Today we received an email from the agency...pretty exciting (and overwhelming), huh? :) Everything sounds fine, except for the 15 month wait to be matched with a baby.... :(





Congratulations we have received your USCIS approval! You are approved to adopt internationally!


PLEASE READ CAREFULLY!


1. In about 10 weeks after receiving your USCIS approval, both the American Consulate Office in Guangzhou, China and the National Visa Center will send you a package that contains the following items: a cover letter containing a case number, forms I-600, I-604, I-864, 230, and a physical form for the child. If after 10 weeks you still have not received this package, don’t worry! We will be able to give you one at the time of your referral! These items are very important, so put them in a safe place. We will need the case number from you when you get your referral in order to make your appointment with the American Consulate. We will not ask you for this number until you are preparing to travel. Please put these packages in a safe place with your other important adoption documents. We will go through them again before you travel to China.

2. Your dossier for the China Center of Adoption Affairs should be complete. I will be in touch if we are missing any of the documents required for your dossier. Otherwise we will begin the authentication process of your documents. It takes us about three to four weeks to finish the certification and authentication process and another 7-10 days to express mail the dossier to CCAA. The arrival of the package from the American Consulate in Guangzhou does not mean your dossier has arrived in China. Someone from our agency will contact you when your dossier has been sent. The date we express mail your dossier is called DTC date(Dossier to China). We will inform you of this date. We appreciate that you mention your DTC date and your last name when you call the office with any questions and concerns.

3. The date the Chinese government register your dossier is called Login Date. We will let you know of this date as soon as we get them. CCAA does assignments according to the login date. At this time, it’s taking approximately 15 months from the time your dossier arrives in China until you receive a referral, and another 6-8 weeks from referral to travel. There are many factors that determine how quickly you travel after your assignment is accepted. These include visa appointments at the American Consulate, CCAA Official Notification, flight availability, etc. Please know that referral time is always subject to change. We will keep you updated on any and all changes!!

4. It is our recommendation that you start the Hepatitis A and B immunization series NOW, since they take a few months to complete. There are no required immunizations when traveling to China; however, the agency recommends the Hepatitis vaccinations. Please consult your doctor!

We will contact you regularly from now on to update you. Please feel free to call us at any time during the wait!

Best wishes,
CAWLI

WOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Mike and I are pleased to announce that Christmas came early for us this year. Yesterday we received in the mail our I171-H and today we sent it to our agency via Priority mail (with tracking, OF COURSE!). We are DONE. Now we just wait for CAWLI to review our documents and send them to China. Within about 4 weeks, China should have all of our documents, and we will be able to officially call ourselves “paper pregnant”. On Tuesday, Mike and I will go to the police station to get new letters of good standing (background checks). We’ve already had this done, but they will be close to expiration by the time our stuff goes to China, so we will get new ones just in case we need them. Nothing else is even close to expiration (thank God), so there really is NOTHING left to do except wait, wait and wait. I can’t even tell you how excited and relieved we are to have this paperchase over with and to finally be “in process”!

Hope all of you reading this have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Here is a picture of Emily giving Santa a Christmas card that she made. As you can see, she was very excited!

No word from immigration yet…. We are still waiting for our I171-H (the document that gives us permission from the US government to adopt an orphan from abroad). Without this document, we can’t send our dossier (all of our documents) to China, in order to be matched with a baby. This is the only thing we are waiting for. Everything else is done. Mike and I are going to go back to the police department this upcoming week to get new letters of good standing (background checks). We’re doing this, because the letters can’t be more than 6 months old when sent to China. Our last ones were done on 8/1/06, so we are cutting things close (as it looks like it will be at least another month before our dossier is sent to China, since it takes the agency 3 weeks or so to review everything and send it over after we get the I171-H). This is a bit frustrating, as this will be our 3rd time getting letters of good standing from the police department (since our paperwork stage of this adoption has taken so long). Oh well. Every day I come rushing home from work to see if we’ve received our I171-H yet. Maybe we’ll get it for Christmas….? This would be a great Christmas gift. What’s sad is that even once everything is sent to China, we still have about a 14 month wait.
I would be feeling really down right now if it weren’t for the fact that Emily keeps us both so busy, and keeps us smiling a lot. She is so looking forward to Christmas. She met Santa Claus last night and LOVED him! She even drew a card for him. Emily is so excited for Christmas that her teacher, Miss Danni told me that she woke up suddenly from nap time the other day, ran over to Miss Danni and exclaimed “Miss Danni!...Miss Danni! It’s Christmas! It’s Jesus’ birthday!”
Emily is also so excited about the idea of dressing up for Christmas. She’s turned into quite the girly girl. She’s already told me (and Santa) that all she wants for Christmas is a purple necklace and a purple bracelet. Purple is her favorite color. She likes all things pretty. In fact, so much so that while I was doing laundry the other night, she managed to get her hands on some lipstick and tried to give herself “pretty lips”. Below are some pictures of her makeover.

I just wanted to post a beautiful picture of China that a friend of ours took over the summer. Click on it for a larger view.

Hello. I know, I know…long time no post! There’s been a lot going on. Lets see…first of all, Mike and I had our fingerprinting appointment back on 11/14 at 8 am in Hempstead (about 30 minutes away). We overslept (Mike accidentally shut the alarm in his sleep), so the morning started out with a big rush. We didn’t even have time to drop Emily off at Mike’s parents’ house, so we ended up bringing her with us to the appointment in her P.J.s! No biggie. Everything went pretty smoothly. The one thing we learned is that appointment times don’t really mean anything at the Homeland Security office. About 300 other people had the same appointment time as us, but things still moved along pretty quickly (took us about 2 hours from start to finish). They no longer use ink to fingerprint you with. Instead, you place your hands (one at a time) on what looks like a supermarket cashier’s UPC code scanner. It was hot in there (with all the people), so my hands kept sweating, so they kept having to re-scan my fingers. Thank God the woman was patient with me! Mike and I kept getting the same error message when they did our prints “Match warning, match warning”…..No biggie….I guess there are just two serial killer psychos out there in the world who have the same prints as us (hopefully not!).
This week, Emily got sick with a fever and a very yucky, blistery throat (kind of like strep). The doctor said “With a throat that looks that bad, if she doesn’t feel better within 3 or 4 days, she probably has mono.” However, thankfully, she recovered within about 48 hours, so it turned out just to be a regular, yucky virus (no Mono…yay!) My mom was kind enough to come down to Long Island to watch Emily while she was on the mend. I think they both enjoyed their time together.
I came home today for lunch to find blood all over the floor (Ruby the dog was sick). I brought her to the vet, who checked her out and prescribed 10 days of antibiotics and a bland diet of just chicken and rice. Poor Ruby!
Otherwise, no real news on the homefront. Thanksgiving was really nice. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost Christmas….and then shortly after that, my baby girl will be a big girl of 3 years old….Waaaaaaahhhhhh! Hopefully, we will have our approval from immigration/Department of Homeland Security well before then, so we can get our documents to China before the new year. That is the big goal! :)

So, on Saturday I officially turned 30- and what a birthday it was. First off, some of my friends treated me to a morning at the spa (massage and pedicure), which was absolutely WONDERFUL!!!!! Then I came home to a warm birthday welcome from my husband, my parents, my sister, Mike’s parents and brothers, and several close friends. About an hour later, when the mail arrived, Mike and I were both racing to get to the mailbox first. (Of course, Mike let me “win”---it was MY birthday, after all! Heehee!) And when I got there, there was great news inside. We received our fingerprinting appointments for immigration. So we are all set to get fingerprinted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 8:00 am. It was great to have our families right there to share the great news with! So, after we get fingerprinted, we will receive our clearance from the government several weeks later, and then all of our documents can go to China!!!! We are almost there!

I added a short video to this blog (below). It was made by a couple who adopted twin girls from China. Mike and I thought that it was a really sweet video, and decided to add it to our blog (courtesy of You Tube). This way, whenever we feel down and frustrated by the wait, we can watch this film as a way to remind us that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that this couple also used the same adoption agency as us (China Adoption With Love in Brookline, MA....otherwise known as CAWLI).

Yay! I just checked the United States Postal Service's website, and our paperwork was received by the NY City Immigration office just before noon today! Let's just keep our fingers crossed that we will recieve a speedy fingerprinting appointment. :)

Woohooooo!!!!!!!! Last night, Mike and I finally received in the mail our completed home study (for Immigration). Within 30 minutes, we had the I600A form filled out and all necessary copies of our birth certificates and marriage certificate, as well as our original homestudy ready to be sent into the Department of Homeland Security (aka USCIS- Immigration Services). Today, first thing in the morning, I went to the bank and got the $685 money order to be mailed with our paperwork to Immigration (in New York City). So, today our paperwork was officially mailed to Immigration. From here, it will take approximately 2-3 weeks to receive an appointment card from them, for our federal fingerprinting appointment. After we have our fingerprints done, it will take another few weeks for our fingerprints (and for all of our paperwork) to clear through Immigration, and we will receive in the mail our I171-H (approval from the government to adopt an orphan abroad). Once this I171-H clearance is received, all of our paperwork (called our dossier) will be sent off to China, so that we can officially start the waiting process to be matched with our baby. :) We definitely met a milestone today (as we have done everything paperwork-wise that there is for us to do), so Mike and I will have a glass of bubbly tonight to mark the occasion.
Some other news on the forefront, Emily has announced to us (at the age of 2 ½) that she is going to be a teacher when she grows up “So I can teach my kids.” Needless to say, her daddy (also a teacher), was thrilled with her career choice. She also learned how to open and close large buttons by herself for the first time yesterday. She was grinning from ear to ear with pride. :)

Nothing too much to report, unfortunately. We are still just waiting for the final draft of our homestudy, in order to set up an appointment for our federal fingerprinting, get USCIS approval and finally get our paperwork to China. Mike called the homestudy agency today and they said that our social worker is on vacation until Thursday. However, they also said that the homestudy had been completed and was sent to CAWLI (our agency) for review. Mike called CAWLI today to confirm whether or not they have received it. Hopefully, when he comes home today, he'll have some good news....

UPDATE: Mike just called and CAWLI has received our homestudy draft from Family Focus (Thank you Sandra!) Yay! They said that within the next day or so, they will be done making any necessary changes/corrections, and send it back to Family Focus to finalize. Stephanie (the social worker from CAWLI) also said that Family Focus is excellent at writing home studies for China, so there probably won't have to be any corrections. So, by next week, we should be in posession of our final homestudy and should be able to send in the I600A to USCIS. We'll start filling out the I600A tonight so we are prepared to mail it out when the time comes.

We are all done with the adoption paperwork (and everything has been submitted to our homestudy and adoption agencies). Yay!!!! The ONLY thing we are waiting on is the finalized draft of the homestudy from our social worker. Without this, we cannot proceed. The social worker needed my CPA letter to finalize the draft (which we sent in to her last week). Even though it has only been a week since the SW received our final paperwork from us, it seems like an eternity that we've been waiting for the homestudy final draft (In case you haven't noticed, I am not very good at waiting). The reason why it feels like so long is because this is the only piece of paper holding up our whole process. Without this draft, we can't apply to the Immigration office for the government's permission to adopt an orphan abroad (the process of getting this approval alone can take about 8 weeks). And without this approval, we are unable to send our documents (dossier) to China. And without our documents in China, the Chinese government doesn't even know we exist, and we can't even begin the waiting process for a baby..... So, as you can see....everything hinges on getting this homestudy draft. What is so nerve-wracking is that we are no longer in control of our paperwork....Not that we're stressing out, or anything!!! :) For all who read this message, please pray that we receive this homestudy soon, so that we can sleep at night again! Did I mention that I don't like not being in control of our paperwork? Did I mention that I don't like waiting? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

A lot has happened over the past week. On Wednesday, I got my CPA letter (showing that I am working as an independent contractor OT), so that is one major hurdle that we are finally done with! On Friday, we had our physicals redone at the doctor's office. (We had to get these redone, as our original physicals expired...they can't be more than 6 months old at the time that they are sent to China). We also took all kinds of photos of the house (inside and out) as part of our dossier requirement.
Of course, with all of this work, we needed some down time....so on Sunday, we took a family day trip to the North fork of Long Island to go apple picking! We've included a couple of pictures here. We all had a great time, especially Emily!

Sorry I haven't written in a while. Things have been crazy..............work, work, work!!!! On the adoption forefront, we completed the final financial paperwork for our homestudy agency (we filled out and gave them our financial statement showing our assets and liabilities, and gave them Mike's letter from his employer verifying his employment/salary). So all we have left to do is to get my letter of income verification (since I am an independent contractor OT, my letter has to come from a CPA). This has proven to be incredibly difficult as we did not have our own CPA. We must have contacted a hundred CPA's who all replied in the same way....."Sorry, but we cannot write this letter for you, as you are not a client, and we did not prepare your taxes....But, good luck anyway." Grrr. What made us mad is that we have all of our 1099s and W2s and tax returns to prove my income, so this really should not be that difficult. We even offered to pay the CPA's to reprepare our 2005 taxes, just so we could get this letter....nothing. We then promised all the CPA's that we would use them to prepare our taxes in 2006, just so we could get the letter...nothing. Then I promised to use their financial planning service and have them prepare our taxes.....finally, I got a bite! So, the CPA will be drafting the letter for us for $250....a bit pricey, but whatever it takes to bring home our baby, right? He said it should be ready by tomorrow....hooray! After this, we need to get our physicals redone (we have appointments on Friday), send our completed homestudy to Immigration, get fingerprinted, send our papers off to China....and we're done and onto bigger and better things (the waiting game for about a year until China matches us with a baby), but our paperwork will be done. The wait will be hard, though, especially since Emily asks us every day when we are going to get her baby sister from China.

So...over the past week, Mike and I have been running around like someone lit a fire under our butts. Between Saturday and Sunday (7/15-16), we looked over our the intake package that the agency sent to us and managed to complete all the forms necessary for CAWLI to begin our file (service agreement and multiple policy and procedure forms, letter of application and committment to China, etc, etc.). We also made copies of lots and lots of forms (3 years of income tax returns, our birth and marriage certificates, copies of our passports, etc). We also put aside any forms which need to be completed by our homestudy agency (Family Focus) for them to forward to CAWLI (adoption agency).
On Monday, we went to Costco and got our passport photos taken (China requires two passport-sized photos of each of us to be sent with the dossier).
OnTuesday morning at 10 am, we had our agency's intake meeting with the social worker over the phone, while sitting on the front stoop of our house. After the meeting, I had to go to work. But after I came home from work that afternoon, we took a walk to the park. Emily learned how to ride a tricycle this week and was practicing her pedaling skills. This was both trying and comical at the same time, as Emily would become easily discouraged, saying "Hmmf...I can't do it. I give up", crossing her arms in the way that only a toddler can. The funniest part is that she would say it as she was successfully moving forward on the tricycle. Mike and I tried to encourage her by saying excitedly "Look, Emily. You did it! Look how far you moved!" And she would say "I didn't do that." So, needless to say, it took a little bit of convincing. :) But she was so darn cute on that tricycle, and we did eventually make it to the park! :) :) When we got there, Emily decided she wanted to go on the swings and the slides. This is when we realized that this was a perfect photo-op (as part of our adoption requirement, we are supposed to send our agency family photos). The only tough thing was that we didn't have anyone to take the pictures of all 3 of us, so Mike set the camera up on the platform above the slide and set the camera on a timer.
On Wednesday, we went to police headquarters to get our new letters of good standing (as the ones we did originally had expired). Emily had a great time, and entertained herself and those around her by playing peekaboo with the clerk and all the people waiting on line. In fact, she was laughing so hard that the rest of the staff came out from behind the desk to see who the giggling little girl was. After we got home, we had our last homestudy visit with Sandra, the social worker from Family Focus. We had lost power for a chunk of the day, due to heavy thunderstorms the night before. Even though we regained power before the homestudy visit..by this point, cooking dinner was not an option. So we ordered Chinese food (which was actually quite appropriate, given our country choice). We joked with Sandra that we were trying to educate ourselves on the Chinese culture through our culinary choices. The meeting went well, Emily was a ham, and Sandra said she was very happy and excited for us.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Today was an exciting day. We had Mike's parents and his younger brother Danny over. We took them all out for a movie and then hung out at our place. It was during this time, over pizza, that we made the grand announcement that we have switched countries to China. They were very excited for us, which just added to our joy. In fact, they were so excited that they called us again just after they arrived home, to tell us again how happy they were for us! :)

Today was an awesome day! Not only did CAWLI (our agency) contact us to say they received our application, but they emailed us the official "intake package". So, we officially are in process!!! Yay!!!!! The agency also scheduled an over-the-phone "intake meeting" with us for Tuesday 7/18 at 10 am (where the social worker will walk us through the paperwork and provide us with a chance to have any initial questions answered). I am so excited! We are offically on our way to becoming new parents again! :)

Hello everyone! For those of you who do not know me, my name is Kate. I have a wonderful husband, Mike, who I married in 1999. Mike and I also have a beautiful 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Emily, who is the light of our lives. The reason why I decided to start this blog is that Mike and I have begun a very special journey. We have begun the adoption process to bring home our baby girl from China (and much-awaited baby sister for Emily!).....hopefully by the end of next year (2007), as the process takes about a year or so.
Originally, it was our plan to adopt from Russia...but, after some serious consideration and research, we decided to switch gears and head to China instead. So, here is where we are.....We officially applied to the adoption agency yesterday (7/11/06)....woohoooo!!!! We have the first draft of our homestudy done, but the social worker needs to visit us at home one more time (as China requires one extra visit vs. Russia). So, the next step is to gather all kinds of documents to be compiled into our dossier (which goes to China). We also have to apply to immigration to get fingerprinted and to gain the U.S. government's approval to adopt.