Our Adoption Journey

Better pictures - Kind Of

2009-04-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Here are more room pictures since I've been getting some requests. I don't know why I have so much trouble getting a good shot. Maybe because the room is the size of a my car.

Can't. Sit. Still.

2009-03-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

I think we have everything done but then again I don't know if you ever have everything done. I think of little things here and there. I just want that &^*$# phone to ring, or that email to arrive saying it's time to get on a plane. This waiting is going to kill me, I'm sure of it.

We are waiting for the National Visa Center to approve his visa, for him to get a final physical in Korea and for a few other documents to go through in Korea and then we get the go ahead to travel. Apparantly this should take 3 weeks. THREE WEEKS.

I was looking at Henry's first medical info, the first packet we received back in December. He was 6 months old in that write-up, could barely put any weight on his legs, weighed 17 lbs (woah!) and was 26 inches. Now at 9 months he's 20 pounds and 28 inches. Still sounds like a big kid to me. Now he laughs but he's shy with strangers and waves bye-bye. He sits alone, walks a few strides alone, he says mama in Korean (heart breaking for the moment he has to leave his foster mom) and he picks up objects. All in all he's pretty much brilliant.

As for us, we are just waiting for our call. We have put together our strollers, we are waiting for the delivery of our car seat which should be any day now, his room is in order (no we're not painting it) but we've managed to hang some colorful and whimsical mobiles. I need to photgraph those. Here are some bad blackberry pictures while our camera is still being repaired.

This is a beautiful tapestry from India from my friend Elise. I know you can't see it but it's perfect for the room. It has animals and kids on it and also I can hang it on the wall and if the closet door hits it, no problem!

This is a terrible picture before we added the mobiles for some life to the room. Too much white, no sheets in the crib, Tim's computer bag(?). I need to get a better picture on here.

The stroller from my mum. This took about 3 seconds to put together. I love it.

I just like this picture. Murphy spends 90% of the weekend here and I don't know how much of the weekday while we're not home.

Poor little Murphy, he will no longer be the little man of the house.

Waiting For The Next Steps

2009-03-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

There have been things happening behind the scenes both on the US and Korea side to get Henry home. We found a more baby friendly place to live in South Pasadena. It's a great little neighborhood with a park nearby and lots of kids. We're setting up Henry's room and meanwhile we got our homestudy updated and sent in our newest forms including the all important I-600 which in adoption world is huge. Henry got his Emmigration Approval or (EP approval as it's called) so we are now waiting for approval of the I-600 from the US, Korean immigration approval and for the final call for us to get travel approval and go.In short we're hoping within 6 weeks we'll be able to go to Korea to get him.

What's happening with Henry? The latest is that he's walking while holding on for support he imitates sounds and is starting on solid foods. I have a feeling we'll be surprised by all the things he can do.

Thanks to everyone who has gone out of their way to offer their support, amazing gifts, words of wisdom, you name it, we are thankful and overwhelmed by the joy and excitement everyone has shown in our journey to becoming a family through adoption. It We hope you're all still as excited when we're looking for babysitters!

It's Time

2008-12-15T20:29:00.000-08:00

As pretty much everyone has heard, the time we've been waiting for came totally out of the blue. Ilana, our social worker, rang us early last week. She had news that a baby boy, Min-wu was waiting for us in Korea. He's 6 months old, just newly eligible for adoption and he's ours! He also has a half sister in Long Beach which is just icing on the cake. His sister's family wanted to be sure we'd be open to having a relationship with them, which of course we are and we're anxious to get to know them. Unfortunately that part can't happen until we finish a mound of paperwork which we are diligently working on at the moment.

So Henry Min-wu McKeon will hopefully be home within 4-6 months, as quickly as we can push through his visa paperwork. In the meantime he is with a foster family in Korea. We are so thankful for the love they are giving him while we are working hard to bring him home and thinking of him every moment.

There's a lot to do between now and then of course but we're thankful to all our friends and family for their support, well wishes, advice and everything in between. It truly does take a village.

Parenting Class

2008-11-17T15:00:00.001-08:00

We went to a "parenting" class this weekend but it wasn't your typical how to change a diaper or swaddle or whatever most parents learn to do in their hospital parenting classes. Instead, this was on the 30th floor of a high-rise in downtown LA, in the conference room of a fancy-shamancy law firm. We were one of 3 couples meeting over fresh bagels and coffee to discuss raising adopted children of interracial families. Most interestingly was the make-up of the group: we were coincidentally all adopting from Korea, Tim and I were the only white couple, another was half white (Australian) half Korean (she moved to the US when she was 11) and the third couple was Korean-American.
Mostly we talked about the delicate balance of attempting to provide information about Korean culture without, at least in the case of Tim and me, feeling like a bit of a fraud, since it's not as though we'd typically dress in hanbok. We want to provide a gateway while realizing we're very much learning ourselves. I was a bit relived to find the Korean-American couple didn't do all the "traditonal" Korean fare for their first son like the big first birthday celebration. "http://www.lifeinkorea.com/culture/tol/tol.cfm"Granted, every family finds their own way but seeing as this couple is surrounded by grandparents who I would expect would insist upon Korean tradition and yet don't it made the pressure to figure out what I do an don't need to blend into our American cutlture seem a little less intimidating. I certainly want to intruduce Korean culture to our child but it seems more for the adults than the baby to do it at such a young age. I have this feeling no mattter what we do, a family vacation to Korean, Korean BBQ nights and weekends with our adoptive family network I hope I can just do a good job of helping my child figure out who they are, not as a Korean, or as an American but just as themselves. However, having said that, it may be easy, living in a white society and being white, to not realize how much race and culture do play a factor. So that's where my job, our job, as parents come in.

Korea

2008-09-14T09:44:00.001-07:00

It's finally official. It's been a long time since there's been an update because there's been a big change to our adoption plans and it's not something to just casually discuss. After much consideration we have switched our adoption from China to Korea due to the extensive wait in China. What had begun as a year and a half to potentially 2 year time line has now stretched to an unpredictable amount of time. So that being said we began to explore other options and moving our adoption to the Korea program once we as a family qualified for it, made sense.

The Korean guidelines differed from China in that we needed to be married for 3 years versus the 2 years required by China. For us we hit this milestone on September 4th. We met with our social worker this past week to update our home study and officially switched our paperwork over to begin again. Although we're very excited there is of course an element of sadness and frustration. But parenthood demands flexibility and this is just the beginning on our road of the unexpected.

Now that we have officially begun the process with our agency of participation with the Korean adoption program we are as eager as all of you to know when we will be matched with our child. According to Holt, our agency, it will take approximately 11 months once our home study is completed to be matched. Once we are matched with a baby it will take approximately 4-6 months for our paper work and the baby's paperwork to be processed for us to fly to Korea and bring the baby home.

The baby will be approximately 5 months old at family match. All children are fostered by a family and therefore are not in orphanage care which is excellent for early child development.

So now we wait for our home study to be submitted, we finish a few forms ourselves and wait...

The Earthquake in Sichuan

2008-05-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

On the afternoon of Monday, May 12, 2008, a massive earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale, rocked China. The epicenter was Wenchuan County, Sichuan, northwest of Chengdu.

Chengdu - The city's Qingyan Sports Center has become a relief camp. The young mom (red coat) received special assistance from the army to reach the camp with her 16 day-old baby. The baby was born in Yingxiu and lost her father in the earthquake when she was only 11 days old. There are many children living in the Qingyan camp who've not yet been reunited with their parents. Most are teenagers. Children in the primary schools and kindergartens more often did not survive as they were napping when the earthquake struck.

SHIFANG, SICHUAN
As many as 40,000 children are in need of shelter and care. Their schools and homes destroyed, high school-age survivors are trying desperately to study for their all-important school exams, which take place across China in early June. The government and national and international aid organizations are providing tents and basic necessities as much as possible.

CHENGDU CHILDREN'S WELFARE INSTITUTION
The surviving children are all well. They all sleep on the first floor of the children's building and, for their safety, are kept outside during their waking hours. Due to recent severe aftershocks, the Children's Welfare Institute is now preparing to move children to tents.

HANZHONG COUNTY SOCIAL WELFARE INSTITUTION, SHAANXI
Cracked walls and a crumbling foundation forced the children and caregivers of this small orphanage close to the Sichuan border to take shelter in tents. All are reported to be fine.

Today marks three-days of national mourning for the tens of thousands of people killed - may China begin to heal and rebuild.

How It All Works

2008-05-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

I've been repeatedly asked to explain how the adoption process works so here's my attempt to break it down:

The Paperchase
To adopt a child from China a family must gather certain paperwork, called a dossier and submit it through their agency to the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) in China. The paperwork consists of birth certificates, a home study report, as well as fingerprinting, medical approvals and background checks, financial paperwork and immigration approval. All the paperwork is then authenticated at the local, state and federal level and then as a last step must also pass through the Chinese embassy for approval. Once all of this is completed, a family’s American agency will review the paperwork and send it off to China (also know as DTC or dossier to China). When the CCAA receives the dossier a log-in date (LID) will be assigned. The “paper chasing” portion of the process takes anywhere from 5-12 months to complete. At this point the family will wait for a match with a child. Right now we are waiting and waiting and waiting.

The Match
The CCAA will review the dossier and will match us to a child. We then will be sent a photo of her with as much information as they have. We are specifically requesting a healthy infant girl between 0-12 months: as young as possible or sibling twin girls. She may be anywhere from 6 months to 15 months old, since the Chinese believe a 15 month old is still an infant. Once a baby is abandoned it takes 6 months to declare the baby legally abandoned in China. The Chinese newspapers post a “found list” with the baby’s picture and information such as where the little girl was abandoned. The Chinese government attempts to find the parents or other biological relatives before placing the child up for adoption. Most of the babies are around 10-12 months at the time of referral. The referral will hopefully include some general information about her personality and interests. It will also include her age and where in China she is located, if she is in an orphanage or living with a foster family. Upon acceptance of our daughter, we will be given travel approval from China and expected to travel within 6 to 8 weeks post referral. The wait time from dossier completion to child referral is somewhat unpredictable, right now the wait is at 30 months and we are just hoping it doesn’t continue to extend. It will be an exciting day when we get our first pictures of our daughter sent from the CCAA.

The Travel
Our travel will take approximately 10-14 days. We will fly first to Beijing or Hong Kong to tour and learn about the country. Then we will meet up with our travel group and travel to the province in China where our daughter lives. We expect to be united with our daughter the 1st day or 2nd day after we arrive in her province. We will spend 4-5 days in the province processing much of the Chinese adoption paperwork. After finishing our paperwork within the province, we will travel to Guangzhou, China where the US Consulate is located. Here we will process our daughters’ US VISA and passport and she will have a medical exam which typically consists of a lot of crying children during a hearing exam.

As you can imagine we are filled with excitement and anticipation as we travel this journey to our daughter. We encourage you to follow along with us and share in this exciting time.

China's Very Complicated One Child Policy

2008-03-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of discussion and various news articles recently published about the one child policy, and I’ve certainly stayed away from the subject here.

There are two reasons I’ve stayed away, the first being that it’s a very complex issue and there is no way to say whether doing away with it would be a good or bad thing for China or the world. Certainly, the policy is harsh, particularly on women and on female children.

And the second is that it makes me very uncomfortable to hear people who are in the process of an adoption freak out about the news stories. I try to take solace in the belief that China should do what is best for her people. The idea that people might want this kind of policy to stay in place in order to make sure babies make it into orphanages is just mind boggling. It makes my head and heart hurt. So, I’ll stay away from that and go back to my first reason.

Let’s look back in history for a bit to understand why the policy was put in place to begin with. After years of food shortages and people literally starving to death, the country was finally able to feed most everyone. But the government looked ahead and realized that if families continued having lots of kids that in another decade or two there would (again) not be enough food to feed everyone. Realize that in the late fifties and early sixties it is estimated that between 20 and 43 million people in China died of starvation. In some areas one out of every four people died of starvation. Imagine 16 of your friends and family, with four of them dead to starvation and you perhaps not far from it.

So, in the late 70’s when the one birth policy was put in place, it was done so in part to keep the population from exploding back to what it had been when there wasn’t enough food to feed everyone. This is a bit simplified of course since there was more at work during the famine than just population, but it’s a complicated subject and I’m trying to do this in a few paragraphs.

If you’ve visited China then you know that there is plenty of food now. Well, there may be some shortages right now because the winter storms disrupted the crops, but in general terms, if you have the money to buy food, there is affordable food to buy.

But now the government is having to deal with a reality where there are enough people who can afford to pay the fines for more than one child that it has become noticeable. And those who can’t afford to pay the fines are justifiably upset. There are the families seen in fancy hotel elevators all well dressed and toting three kids. Walk around the areas where the rich shop and you’ll see families with more than one child. But go out into the countryside and you will mostly only see families with one child. Now there is some bitterness, where there was not before.

The government is looking for a solution to this, and has begun putting political pressure as well as the threat of fines to keep their wealthy people limited as well.

And, they are starting to put out hints that they are reconsidering the law. Some argue this won't happen any time soon. And even if they do change it, my guess is that there will still be restrictions in place, they’ll just loosen it even more than it has already been loosened. It hasn’t been the “one child policy” for a long time. First, it’s really the “one birth policy” since twins and triplets are okay. And second, there are now many ways to legally have more than one child without paying fines. In some areas if your first child is a girl you get one more chance, though if your first child is a boy then you are done. Also, two only-children parents are allowed to have two kids, no matter the gender of the first.

But, back to our discussion of the ramification of taking the one child policy away. Let’s shift directions.

OK, let's look at look at land.

As of November 2005, China had approximately 301.5 million acres of farmable land. The United States had 470 million acres of farmable land in 2001 (can’t find anything more recent) China has less farmable land than the U.S.

If China’s population starts exponentially increasing then in today's global market we could be looking at worldwide food shortages. Under Mao’s reign they didn’t look outside the country for food. But in today’s market they’d get it from wherever they could, at whatever price it was offered.

China has population disparity. Without seeing it for yourself, I think it’s hard to get it across. When trying to explain what it was like to go to a market apparently it's like a store in the U.S. the day before Christmas. Every day. And the traffic? Like the traffic around the mall the day before Christmas. Every day.

The Chinese government will do what is best for China. The one child policy is harsh, and cruel and sad. But the alternative could, in the long run, also be harsh, and cruel, and sad.

As I said, I haven’t talked about it because it is a complex issue. When I think of the people in China then I’d love for them to be able to have a huge family as a basic human right. But, when I think of the overall effect of this happening across China, I’m actually pretty glad I’m not the one making that decision.

The equitable decision would probably be for the rest of the planet to also be responsible with how many children we bring into the world. But I doubt that will be happening any time soon. And, again, I’m glad I’m not in a place to have to make such a decision.

China's Stolen Children - A Documentary

2008-03-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

There's a new documentary released in the UK called China's Stolen Children. It follows ten years after the policy-changing and award-winning film, The Dying Rooms, the same team returns to a very different China where the infamous One Child Policy has had the horrific side effect of a boom in stolen children.

With extraordinary access to devastated parents desperately searching for their stolen son; a man who brokers the deals and has sold his own offspring; and prospective parents grappling with giving up their soon-to-be-born daughter through lack of options, we are brought face to face with the crisis that such a stringent government policy has created among China's poorest people.

This film takes us into the heart of modern China, a place where girl babies are being sold for 3,000-4,000 RMB ($450-$550); detectives specialise in finding kidnapped children; and child traffickers are so relaxed about the trade they ply, that they allow the film-makers to covertly record them buying and selling tiny human lives. Tens of thousands of children are now kidnapped and traded on the black market whilst the State is more concerned with keeping the story quiet than tracing Chinas stolen children.

Why is this happening? Clare Dwyer Hogg from the Observer outlines it well:

A root cause of such large numbers of children being snatched is the fact that having a son in China is a necessity. He carries the family name, he is the child who will provide for his parents as they age. A daughter will leave the family to marry into another name, passively obliterating her own family line and leaving her relatives without the assurance of help in old age. The One Child Policy - which Save The Children calls a 'mass, live experiment in family life which is unique in the history of the world' - has resulted in prohibitive family-planning laws in China: prospective parents must have a birth permit before conceiving, and while rural families are allowed a second child if their first is a girl, urban families must pay a fine for flouting the one-child rule. And if you haven't had an abortion to get rid of your female child (although it is now illegal, around 40m girls have been selectively aborted since the One Child Policy was instituted in 1979), how can you be sure to get a son? Sometimes the only choice seems to be to buy a stolen child, gender already determined.

Here is the youtube link:
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=b9YdA3WSiPM

How The Matching Room Works

2008-02-26T12:27:00.000-08:00

I found the below from someone else's blog. I have to admit I find it a bit convoluted but if you can follow along it's pretty interesting.

I have enclosed a copy of "How the Matching Room works" in this journal page. Right now rumors are that CCAA (Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs) is in the Matching Room.

How the Matching Room works:

First, they review the children’s dossiers and make sure there are no issues with them. We are told that they then count up all of the children’s dossiers that are eligible for matching that month and then look to see how far this stack will go in the parent dossiers without sending out a partial day, and they pull all of those parent files. That is the likely cut-off date. Sometimes something happens and they don’t get this far. Sometimes something happens and they get farther.
Next they match orphanages up with agencies. This orphanage has six children, this agency has six families. These two orphanages are in the same province and have a total of 12 children, this agency has 12 families. When they are through with this is when (I believe) some agencies start to get information about the cut-off date. Or at least it is when they used to start getting information.
And then they start matching individual children to individual families. At some point during this part of the process most agencies used to hear from their person in the matching room to let them know how many referrals they will be receiving and from what province(s). Some agencies shared this information with their clients. Some chose not to. Recently I’ve gotten the feeling that many agencies are still getting this information but they are being given orders by the CCAA to not share this information with the families.
Just as in the review room, each matcher is assigned certain agencies and is responsible for communicating with their agencies. Some matchers tell their agency the cut-off date, some matchers tell their agency you have X number of referrals arriving, some matchers give their agency a list of that agency’s families that will be receiving a referral. And some matchers don’t say anything at all to their agencies.
The next question that comes up is generally how the matchers match families and children. I’ve heard from several people who have had the opportunity to speak with someone who works in the matching room. The various conversations seem to all agree that they first look for something that stands out: a matching birthday, a child who looks a lot like a parent, or a child who likes music and a parent who teaches music. Several matching people have stated they match by bone structure of the child’s face and the parent’s faces (this is why they need our passport photos, so they can compare our mug shot with the child’s photo). Some have stated that they used Chinese astrology, also. Once they’ve matched the obvious matches they then start to look at things like age of child requested. The age requested is not a priority for them, they feel they are matching families and not filling orders.

The Waiting Game

2008-02-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

The wait times are getting a lot longer and I mean a lot longer. At first we were told 24 months now we're being told 36 to referral but I'm thinking it will be longer than that. Of course people around us ask why and I wish as much as the next person that I had an answer but I don't and our agency doesn't either. The CCAA who does the matching has simply slowed down its process and there is no guarantee things will speed up after the Olympics. That is more of a wish than a fact. It could happen, or it might not. What is known is that the CCAA is currently only making it through a couple of days with each batch of LIDS.

A few other possibilites for the increase in wait times may be due to the fact that Russia stopped all adoptions and has required all US agencies to recertify and many people jumped ship and switched to China. Guatemala's system was becoming so corrupt (with documented cases of baby theft) that that country has closed its doors for adoption for now, and again people in that program switched to China. Those factors, plus the growing demand for Chinese babies in a country that is seeing families in the cities now keep their daughters (which is great by the way) now means there are less "orphans".

What people can know for sure is that we hate it more than anyone and can use all the support we can get while we wait. We are in this for the long hall and know in the end we will get the perfect child for us, you'll be one of the first to know when we know something, thank you for your thoughts.

At Long Last - We Have Our LID Date

2008-01-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

The date everyone in the world of China adoption goes by is their Log In Date and we got ours today! This is when China officially approves your application to adopt. Our LID date is 12/19/07. We didn't expect to get it so soon but I got an email from Holt that links to DTC and LID dates and ours was the latest posted. So we have approximately 24 months until match from this date but the really hard part is behind us (although waiting is incredibly hard) the question of China approving our documents is now behind us. Yay, Happy Birthday to me!

We are DTC!

2007-12-13T20:26:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-12-05T13:34:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-03T15:26:00.000-08:00

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!

2007-11-30T09:51:00.000-08:00

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

Welcome Julian

2007-11-29T17:27:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-19T12:40:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-16T10:47:00.000-08:00

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

The things you read

2007-11-15T17:21:00.000-08:00

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)

2007-11-13T16:55:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-07T17:40:00.000-08:00

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.