it ahead in the pile. But, 2 weeks are gone and now I don't know when we will travel. So, please pray that this doesn't set us off too bad. With the week long holiday the first week in China I can only pray we will travel mid-October.

Just goes to prove my point about why I am such a control freak. If I hadn't caught this, we'd still be waiting. UGH!!!

So, the adoption rollercoaster continues. Trying to "roll with it" but not feeling happy today.

Waiting....Waiting....Waiting

Well, we are still waiting for our homestudy to be updated. I'm not sure what takes so long. All of the background clearances have gone through. So I am happy to report that neither Mike nor myself have any history of bad behavior at the local or state level or anything reported to DCF! Yeah us!

I have most of the papers done for the dossier. We are meeting with the doctor to complete the medical forms today. I am still waiting on my employer to complete an employee letter. It's been a week. Not sure why that is held up. I also need to take photos of the house and Little Miss's room. The room is currently Colby's Lego room so he spent much of Sunday morning cleaning it, under the watchful eyes of Daddy.

So, not much new to report. More waiting and waiting and waiting. And still no name for Little Miss. Top contenders seem to be

Amelia, Morgan, Ella, Sophia. I'd like the middle name to be Mae (Mei). HELP!! Suggestions!!!

Dossier Paperwork

Here it is March and we are still freezing! When will Spring come???

We received a nice packet of information from the agency on Friday explaining the documents we need for our dossier. It also had some information about the home study for WHFC. I spent much of today emailing, calling, visiting, or mailing stuff out. A lot got done which is good but not everything.

The To Do List:

My employment letter will be done next week, I hope.
We need to clean up Little Miss's room and at least make it look presentable so I can take photos.
Need to take photos of the house too.
Medical forms (UGH!) yet again. Not sure what to do about those. Hopefully we'll get into a doctor who helped a fellow China mom with her adoption paperwork, but not until next week also.
Copies and signing/notarizing papers.

Actually, not too bad. I can say that the docs needed for China are so much easier than the docs we needed for Russia. No 25 pounds of paperwork for this one!

So for now, paper chasing and watching videos over and over. Hoping for a "correct" update and new video soon. We had received an update but it didn't make any sense. Measurements were totally off and had Little Miss with 2 LESS teeth than before. I think they were wrong. What do you think?

Pre-Approval Equals One Step Closer

Well, we received our Pre-Approval yesterday for our little girl. We are so excited. It brings us one step closer to bringing her home. Now to hurry everyone else up: social worker to update our home study, US Immigration to get our fingerprints done and approve us, China to translate and approve everything. Plus some notarizations and apostilles in the middle.

The paper chase has begun! 

But we are matched and she is ours! Here we come!

Domestic or China....Social Worker Has Us Thinking

We had areally nice visit with Christine, our social worker. It was nice to see her again. I still can't quite believe we are back on the adoption rollercoaster. Christine was here last Friday. She was scheduled to come on that Saturday but there was a threat of snow so she rescheduled it for Friday night. We talked for almost two hours. She will be coming again at the end of March to actually start the paperwork to get accepted for the China program.

While she was here she asked us which program we were looking at and we said the China Special Needs program. She wants us to think about the domestic program. I guess there is a need for families in that program. But, I am just not sure. I would love to adopt a newborn and the thought of that is very appealing, but we just do not want an open adoption with our child having contact with the birth family. It just wouldn't be fair to Colby who will never have that. I wouldn't mind sending photos through an agency without any identifying info but not a full open adoption. So, that really limits our availability and we would be waiting for a birth mother to like our family portfolio. There wouldn't be a set time frame and there would be a whole lot of unknowns. I just don't think it would fit our family's needs. But I will touch base with Mary who heads up that program and see what she thinks. Maybe I am being too harsh and too quick to dismiss this. I just don't see us as that "lucky" couple who falls into a quick and easy adoption process. More likely, we'd be the family who waits forever and does finally get a match only to have the whole thing fall through and us left standing empty handed in a hospita somewhere. What do you all think? Any experience and words of wisdom?

Thus far, the paperwork has been so easy. I am amazed at the huge difference between this paperwork and what we did for Russia. I'm still waiting for someone to give me a list a mile long of documents that they need tomorrow! But the dossier list of docs looks really small and I could probably get them done within a couple days. So, we wait for the homestudy to be written and we enjoy our days, waiting for Spring to arrive. With Spring...the arrival of new things and new possibilities. Here's to shooting toward dossier being complete for Colby's birthday end of April...

Waiting Already

Well, our first set of papers were on the agency's desk as of 1/31. Yeah! Quickly followed by them sending the next set. I guess just preliminary paperwork for our state. Ok. Only the medical forms need to be done and then that's all set. So, I am good here. We are now waiting for the social worker to call. I am excited that she will be doing our homestudy again. She helped us bring Colby home 4 years ago this month and we had become close. I just wish she would call. I'm hoping this update won't take too long. I'm not really sure how long it will be. Hopefully not like the first one which took about 4 months. Hoping maybe 2? We'll see. So for now, I'll enjoy this snow day and try to relax. I think chocolate chip cookies are in the baking. I bet I'll even get a helper!