No list today.....waiting

Seems most of my posts lately are centered around the word waiting. We do a lot of that. I spend a lot of time on a blog called chinaadopttalk.com connecting and chatting on line with others like me who wait. It is a community unlike no other where people just understand, no explanation necessary. Everyone has been through this process or is going through it. I am not saying that friends and family don't try to understand, they do, it is just if you haven't gone through this before it is impossible to explain it. Waiting stinks but it is a necessary thing that one must do to accomplish the end result.

No shared list tonight. Maybe on October 31 rst, I should know for sure by Friday, maybe. Nothing is ever really written in stone especially with China. They just don't like to give out any information before the event actually happens.....hence the waiting. Turns out I was right in the first place :) Take that people who say I am not good at math.

I have done a lot of bargaining with the big guy upstairs this week. I told him I just want a photo of our little pea pod and then I don't care how long the process takes after that just as long as I have a picture and I can give her a name. Remind me of that after we have a referral and I start freaking out over how long everything else is taking, it is quite the process by the way. Lots of paperwork! I envy those who haven't had a referral yet but have given their child a name. I don't want to call her my little pea pod or the second child anymore but I don't want to do anything to jeopardize the process either. Jim is much more practical. He says what if you name her and she doesn't look like the name. I told him, and it is not very PC, she is going have dark hair and eyes and be Chinese. That's enough for me. I do have a name picked out but I haven't dared utter it to a single soul other than Jim, and Ainsley too! She doesn't like it though so she has probably forgotten it so don't even try.

We are trying to get ready for Halloween. Costumes not done yet, tomorrow I promise. I will have to ban myself from the computer. Well, hopefully this Halloween will be like no other!!!!!!

Let's just call this one Friday

Well, math still stinks!!!! So after I used all my brain cells up figuring out the prior post......I was probably wrong. Go figure, that never happens to us. NO emails confirming the release of the list to any agency today so the shared list will probably not come out on Monday the 24. Two scenarios come to play. Monday Oct 31, again, or not at all!!! I am going for the 31, I can't even process the no list scenario at all yet. Adoption is such an inexact science, as soon as you think you have it figured out, someone changes the rules......kinda like raising children :)


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Math is hard

I am such a goof ball!!!!! So I have been stressing out because the next shared list comes out on Halloween......well it probably won't. I totally forgot to factor in that the list comes out the last Tuesday of the month in China which is a Monday night here. Well the last Tuesday of the month is October 25 which means the list should be out here on Monday the 24! None of this is set in stone and could change. I should know something concrete by the end of this week.
I found out through a chat room online and my stomach immediately did a flip flop and then the nerves and butterflies started again. Wow, how stuff changes in 48 hours. I will try to remain calm for the next week but I can't make any promises :)


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Waiting and waiting

Not much new to report! We wait and wait :) The week after the referrals came out brought some much needed relief...back to normal stuff, lunches, dinner, laundry and work! The last week has been kinda tough. It is like building anticipation and stress waiting for the end of the month to come. It is kinda like you are in limbo....your life goes back to the same old stuff but you are still stuck waiting. It is so hard to explain. I have read many peoples blogs and they say they blog to keep people informed but also as an emotional release. It is like baring a little piece of your soul everytime you post a message, you are letting people into a very private place but at the same time it is a release. You let a little bit of anguish go each time.
OK so enough of that. As you can tell it has been a week!
Jim just got back from Mexico again. He was there on his mission trip to do cleft lip/palate surgeries on some much deserving kids! They did 40 surgeries in two days and worked each day from 7am-10pm. He was tired but it is a trip that is well worth it. You just think of how many kids lives you have completely changed in two short days. These kids can't eat or speak properly or at all and in one surgery so much changes for them! They still have a long road ahead of them and probably more surgeries but they are given a real chance at a "normal" life. As Ainsley calls them, the kids with "ouwies" on their lips :)
Halloween is coming up quick. Ainsley wants to be a cowgirl and the dogs have their costumes all ready. Ainsley wanted them to be horses, so, Shiloh is a horse and Domino will be the sheriff. I will post pictures :)




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The Wait Continues

Every thursday after "the list" comes out, the referrals that are not accepted are released back to the list. Last thursday we received another call with a referral which, sadly, we had to decline as well. After a medical review we decided that her medical needs we beyond what we could handle. Declining two referrals in one week, while exciting, is also an emotionally draining thing to do. We are hanging in there and we know we made the right decision. The next list should come out Oct 31.......Halloween....and Jim works a 24 hour shift! I am going to have to do the next wait solo...should be interesting!


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Location:The wait continues

Day 1

We did get a referral last night but we had to decline it. She was much too young. We are doing great though. It just didn't feel right and I know we made the right decision. We know that our daughter is out there we just have to find each other! Next chance is this Thursday evening and then not again until the end of October.


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LID

We are official. We have a LID of 9-20-2011. The new referral list comes out this evening and we could get a call as late as 11:30 pm or we could not get a call at all! It is out of our hands now! I am not expecting a referral tonight but one can hope! Either way it feels amazing to finally be so close! Say a few prayers for us :)



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Location:LID

Say a little prayer

Say a little prayer and cross your fingers.....we need our LID (log in date)to come in this week. The next batch of referrals (how you are matched with a child) probably will come out next Monday. We need our LID to be included in this group. I am not expecting a referral....but you never know :) the new referrals are issued the last Monday of each month, so, think of us at that time. I will probably be going crazy and driving everyone around me nuts!


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DTC 9-16-2011

I logged into my email at work this morning just to check on the off chance that something happened. I was not holding up much hope as not much seems to go our way during this process.......well, we are moving forward. Our Dossier To Country date is official. Our paperwork left for China today. I actually started crying at work! I know, I do that all the time....not usually at work though. The next step is to receive a log in date from the CCAA, the agency responsible for adoptions in China. We should be all set by the time the next round of referrals comes out the end of September, beginning of October. I am not holding out much hope this round of referrals, but you never know!


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Back from Chicago

Good news today. Our Dossier is back from Chicago and has been authenticated by the Chinese Consulate. It now gets sent to the Chinese Government and then we will get a log in date. Dossiers are sent to China every Friday so cross your fingers that ours gets sent out in this batch otherwise we will have to wait another week!



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Awesome news today! Our Dossier is done being certified by the Secretary of State of Minnesota and was sent today to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago! Funny, Jim and I just came back from Chicago :) This process should take about 2 weeks then onto China! We will keep you posted.


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Dossier done

Well, where do I begin. We haven't been around much this summer and I have been super busy trying to get all of our dossier paperwork finished which is no small task considering I wasn't home for almost a month. Thank goodness for my lap top and a good file folder.

In July right before we left on vacation I discovered that I would have to get our birth certificates and marriage certificate not only authorized by the Canadian Foreign Affairs Dept but also by the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa as they are Canadian issued documents. Thanks to a fantastic process server that I hired and a lot of help while we were on vacation in Toronto, we were able to get that process completed rather quickly. We then moved on to being fingerprinted again by US Immigration while I continued to gather all the other necessary documents.

On this past Wednesday I sent in all the dossier documents, ten in all, to our agency and we also received our formal approval of our USCIS "application for determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Hague Convention Country" It was a fantastic day!

This posting has taken me about a week to finish. I have been struggling with if and how I should post the following information. I realize that someone who hasn't gone through this whole process doesn't really understand, nor could they, what it is like to wait "forever" for your child and the pain and anguish that goes along with having one process halted and having to start over again. I feel that the blog is a way to let people in on our process and to play a small part as an advocate for adoption. I haven't told too many people the following story as it is really hard to talk about, and apparently type about. I need a tissue! During the initial time when our Ethiopia adoption fell apart, Jim came home and said that there was a little girl from Haiti that was in the United States for surgery and was available for adoption. She had several medical issues and was being fostered by a family in Minnesota. We agonized over our decision, but, decided in the end for several reasons, which I won't go into at this time, that it wasn't right for our family. The foster family that she was with was fantastic but they stated that their calling was to help her but not adopt her. They believed that there was a family out there for her, it just wasn't us. I was showing my Mom and Dad the blog that the foster mother does on the same day that we received our immigration approval and our dossier was completed. Low and behold they found that they couldn't let the little girl go and have decided to adopt her and make her a permanent part of their family. Jim and I were elated. It was something I had known all along, that she belonged with them! Sometimes it pays to follow your heart. It gave the both of us such peace of mind knowing that we had made the right decision. I will stop ranting now and move on. The blog is a nice way to vent off some emotions without having to talk to anyone. I will keep you all updated as we move forward. We are off to the State Fair tomorrow!

Finally...something goes right!

I have finally dove head first into the dossier paperwork that I now have to assemble and have notarized. It is a daunting task and far more in depth than the one for Ethiopia :(

I was given some awesome news today. All of our notarized documents for our dossier have to be certified by the Secretary of the State they were issued in, Minnesota. Due to the Minnesota gov't shut down(who knew that an entire gov't could just go on vacation), all of our notarized documents would have to be sent to another state for certification all at an additional expense and much effort. We found out today that the Office of the Secretary of State for MN would remain open and operating during the government walk out. Yes, I am calling it a walk out!

Yeah, I can't tell you what a relief it is. It is a huge stress taken off my shoulders and it is something that has finally worked in our favor :)

Moving along

Yesterday, we received our notice that our I-800 A application has arrived at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. This is our application for determination of suitability to adopt a child internationally from a Hague Convention Country. Next step is a notice to go to an immigration office to be fingerprinted again and then, hopefully, a letter of acceptance. I think we have now been fingerprinted at least 6 or 7 times!

Our pre-approval paperwork was also reviewed by our agency and accepted. It will now be forwarded to China. Now we go back to waiting :)

Finally....a step forward!

Well, how long has it been since I last blogged.....a while! That is how long it has taken us to finish the homestudy. We finally got all the reference letters done and proof read etc. only to find out that our original Canadian background check was never completed last year as Ethiopia didn't require it. So, we have spent the last few weeks trying to complete that and getting the total run around from the agency in Canada. There had also been several agency personnel changes over the last month as well and we were starting to lose hope. The feeling of "this is starting to happen all over again" started creeping in. We were starting to wonder if this adoption was ever going to happen and if maybe someone was trying to send us a message.

All of a sudden everything changed. Our Canadian background check finally came through and our home study was done. That same day while in line checking out in Walmart, the social worker in charge of China's waiting children or children with special needs called me to talk about what kind of child we were willing to parent. WOW..what a change in one day.

Today I officially sent in our paperwork for our I-800 A which is the pre-approval for immigration and was the step that needed to be taken before any thing else could be done. I also sent in out pre-approval paperwork that gets forwarded to the agency in China. We are officially waiting for a daughter from China :)

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

Hope everyone has a great long weekend and to all the Canadians, hope last weekend was a good long weekend.

Well, we thought that our second home study was finished and completed until they informed us that China will now require 3 reference letters attached to the home study. The letters are very specific and have to be worded a certain way. So we are now waiting for the kind people who have agreed to furnish us with said letters to complete them. A huge thank you to the three people who have agreed to do this.

This whole process is certainly a lesson in patience! Just when you think you are ahead of the game and are ready to proceed, something else always comes up. Oh well!

Hopefully our home study will be ready in the next couple of weeks so I can go ahead and file our I-800 A with immigration. Nothing can proceed without our home study. This is such a different process that what we went through the first time around.

Ainsley will finish her first year of school in a week and a half. She has had a blast in kindergarten and really enjoys it.

I will let everyone know when our home study is finished and we take another step forward!

Bonnie, Jim and Ainsley

New Beginnings

Well, today was the day that we halted the process of adopting from Ethiopia. There has been little change or progress made through the negotiations between the US Government and the Ethiopian Government. Eventually things will change and the process will get better, but, not in time for us. The adoptions will, for now, continue to be processed at a reduction of 90 percent. It has been estimated that it will add 2-3 years onto the process. We have been waiting for 14 months already. Everything happens for a reason, right! We have now begun the process of changing our paperwork to adopt from China. Unfortunately, I have to start most of the paperwork all over again as they cannot use most of our documents from Ethiopia. I am getting really good at it by now though and it doesn't seem as daunting a task as the first time. Talk to me a month from now and I might have a different story. This has been a very difficult, trying and emotionally draining month. This is actually the first time I have been able to talk or type about all of the happenings without completely breaking down. Here's to new beginnings or, as Ainsley so perfectly put it today, without any prodding on my part, "so where is my sister coming from now." I will try to keep everyone at little more informed this time. Keep us in your thoughts and say a little prayer or two. As the Chinese proverb says "An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break." New Beginnings :)

Hello again finally

Well, it has been a very long time since I last blogged. I haven't really had anything positive to say and found it very difficult to share.
The past few months have seen changes and new rules and new delays with the Ethiopian adoption process. There really wasn't anything else to report other than this is going to take longer and I was getting tired of saying that.
Last week we received some more disturbing news. The Ethiopian ministry that oversees all adoptions has decided to limit the number of adoptions processed daily from 50 to 5, a decrease of almost 90 per cent. The reason for this is to reduce instances of fraud and reduce case workload in an ministry that is understaffed. I am not sure what all the children who will remain in orphanages for extended periods of time or those that have no where to live are supposed to do. What a tragedy for all the children. While a change in rules to benefit and protect the children and remove any agency that participates in fraud is a good idea, limiting the work that reputable agencies are able to do is a tragedy.
This new plan would increase the wait time for families with referrals (matches with children) to approximately one year and for those who are still on the waiting list (us) there will be an untold delay if it even happens at all.
The last week has been very stressful and exhausting. The not knowing what is going to happen is the hardest thing to deal with. We have no idea what to do or where to go from here. I feel like the rug has been pulled out from underneath our feet. I keep telling myself that everything happens for a reason, but, I am still looking for the reason! If everyone thought that this change would make a difference I would be able to accept the change, but, the children will be the ones who will suffer. How many of them will never know the love of a forever family and how many of them will not survive.
Through all this, we have been trying to hide all of this from Ainsley. She knows that we are upset but not why. I just don't know what to say to her especially as I really don't know that much at all either.
Keep us in your thoughts and prayers. I will keep you up to date as I find out more!
Bonnie, Jim and Ainsley