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.

More of the same

We got our home study update in the mail last week, surprisingly. We were not worried about getting it real quick, we figured she would have it to us by the time we would be ready to travel. We also sent a care package to the baby/orphanage. We used a service in China, www.redthredchina.com , the lady that runs it, Ann, was very helpful. She did call and get us some updated sizes, and pics! Unfortunately the pics were the same ones we already had, :( The care package included a disposable camera, so I'm hoping we will get some new pics anyways. We have no idea if they will use the camera, and if they do, if they will send it to us, or if they will just give it to us when we get there.

Sooooo now we are still waiting. We have a trip to St. Louis in July, and a trip to Atlanta in September, and then Disney World in October. And somewhere in there, hopefully before November, we will be going to China. We're hoping the China trip doesn't overlap any of these other trips, but if our agency calls and tells us a date, we are going!

Waiting is no fun

We sent a care package to the baby and foster home a few days ago. We are hoping to get some more updated photos and information on her, mainly sizes, so we can buy some clothes.

Also, our home study update, should have been done last week, but our social worker "lost it". Now, usually I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but every single thing our social worker has had to do, gets messed up. She lost the initial home study and had to re-interview us. Then we needed it updated due to a typo, one sentence was wrong. That took 2 months. So even though I typed out the new update, and all she had to do was print it and sign it, making it as easy as possible for her, she still screwed that up. SO, if you want to know the name of a service/social worker in the area that is really knowledgeable and nice, but extremely slow and forgetful, let me know, I can get you her info, :(

We are also still working on a name for the kid, not sure how that is going to go yet. We are fairly certain we will keep the "Ying" portion as her middle name, but no idea on the first name as of yet. We're taking suggestions of course!

We got PA!!!!!!!

Wow, this is borderline stupid at this point, we are flying through most of the steps. We just got the email today that the CCAA(China Gov for adoption stuff) pre-approved our letter of intent. Usually this takes 1-4 weeks, so we are surprised that we got it in 2 days! Here are a couple pics of Dang Ying!




A little bit of info since we can legally give it out. She was born 8/30/07, so she is about 5 months younger than Matt. She is in the Henan Province in a Pingdingshan Orphanage, actually its a foster home. She is "special needs", she has cleft lip/palate, ToF/Tetralogy of Fallot(Heart disease), and a floating kidney. The cleft lip has been repaired, and we think maybe partially the palate, but she may need another surgery, we will just have to check. The heart issue has also been surgically corrected. As for the floating kidney, apparently thats not a big deal, most people don't even know that they have it unless they experience some kind of pain from it. No surgery or treatment required for it unless it bothers her. We reviewed her medical profile with 3 doctors, and they all seemed to say the same things, and weren't overly concerned with most of the issues she had. So now, we are back to the awful process of waiting. The agency said even though all our other approvals have gone through so quickly, that the next step likely won't, and will be about 4-5 months before we are set to travel.

Updates

Ok, first, since I have had a few people ask, "jnj adoption adventure", jnj stands for Jason and Jamaica. The wifey's first name is Jamaica, yes, like the country, :)


We have all our paperwork done again. We submitted the letter of intent(LOI) Monday, and it was translated and sent off to the CCAA Tuesday, so now we get to wait for the ever elusive PA. Could be 5 days, could be 35 days, I love how broad a window all the steps can be. We also confirmed our immigration status, to make sure that it lists that we are approved for a "special needs child", which it does. And lastly, *I* type up the home study addendum and sent it to the social worker. CCAI provides a basic template where you just drop in names and dates and what-not. So HOPEFULLY we will get the home study addendum back this week, all she needs to do is print it and stamp it, but historically our SW has taken lengthy periods of time to get things done. After we get the home study back, thats it, we are back to hurry up and wait status. Only NOW the whole "waiting" process sucks 10x more, because now we have a baby over there, with a name, and a face.

We are fully aware of the "averages" associated with the next few steps. Basically 4-6 months is what we were told from now until we travel. BUT, given the fact that we have greatly blown out most of the previous "average" numbers, we're hoping to get her before she turns 2, August 30th. Thats about 2.5 months away, and fairly unreasonable, but we can still hope! I've seen other people get LOA/TA in 2 months, so I know its a possibilty, :)

Since the referral came about 6 months before we had anticipated it, at the earliest, we are now faced with a few things we need to get done. A bed, DAH! I just took the baby's bed apart last month so he could sleep in his big-boy bed. Now I need to reassemble it and buy another mattress for it. Clothes, I've been batting away all the girl clothes wife looks at when we go out, saying "We don't have any idea how old/big she will be, just wait, we have a few months!" HA! That kind of backfired on me, so now we get to spend twice as long in the clothing sections looking at 2yo boys clothes, and 2yo girls clothes, grrrrrreat! Also we need to get the room arrangements setup. We are still debating on how thats going to go. Since they will be "virtual twins" we are thinking about putting their beds in the same room to let them sleep together. It will def help the bonding process, and may help ease the transition for the two of them. Then we could setup the other room as a pure playroom. We're going to do some research on that though to see what other people have experienced. We will probably need to get another stroller, or a dual stroller now too, and maybe another chest of drawers for clothes. Other than that I think we have everything else, purely because we already have a 2 year old. Now the wife's girl friends, that have been asking, can finally setup a baby shower and dump clothes on us, lol.

Lastly, yes, we have pictures of her, but we aren't supposed to post them publicly until we get PA, so as soon as we get PA, there will be pics!

Referral!

We have a referral! Whats that mean? Well, it means that we reviewed a child's profile, and made visits to several Doctors for some consultation. After reviewing the precious little girl and talking it over with the family we called and told the agency YES! Her name is Dang Ying, she was born(a guess on the orphanages side) August 30, 2007. The bio-kid and the new little one will be about 5 months apart in age, yes, two 2 year olds in the same house. Mommy and daddy may need to start buying box-wine, :) She is currently in Henan province in Pingding Shan City, China. We have a little more paperwork to do now, but we are sooooooo close now(hopefully 4-5 months). I will post some more info later, but had to post SOMETHING to mark the occasion.