INS approval!

I'm going to start this blog (this is my first ever post to my first ever blog) with some good news! After calling INS yesterday, our assigned officer informed me that she approved our I-800a yesterday and that it was in the mail! This is the second major approval we needed, giving us permission to bring an adopted foreign child into the U.S. The first approval was the home study from the adoption agency (approved in January) and the final will be from CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) whenever they get to it.

The next step is tomorrow when we go to the agency and submit all of our paperwork for the dossier. Assuming they don't find anything wrong (cross your fingers) the dossier is then sent to their HQ for another check, then it gets translated into Chinese, then it goes off for authentication to the Chinese Consulate in the U.S (something like that) and finally off to China. This process will take 4-6 weeks at the end of which our dossier will be logged into CCAA and the waiting can begin. Right now the wait is 36 months but hopefully that will speed up soon.

Anyways, we are very excited to be one step closer to bringing home our daughter.

Will keep posting updates!