LID!

We found out today that we are LID!! Cupcakes for everyone!!!  Our dossier arrived in China on 6/20 and we were logged in 6/21. Next step is a referral!

Then I will tell you about the LOA wait- that is not the fun part.

 It's a good day today!

D.T.C.!!

We are Dossier To Ch*na!  I almost fell off my chair Friday afternoon when the dossier department contacted me to let me know we made it through critical review in one day- meaning everything in our dossier is complete and no revisions to any documents were needed.  Usually this process takes several days, not one, but one of the dossier specialists kind of implied that when the first review was done and it was perfect, they pushed it through the other levels quickly, for no other apparent reason than they didn’t feel the need for it to sit around the office. Following critical review, our agency translates key pieces of the dossier to avoid any confusion (Ch*na translates the entire thing once it gets there) then the agency arranges it in a folder/binder and mounts your pictures, so that all dossiers from this agency look a certain way. 

I knew on Friday that even though we made it through critical review, it would probably be a few more days before we were DTC, with the translation and organization of the dossier.  (Typically the entire process, critical review and preparing the dossier for China takes 9-11 business days).   I was in complete shock when I received an e-mail at 6:00pm that same day that we were DTC on 6/15/12!!!  I am not sure if they got it all done because they already had a package going to Ch*na or what, but we are so excited!

Some time in the next 3 weeks we should hear that we have been logged in the system in Ch*na and we will get our LID, or Log In Date.  Then we wait for our referral!

Dossier to Agency

Well, our revised I-800a approval was mailed out to us Monday, we received it Tuesday evening, I went to the Secretary of State and the Chinese Consulate to have a copy of it authenticated on Wednesday, mailed out our dossier, and dossier was delivered to our agency by FedEx a few hours ago:

I am not one to do "happy dances" but I definitely did one on Monday when I realized our USCIS officer had indeed turned my paperwork around in one day. Now I'm just hoping everything in that dossier is perfect and it can be mailed to China ASAP.

Currently Reading...

Yesterday while I was waiting in the consulate office for my number to be called (30 min) I downloaded a free sample of “No Riding in the House Without a Helmet.”  I had seen the author of this book promoting the book various places which turned me off for some reason, but the book came up under my “suggestions for you” in Amazon, so I downloaded a free sample on my Kindle while I waited and..I loved it.  Love the author, who narrates the book.  It is honest, candid, witty and wise.  You KNOW her after just reading a few pages, and I couldn’t help but really like her.  I read this one line twice and knew I would love this book- (In reference to choosing to adopt several children when the rest of their friends were empty nesters): "In retrospect, I see that Donny and I have steered by the light of what brings us joy, what makes us laugh, and what feels right and true." 

I have a love/hate relationship with my Kindle, because it is just too easy to buy a book. But I bought this one last week for $0.99 and it was great! Pretty Woman Spitting: An American's Travels to China. 

And otherwise, I am not reading books because oh my word, there are enough blogs about families adopting from China to keep me reading for the next 10 years... 

(Im)Patiently waiting

Our dossier is ready to go, except for that one little piece of paper that changes our Hague country to Ch*na.  Our officer said it should take about 10 business days for our paperwork to reach her from the Texas lockbox.  Day 10 is today.  Just in case it was a little early; I e-mailed her a FedEx mailing label for our approval on Tuesday.

The wait has been more brutal the past week because there is more than one little boy our agency currently has posted on their website that we are really interested in learning more about.  However, the agency only has 60 days with each child’s file.  If the agency is not able to find a family for the child after 60 days, the file sent back to Ch*na.  It is then sent by Ch*na to another agency, or posted to the shared list.

Unfortunately, the children we are interested in require that a family has a dossier logged in China. It takes up to 30 days for your dossier to be “logged” in China.  The agency can’t formally accept your intent to adopt a specific child until you have a log in date (LID).  So, our agency won’t share these files with us until they have our dossier, and then they need to check on the timing to see if it is possible for us to make the cut off.  Which makes perfect sense, I couldn’t imagine looking at a file only to miss the cut off, but boy, is it frustrating!!

I have been looking at the waiting children on their website for months, watching kids be matched, or not, and one by one, watched files go away and new pictures posted. Now that we are so close to getting our dossier in, there is a slight possibility that one of these boys could be our son.  Every day I look at who is still waiting, and think to myself, are you my son?