Friday, September 24, 2010
Cabled & Received Letter
Monday, September 13, 2010
Baby steps
When I got home today, I saw that our I800 approval had arrived in the mail... I opened it up to verify the information was all correct and I saw that Jack's middle name was written without the umlaut. I hope that's intentional and not a problem... we'll find out tomorrow. In Chinese pinyin, Lu and Lü are two different words, so technically his name is incorrect. Uggh!
Friday, September 10, 2010
I800 approval - sort of
We found out yesterday that our immigration officer has issued our I800 approval... the first of the many steps we have to work through. However, as expected, she still needs the updated LOA before she can forward our case onto the division which handles cabling (transmitting) our information to the US Consulate in Guangzhou.
Unfortunately, three weeks after the fact, there still is no sign of the LOA... our agency requested the updated LOA the very same day we received it. Hopefully, it will be arriving any day now and I can get it off to my officer. Until then we are stalled completely, and that's an unpleasant feeling...
The final steps
When we adopted Leah, adoption regulations were such that once you received LOA, you signed it, returned it, and then waited for TA (Travel Approval). TA is the official invitation to come to China to complete the adoption. Typically, the wait between LOA and TA was 3-5 weeks.
Since that time, the US has signed onto an international treaty which defines how international adoptions should be processed. The treaty defines several steps, all of which are designed to help reduce the chance for corruption and child-trafficking.
The unfortunate thing for us at this point, is that the changes have impacted the process between LOA and TA. There now is an average of 2 - 3 months between LOA and TA... a big change from last time. The following are the steps we need to walk through before we can be issued TA and finally get to our little boy:
- Receive I800 approval. With our dossier, we submitted our I800A, which was a pre-approval to immigrate a child into the US. Now that we've been matched officially with this specific child, we submit more paperwork, along with all of Jack's referral paperwork and other items from our agency, in order to get I800 approval which is specific approval to immigrate this particular child into the US. The snafu in this step is that our LOA arrived and had a typo with our son's birthdate. Its highly likely that USCIS will be unable to issue our I800 approval until we receive an updated LOA with no errors. Hopefully, this arrives sooner rather than later. I800 approval has been taking about 2-3 weeks lately.
- Have Information Cabled to Guangzhou. Once the I800 is approved, our information is forwarded to another division of immigration which will handle forwarding our information onto the Consulate in Guangzhou (which handles the final issuing of Jack's visa to come into the US). This has been taking 7-10 days lately.
- Get Letter Confirming Cable. Once the information has been cabled, a letter is issued to document this. This letter needs to be included in some paperwork needed for the next step. Folks have been waiting anywhere from 0-9 days to get this letter (some folks have had luck getting it emailed to them... others have to wait for 'snail mail')
- Article 5. Once all the previous paperwork is gathered, it will be hand delivered to the US consulate in Guangzhou to get what is called the "Article 5". This is the US government approval of the adoption and confirmation that the child will be able to enter and stay in the US. This paperwork can apparently only be dropped off on a Monday or a Thursday, and is ready for pickup exactly two weeks later.
- TA (Travel Approval) Once the Article 5 is picked up, it is delivered to the Chinese Adoption Officials who can now finally issue our Travel Approval. This step has been taking 1-4 weeks lately.
- CA (Consulate Appointment) Once our agency receives notice that we have TA, they will contact the US Consulate in Guangzhou in order to schedule our Consulate appointment. This is the appointment at which Jack's visa paperwork will be reviewed and approved. The CA date drives the entire timing of the adoption trip, so until this is scheduled we won't know when we need to be in China.
So, there are a lot of changes that we need to get familiar with... and a lot of steps we need to pass through before we can go get Jack. Hopefully we can work through those quickly... We want our little boy home for Christmas!
LOA
Its official! China has issued a "Letter of Approval" which officially approves our family to adopt Jack - Dang Zhilü. They have reviewed all of our paperwork (which we painstakingly prepared), scrutinized the details, and found us to be suitable parents to adopt this little boy. We are honored and SO excited to have reached this milestone. Our agency overnighted the LOA to us yesterday, and we've signed and returned it back to them today along with a big stack of paperwork to begin the next step of the process.
I honestly didn't expect to hear anything for another month... hopefully everything else falls on the shorter end of normal. Right now, our agency is estimating we will travel sometime in November... which means our little boy could very well be celebrating Christmas with our family. What a miracle that would be!
We received an update!
Here is the updated information we received:
His current health is good.
He can walk on his own and express his wish with body language.
He can say mama.
He is not potty trained.
He does not know color yet.
They call him Zhi Lu.
He is outgoing.
He is in the orphanage.The orphanage wanted you to know that he is afraid of strong light.He received package from the family.
He eats noodle, soft rice, milk, fruits, juice and biscuits.
We can't wait to meet our little boy!!!
Friday, September 3, 2010
To umlaut or not...
Umlaut? What's an umlaut? Just a simple set of dots placed over a letter. In Jack's case, it occurs in his Chinese middle name... Lü.
These two little dots have been the cause of much worry on my part... When the chinese write "Lü" many times its written as "Lv" since that's available on a standard keyboard and the "v" is unused in Chinese pinyin. So some of his official paperwork may come in as Lv and other may be Lü... will this discrepancy cause a problem? Do I use Lü or Lv on official paperwork, passports, airline tickets?
And what about his English name... The plan is to keep his Chinese name as his middle name... but do we keep the umlaut on the u, or do we drop it? Do we use "Lv"?
After much fretting, we've decided that Jack's English name will not contain the umlaut. We figure that will make life so much easier when it comes to all official purposes... drivers licenses, school paperwork, etc. But I can't help but feel a twinge of guilt for making the easy choice, and not sticking with our desire to maintain his Chinese name... even though his name was just assigned by the orphanage, its still a part of his history and identity. When he's older and reading this, hopefully he'll laugh at how much his poor mom worried about this and thank us for making the easy choice.
LID!
We were notified today that our dossier was logged in... July 13 is our official LID. Now the clock has officially started. We are waiting now for our Letter of Approval (LOA), also known as the Letter Seeking Confirmation of Adopter (LSC). This is China's final approval of our adoption of Jack... this is when they review all our paperwork, deem we are qualified parents, and officially approve of the match of Jack to our family. This is the nerve-wracking wait in which there always is this little nagging worry that China could actually change their minds and say No. We'll feel a lot better once we get that LOA in our hands.
Dossier arrived safely
We received confirmation from our agency today that our dossier has been delivered to the Chinese adoption officials. Now we wait for our log in date (LID), which indicates when our papers have been officially entered into the system.
So, walking out from work today at 5pm I got an email from my agency... We are DTC today! Our dossier is on its way to China AS I TYPE THIS!!! We changed our dinner plans immediately to meet up with Mom & Erin at the Chinese Buffet for a DTC celebration!! One step closer to our little boy!
More delays!
Finally heard back from someone at our courier's office... they are on vacation through the end of the week, returning Monday. Ack! Had I known this, I might have actually gotten in the car and driven down to NYC to get this done myself. Every day now is just one extra day Jack will go without us... it kills me.
Hopefully, on Monday the document will be processed and sent back to us ASAP.
Where's our document??
We sent our I800A off to a courier to be processed through the Chinese Consulate with same-day service and returned ASAP. It wasn't processed same day (since it hasn't been picked up by Fedex) and I can't get a reply back from the courier with a status update. I'm FREAKING out! This document is the last thing we need... we're so close.
I800A approved!!
Wahoo! We talked with our officer today and found out our prints came in fine (phew!) and our I800A has been approved. As soon as we receive the I797C notice in the mail, we can get it notarized, county certified, then off to our courier to send it through the NY Secretary of State and Chinese Consulate for next day service. I think our DTC goal for the end of June is going to be possible!!
I am an idiot
So... for the past 2 weeks, I've been waiting... VERY impatiently... for our fingerprint appointment. I know exactly how many days are left until the appt. I'm SO excited and hopeful that the prints clear quickly and our officer can approve our I800A ASAP.
So, what did I do today.... Went out in the yard, dug around in the mulch and pulled weeds. Without gloves. And what do I have now... finger pads FULL of dirt... dirt that can interfere with the delicate fingerprint machine... dirt that's so ground in it won't come off with several rounds of soap and water... dirt that I can NOT scrub off too vigorously bcs that too could impact the prints.
Now... anyone who's visited our home knows that gardening is no where near our forte. We probably weed about twice a season... so WHY in the WORLD did I pick today??? Ack! Why didn't I realize what I was doing to my fingers!!
I've got three days to hope that I haven't screwed things up too horribly... if my prints fail and I need to wait for another appt, that just more weeks that Jack has to stay in an orphanage. That will be a horrible feeling. For the next three days, I'm on a strict regimen of applying Corn Huskers Lotion, which apparently is highly recommended by the fingerprinting folks for being great for prepping your fingers for prints. Please please please let this work...
A mixed bag
June 9, 2010
Exciting day - for both good and bad reasons. Lets start with the good news...
Today our entire dossier (minus the I800A/I797C we are waiting on from USCIS) arrived at our agency. It will now undergo a series of multiple reviews to make sure everything is in perfect order. Here's hoping I didn't make some crazy mistake somewhere down along the line... I'll breathe a lot easier once I get confirmation from them that everything looks good. Its quite a milestone to send this huge bunch of precious papers off to the agency... I was freaking out the entire 24 hours that it was in transit. What a relief it was to get the "Dossier Rec'd" email from them today!
So now the bad news... I emailed USCIS to determine whether our I800A case had been assigned to an officer yet. The officer is the person who reviews the case and all supporting materials, and makes the determination of whether we are approved to immigrate a child into the US. You can't get any movement until you are assigned an officer. So anyways, I emailed my inquiry and received a response from our officer (yay!). Unfortunately, she told me that she issued us an RFE ("Request For Evidence")... our homestudy contained some verbage that apparently it shouldn't have (even though our agency has sent many many homestudies with the same verbage and had no issue... apparently we got lucky. ) Normally, an RFE means a delay in getting your I800A. In our case, since we are still waiting on our fingerprint appts, hopefully everything will be resolved with this RFE before it causes us any delays. We have an amazing officer, thankfully... when she emailed me, she told me about the RFE but also told me that she had already contacted my agency, told them what needed to be fixed, and knew that they would be sending it along soon. It was like a major crisis that was handled completely by someone else... Normally, the adoption crisises are all on me, so its nice to breathe easy on this one.
No go on the fingerprinting
June 2, 2010
Well, we tried to walk-in for our fingerprinting with USCIS today and failed miserably. DENIED. Unfortunately, we picked a bad day to walk-in.. the office was getting a new fingerprinting machine installed that very day. I should have volunteered to wait for the install and be the first set of prints on it, but didn't think of that until we were leaving. They were none too thrilled that we even were trying this, so I'm not sure that would have worked either. Oh well... at least we know we did all we could to get to Jack sooner, now we just have to wait for our appts in a few weeks.
Finally got our fingerprint appt notices
After waiting nearly a MONTH, we have finally gotten our appt notices for fingerprinting with USCIS. Unfortunately, we still have a ways to go... our appts aren't scheduled until June 15. The I800A can not be approved without a cleared set of prints from both parents, so this is going to be the long-pole in the process. Other families have had good luck trying to walk-in earlier than their appt time in hopes of expediting the process, so we're going to try that next week. Here's hoping we get a very kind officer who's willing to help us
Happy Birthday to our son!
Today is Jack's second birthday... Happy Birthday little man!
Here are a few pics from his party with the cake we sent. Look at those cutie patootie cake pictures! And love the pink... LOL After having four girls, it cracks me up that some of the very few pictures we have of our son have him wearing pink. Real boys wear pink, apparently!
Ordered birthday care package
Last week I placed an order with Ann of Red Thread China to have a care package and birthday cake delivered to Jack at the orphanage. Many families have been able to receive photos of their child having a birthday celebration, so we are really hoping we are able to get some as well.
Here is a photo of the care package we sent:
Hopefully, the nannies will give our sweet boy some extra hugs and attention, and let him know that we love him very much. This is the last birthday he'll need to spend without a family.
Homestudy approved & I800A sent
We got official word today from CCAI that our homestudy has been approved! This now means that we can submit our I800A application to USCIS (immigration) to get approved to bring a child into the US for immigration. Lately the process has been taking 4-6 weeks, so we're really hoping to be on the shorter end of it. :::fingers crossed:::