Our Care Package to Kimi

I received a follow-up email today from Ann of Red Thread China, with a photo of all the items being sent to Kimi this week in our Care Package. I have attached a photo. We also learned yesterday that the U.S. and China offices are closed on 1/3/2011 for the New Year, which will delay our Article 5 being picked up, by 1 to 3 days. Delays at this point continue to be a frustration. But, hopefully, we will still be able to travel to China before mid-February.

Our care package finally arrived in China!

We received an email confirmation that the care package we sent Kimi four weeks ago, finally arrived at its destination! Ann of RedThreadChina wrote, "...your blanket was talking when I got your package..." What she is referring to, is the little recording embedded in the monkey's head in the center of the little blanket. The button to listen to our voices is on the underside where I sewed it inside the pink monkey's head. I asked her if our attempt at Madarin was understandable, and she said, "...I think your little one can understand what you guys said..." She will now send the little pink blanket with the recording, the small photo album of our home and family, the small doll, the warm, winter outfit, the candies, the disposable camera, and the translated letter from us, to Kimi! She should receive it in the next few days!

A little bummed out...

I was just a little bummed out today. To explain: when you go through this process, there are SO many uncertainties around timing, that you tend to really grab onto the milestone dates that ARE certain, especially after wading through all the paperwork for months and months; and even moreso when you are nearing the end of the process and will soon be united with your child. We had been told that our Article 5 document would be "picked up" exactly 2 weeks after it was "dropped off". Those dates were supposed to be "certain". We had forwarded our NVC approval letter as soon as we received it on 12/13, hoping it would be "dropped off" that day, since it was a Monday (and these are only dropped off and picked up on Mondays and Thursdays each week). We were reminded,however, that the business day had already ended in China and were told it would be dropped off on 12/16 and would be picked up on 12/30. Well, we learned today that it didn't get dropped off until TODAY. (Someone, evidently "dropped" the ball.) And, it will not be picked up until 1/3/2011. I realize that is only a few days later; and, due to the government shut-down over Chinese New Year at the beginning of February, will probably not negatively impact our travel date. But a day here and a day there, really begin to mount up. And, obviously, we do not want Kimi to have to live without a family even one day longer than she absolutely has to. But, I also know God's timing is ALWAYS perfect - and I am reminded to lean on Him.

More photos of Kimi!

We received more photos of Kimi from Ann of Red Thread - our agent for sending our care package to Kimi! I have attached two of my favorite ones. I am SO glad they are continuing to let her hair grow!

We received our NVC Letter!

Another milestone: We received our National Visa Center letter, stating our petition for a visa for Kimi has been forwarded to the U. S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China! This is commonly referred to as "being cabled". Just ONE MORE MILESTONE to go - our Article 5 letter, which should be dropped off on Thursday (12/16) and picked up two weeks later (12/30) - before we get Travel Approval (TA)! Based on current timing trends, it is looking more and more like we will travel to China right after Chinese New Year in February.

Another adoption milestone!

We reached another milestone toward bringing Kimi home! Today, we received an email from our immigration officer, informing us we had received Provisional Approval. (Yes, there are a LOT of approvals to be obtained with international adoption!) Now we wait on word from the National Visa Center.

We also mailed a care package to Kimi this evening. The package contains a small doll, a warm, winter Chinese outfit, a disposable camera (for the orphanage to take photos of Kimi and others around her), candy for the nannies, a small photo album containing photos of our home, her room, her bed, and her new family, a translated letter telling her about our family (that will, hopefully, be read to her), and a soft, pink, little, cuddly "blankie" with the stuffed head of a monkey in the center that has a push-button on the underside. When the button is pressed, it is Mike, me and Elizabeth saying the following in Mandarin (yes-we practiced a LOT): "I am your daddy." (Mike) "I am your mama." (Me) "I am your sister." (Elizabeth) "We love you!" (The three of us). It will, most likely, take a couple of weeks for her to actually receive it. This way, she will hopefully learn she is getting a family soon; and she will know what we look like and sound like and that she is already loved. I even slept with the little blankie for a week, so she might be able to tell what her new mama smells like :-) !

Finally, we should be receiving OUR Chinese visas on Monday from the courier in Chicago. So, everything is falling into place: just like when we traveled to China to bring home Elizabeth. God surely wants this child to have a home, a family, and, most importantly, to have the opportunity to know how much He loves her!

I-800 Receipt received!

We just received our I800 Notice of Receipt today!! (For those comparing timelines: we had received our LOA email from MAA on 11/15, received the LOA mailing on 11/16 from MAA, overnighted our I800 paperwork that evening and it was delivered on 11/17 to USCIS. The Notice of Receipt just confirms it was, indeed, received by USCIS on 11/17.) The next step is to receive Provisional Approval: hopefully within the next week! Little by litte...step by step...we inch ever closer to bringing our Kimi home, and one less day for her to live without a family.

We received LOA!!!

Today, I received the email we have been watching for, ever since our dossier was logged in China. The China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) sent our agency the Letter of Approval (LOA)!!! This means we have received official approval from the China officials to adopt Kimi, specifically!!! Things will really begin to move fast, now!

We received an UPDATE!!

We received an update from Kimi's orphanage today!!! Believe it or not, they sent us 14 photos! And Kimi's hair has begun to grow out, as they agreed. They also sent a nice letter. She has grown three inches in height since May. They told us she loves hugs, and smiles at everyone, even strangers, and "Everybody loves (her) when they see her." She "eats just about anything" and "loves eating candies with corn flavor", whatever that could possibly be. It is amazing how much love we have for a child we have never met!

We still have approximately another 3 months or so to go until we can leave for China. At this point in the process, we are at day 16 awaiting our Letter of Approval (LOA) from China.

LID!!!

This morning, we received the email we have been watching for: our dossier was logged in at the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) on 10/12/2010!! This date is known as our "Log In Date" (LID) - another milestone! Even though we knew our dossier was sent by our agency on 9/30 and finally delivered on 10/8 (after the week-long Chinese holiday), it is a relief to know they officially logged it in and it is now in line for review and final approval! This means, we are now awaiting receipt of our official Letter of Approval (LOA), which is currently running at about a month from LID.

Back in June, we received "Pre-approval" by the CCAA to adopt Kimi. "Pre-approval" means the CCAA will approve us, subject to our passing all the background checks, being approved by the USCIS to adopt a child from China, and submitting the dossier to the CCAA, per their specifications. Now, we have completed all those steps and are just waiting on the LOA! The final step after LOA will be to obtain USCIS approval to adopt Kimi, specifically, and approval to obtain a visa for her to enter the country. (The former USCIS approval was general and did not name a specific child.) I know: its a complicated legal process. But SO worth it!

We are closing in!!!

DTC!!!

FINALLY, WE ARE DTC!!! Our agency sent our dossier to China today!!! Another step closer to Kimi!!!

Our Dossier is on its Way!

First, I must say: I have some wonderful kids! We had one last document to be authenticated by the China Consulate in Chicago: our I-797 USCIS immigration approval. We could have FedExed it to the courier in Chicago to handle, but, even "rushed", by the time she would receive it, get it processed and return it, it would have been the end of the week at the earliest before we would have received it back. Also, this Friday (10/1 - 10/5) is the beginning of a Chinese national holiday (so the China Consulate is closed), which could have delayed the process even more. So, Rachel volunteered to take Eddie's kids to and from school and take care of them before and after school, so Eddie could drive all the way to Chicago (about 180 miles from Indy), take that last document to the China Consulate in Chicago himself, drop it off to get it authenticated, pick it up 3 hours later, and drive back, all in one day! He arrived home just before 7:00 p.m. with the authenticated document! I quickly made the required copies of it, assembled our dossier packet, and FedExed it to our adoption agency in Delaware, where it will be final-reviewed, and then forwarded to the CCAA in Beijing where it will be logged-in! For those of you who are not familiar with international adoption, the dossier is the end-product of, literally, MONTHS of paperchasing! Although, this isn't the end of the paperwork, in my opinion, the dossier preparation is the most labor-intensive step! And now, it is DONE and on its way!

And THANKS to SO many who have helped: Rachel, Eddie, Cheryl, Elizabeth (yes, she had to give up her mommy many times so I could get documentation done), several people at our adoption agency (Diana, Sara, Lydia, Kerry, Aleda); friends (Ginger, Sandy, Teri, Robin, Lynn and Brenda); notary and friend, Monty; Natalie at our bank; many people on our agency yahoo group (Myra, Chelsea and others); our Chicago courier, Denise; our home study caseworker, Jennifer; Bob and Barb Kilbourn (help with FedExing documents); friends and family who wrote personal referral letters, our employers who supplied information; our doctors who wrote medical reference letters and physical exam certifications, those who have encouraged us, the list goes on and on...I'm sure I'm leaving people out, and I apologize. Even though I'm the paperchase guru in our family, Mike was a huge help and very much involved! Most of all, we thank the Lord God Almighty for His direction and confirmation and providing us with all this support to get us to this point!

More good news!

I contacted the USCIS to inquire about the status of our case and was told we were APPROVED yesterday! Now we wait for the letter to arrive in the mail! We are one step closer!

China Authentications and USCIS Officer assigned!

Yesterday, we received our 14 dossier documents back, complete with China Consulate authentications, from the courier in Chicago! I also contacted USCIS in Missouri (the office handling international adoption immigration cases) and talked to the officer assigned to our case to confirm she knew our fingerprinting was done last Thursday. She told me she had just been assigned our case, and would try to get our case file reviewed by the end of the day yesterday! Hopefully, our immigration application for Kimi is all in order and our fingerprints are clear enough to "read". Come on I-800A approval!!!

USCIS Fingerprinting: Done!

Today, we can check off another step: Our USCIS fingerprinting is done! Tomorrow, I plan to call our assigned USCIS agent to let him know. Hopefully, our USCIS (immigration) approval will follow shortly after that, which is another milestone in this process. This is also the LAST document required for our dossier to be sent to China! Of course, as with the other 14 documents, this document also has to be state-sealed by the Indiana Secretary of State's office, and China-Consulate-Sealed in Chicago prior to sending it to our agency in Delaware. Just to let you know how this figures into timing of our travel to China: Once our dossier it "logged in" in China, our agency will be notified of our LID (Log In Date). Currently, it is approximately four months from LID to travel, although that can always change. It still looks like we will travel to China sometime during the first quarter of 2011 - which is NOT soon enough!

Received our I-797C - Notice of Action!

I arrived home yesterday to find we had received our I-797C, Notice of Action! This is the USCIS official notification of receipt of our I-800A (Application to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country). Next step: wait for our biometrics (fingerprint) appointment notification. We should receive that within a week or so. Once received, we will get our fingerprints done and await final immigration approval to adopt Kimi and bring her home! That will be the final document required for our dossier. After getting it and all our other documents state-sealed and China-Consulate-sealed in Chicago, we can send our dossier to our agency and on to China!! Every day brings us one day closer to bringing Kimi home!

...AND our I-800A has been sent!!!

What a day!! Received the email that our home study provider received our home study approval from our agency. Then, drove up to Carmel to pick up our copies of our home study on my lunch hour. Then, on the way home from work, stopped by the drive-thru at our bank, withdrew the money for our I-800A (this is Kimi's immigration approval request), and purchased the money order for our I-800A submission. Next, came home, fixed dinner, and then, assembled the documents for our I-800A submission: double-checking, triple-checking, quadruple-checking to make sure everything was complete, signed, etc.!! Then, put it all in a Fed-Ex envelope and sped over to the drop box, which unfortunately, showed I was too late for today's pick-up. Came home. Checked my email - and lo and behold, the Fed-Ex driver must have been running late, because my package was picked up 20 minutes after I dropped it off!! This means, it will arrive at USCIS in Texas before 10:30 tomorrow morning! Every single day I can save is one less day in the orphanage for Kimi, and one day closer to her having a family! Now, I need some sleep!

Our Home Study is DONE!!

Our home study is finally done, signed, notarized, and approved by our agency! Now we can submit our I-800A, which is our application to immigration (USCIS)and requires an original copy of our home study! This is a major milestone. So, we are one step closer to bringing Kimi home!!!

The story of our decision to adopt Kimi

Over the past few months, I have often been asked how we came to the decision to adopt another little girl from China - and how we decided on Kimi. At the bottom of this blog, I have written my response to those questions.

Regarding where we are in the "paperchase" - We have completed our required adoption training and all of our homestudy meetings. Our caseworker anticipates submitting our homestudy for approval to our agency on Monday (8/16). Once approved, we will submit our I-800A for USCIS (immigration) approval.

This week, we also received a response from Kimi's orphanage to the questions we submitted about a month ago. The orphanage staff has agreed to let Kimi's hair grow! In answer to my question about any illnesses, they responded "she rarely gets sick, even the cold". They also said, "She prefers stuffed animals" and "She likes to play with others..." and "Whenever she meet the nannies, she always smile, so nannies like her very much."

Slideshow added!

Unfortunately, we have not been given very many photos of our little one. However, we were provided with a short video made last November, from which I was able to capture a few frames. Although the quality is a little fuzzy, I made an attempt at creating a slideshow of all the photos given to us, including the video frames.

Regarding where we are in the process:
We have our final homestudy visit this afternoon! We continue the "paperchasing" phase of the process and are making good progess! We already have all our dossier documents, except for Mike's physical (his appointment is Monday), the completed homestudy, and the all-important I-797C (USCIS/immigration approval) which will take a little while yet. We have to submit the I-800A form to USCIS (which we cannot do until we have our completed homestudy); then, wait for our fingerprint appointment; and finally obtain our clearance/approval (I-797C) in order to have EVERYTHING. Then, we have to get all the dossier documents copied, state-sealed, and China Consulate-sealed. THEN, we can submit our dossier to China! Then...we wait...and wait...and wait...for travel approval from China. If there are no glitches with any of this process, we are still estimating travel to China in early 2011 to bring Kimi home!

Kimi's photo is back!

Today, I received confirmation from our agency that it is permissible to post photos of Kimi on our blog! So, I have re-added it

It is amazing how many criminal background checks have to be done on us in order to prove Kimi will be safe with us! We both had to be fingerprinted twice: once for the State Police check and one for the FBI check; we had to have our local police department run a background check and write a letter for each of us, stating we had no criminal history; and we have yet to be fingerprinted by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office (USCIS)for another background check as part of the immigration approval! Then, this past weekend, we learned that since Mike lived for a short time in Illinois while he attended Lincoln Christian College, and a short time in Texas in the 1970's, we have to have criminal checks done in each of those states as well! Plus, our caseworker has requested personal reference letters from five of our friends. All of this is the normal process for anyone adopting from China. And this is just for the background checks! Now you have some idea how much paperwork there is to this process! None of it is difficult; just a lot to do! But, those of us who have or who are in the process of adopting, see it as our "labor pains", and SO worth it, considering we will have a new little member of our family in the end. It has been somewhat of an "eye-opener" to Elizabeth to realize that we did the same in order to bring her home. We have told her how we prayed for her while she was in China - even before we knew who she was. And, now, she is praying for her new little sister until we can bring her home.

We have temporarily removed Kimi's photo from this site until we receive clarification from our agency regarding posting her photo prior to our finalizing her adoption.

We have also completed our second homestudy meeting! We continue to move right along with our dossier paperwork!

We have received Pre-Approval!

We received Pre-Approval to adopt Kimi from the China Center of Adoption Affairs on 6/21/2010! YAY!!!! Then, this evening, we met with Jennifer of Adoptions of Indiana for our initial homestudy meeting! There is LOTS of paperwork to do - even more than last time! But we have already begun to work on it and are up to the challenge!

Greetings!

Greetings, everyone! This is my first attempt at "blogging", so we will see how this goes. We are in the very early stages of adopting a sweet, little girl from China, currently named Zhang Lan. As you can see in the blog heading, she is currently in an orphanage in Jiangsu Province, China. She is three years old. This is our second adoption from China, having adopted Elizabeth Anne in 2004. Please feel free to follow along as we, again, embark on an exciting journey...to bring home Zhang Lan, soon to be named Kimberly (Kimi) Michelle.