Dossier to China!

Our adoption agency called yesterday to let us know that our dossier was back from the Chinese Consulate and will be sent on to China! What this means is that it passed authentication at the Consulate with no problems (phew!) and was returned to Bethany's HQ in Michigan. The next step is that it is sent off to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) in China to be logged in and translated into Chinese. Once logged in the real wait begins. At last report they have referred children to families with login in dates (LID) as of 3/8/06 so the wait continues to increase.

We'll get another phone call from Bethany once we have a login date. Hopefully, we'll have a login date sometime next week but may not be informed of it for a few weeks. The reason we won't have a LID before next week is because Bethany is holding our dossier until they have a few to send (to cut back on costs) but more so until Eli turns a year old (on Friday!). Yes, although the wait is 3+ years CCAA requires that your youngest child is 1 before your dossier can be logged in.

Next, there is one more "review" that our dossier goes through. This is the review by CCAA to officially approve you for adoption (on the China end). At some point our dossier will pass through CCAA's review room where it will be closely scrutinized. They might question a few things (not likely as Bethany is very thorough) and then approve it for adoption. Then, you wait until can be matched with a child. Right now, they have reviewed dossiers with LIDs through March 2007 expected to speed up soon.

We'll post again once we have our LID!

Blog Description

I have nothing to update today as our dossier is still at the Chinese Consulate being authenticated. However, I wanted to explain some of the links I have setup on the lefthand side of the blog.

Currently, I have posted links to 2 other blogs in the "adoption links" section. The Rumor Queen blog is authored by this woman known as "The Rumor Queen" who adopted from China a ways back. She setup this website to track the wait for a referral based on several factors when she was waiting for her own referral. She has proven to be fairly accurate and decided to keep the site going after bringing her daughter home from China. This is our main source of information when we post updates on the wait. According to her site, they just referred babies to families who had LID (login dates) of March 7-8, 2006. Hence, that is why I am saying the current wait is 36 months. If you can't wait for our update check out her site. The site also has lots of good information for adoptive parents (from China) as well as forums on China adoption.

The Bethany China Blog is our adoption agency's blog on China Adoption. The blog also has updates on referrals but is mainly concentrated on adoptions related to Bethany families. It also has been a good source of information for us.

Our intention with this blog is to not only keep everyone updated on our situation but also go back and recant our experiences going through the paperwork as well as our reasonings for many of the adoption related decisions we made. We are planning posts on such topics as why we are adopting, why we choose China, why we choose Bethany and so forth. We'll try to post something at least once a month but that is sure to increase as we get closer! If there is any question you might have please feel free to ask us. We also welcome comments!

Dossier off to the Consulate!

We were informed today that Bethany's HQ in Michigan has deemed our dossier "perfect" and sent it off to the Chinese Consulate in DC. And no, this is not an April fool's joke :) as we are perfect.

Now it goes for more authenticating via the Consulate (2-4 weeks) then back to Grand Rapids. Bethany's home office will then send it off to China to be logged in and translated into Chinese. However, it is my understanding that this won't happen before April 24 as per China's rules our youngest child has to be a year old before our dossier can be logged in. We expect a login date (LID) sometime in late April/early May and then the real wait can begin. Right now, the wait is approaching 37 months but expected to pick up soon. We shall see.

So, you might be wondering how the boys feel about this whole adoption thing. Well, obviously Eli has no idea as he is not even 1 yet. By the time he can understand we'll be close to bringing her home, we hope. Benjamin is another story. He understands that he's getting a baby sister from China (apparently he's been bragging about it at school as one of his classmates asked his mother if they could go to China to get him a baby sister too!) and is very excited. Of course, he was very excited about Eli's birth until after he was born. He has a little different perspective on Eli now, as this conversation I had with him on Friday morning illustrates:

Benjamin: "Daddy. you don't have work today?"
Me: "No, I'm off today."
Benjamin: "Am I still going to school?"
Me: "Yes, Mommy and Daddy have to go to an appointment to submit all our paperwork for your baby sister from China."
Benjamin (with excitement): "Is she going to be here when I get home?"
Me: "No, we first have to submit all this paperwork and then wait and eventually go to China to get her"
Benjamin: "Are you going to China today?"
Me: "No, it's going to be a few years before we can go to China."
Benjamin (after a few moments of thought): "Daddy, when you bring my baby sister home from China are we going to take Eli back to the hospital?"

You see what I mean? Not the first time Benjamin has made such a suggestion. Much to his disapointment, we are not taking Eli back to the hospital just in case you were wondering. :)

Dossier Submitted!

Yesterday was quite a day! Exciting, nerve racking, and long. After we dropped the boys off at Bet Yeladim and took my car in for an oil change it was off to Bethany Christian Services (our adoption agency-will explain that in another post some other time) to submit our dossier. We were excited but nervous that everything would be in proper order.

We got to Bethany which is in Crofton, MD and sat there as our social worker painstakingly went through all of our documents. There were a couple of nervous moments as she questioned a few documents, most importantly the DC seal on my employment letter. Apparently, she wasn't sure it was the right seal and was concerned that the "authenticator" there had crossed out the word "chief" in the title but after a phone call she was assured everything was ok and that the Chinese consulate had been ok with this crossout on other documents. Finally she got through all the documents and got INS to fax over the approval so we were good to go! We had gotten a verbal aproval earlier in the week but had not received (and still have not) the actual paper saying we were approved. (BTW- our social worker was awesome! Highly recomend her and Bethany for anyone interested in adoption)

Now that our paperwork was in good order it was time to head down to Annapolis to get few more notarized documents authenticated and a bunch of authenticated documents state sealed. However, just as we're about to leave for Annapolis we get a call from Bet Yeladim. We're thinking "oh crap" one of the boys is sick and we need to go get them. As it turns out, Eli's class was having a birthday party and he was eyeing the cake. They just wanted to know if he could have a slice and we said yes and left for Annapolos.

After parking in Annapolis (an adventure of its own), we head over to the Anne Arundal Clerk of the Court to get the authentifications and then over to the Sec. of State's to get all the documents state sealed. That whole process only took about 20 minutes and it was back to Crofton (about a 20 min drive) to turn everything in.

Back at the Bethany office we got to see the end of a domestic adoption taking place which was exciting and even more exciting was turning in the remaining documents and our paperchase has finally ended, we hope. The next step is the dossier is sent to Bethany HQ in Michigan for review. If they don't find anything wrong (at this point they usually don't) it gets translated into Chinese and then back to DC to the Chinese Consulate for more authenticating. And then its finally off to China to be logged in at CCA!

So, now it was finally time for a little celebrating for us. Beth and I headed back to Annapolis for lunch at Carol's Creek which is a very nice restaurant on the waterfront and then we walked around the shops in town. After doing some browsing around, picking up some fancy cupcakes for a family treat that night and treating ourselves to some ice cream we headed back to Columbia to pickup the boys from school and return home.

It made for a very long but happy day! I'll keep posting updates to this blog as well as post about all that we've been though the last few months and such.

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!