2nd care package and getting anxious!

We sent off our 2nd care package last week. Its packed with all the pictures Ying will need! Everyone this kid will meet is in our little book. A few other little toys/lovey items as well. With the help of our Nai-Nai(our official Chinese Grandmother)the wife wrote a nice letter in Mandarin/Pinyin for the foster group. Man is it expensive to send from the US to China. The post office was 55 bucks to ship, no tracking, and 2-3 weeks to get there on average. So much for 'NEW flat rate boxes'. We figured it would be quicker to Fedex it, but they don't have delivery service in Henan. We ended up fedex'ing it to Ann at Red Thread and having her send it via express mail, that should get it to her in about a week, and at least we know it got to China. We've heard some people mailing packages off and having them basically disappear as far as they know, because the child doesn't have any of the items, and they have no pictures or evidence they were ever received.

We are now into the 50-ish days waiting. This is not very long honestly. It has actually flown by for us, BUT we have entered into a window that we could start seeing the LOA. 70-90 days seem to be a fairly popular number for "days waiting for LOA", but they start to come in around the 50s for some folks. So now I'm becoming obsessive with checking the adoption forums to see if others are getting LOA yet. Very few have come in these last 2 weeks. I'm not sure if thats good or not, maybe that means a big wave will roll through this week or next. I am extremely jealous when I see people getting LOA, and start looking up their LID/LOI/PA stats to see how we compare. August is going to be slow I feel, nothing but summer and doing things around the house. Vacations start in September, and another in October, so we will have 2 months worth of back-to-back "things to look forward to".

We have a Mandarin class every Friday. It used to be a little more intense before the baby, but since we started taking a kid it turns into half class and half Nai-Nai/Matt playing. The 2 year old has good tone, and knows a decent number of words, mainly the ones we force upon him, "please", "jump", "open". We learned alot of baby words when we were pregnant(she was pregnant, I was just nervous). We have several sheets worth of words and phrases we used/planned to use with him. Its just now hitting us that a 2 year old Chinese child will have a pretty decent vocabulary, so now we are trying to get together a list of the basics to review, hoping to make the transition, and the language barrier, much much easier. We don't foresee too many problems, we have the eat/sleep/hurt/potty stuff down, it will be the odd things that catch us. Well, thats all for now, hope to post more soon!

Nothing new

Here is a pic of the care package that we sent a couple weeks ago. It was delivered 6/24, pretty nice little package. We used Red Thread, Ann, the lady who sent the package, was very helpful. We got a nice little generic letter put in as well. We may use the service again, but the wife has put together a package of our own that we will mail this weekend. Ann at Red Thread said that she found out little girl is in Beijing now, and is no longer in Henan, which is good, because we couldn't Fedex anything to her there as they don't service the particular area. I thought maybe it would be easy to get the updated mailing address from someone as opposed to having it sent to the Henan address and them sending it to the Beijing address, but that is not the case. I guess they don't want you to have any direct contact with the orphanage or foster home, and I can see why, I'm sure some people wouldn't be far from calling or showing up to see their kid, heh. So with all that said, we have to USPS it to her, which is fine, I'll support the Postal Service, my dad and sister work there, and they do business with Fedex. The wife has put together a nice package to send over, she even wrote out a letter, in actual Mandarin, giving some more detailed info on us and how we can't wait etc etc. She put together two good sized photo flip books too with Mandarin/pinyin/English translated captions of all the people, looks very good.

We have also started to actually prepare for her arrival. We bought a double stroller this week. We are picking colors, and themes, which is apparently looking like a Disney princess "Happily ever after" theme, seems appropriate. My mom, aunt, and wife are excited about the decorating aspect of it. Several family and friends had asked about a baby shower, and after some back and forth we decided that we will have one before we go get her, that way we can get some cute clothes/toys and be ready when she gets here. We still need to look at 2 more car seats, an additional one for each car. Thanks goodness for craigslist and freecycle sites!

2 year old Matt has officially switched over to calling the "extra room" the "mei mei's room"<"mei mei" is little sister in Chinese>, as well as some of the toys that the wife has pulled out, he refers to as "mei mei's toys", which he wants to take out of the bags/boxes and play with. This weekend we are going to start disassembling mei mei's room to empty it out and get it ready to clean and paint. Its currently a fake bedroom with a bed, chair, and tv that nobody ever uses. Might as well go ahead and empty all that out and prep it for its now intended use.

We have been waiting for about 1 month now, REALLY waiting anyways. Average is 90 days, so we hope to see something in a couple of months. Hopefully sooner, but not likely.

Insane

Our social worker called today apologizing that she hadn't sent us the homestudy addendum we needed 2.5 weeks ago. She had it done and will mail it out on Monday, and she was very sorry!


Oh yea, she sent us one 2 weeks ago, I didn't tell her. I still needed a 2nd copy anyways, so it all worked out, :)


Other than that, nothing new, just waiting now for LOA.