*DTC!!!!!

Alleluia, we are DTC today! Translated: Our big bundle of paperwork (Dossier) went To China today!

Our paperwork before sent to our agency.

Today is my late Grandma's birthday and I took Koen out to her grave site to honor her. She passed away year and a half ago. I hadn't been there before and decided a couple months ago that I would go on her birthday. It was a beautiful day and the cemetery is on a hill overlooking the city. It was such a perfect day to go. Afterward we visited a park nearby that is also a farm. Koen had fun getting to see the horses, goats, chickens, bunnies, and a very muddy pig.

When we got home there was a message from our agency saying she was putting our dossier in the mail to China. Yay! Once it is there it will be "logged in." China will send our agency our LID (Log In Date) but we likely won't know about it until well after in happens.

Our agency also received our special needs checklist today, and sent us an email asking for confirmation that we would like them to try to match us with a child from the list the CCAA puts out about every month. I quickly replied with a yes, and now we wait to hear from them.

I hope, hope, hope that we will see her face soon.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is Chinese New Year, and the first time that Chinese New Year has felt significant to me. The nannies at my daughter's orphanage are likely celebrating. I pray the children get to be a part of the festivities and are not forgotten on a day like this. Welcome to the Year of the Ox - prayerfully, the year we will bring our little girl home.

Our paperwork should head to China in the next two weeks, as it is currently being authenticated in San Fransisco. Then we will be DTC, and can decide when we want to start looking for a "match" on the CCAA's lists. I hate having so much control, and just pray the Lord guides us in the decisions we need to make. We've been researching many different medical issues and trying to decide what we are ready for, and not really feeling adequate for anything.

*Premature Excitement

So, my post last week was a little premature. We thought it was the last of our paperwork, but we had a couple issues with our medical forms. We had to get them resigned, and add some letter explaining the medications we take, which put us back a couple days. On Thursday we dropped the last piece of mail at the post office, and on Friday our agency sent our last pieces of paperwork to the state to get authenticated. I believe that we should be DTC (Dossier to China) in the next couple weeks, but I'm not totally sure what all needs to be done.

I joined two yahoo groups about adopting from China - one for the special needs program, and one for adopting toddlers. We are still unsure what special needs we are open to, and are finding this is a good way to learn more about them from adoptive parents who have experience.

We went to the zoo with friends yesterday, and as we were walking through the tropical rainforest, and cute family with two young Asian girls and two very white parents walked next to us. I was unsure of how to ask, but really wanted to know, so I blurted out "Did you adopt?" The mom graciously answered, and was excited to hear we were adopting from China too. It went well, but my friends couldn't believe I had asked. The children could have been their grandchildren, or from a previous marriage, or foster kids.... Do you have any advice about how to ask without offending?

My other concern was that their girls were old enough to understand our conversation, and I didn't know how comfortable they were with talking about their adoption, or feeling like their family looks different enough to get these questions. The mother didn't seem to be concerned, but having not been through it, I'm not sure how to approach the subject with them listening. I probably shouldn't in the future, but I love, love, love to see adoptive families!

*Done with Phase 1!

Today I dropped our last pieces of paperwork in the mail. We were waiting for my medical appointment, which was on Wednesday. Today we got our medical forms signed and notarized, and we are done! It's good to be done, but it only means the rest is out of our hands.

I talked with our agency this week and was discouraged to learn more about the process. We really did enter this blindly. The most discouraging news is that we will likely wait 6-9 months to travel once we are matched with a child. Can I just say TORTURE!!! My little girl will be that much longer without me. I had my mind prepared for 3-4 months like with Vietnam, but this is double that wait. I'm not sure why it takes so long - is it just because the CCAA is understaffed? Or is there some kind of paperwork happening during that time?

Our agency also said that it is up to us as to when we want to start looking for a match. They recommended we wait a couple months after our paperwork goes to China, as this will likely decrease the time that we have to wait to travel (the torturous part of the wait), but still keep out total wait about the same. I'm not sure I understood, but I will research and trust their judgment.

In the meantime, we pray hard for Mei Mei, and trust the Lord to watch over her and bring us together. We also trust the Lord to provide the funds we will need to pay in the next couple weeks when our dossier goes to China.

*Fun Mail

Guess what I found in our mailbox today.....Our immigration approval already! And, now it is noted on the bottom that a cable was sent to Guangzhou, China. It's official! We really only had to renew our previous approval, as well as do a change of status from Vietnam to China, so that is why it happened so quickly.

Since we sent in most of our paperwork to the agency on Monday, all we are waiting on now is Keith's Birth Certificate and our medical exams. Keith saw the doctor today, and will see mine on January 7th. Then we await blood test results, and signatures, and our part should be done by mid January. We're making progress!

*Here's the News....

Alright, so now I have a few minutes to write and wanted to let you know that we are moving forward with China. We are very excited about. For the first time in a long time, things actually seem to be moving forward MORE QUICKLY than we expected. Because we had just updated our home study for Vietnam, our social worker was able to surprise us by having our China home study done in two days!! We expected this to take at least a month, not really knowing that it didn't require all new paperwork. That was a huge praise!

We are going the special needs route with the China program through our agency, Faith International. This route works much different than the route for healthy children, where the wait is as long as 3 years now. Our whole process from now until we have the child home could be 9 months, or even less since our paperwork stage is progressing quickly.

We have done some research on what kinds of special needs we are open to. We are using the term "minor correctable special needs" in our paperwork, and can be more specific with our agency. They will then help us find the right child for us based on the age and special needs we have requested. The most common special needs that we are open to are cleft palate/lip, minor physical deformities like missing or extra digits..., sight or hearing weakness, skin conditions, minor heart conditions, Hepatitis B.....We are still requesting a girl, under the age of 2.

Our immigration forms are being sent to the US Consulate today. It is perfect timing because our Vietnam approval expires soon and we were needing to update our forms anyway. Anyone can have one free update and one free change of status, and you can do both at once. So, we are updating and changing our status to China, and will wait a few weeks for approval. Once we have our immigration approval, and all of our paperwork done, our dossier goes to China and our agency will start looking on the special needs lists for our child! Most of the paperwork we have done before. The most time consuming are things we need other people to help with - our medical reports, and employment letters..... The stress of paperwork is adding to the busyness of the season, but it's a good stress.

The Lord has given us peace about this, and is open doors along the way. Now we need Him to provide the funds, and help us find our daughter.

We are not giving up on Vietnam. If things open again soon, we may have to delay our Vietnam adoption, until our first daughter is home and adjusted. It would also be an even bigger financial stretch to do two adoptions, but if this is what the Lord has for us, He will provide. Liv is still in Vietnam, and I won't give up looking for her until the Lord tells me to.

We need a nickname for our Chinese daughter, and may have to start a new blog, since this one is obviously rather Vietnamese. Some nicknames we have brainstormed are: Pearl, LIA (Love in Asia - LIC just isn't cute, and LICh is worse:) and Mei Mei (which means little sister in Mandarin). Any other suggestions, or votes?

It is so great to see an end to this long wait for our next child in site! I have hope, and am also trying to guard my hope for fear of trials like we've had with Vietnam.

*Paperwork and Potluck

Still no exciting mail, but we have gotten a little more of our paperwork done. We got our "letter of intent" notarized on Friday. This is one of the harder papers required to adopt, as it is a one page letter written by us communicating our desire and reason to adopt, the age and gender we are requesting, and our intentions with our future child. More hinges on our writing papers like these, than ever did before - in school and college it was only for grades, on job applications, it is only for a job, but this is for our child! It adds a little to the stress, but we probably don't have to worry about grammar as much, as it will be translated to Vietnamese.

We had a hard time with this letter too, because I don't feel 100% confident that we should be requesting a healthy infant girl. I've mentioned this before. I talked with our caseworker, and if we are willing to accept some special needs we need to update our home study to say which ones specifically. We also found out that our home study approved us for one or two children birth to 18 months. We thought it was birth to 12 months. So we had to consider if we would be willing to accept a referral of a 13 or even 18 month old child. Our case worker recommended we keep it up to 18 months, and they would take note that we want as young as possible. It may be the case that we will receive a referral that is 9 months old, and have to wait 4 months to travel. Thus the child would be 13 months when we went to get her, and our paperwork would need to say we're approved for us to 18 months. Complex, yes, but she helped me feel good about keeping it at 18 months. She also said we could update our home study later to include special needs if that is what our referral is for (I think.)

Our agency adopts out of three orphanages in the north, and 3 in the south. As I've said before, it costs $3000 more to adopt from the north, but they are healthier, and the wait between referral and travel is way shorter (one month in the north, and 4-7 in the south). So, that $3000 could get us to our child 6 months faster, and allow us to enjoy 6 months more of her life (get her younger). That 4-7 month wait after receiving the picture and information on our child would be pure torture, but if that's where our daughter is, that's what we need to be ready for. The southern orphanages also refer out their children before searching for biological or national adoptive families, so sometimes a referral is given to an American couple, and then the family is found in Vietnam, and the referral is revoked. I'm sure that's also torture, but something we'd have know could happen if our child is in the south.

The other thing we've saved for last is our individual pictures. One of Keith, and one of me, each by ourselves. It's hard to pose for a picture and not make it look too posed, and yet also look like you'd be a good parent (whatever that looks like). So, after church today we quickly snapped some photos, and then Keith was off to a student leadership retreat. Campus ministry is getting busy already, even though most schools don't start classes until the end of the month. The fall is always the busiest time for Crusade staff, so I probably won't see him much the next 3 months. Today was only a half day with Koen to myself, and it was exhausting, even though he was really well-behaved. He has a lot of energy!

Yesterday we got to gather with several other families who have adopted from Vietnam, or are in process and live in the Seattle area. The family that hosted the potluck has two boys from Vietnam, the oldest of which is 9. They started the group, which gets together a couple times a year, soon after they adopted him. We met a family who is at about the same stage we are in the process, and a lady adopting through our agency that is getting her referral tomorrow.

Hard to see, I know, we're in the middle back. Koen has a white hat on.

Through conversation there I learned that several of the families were able to meet the birth parents of their child, and that sometimes the birth parents attend the "Giving and Receiving Ceremony." I didn't even know this was a possibility, and I hope it is so for my child. I think it would be a blessing for her later in life, to at least know a little about them, rather than it be a complete mystery. We also learned that the orphanage food the children in Vietnam receive is usually better nutritionally than orphanages in other countries. Babies are fed formula from France in Vietnam with all the nutrients baby formula in the US has.