We are DTC!

You never could have guessed it from the title, but we found out today that we are DTC! Actually, our dossier goes out to China tomorrow, but we decided to go out and celebrate tonight anyway. Yeah, we're crazy like that. We went to Torrini down the street and allowed ourselves to have appetizers and dessert in addition to our very own meals. That's right. It's was a pretty special night.

We thought once we became DTC, it would be a month until our LID, but checking the Holt website, it might be sooner. For example, a couple that had a DTC on 11/16 got a LID of 11/28. Then again, last year a couple had a DTC of 12/15 got a LID of 1/24. My guess is China will find our application so fetching they won't be able to help themselves and we should have a DTC by the end of the week. A boy can dream.

This is Tim typing, by the way. That'd be weird if Danielle called herself a boy. I mean, I'd still love her, but...

How Long?

I get asked a lot "how long?" which I take to mean "how long until we're sent information about who our child is?" It's such a hard question to answer. Once our dossier is sent to China (DTC) China looks it over and gives it their approval. When that happens we are given an official date of entering the process. That's called our Log In Date (LID). This date is really important. It's the date families live by because we're matched with a child by this date. Each week the CCAA, the government organization in charge of matching families with children,
http://www.china-ccaa.org/frames/index_unlogin_en.jsp
goes by the family's Log In Date to see who is next in line for the child matches.

In order to answer the question, "how long" it's difficult to say. The 24 month wait from LID is for families getting their referrals now. These families logged in in December of 2005. Every month that the CCAA refers only a few days worth of LIDS, the wait grows. It is taking the CCAA several months just to get through one month of LIDS. There is no way to know how long someone logging in now will wait, though there are algorithms online that can render a guess.

http://people.wwc.edu/staff/stirra/china/stats/statsdisplay.htm#QUICK

We're hoping the wait won't increase but you can't know. People tell me how patient I am but that's not true. There's just nothing I can do about it. Plus, we don't even have a LID date yet, we're still waiting for our DTC.

Not Quite Sure

Tim and I headed to the notary on Saturday. It was seemingly uneventful as we waited in line for our last document to be stamped. Emmanuel, the UPS store notary, was behind the counter as usual. He's now to the point where he recognizes us: I'm the uptight one (shocker), Tim's the jokey one (double shocker). Usually we have several items to take care of but on Saturday it was simple, one document, one signature, $10 and we were spit back out onto Wilshire Boulevard. We headed next door to Fed Ex where we have an account so I could overnight the I-171h to Masha Ma. Masha is my contact at Holt who is managing our dossier. She is in charge of certifying all our documents and then once that happens they'll be sent to the San Francisco Chinese Consulate for authentication. The good news is we expect our documents to come back from the certification process today which is sooner than I had expected. We might get the authentication process finished by the end of December which would be fantastic and pretty much the best Christmas present we could imagine but I'm trying not to get my hopes up. Having that done means our dossier is finished and to China but that's a pretty big hope with the holidays in December.

Pictures have arrived!

Thank you Aunt Amy! Julian at 30 minutes old. I can't wait for more.

Welcome Julian

Our family received a new addition today, baby Julian, son to my sister Lisa and her husband Kit. He arrived at 3am weighing 6lbs, 7oz. I haven't seen any pictures yet (which is killing me!) but hopefully someone on the east coast will email pictures soon. His arrival was unexpected since we thought he'd be here closer to mid-December but unlike his family members he's showing a early streak, I like that! I wonder if we'll find Julian dusting statues like his grandmother someday. Sorry, inside family joke.

In other good news Tim and I received our I-171h today. Although this is in no way as cool as becoming an aunt (or a parent, or a grandparent) it's still pretty great for us. This is our very last piece of documentation for our dossier that we've been compiling since May. The I-171h is
a notice of favorable determination concerning the application for advance processing of an orphan petition. Basically it means we've been approved by the US goverment to adopt. Our next steps are to go to the notary on Saturday then Fed Ex it to our agency and then high-five!

Invoices Mean Moving Forward

On Friday we got an invoice in the mail for our dossier. This might not seem like much but it actually is. Our next invoice won't come until referral which is probably 24 months from now so this is a milestone. Tim put the check in the mail today for the dossier payment so now our agency can move ahead with the final elements of it as these are administration fees. We're of course still waiting for our I-171h form which we hope will be completed around mid December but once we have that THEN the dossier will be complete!

update

She received her child's visa and will be able to leave China on Saturday morning (as planned)!

The things you read

I read a lot of blogs and chat rooms and things I shouldn't including this article

http://www.wilx.com/news/headlines/11384376.html

about a family adopting a SN (special needs) baby. While the family was in China to adopt the child the husband died of diabetic shock. As if that wasn't traumatic enough China is now reclassifying the family as single parent, saying they need to re-evaluate and the mother can't take the newly adopted daughter home. So this poor woman is now a widow who has lost a child and a husband. This is why Tim tells me to stay off the Internet.

Baby Steps (heh)

Today is a good day. Tim dropped off our home study at the USCIS (immigration) office. We've been waiting for our home study to be finalized for quite a while. From start to finish the whole home study took 2 months. It would have been a lot smarter if we could have done the home study alongside other parts of the dossier but... So now the home study is with USCIS and from there we wait for them to take a look at it and make sure everything is okay and if it is we'll get our I-171h form which is the last document we need to complete our dossier. Once it's complete we can begin the process of our agency examining all our forms. They'll tell us if everything looks okay, if our notaries made any mistakes, if there are any inconsistencies, etc. Fingers crossed we'll still be DTC (dossier to China) by January.

Waiting, Waiting and more WAITING

I called Holt today because the home study still has not arrived. Apparently it's caught up in "China Approval". What does that mean? I think it means Beth Smith, the head of the China division at Holt, needs to just sign it and then it gets notarized and then they SEND IT TO ME! They were supposed to send it to me last Wednesday. It's nearly a week later. We could have had it to the USCIS by now. It's still going to take a good 6 weeks to get the I-171H and with the holidays.... I'm so annoyed.