Ai Yai Yai

It didn't take long before we hit another snag.

It turns out that the next step is to wait for China to respond to our Letter of Intent to Adopt by sending us a Letter of Acceptance. Nothing else can happen until we receive this. The only problem is we don't know how long it will take to hear from China. It could be 45 days at the fastest. It could also be 6 months... gulp!

So I spoke too soon on the timeline. We have at least 45 days to wait before we can process any further paperwork and then plan the trip to meet Qinying (an additional 2-3 months).

It's harder now to wait. We've seen her picture. We imagine all of the developmental stages we want to be a part of. She's no longer an abstraction. She's a real person.

Sigh... This is going to take patience.

The Long-Awaited Call Has Arrived

It has been more than a month since our dossier was completed and sent in, and we were just in a holding pattern, getting antsy for the phone call from the adoption agency, Holt. Yesterday morning that call finally arrived.

We were informed about a 10-month-old girl from central China named Jiang Qin Ying. My Chinese friend tells me that her name probably means "hardworking" and "excellent." The name was given to her at the orphanage since she was anonymously left at the Child Welfare office's front doorstep, swaddled in a blanket with a bottle as her sole possession. She was approximately 2 days old.

Yesterday Eliza and I spend the evening discussing this moment and our big decision. Is Qin Ying our daughter? I'm going to let Eliza fill in more of the detail, but in brief, the answer is YES!

So the journey continues, now at a much more accelerated and anxiety-producing clip. We appreciate our dear friends and family who have been walking alongside us all along. It's about to get really exciting...

the Waiting Game

It's been a while since we've posted...we've hit that place where we are just waiting for "the call" from the agency saying they have a child for us. We actually got a call in early May for a child referral, but we ended up passing because the little girl they had was a month younger than Malia. After some thought, we had decided it would be complex for their relationship to be so close in age and should probably go with a child who is at least a school year younger.

It's hard to "pass" on a child, as if it were a car in the wrong color, or that dessert you're now too full to have. But we've been trying to heed advice from our social worker that if we're feeling overwhelmed before the child even gets here, that's not a good sign. The agency really does want you to think very carefully about what you feel you can handle and what would work well for your family. They want to set you up to succeed, as far as can be determined at least.

So now we continue to wait. I can't complain. We are not waiting nearly as long as families in the standard China process, which is now taking 3-4 years before you are matched with a child. But after hearing in April that we would be matched in 1-3 months, we had gotten pretty excited and ready for things to happen that quickly.

We are constantly being reminded that God has perfect timing. He knows things we don't, and will bring her to us when the time is right. We do trust that, even though our thoughts continue to drift towards our daughter-to-be, who is somewhere in China even as I write this. We pray for her, that someone is caring for and loving her well.

Child of Promise part 2

Another little pitch for the China Child of Promise option...yesterday our adoption agency, Holt, matched a group of families going through the standard adoption process with China. These families matched had dossiers (paperwork) completed and logged on March 3, 2006! They've waited for over 3 years to get matched. I can't even imagine waiting that long.

I spoke with someone at Holt today and found out that since we are open to a child with cleft lip/palate, our current wait time to get matched is 1-3 months tops. Wow, that took our excitement to another level! Another piece of good news is that we found out that this certificate of citizenship Paul and I have been bemoaning in this blog, is not even needed! The guidebook with all the processes states you need it, but a staff person at Holt told us that there have been a few cases where people lost their certificates and just wrote a letter explaining their situation and included a copy of their U.S. passport and the Chinese government accepted it. Ugh, on one hand all that worry and stress for nothing, but more importantly, we don't have to be held back by it anymore!

So now, because there are so many available children with cleft lip/palate, it looks like we can get matched pretty soon after we get our dossier in. All we are waiting on for that is the approval of our I-800A application (immigration services pertaining to suitability to adopt).

This was just the information I needed to encourage me today. It has been a stressful few months where all I could see was a long paper trail ahead of me. Thank you Lord.

Child of Promise

Our agency, Holt International, continues to give us the impression that a match could happen pretty quickly, especially now that our home study is approved. If you're wondering why it seems to be going so fast relative to the long saga other adoptive parents face, it's because we're part of a special program called the Child of Promise (click to read more).

By the way, I got my appointment at Immigration Services for my Certificate of Citizenship interview. Unfortunately, it falls during a week that I'll be in China for business travel. Gettting this Certificate is on the critical path to finalizing our adoption, so we're praying that we can get a different interview date scheduled soon.

Home Study

Last week we had our two Home Study visits with our social worker from Holt. The Home Study is basically where they come see where you live and how you live, and find out all about you and your family. The agency wants to get to know you better and make sure there aren't any red flags that come up, and the Chinese government wants to see it as well so they can get an understanding of the families who are adopting their children.
It's interesting, some potential red flags in the eyes of the Chinese government are: 1) spanking as a discipline philosophy and 2) going to marital counseling. The agency however, doesn't have a problem with these and just leaves these details out of your Home Study if they apply to you and they think you're fit all around.
Most of the time our involvement with the adoption consists of filling out forms and obtaining documents, neither of which necessarily touch the heart. Doing the Home Study and getting to know our social worker went a long way in bringing everything home and making the adoption seem more real and tangible. We got more and more excited as we discussed the details of being matched with our daughter and bringing her home.
I also had a moment where the reality of having two children hit me a little harder. I feel like I finally got to a good place with Malia, of feeling like I have somewhat of a handle on things and life. Not having a growing belly to remind me everyday of what's to come made it harder for me to mentally prepare myself. I'm glad we're approaching the end of the paperwork phase and having more personal interaction with Holt where everything feels more, well, personal.

The App Is In!

Whew! As we previously mentioned, China won't accept my US passport as proof of citizenship, so I've had to assemble a laundry list of documents to the US Center for Immigration Services to try to get my Certificate of Citizenship. Why don't I have one? I have this vague recollection of missing my appointment back in, like, 1984 because of a soccer tournament. I can't even remember if I scored a goal that day to at least make up for some of the pain in the fanny this has caused us.

Well, the documents are in (along with a hefty $460 check). The funniest piece of it was submitting my Family Census Register from Korea. For those of you who've never experienced life in a developing country (at least Korea was in 1972), let's just say that the documentation for stuff is... well, different. My Family Census Register is literally on this thin, see-through paper. It might even be made of rice. It's all in Chinese characters and it traces my lineage for multiple generations. Like hundreds of years, I think. That stuff is important in patriarchal societies like Korea. I'd love to see the look on the immigration officer's face when they try to figure out what to do with it.

We're just hoping it won't take the full 6 months to review and get my certificate. In the meantime, we're going to keep moving on other stuff (e.g., home study, compiling dossier) that is not predicated on the proof of citizenship being in place.

Thanks, all, for caring enough about us to read this blog and ask us how we're doing. The support and encouragement has meant a lot.