We are officially waiting for our TA

Finally confirmed that our Article 5 was picked up on 3/27 and was overnighted to the CCCWA in Beijing. We are on day 3 of our wait for our TA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One step closer to Miss Sofie Lu :)

UPDATE!!!!!!!

I was in the parking lot of Trader Joe's after work today and for some reason I decided to check my email on my phone which I never do as the writing is too small for me and I hate reading email in sections. There was an email from our agency....we have an update would you like me to forward it to this email.........YES....please!!! Sadly, there were no pictures and no measurements as they only got half the questions answered. Apparently our agency had two people trying to get the same update...again. This is the second time they have done this. In this age of instant communication you would think someone would communicate who is in charge of getting the updates :)
Anyway, I digress. I started to hyperventilate and then shake in the parking lot. Like an idiot I decide that going into the store and shopping would distract me from waiting for the update email. Yes, it came in the middle of my shopping. I was trying not to completely break down into a heap of joyous tears in the middle of TJ's. I think I stood in the same place in the store just reading the email over and over for a very long time as I was starting to get some stares from people. I still hope for some pictures and I would really like to know how big she is now as I have to clothe this child soon.
Well, I may not know how big she is or how she looks, but, I know what her nickname is :)

The following is the update for:  Lu JingJing born 8/14/2009 and is at the CWI of Hefei City for the Ducharme family:

1.     Does she sleep in a bed or a crib?

   She sleeps in a crib.

2.     Does she drink from a cup or does she still get a bottle?

   She can drink from a cup, but she drinks from a bottle mostly.

 3.     Does she get a lot of colds, ear or sinus infections?

   Occasionally she had some colds but never had any ear or sinus infections.

5.   Does she have a nick name,what is it?

   Yes, she has a nick name, little beauty (小美女).

4.     Does she have a favorite toy,what is it?

   She likes playing new toys and reading picture books.

5.     Who are her friends that she likes to play with?

   I do know the answer to question 5&6 :)

6.     -Which caregiver is she closest to?

7.     What soothes her when she is upset or angry?

    Playing with her, giving her some foods or toys and talking with her.

Thanks.

I also still do not know when if or how my Article 5 was picked up :)

The soap opera in my head!!!

So during this whole process, my mind always seems to imagine how things will work out and how things will happen and what my response will be. I call it the "soap opera in my head." You would think I  would have figured out by now that things never seem to work out how my brain invasions it. Things do work out just not according to the script! With the Article 5 pick up it was supposed to be "shout it from the roof tops!!! I am now waiting on our TA!!!! The final step!!!" This was to be broadcast all over the world wide web ;) Instead when I emailed our agency to find out if our paperwork had been picked up this is the response I received:

Bonnie,

I did not get an email last night from our rep in Guangzhou.  I’m sure that she did, but just didn’t send me an email. I will let you know as soon as I hear from her.

In addition, you may receive an email from the consulate in Guangzhou.  They sometimes contact families directly to let them know that the Article 5 has been picked up.

There was no, "let me check on that for you....I will email our rep and find out"  I still have not heard anything new today other than the email I received from the Consulate telling me that our Article 5 was ready for pick up on March 27. So at least I know it is done...I just don't know where it is. We may or may not be waiting for our TA.....doesn't have the same punch as my original script! I am trying to find the positive aspect of all of this....I haven't yet. I have faith though. Every time something doesn't go according to plan, there is usually a reason for it. I will let you know if I figure this one out. Stay tuned :)

It is March 27 in China

It is now March 27 in China...Article 5 pick up day!! It is now 10:30 am so business should be in full swing at the Consulate. I have no idea what time they pick up the stuff or even how long it takes to courier it to the CCCWA in Beijing. I am a total mess today :) Part of me, I think, thought that we would never get to this point. I cannot believe that we are nearing the end of all of this. I have that knotted icky feeling in the pit of my stomach again. I have had that feeling for about a year now, ever since we switched from Ethiopia to China. I have not had that feeling for the past two weeks......believe it or not, I kinda missed it. The wait for your Article 5 pick up is an automatic two weeks for everyone, no variables involved, nothing to be stressed over.......boring!!!!  It was not a normal feeling for me. I have that feeling back now!  Maybe it is comforting as it is what I know and it means we are still moving forward to our daughter. Who knows!!!!

Hopefully I will hear something from our agency regarding our status tomorrow morning. I am still waiting and hoping that we get some sort of an update on Sofie too! I will let you all know something as soon as I do :)

Chinese Visas

Friday our passports returned to us via Fedex with our wonderful travel visas inside. I am very relieved to have them back as it is very unnerving to have your ability to travel to see family so limited. While they were only gone for a week, it is still a very odd feeling to know that you cannot cross the border whenever you want to..and it is only 6 hours away. I have never had a visa in my passport before. Everywhere I have travelled before I did not need one. Ainsley thought it was so "awesome" that the picture of the Great Wall is on our visa.  The Chinese government says it is OK for us to travel in China, now all we need is for their agency that oversees adoptions to say that it is OK for us to come and get Sofie....the TA!

Tuesday March 27 China time our paperwork should be picked up from the US Consulate and then sent to the CCCWA in Beijing. So that will be late Monday evening our time so I will not hear anything until Tuesday...I think I got that straight.  That is the day we start our wait for TA! This is the last and final step other than the travel and the actual adoption in China. We have reached the last step! I cannot even begin to explain the emotions that this statement brings over me. We are so close to finally seeing our daughter and being able to hold her and be her Mommy and Daddy. Every time I think of the fact that we will be waiting for our TA I just swell up with emotion and tear up.

I looked back at my old calendars (yes I keep them) today and I figured out that it has been 3 years since we started this journey. It seems like a lifetime some days. June 9, 2009 was our first meeting with the first agency that quashed our hopes of a domestic adoption. We were told that for the age we were looking for, we would have to foster first and we didn't feel like that was the path that was right for us. The only avenue left open to us was international adoption but we couldn't adopt through Canada as we no longer had a residence there and we couldn't adopt through the US as neither of us were US citizens. We then started the process of becoming citizens, the journey through the Ethiopian adoption process, the loss of the Ethiopian adoption process and a little girl from Haiti who opened our eyes as to the path that we were supposed to be on. Finally, we arrived where we are now. It has been a long journey, yet, not as long as some people's. We are now where we are supposed to be, soon to be on our way to China :)

Confusion

I am a little confused right now! The social worker who is in charge of our home study emailed me today and said that we need to do an update to our home study. I didn't think anything of it until I had a chance to think about it for a while. I do not know why we need one. Our current home study was completed in June so it hasn't been a year yet. All I can think of is that they got wind of the fact that my stress level is almost non existent during the wait for our Article 5 to be picked up so they decided to change that....just kidding.....sort of!
Yesterday we wrote a letter to Sofie telling her about us and her new home. It was actually a letter from Ainsley that was Ainsley approved. We have also asked our agency to try to get us an update on Sofie so I submitted a list of about 10 questions for the orphanage to answer. It was easy coming up with a list of questions to ask but it was really hard to narrow it down to only 10-12. There is so much that I want to know about her. Just think of never having met your child yet and you can only ask 10 questions right now. What would they be?
It is time to head off to bed now. I will let everyone know what I find out about our home study update :)

All things happen for a reason...it is not always ours to know why!!

After the drama last week of our not receiving the pdf at the same time as everyone else, I was able to sit down and ponder as to why this happened. Sometimes the reasons for things happening are not ours to know or are something that we are to learn along the way. Friday night I came to peace with the fact that our approval would not be dropped off that day, rather it would happen on Tuesday. I had an inkling as to why, but I thought I would wait until this week to see what happened.
I have met some wonderful people on this journey. No one knows or understands you like someone who has gone through the same things. One person works with Jim and they are with the same agency as we are. The other person I met on line by chance and our daughters are growing up together in the same orphanage in China. I feel like I have a connection with these two women like I have with no other. When our Article 5 drop off was delayed, it managed to bring us even closer to maybe ending up in China  together. Ours wasn't dropped off until Tuesday and they both received their pdf's today meaning they will be dropped off tomorrow. We are now just days apart in our time line. It is not a guarantee that we will meet in China, but the chances just got a whole lot better. Everything happens for a reason......you would think I would learn to trust in that :)

Article 5 Drop Off

Lots has happened since I last blogged, lots yet not a lot! We finally received the official word that our paperwork that is required for our Article 5 was dropped off by our agency rep at the US Consulate  in GZ China on Monday March 13, china time. It is scheduled to be picked up March 27, china time, and then sent hopefully quickly to the CCCWA in Beijing. This will begin the official wait for our TA. Yeaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been one stressed out individual this past week, probably the worst I have been through this whole process. I don't know if it is all the other stuff going on in our lives or just that fact that we are getting so close to finally meeting our daughter. This week I waited to be cabled, waited for a pdf, sent a care package complete with photo album and letter introducing ourselves to Jing Jing and filled out and sent away 3 Visa applications, complete with our passports for our trip.  This was by far the most difficult bunch of paperwork that I had ever filled out. I think that all the other paperwork you complete either in the hope that you will find your child or with the prospect of traveling to meet your child far off in the distance. This set and the care package were done with travel not too far off in the future. I was so afraid of messing something up that would delay us even farther that I think I had a complete mental breakdown. I couldn't concentrate and I would just freeze up every time I tried to move forward.

I was at the post office on Monday to send my care package to Sofie as a way to introduce us to her. It had to fit in a manila envelope. It basically was a photo album of us, Ainsley, our house, her room, the dogs and the grandmas and grandpas.  All was complete with labels in Chinese characters provided by our agency. They were also nice enough to provide us with a letter from us to the orphanage and Sofie, from us translated into Chinese. We had no input into the letter. Don't get me going on this one!!!! There was also the list of questions for the orphanage and a stuffed teddy bear that Ainsley had picked out for her sister. This was the hardest package to let go of. I must have checked it a thousand times to make sure I didn't forget anything and then I took a million pictures of it in case it doesn't come with Sofie on Gotcha Day (that is the day that we meet her in china). I also thoroughly quizzed the US Postal Service worker on the details of the package delivery, told him how important it was and who it was going to. I then gave him the evil stink eye in case they thought of losing said package!! I know, I have become a crazy person. Just imagine, you have been staring at a picture of a little girl for months now and this is your one chance to make a first impression with her.....nobody had better lose my package or my passports. Talk about weird......imagine putting the passports of your entire family in an Fedex envelope and sending them to a stranger in Chicago who now has to take them to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago so they can issue all of us travel visas. At least we don't have to be fingerprinted for this one :) You have to read the fingerprint post to understand this one. It is very funny :)
Here is the care package:

Yes, the photo album is in the form of a little pink clutch purse complete with a rhinestone clasp :) Ainsley helped pick it out!

I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders today. Everything else is out of my hands and I can just sit back, relax, enjoy the wait for our daughter and try to get the gazillion to do lists completed. Someone remind me of this zen moment about 3 days from now when I am freaking out again about something :)

Saturday

Saturday morning I awoke to an email from our China Specialist who has been absent from the emails this week. Here is what she said.

I forwarded this to our rep in Guangzhou when I received the letter, on Thursday.


She is referencing the email that I received from the other China Specialist on Friday who said she sent it out on Friday. If you are confused, so am I. So what I gather this means is that our Article 5 drop off was either on Friday and I didn't miss the deadline or it might be on Tuesday providing the gang gets their act together by then. Time will tell :)

The Story

Ok here is the story from yesterday. I had to work yesterday so I had my email up at work so I could check it every so often. I knew that to make the deadline, I would have to get the pdf and get it to my agency sometime Thursday afternoon. Because of the time change Thus afternoon is already Fri in China and the US Consulate is not open on Sat or Sun. They also do not accept paperwork on Mondays so it was Thurs afternoon or Tuesday for my agency to drop off my Article 5 paperwork. There is no progress forward until this is done. No email alllllll day! I check one last time on my way out the door from work at 3 pm. Half way home my phone goes off....you guessed it, we have been cabled to China. I pull over to the side of the road and I cannot find the attachment with the pdf of our approval that our agency needs. I try to calm down and decide to just head home and do everything from the lap top. I am trying not to speed too much, but I am forced to slow down by the two police cars waiting to merge into traffic. I continue on now going the speed limit until I get to the freeway. Clear sailing, except for the ambulance that has now merged in front of me with lights and sirens going. He only manages to do the speed limit with lights and sirens blaring away. I decide that it is probably against some law to pass an ambulance when they have all their alerts going full scale????? I am pretty sure that " I need to get my pdf" is not going to help me with any police officer! The ambulance finally heads off to the hospital...I hope...and I then manage to get behind someone who is going under the speed limit in a really fancy Audi sports car in the left lane....breath....deep breath.....don't these people know that I need to find my PDF!!!!! I finally get three blocks from home, turn the corner and I am behind the school bus that has to drop kids off every 5 feet :) I give up.....I just start laughing.
When I get home there is no pdf yet....it doesn't come until 5:39 PM.......after I have talked to some rude federal employee who wouldn't help me at all and thought I was crazy (he may have a point now)....after my agency has closed for the day....after I missed the deadline. Everything happens for a reason....it usually takes me a while to figure it out. I have an idea today as to why everything worked out this way. I won't share it until I see what plays out next week.

I learned today from someone's blog who was at Sofie's orphanage in Jan that the reason that the kids are so bundled up in clothes in all the pictures is that they don't have heat in the orphanage. I am sad....think of all we take for granted everyday! I am so ready to get on a plane....anytime now :)

Cabled and PDF!!!!!

Yeeeaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and thank goodness. Today we were cabled to the US Consulate in China by the NVC and I have in my possession a PDF of our approval letter. There is quite a story to tell with it, but, I am tired and need to head off to bed as I work tomorrow. I think I got 2 hours sleep last night and my typing skills are lacking tonight. Tune in tomorrow....it is pretty funny, sort of! I am off to dream of cables and pdf's :)

I should know by now.......

Well you would think I would have learned a lesson by now. Never get your hopes up too high in the adoption world cause things usually don't work out the way you planned it. So in my head I had us being cabled today and getting our pdf Thursday. Today I got an answer to my email to the NVC last night. It was the same email that I got on Tuesday. We are in the system, not cabled yet. What a downer after such an exciting day yesterday. I should know better than to do this to myself. I can't help it though. Fingers crossed for tomorrow. See, I can't help it!

I did manage to stay off the computer long enough to clean out one closet upstairs and haul a bunch of toys up to the play room.

Jim made it home today. It is nice having him home. Now I have someone to talk to. The dogs just aren't very good communicators. It's all about food, food, food :)

All I have to say about today is WOW!!!

I don't even know where to start with this. Jim is in London, Ontario with his Dad who had to have a procedure done today. All went well and all is OK. I am a single parent for a few days. Ainsley is pretty easy other than the fact that she misses her Daddy terribly and doesn't like changes to her world. A trip to China with her should be interesting. I had plans to start moving all the toys up to the play room so I could  cross off one more thing from my list. DID NOT HAPPEN.

Yesterday I received our agency's travel package in the mail. Yeah!!!! No dates, just info. Included in it was the information on how to send a care package to the orphanage...very awesome. I did not expect the list of 23 questions for the orphanage about Jingjing. The first three were how was she found, who found her,what was she wearing when she was found and will we be able to keep the clothes she was found in. I cannot tell you why, but I ended up a heaping mess of tears in the middle of the kitchen with Ainsley's school bus about to arrive in 10 minutes. I mean, I know all of this, it is just kind of surreal to see it in black and white. I would have hopped on a plane to China in 10 minutes if someone said it was OK. And the only person I have to talk to is a 6 year old :) I managed to file all the emotions away and continue on.

Now on to Tuesday! As you are aware, we received our I-800 approval last week on 2/29. Normally, you wait about 7 days and then you start emailing for your PDF of your paperwork that immigration sends to the US Consulate in China. I have no patience so I started emailing on Sunday. Monday around 1:00pm I got a response that we are not in the NVC system. No big shocker I was not expecting it. You are supposed to email even night until you are in the NVC system. Monday night I fired off another email. 1:00 pm on Tuesday came and went and no response so I gave up closed up the computer and started doing my chores! I didn't really expect anything so I decided to send another email before bed. About 30  minutes later I opened up the computer again to balance the check book, my latest obsession as the price of airline tickets to China keep going up. I didn't close my email so it was the first thing that popped up.........and there it was. All your Immigrations stuff has a SIM # which is your case #. This email had a GUZ# which is what the NVC gives you once you are in their system. I almost fell off my chair and I have no one to tell. Thank you texting and internet! I about 2 minutes I had informed Jim and just about the rest of the world......after I managed to stop crying for 2 minutes.

I was hoping to be in the NVC system by the end of this week. Tomorrow I should get an email officially telling me that the NVC has cabled our information to the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China. Hopefully Thursday I will have the pdf of this paperwork to send to my agency so that their rep in China can drop it and Sofie's DS 230(Visa stuff) off to the US Consulate maybe as early as Friday. 2 weeks later this paperwork is picked up and this is called the Article 5. This is overnighted to the CCCWA(look at the chart) in Beijing and we start waiting for our TA(travel approval) which we should hopefully receive in early April. You then travel 2-3 weeks after that and we won't know the exact dates until we have our TA.

What a day. Anyone who says that there are no pregnancy hormones associated with adoption is full of it!! This is quite the ride. Imagine having all the pregnancy emotions and pregnancy brain, and then have to keep track of Visa's, and Immigration stuff and not mess anything up cause it is going to cost you time, which means you are going to have to carry this kid for longer. It is hard when you are carrying a two year old too!!

I have no idea what I am going to do when I don't have this to do anymore. I have been living and breathing this adoption for almost 3 years now, since before Sofie was born. We are so close now. We are almost there Sofie. Mommy, Daddy and your sister Ainsley will be with you soon and we will never let you go!!!! We will be a family forever :)

Not in the System yet!!!!!

As I am not the most patient person, I decided Sunday night to email the NVC (national visa center) to find out if we are in the system. We are not. I didn't really expect to be yet. There was storms the end of last week and the NVC lost power and was actually closed so I would imagine that they are a little backed up. I am still going to email them every night though. Apparently they don't mind as every adoptive parent does it so I don't want to miss out on anything. For those of you who have no idea what all this means please refer to prior posts and the chart at the right bottom of the blog. It hurts my brain to explain it too much!
The play room is finished, except for the myriad of toys that need to migrate up there. Ainsley helped us put everything together and tonight she vacuumed and swept the floor. It was her idea I swear!! She loves to clean and I have no idea where she got that from :)

Before: a guest room

During: a mess

Finished: a playroom/guest room

We had fun putting it all together.