8/11/11 - Yay! We got our tax return today!!
8/2/11 - Like I said, with Max's adoption we sent two different sets of things to the Dept of State to be authenticated and each time it only took about 10-15 days. Who knew this time would be so different. They've now had our entire dossier for 6 weeks. I spent 90 min. on the phone yesterday calling everyone I could trying to find out what the status of our authentications was, how much longer it might take, and if that was going to be ok. From all the instructions I have the Chinese Embassy, which is the 3rd step in the authentication process, won't put their seal on any document that is older than 6 months. When I first sent our dossier to the State Dept knowing they would go to the Chinese Embassy next I had about 2 months before half my dossier would be 6 months old. I figured that was pleanty of time. Long story short after lots of phone calls calling all kinds of creative resources, I'm pretty sure the Chinese Embassy will authenticate documents that aren't older than a year so we should be ok. At one point yesterday I thought we'd have to redo half our dossier though. I wasn't too happy for a bit, but I think it will be ok now. Looks like my estimates about how long this entire adoption process will take was quite off again though. I thought our dossier would be sent to China for my birthday. Now I think we will be lucky to get it sent by the middle of Sept, which means we probably won't have our LID until November, which means that Nov. or Dec will be the first chance we have to be matched by our agency and I assume it will take several months of lists to be matched to our child. I'm guessing we will be traveling to pick up our child late summer to fall of 2012 instead of winter or spring of 2012. Oh well. I keep trying to tell myself I'm ahead of where I thought I'd be in this because we started a year earlier instead of feeling like I'm months behind.
7/26/11 - Today I had some alone time with Max while Noah was at kid's club and so we went shopping at Walmart. Out of nowhere he looked at me and said, "I want Marilyn. I want my little sister. I wanna hold her." It was so sweet. We talk about her sometimes, about how we are doing paperwork so that we can bring her home, and we pray for her together as a family but most of the time it is Max's doing. He almost always remembers to pray for her all on his own and I can tell he thinks about her because he will make comments like the one in the store completely unprompted. I really feel like she is out there somewhere, and I guess I'm not the only one.
7/21/11 - We just got a letter from the IRS today saying that they are auditing us because we claimed the adoption tax credit. If they want receipts, they will get receipts!! Just give us our refund already!
7/19/11 - "Nothing is happening!" (Say that like Scuttle from The Little Mermaid.) The Department of State has had our dossier for 4 weeks tomorrow and still hasn't finished authenticating it yet. On their web page there is a phone number listed for "authentication status inquiries". I called that number this morning and got a really nice but completely unhelpful older lady on the phone. She said she doesn't really even work for that dept, but that they put her phone number as the contact number on the website. She could give me absolutely no information except to say, "If you are sure they received your dossier, just be assured they will get to it in turn. They are really back logged right now." She couldn't even give me an estimate of how long it is taking for them to do authentications right now or even give me a phone number for anyone in the actual authentication department that I could ask questions to. I'm so fed up with the Federal Government right now. It's the same story over and over with different applications for every thing I'm doing with them. Our tax return is still being "processed" - 5 months later. Ughhh...
6/22/11 - We got our documents back from State of Utah yesterday and worked really hard on getting them mailed off to the US Dept. of State in Washington DC. They got them today so now they will work on step 2 out of 3 in getting them authenticated!
6/21/11 - It's been a really emotional couple of days for me.
When God first told me back in January that it was time to start working on adding to our family again it was really hard for me to accept. God told me I had work to do for him, that I had promised to do it, and that there was someone special we needed to have as part of our family. I felt Him telling me that He wanted to give me the tremendous blessing, and tremendous responsibility, of being a mother to another child, and that NOW was the time to prepare. I was ready right then to do whatever it was that I needed to do to make that happen, but it took me a few weeks to get used to the idea and really embrace it. It felt overwhelming, but the joy of it was compelling and completely won me over. Ever since then I have felt an undeniable pressure to get what we needed to done as quickly as possible, and I have been racing to complete every step. We are almost done with our dossier and so now comes an even harder part: finding her.
Who is she. Where in China is she. Is she a she? How do we find her?
A few weeks ago we became aware of the picture and file of a sweet little girl named Yao Min Min and she seemed to fit the picture of what we felt was right for our family. I've thought about her obsessively for the past few weeks, mulling over in my mind what it would be like to have her as part of our family, trying to learn everything possible about her, wanting to know if it was right. Two days ago we learned more about her. She most likely has a very serious condition that we were previously unaware of. We also learned that there was nothing holding us back anymore from locking her in for our family. Basically, now is the time to decide if she is "ours" or not.
It has been a heart-wrenching, soul-searching, God-trusting decision to have to make. Her condition is one that Chris and I have previously thought wasn't right for our family, but we want to be open to what God wants for our family, so we have been seriously deliberating this decision. We sincerely believe that He has someone specific in mind for our family and we don't want to miss out on that just because a condition our child might have feels overwhelming or scary. I've spent the past two days learning a lot about myself - my fears, my hopes, my limitations, my strengths and dissecting all of them. It has been an emotional and amazing experience. Once Chris and I both did that we felt prepared to find out what God's answer was for us about whether she is ours or not.
She's not ours.
Part of me is sad that she's not, but part of me is still full of hope. Our next little one IS out there somewhere in China waiting for us and we are doing everything in our power to work towards bringing her home. I believe that the right family for Yao Min Min is also out there somewhere and I pray that they will find her soon.
I've cried a lot of tears the past few days.
It's really, really hard to see the pictures and faces of so many little children who are being denied things that are critical for their development, things like parents, a stable forever home, enough food, love, medical treatments -things every innocent child is entitled to. As hard as it is to see lots of pictures of needy orphans, it's even harder for me to see the picture of one that I've grown attached to, to see her and know the things she needs and that I can't give them to her. It's heart breaking. For Chris and I adoption is not about "saving an orphan" but about finding our child; the fact that we do get to "save an orphan" is just a good bonus. When I look at her picture though, I wish I could save them all - I wish I could save HER.
6/16/11 - FINALLY got our USCIS approval in the mail today! It was a busy day. The approval was the last document we needed to finish the collection of documents for our dossier that we now have to get "authenticated". We can't send the original USCIS approval to be authenticated though, because we have to keep it for later in the process, so we had to get the original, make a copy, attach it to a statement saying it's a true copy and then have both of our signature's notarized. So, I had to run down to Chris' work, pull him out of a meeting, find a notary in his building to notarize our signatures, and then run everything down to Lieutenant Governor's office at the State Capitol building. All of this with two kids in tow during what should have been nap time. I deserve a gold star!
Now we move on to "authenticating" which is a 3 step process involving the State, the Dept. of State in DC, and the Chinese Embassy in DC where each office puts a seal on every document in your dossier certifying...something. I'm not quite sure what they are each actually certifying. The State of Utah is certifying, for $15 PER document, that the notaries who notarized each of our documents is a real notary - I don't know what the other places do.
There are 3 main parts to the adoption paperwork before you send it all to China: the Homestudy, the USCIS Immigration Pre-approval, and the authentication. We have now finished steps 2 out of 3!
6/13/11 - Reading up. Finished half of "Toddler Adoption: A Weaver's Craft" by Mary Hopkins-Best today and I'm taking notes! The way China does adoptions is contrary to just about every suggestion they have for a smooth, less traumatizing adoption. I seriously give my babysitters more information on my child's routines and personality than the Chinese gave me when they handed me my child. Oh well. I'm glad I have Max to show me that it can turn out ok.
6/12/11 - Still waiting. Waiting for the same three things: our immigration pre-approval (so that we can move on to the next paperwork step), our tax return (so that we can pay for it), and to find out if Yao Min Min is our daughter.
It's been just over two weeks since we first noticed a precious little-girl-cutie-pie on the "waiting child list" in our agency's Jing Yi Program. I cannot get her out of my head. Tomorrow is her 2nd birthday, well today actually. It's about 3am in China right now.
I keep picturing what it would be like to have her as part of our family; thinking about how it would almost be like having twins since she is only 9 months younger than Max. It feels like a real possibility that it might happen and the longer we wait for the beginning of July when we'll be able to lock in her file for our family if she's still available, the more excited and anxious I get. The next three weeks are going to feel like an eternity! Unless I get the bad news sooner than that that she's going to a different family...I think about that and feel sad but remind myself that if that happens, I won't have lost anything because she was never meant to be mine. What a strange way to feel, to look at the picture of a child living half way across the world wanting her to be my little girl and not knowing if she will be. It's a strange experience to see the picture of your child for the first time and not know if she is yours or not. Today Chris and I are fasting and praying for her. I'm glad that she's in a foster family and not an orphanage. I hope she'll get some extra love for her birthday. Happy Birthday little Yao Min Min!
6/8/11 - Waiting, waiting, and waiting some more. I thought we would have had our USCIS pre-approval in the mail more than a week ago. It's still not here. Every day I have a date with the mail box. I can't stop thinking about that little, almost, 2 year old girl in China that we might lock in. Her birthday is in 5 days. Will she be mine? I couldn't get her out of my head at 4am last night. We won't know until the beginning of July if she is still available for us or not. A few more weeks to wait. Still haven't gotten our tax return yet. I'm hoping now that we faxed our return in so they could fix their "coding error" that they won't tell us they now need to audit us because we claimed the adoption tax credit. Everyone else I know who claimed it is being audited. I guess you are always waiting for something.
5/29/11 - There is a bunch of paperwork that has to be done to be accepted into the "waiting child" program for our agency and to be ready to lock in a child once we find her. I worked on some of that today.
5/27/11 - Getting all our notaries done today for our dossier documents. There is a sweet little girl in our agency'sJing Yi Program that we would love to be able to lock in for our family, but since we haven't got our dossier in to China yet, we have to wait one more month before we can. If some other family hasn't snatched her up in another month, which they probably will, we will. Still waiting for our USCIS pre-approval to come any day now.
5/26/11 - Thanks to Heather Jensen for writing us a really nice letter of recommendation for our dossier, for being our friend, and for sharing in all the ups and downs of adoption with us. This is the last letter we need!
5/20/11 - I kept a really detailed list like this for Max's adoption and I'm so glad I did because I have forgotten so much of what happened last time and it's nice to compare this process in detail and realize how much smoother it is going this time. We are having so many fewer hang ups and problems this time around and it's so nice! We are pretty much exactly 4 months into the process this and already we are where we were SEVEN MONTHS into the process with Max. That is huge! It's already taken us three whole months less. Awesome! I'm thinking that we will receive our immigration pre-approval from the USCIS this week.
We are still waiting on our tax return, which we are using to finance this so we want it SOON. I called the IRS, gave them my sob story, and now the Tax Advocate Services dept. of the IRS is going to be working with me to help me get it. They should be contacting me sometime this next week to help me move forward with solving whatever problem they are having getting it to us. (Everyone I know who claimed the Adoption Tax Credit is having problems and getting audited. We filed for our return in Feb. and haven't received any info about what the hang up is.) We are getting a whooping $15,138 back and $13,000 of that is the ATC from Max's adoption! Thank heavens for the Adoption Tax Credit. It has made adoption so much more possible for us. Max's adoption cost $24,000 and we got $4,000 back from our health insurance and $13,000 from taxes so it really only cost us $7,000 out of pocket. We are budgeting about $35,000 for this child's adoption because we are bringing Noah, Max and two helpers (probably Grandma Buckholts and Aunt Linda).
5/15/11 - We finished typing up all the remaining documents we need for our dossier and all the cover letters we will need to send with them when we get them authenticated so that when we get our CIS immigration pre-approval we will be ready to start authenticating the next day. Now we just need to get all our dossier documents notarized and fax them to our FTIA caseworker to make sure they aren't any problems with them before we get them authenticated.
5/14/11 - Hooray for my good friend Tiffany Skelton! She was kind enough to do a letter of reference for us for our dossier and we just got it in the mail. Thanks so much!
5/5/11 - For some reason I've really been anxious about our fingerprint appointments. Maybe because last time around with Max I had to have mine redone. Did you know your fingerprints could wear off? This time around I've been trying to baby them and started really lotioning my fingertips several times a day a month ago. I know. I'm a bit obsessive. Yesterday Chris had his appt and this morning I had mine. Mine went a lot better than last time and we only had a problem with one pinky finger. Last time I had a problem with lots of my fingerprints.
Now I need to finish up just a couple documents for our dossier, get them notarized, get them reviewed by our agency, and then write the cover letters for the authentications. That way the day we get our immigration pre-approval notice in the mail I can get our authentications going and move on to the last big step of getting our dossier ready to send to China!
We are a few weeks behind from where I thought we would be, but who said it was a race? It just feels that way. I've been thinking all along that we would get matched to our daughter this July/August but I'm thinking it's going to take a few months longer than that now. We'll see. In order for our agency to match us to a child our dossier has to have been sent to China. It takes a few weeks for China to tell you what day your dossier was actually logged in and I think that our agency actually needs that date before they can match us. If that's true then it would take a few extra weeks from what I was planning on to be eligible for a match. New lists of children only come out once a month, so if we are "DTC" (Dossier To China) just after that list comes out we'll have to wait a whole other month before we have a shot. Also, I think most families, like us, want a girl so there will be more "competition" AND I think that once you are DTC you get put on a list of first come first serve for our agency to match us and we will then be at the end of the list when we are first DTC. That means that if another family is open to the same special needs that we are and a child comes up who meets those they will be matched to the family who has been waiting longer. I think it could take a while longer than I had first thought. Now I'm hoping to have been matched to our daughter by Christmas. But I'm still in a hurry to get everything done because I want to be on that waiting to be matched list ASAP!
4/25/11 - Yay! We got a letter from the USCIS today telling us our fingerprint appointments are 5/5 and 5/6. I was so hoping they wouldn't be for the following week when Chris is supposed to be out of town. Hooray, they aren't!
4/11/11 - Got a letter from USCIS saying they've received our application and that we will get a letter from them soon telling us when our fingerprint appointment is.
4/5/11 - The USCIS signed for our I-800A application this morning at 9am. Let's hope they get working on it fast!
4/2/11 - A lot of expectant mothers talk about what it's like to feel their baby growing inside of them. Although I'll never know exactly how that feels physically, I know exactly what it feels like emotionally. The love I have for my little one is growing inside of me.
They say you grow to love someone as you serve them, and this is one of the greatest ways that the love I have for my next precious child is growing inside of me. So what did I do for my little one today? I hurried like a woman running half way across the world to her waiting daughter to the credit union to get a Cashier's Check and then to the FedEx store to send in our immigration pre-approval application when the home study approval letter that I have been longing for finally came in the mail today. I ran even though I haven't eaten anything but breakfast today. I ran even though it's nap time and my "break" time. I ran and I just missed getting my package off in today's Fed Ex pickup (the guy was just loading his truck and shutting the door when I pulled up). But I didn't mind too much because this is how I'm loving my baby into reality today.
I don't know much about her. It may even be a he! But I think it's a girl. What I do know is that she's tiny, she's never been held by her mommy and only shortly by her birthmom, she's somewhere in China, and oh yeah, that she is MINE. My daughter. And I'm doing everything I can for her from this side of the world.
It's 7am in China right now. Wake up time. I hope there are kind women all around her this morning as she starts her day. I hope they pick her up and coo at her and look at her sweet face. I hope she feels all the love that I have for her even though it's coming from around the world.
And that is how a baby grows inside a woman who has never held life inside of her.
3/29/11 - Talked to FTIA on the phone today. They have received our HS, our coordinator has reviewed it and it looked good to her, now they are just waiting for their SW to review it before they send us the approval letter and they hope to do that any day. She said getting approval on your I-800A is taking about 2 months right now, which was what I expected to hear.
3/28/11 - Filled out our I-800A application and collected everything we'll need to to send with it. Everything we'll need but the letter from FTIA approving our HS that is. Still waiting for that.
3/26/11 - Got the replacement page for the mistake in our HS the other day. Still waiting for FTIA to send us our a letter approving our HS so we can send in our I-800A application.
3/23/11 - Got our HS in the mail and there was one mistake in it that I'm glad we caught before we included it in our dossier because it could have been a problem down the road. Our SW just needs to mail us out a replacement page for the one page that the problem was on. We are still waiting for FTIA to mail us the physical letter saying they approve our HS before we can send their letter, the HS, and our I-800A application (the application for immigration pre-approval) off to the USCIS so it's ok that we have to wait for this seeing that it won't hang anything up. I should mention that I printed off the I-800A application off with all the instructions and the application alone was 16 pages long and the instructions were about 30! Apparently, it is like rocket science.
3/18/11 - Hooray!!! Fantastic news, I got an email from our SW this morning saying that she had received the child abuse registry results from Texas and so we are officially finished with our homestudy! We are done with the first third of the first of three parts to bringing her home now. It took us exactlty 4 months to get to this point in Max's adoption and this time we are crusin' along seeing as how it has only taken us 2 months this time.
3/14/11 - Yay! The agency doing our homestudy, Families for Children, got approval on our homestudy from our adoption agency, FTIA today. FFC sends the rough draft of our homestudy to FTIA to make sure our homestudy looks good and is compliance with all of China's policies. Our homestudy is all done now except for waiting to hear back from Texas. Hurry up Texas! Grumble, grumble, grumble. It feels like we are waiting for nothing. I keep repeating to myself that God's timing is perfect and this won't hold anything up. We are not going to miss the chance to get matched to our daughter just because of paperwork delays. Maybe this will even help us find our daughter at the right time. Maybe without this we'd have been ready too soon. If only...If only...If only we had used FedEx the first time. If only it hadn't gotten lost in the mail the first time. If only they could have re-used the check they did for Max's adoption. It's not like the information has changed; he hasn't lived their since the check was done and my heavens he only "lived" there two weeks anyways. And it was on his mission! I promise you he was not abusing children on his mission! Or any other time. Oh well. Nothing I can do. I guess it's not even worth complaining.
3/11/11 - Got our marriage certificate in the mail that we will authenticate later as part of our dossier. Did you know it costs $40 to get a copy of your marriage certificate in Utah? That's a lot of money for one piece of paper that they don't even send to you by FedEx. Oh well. No biggie.
3/10/11 - Texas signed for our FedEx this morning.
3/8/11 - FedExing form to Texas today for Chris' child abuse registry check. The lady I talked to on the phone this morning said she will email the results to our SW so she can get it faster. Hooray!
3/7/11 - Well darn. We mailed Texas a form for Chris' child abuse registry check on Feb 8th but Texas says they never received it and our SW needs the check back from them in able to finish our homestudy. Their form says it takes 30 days to get checks done and the lady on the phone said she couldn't expedite it, but we think they will be faster than that. Shucks though! So today Chris had to get the form printed out, filled out and notarized AGAIN so we can send it, this time FedEx, tomorrow. Do you know how lame this is that we even have to do this? Chris "lived" there for two weeks on his mission and he hasn't lived there since. It seems lame that he'd have to have a check done for short length of time he "lived" there anyway and we had it done for Max's adoption and the information hasn't changed because he hasn't moved back to Texas! Oh well...stupid hoops. There's at least a 1000 of them and it's just a race to see how fast you can jump through them.
3/5/11 - Hallelujah for people who work late on Fridays! The company we did our 10 hours of approved adoption training with back in 2009 sent us emails today with our completion certificates attached so we could easily forward them to our SW to print off and include in our HS. Seriously. The hoops we have to jump through. It all feels so needlessly meaningless and yet we have to do it. Meanwhile, there's a little baby girl somewhere in China who is spending her babyhood half a world away from her Mama. Oh well. That's just the way the world works and according to China she's "not ready" to be adopted yet anyway because she's not on a list to be picked from yet and I haven't found her. That probably won't happen until sometime this summer. Still, my heart knows she's there and God knows where she is. I know what needs to happen between now and when we meet each other - she's blissfully unaware. I just have to jump through these hoops, be patient with the process, and know that we'll be together in the end.
We also got our birth certificates in the mail today that we'll authenticate later.
3/4/11 - There was a little drama today with our homestudy. FTIA is moving their office and will be shut down for a few days in a week or so. I really want to get our HS in to them to review before they move so it won't be the end of March when it's approved. Our SW has been working pretty hard getting it done but keeps finding things she needs to include that she has questions on so we've been emailing back and forth a lot. She needed us to complete 10 hours of an approved adoption education class but FTIA said we did that for our first adoption and wouldn't need to do it again. In able for that to work for our HS she needed the certificates we got after we took the training and passed the tests back in 2009 to include and that was the one thing from Max's adoption that we didn't save a copy of. Also, Texas still hasn't sent our SW Chris' Child Abuse Clearance so I need to call them on Monday.
3/2/11 - Emailed back and forth with our social worker about information she's including about us in our homestudy.
3/1/11 - Ordered certified copies of our Birth Certificates and Marriage Certificate to be authenticated.
2/28/11 - Emailed our social worker with the specific special needs we want her to approve us for in our homestudy. If God sends us a child with something else then she will just need to ammend it. This is what we asked her to include: "Christopher and Laura would like to adopt one child, either male or female, age 0 to 4 years old, from the People's Republic of China. Christopher and Laura would be willing and able to consider moderate to severe special needs including Hiatal Hernia, Inguinal Hernia, Hepatitis B or carrier of such, extra finger or toes, missing fingers or toes partial or complete, missing hand partial or complete, missing arm partial or complete, Syndactyly, birthmarks including Hemangioma or Nevus, scars, Nystagmus, Strabismus and similar special needs." When the time comes later this summer we will ask our agency to match us to our child and at that time we will fill out a more specific check list for them to work from. We are going to ask them to match us to a girl, but just in case God has other plans, we had our HS written for either a boy or a girl. We are also hoping that this daughter will be younger than Max, but in case for some reason it takes a long time to bring her home our agency recommends we be approved up to the age of 4. Just in case you were curious. ;)
2/26/11 - Heidi mailed her letter of recommendation to our social worker. Did our financial statment for our HS and our dossier. Mailed that and our medial exam forms to our social worker.
2/25/11 - Things kind of went on hold because we were all so sick with strep and colds, but we're back to getting things done. Today we closed on our home equity loan to help pay for this, we got one of our dossier docs notarized, and we got our physicals done for our dossier and homestudy. Our social worker says 2 of the 4 background checks are back, and that we've done all the face-to-face visits that she needs.
2/18/11 - Mailed our Federal Tax Return in so we can get our huge adoption credit back in a few weeks and start paying for all this fun stuff. Chris wrote rough draft of his employment letter that he can type up on State letterhead and have his boss sign for our Homestudy and dossier.
2/16/11 - Got our fingerprints done at the Davis County Jail on our BCI form for the State of Utah and mailed it. (That's for the State's criminial background check that we need for our Homestudy.)
2/12/11 - Got our blood drawn in preparation for our adoption physicals to be done on the 25th. Now the results will be back in time for the Dr. to have the info from them for our medical forms he will need to fill out.
2/11/11 - Went to the Layton City Police Dept. to try to get our fingerprints done for the BCI form, but they don't do them on Fridays. Had them do our local police check letters that we will need for our dossier. It was a bit of a fiasco...and we will leave it at that - but it got done.
2/10/11 - Called and scheduled adoption physicals, emailed FTIA & our social worker about some questions. Printed off and filled out our State BCI forms and now we just need to get our fingerprints done on them so we can mail them off. Chris met with our social worker so he could sign releases for her to get Child Abuse Clearances for Mississippi and Louisiana since they won't let us do them ourselves.
2/8/11 - Met Chris at his office with Texas' Child Abuse Clearance form so he could have it notarized and mailed it.
2/7/11 - Called the state agencies in charge of Child Abuse Clearances for the states of Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana to find out what procedures they have for getting those clearances for when Chris lived there on his mission. We have to get them for every state either of us has lived in since we were 18. Again. Even though nothing has changed since we got them for Max's Homestudy. Ugh.
2/2/11 - Updated a few forms we will need to have authenticated for our dossier and printed them off. Now I will just need to get them notarized before we send them off for authentication in a few months.
1/25/11 - Emailed our social worker to let her know we were starting this again and to ask her to start updating our homestudy.
1/18/11 - Mailed off our application to adopt again to Families Thru International Adoption (FTIA)!
