Finding ads and and finding the SWI

Let's begin with smiley boy:

I am leaving for San Francisco on Thursday for a week for work, and I am so happy to have something to make some days fly by, for a week anyway...

In more exciting news, last week we received the "finding ad" for Ben. In China, whenever a child is found abandoned, an article goes in the newspaper with their picture and information about where they were found.  There is an adoptive dad who will find your child's ad for you for a fee, and send you a copy of the original newspaper if he has one. Even though I was pretty sure I could eventually find the ad online, Mandarin is daunting, even with Google Translate, so I asked him to find this for us.  We now have our earliest picture of Ben, it looks like he is about a week old, all cute and smushed face like a newborn!

In addition, I was searching for any information about the SWI he is in.  Sometimes there are entire Yahoo groups dedicated to an SWI, but I couldn't find anything, until I found...something.  Two moms who have adopted from this SWI in the past year. I found out  it IS small, less than 10 kids, and I was told there were MANY loving nannies around! It makes sense now why he is sitting, crawling, and big and healthy, despite having a cleft lip for 6 months of his life and a cleft palate still.  One of the moms was able to visit the SWI, surprising because it is 3+ hours outside of the capital of Henan province, Zhengzhou, where we will meet Ben for the first time.  She was there in March, and said she may have picture of Ben... and she did! Another new picture!!  And more than anything, I am so happy to know someone is loving him.  The mom I met now e-mails updates about her son to the orphanage who loves to hear about her son.

Also today I went to Tiffany and exchanged our "M" Limoges china keepsake box (a gift from a friend at our shower) with a "B".  God bless Tiffany for exchanging it almost a year later, no questions asked.  The "B" is quite cute and is our first "personalized" item:

And as I have been desperately seeking things to do, I have begun this cute project which is turning out good.  I still haven't decided if I am doing "Ben's Room" or "Benjamin".  The maps are maps of China, so far I've done B:

And we continue to decorate the play room, I just did this cute border with oversized flashcards from Land of Nod:

And we wait, both for more news on our front and more news from our adoptive friends!

Today I mailed out our first care package, which felt GREAT! We found out that the orphanage would not be notified about us until just a few months before our trip to China, so receiving our package will let them know Xiao Yong, as they call him, (Little Yong) has parents!

We also received our notification that our application for a second extension of our I-800a approval has been received- I added to our STACK of notifications from USCIS over the years…. J  We found out the last time around, when we postponed our trip to Poland and Tom moved an already scheduled work flight to accommodate our fingerprint appointment, that our USCIS office would have allowed us to walk in for fingerprints before our appointment date. Would you ever have guessed? So this time, once we have the appointment form, we may try the walk in.

Yesterday we also received the copy of all of Min Yong’s paperwork from our agency.  All of the documents we had already seen, which included several medical reports and multiple development reports (after seeing all this, I can’t believe Poland sent me one piece of paper), but to our surprise there were 2 new pictures!!!  We received 5 photos originally, 2 from June 2012 and 3 from probably somewhere between January –March 2012.   Now we also have one little black in white picture attached to a medical form from December 2011, and another picture soon following his lip surgery, so probably early-mid May.  In addition, we realized that the 3 from January-March were scanned photos, and here were the originals!  I think any adoptive mom knows how obsessively you stare at those referral photos, memorizing every last piece of your child. Those pictures are now my most prized possession.  

I can’t believe I’ve only waited 4 days for this LOA, with 3-4 months to go. Luckily our calendar in the coming months is FULL, we all know how it is to try to pass the time…

Pre-approval today!!!    Here he is:

His first name is Min Yong, which means "Brave, valiant citizen." We hope to call him Benjamin Min Yong.   We are SO HAPPY!!!

Stay tuned....

Waiting one week

Ok, one week down, hopefully not too many left until we receive a referral.  We have MDs lined up for each type of special need we are open to (though I do tend to rely on gut instinct based on our history of accepting referrals).   When we moved to the China program and first talked about opening ourselves up to a child that may need surgeries or ongoing therapy, we realized (duh) that we live minutes from one of the best Children’s hospitals in the world.  If you live in the U.S. you have access to some of the best hospitals in the world, but here is one literally minutes from our house.  We definitely had an Aha! moment there.

I know I alluded to the wait for our Letter of Acceptance or LOA in my previous post.  Once we accept a referral, we submit a Letter of Intent, or LOI.  Hopefully within about a week we should receive PA, or preliminary approval.  But in order to file our I-800, we need that LOA from China that is the final approval of us to adopt that specific child.  The LOA can take anywhere from 30 days to 120 days.  Unfortunately, we learned via our agency’s monthly newsletter last month that we will most likely be in that 90-120 days category.  The reason being because 1) our dossier will have just arrived in China and will still be in line to be translated and 2) we are not adopting a special focus child (a child with more serious special needs) whose paperwork (and the family’s paperwork too) can be expedited.  So we will be in for a 3-4 month wait for that document.  Luckily, we will receive all the paperwork to file our I-800 beforehand, so we should be able to file that the day we get our LOA, then file the DS-230,  wait for the Article 5, then we receive Travel Approval, then notice of our consulate appointment, which means we can travel. 

Hopefully we will travel within 5-7 months of receiving our referral.  And its only one trip of 2.5 -3 weeks! My only goal is to get home BEFORE February 2013, when Chinese New Year begins and all of China pretty much shuts down for a least a week, from what I’ve heard.  This is the one time of year when EVERYONE migrates home, which is pretty crazy when you are thinking of millions of people.  

So we continue waiting. Waiting should somehow be incorporated into the word “adoption”.