I-800 and Chinese Visas

Well we finally got our updated home study and sent off the I-800A, Supplement 3 and the I-800 to the USCIS. The I-800A, Supplement 3 was to let the USCIS know that Fred had changed jobs and the I-800 is basically identifying the child who we want to make a US citizen. Fred talked with the USCIS yesterday and things are coming along. Our officer said that our I-800 should be in the mail and on its way back to us by Wednesday, March 21st, fingers crossed, God willing and the creek don't rise. The next step is the NVC (National Visa Center). Basically they enter the information in to the computer and then email it to the US Embassy in Guongzhou, China for final approval. Once the info has been emailed we will be sent notification which needs to be sent to Holt. This step takes about a week. Holt will then combine the NVC notification, our LOA and the DS-230 together to send to the Holt rep in China, who will hand delivery our packet to the US Embassy. This is the Article 5. This is the final approval of NaHui's visa. This will take two weeks. Once we have our Article 5, China will issue TA (travel approval). So anyway we are getting closer. We are hoping to travel with the June 8th group. Holt has scheduled two travel groups a month so if we want to travel at the beginning of June it must be then. We received an email the other day from Holt saying that the orphanage would remind NaHui's kindergarten teacher to teacher her some English words to help her express her needs. Which doesn't sound like much but it means she knows she is being adopted and makes it seem so much more real to me. After so long it is hard to believe that we are only a couple months away now. We have purchased all the clothes we need for NaHui in China and a couple toys. We have also been purchasing (with Grandma Sherry's help) the gifts we will need for the orphanage director, the aunties, and a few other people in China. We are probably taking more medications; cold medicine, diarrhea medicine, eye drops, antihistamines, etc. than we would ever take at home but we were told that we should take them with us (because you can't by them in China) so we are. It is a crazy concept, we are told to pack light but don't forget to take all this stuff with you.

Anyway I have also been filling out our visa applications. Most of the app was been pretty easy until I got to the section on the boys app where it said " if minor, than parents can sign" What does this mean. Do I sign my name or the boys name. I will make a phone call to the courier that we are using on Monday and have my question answered. Visa applications must be walked in, they do not except mail, so we must use a courier service. The good part is that the courier will look over the documents before and after to make sure that they are correct. So hopefully there will not be to much mailing back and forth. I'll let you know how it goes.

We have sent two letters to NaHui so far but I need to send another this week. We have some letters from the kids in NaHui's Class (next year) that we are going to send as well. I submitted NaHui's application for the lottery for school for next years last week also. It was weird filling out information on a person I haven't met yet but already feels like one of the family. I also need to get her an Alaska Airline mileage number so she can start earning miles on her way back from China.

As the time gets closer we will post more often. It is hard to post when you are just waiting and don't know anything new.

How do you know?

So other than filling out the visa forms, I am finished with the paper work for this part of the journey. What does that mean you might ask? Well that means that the I-800A, Supplement 3 paper work has been completed. This includes the updated home study that indicates that Fred has changed jobs and we are notifying the USCIS to let them know. Then there was the I-800 which is also to the USCIS that tells the US gov’t that this is the girl that is going to become our daughter. But this is the question that people ask, “How did you know it was to be this girl?”

Before we were matched, I wondered the same thing. I asked folks how they knew and I always got the same response, “You just do”.  I have heard people say that there are 2 major turning points in the adoption process, when you get the match and when you get your child. These are the moments when you can first put a face to the love you have already started to develop for this child that will become part of your family (being matched) and then on what is called “Gotcha Day”, when you meet your child for the first time. The real thing, what they sound like and feel like and what they think, likes, dislikes, who they are. Well we are not there yet, so I can’t talk about that step YET, but when we get there I will, but I can talk about this mysterious “You just know” concept. If you don’t know, before we were matched we decided that it was getting very difficult to continue talking about this girl we were adopting without giving her a name. We didn’t feel that we could really name here before we at least knew something about her, but we needed to call her something because it was awkward calling her “the girl” or “the daughter” or “the sister”. So Quade decided that we should call her Scottie. He wanted Bob at first, but that name has already been taken by a little boy we know. Anyway everyone agreed and we started calling this faceless child we already loved Scottie. So anyway, for me at least, the longer we were in process and closer to getting our dossier finished, the more desperate I became to put a face with our daughter. I looked at every listing of children I could find, even if it was with a different agency. I joined advocacy  forums, anything and everything I could find because I knew our daughter, our Scottie, was out there and I needed to find her and strangely enough I knew in my heart when I did find her I would know. So I looked and I looked and I asked for files and every time it just wasn’t her. All those other girls were someone else’s daughter and I hoped they would find them soon. I was always checking my email just in case there was a message letting me know that someone (our agency) thought they had found her. Until December 2^nd in the middle of math class, all the big events happen in the middle of math class, but that is another story. I got an email from our agency, there were also several from Fred asking why I was not answering my phone or his texts and why I was not paying attention because we had a potential match. Moments after reading that we had an email, Fred walked in, because he could not wait any longer for me to pay attention. We stood at my computer, opened the email, and yes, just like everyone had said, we just knew. I have to admit Fred had already looked and he already knew. It did not take me but a moment to catch up, that was our daughter in those pictures and she was found. Those are the moments of faith, that no matter what the special needs, she was the one. So to wrap this up, knowing when your match is right is just like the Thermos, it keeps the hot stuff hot and the cold stuff cold. “How do it know? It just does.”

When you get an LOA for your birthday

Just a sample of how much paper work we (Danya) have generated.

Dayna's Birthday present an LOA

I have started several posts, as of late, but have not finished any of them. 

I had the post about how I have learned about trust and faith and having to wait and wait and wait.  i know the people taking care of Na Hui have been doing so for the last 6 years and I am sure they have been doing a fine job.  But now we are waiting for travel and it just starts to seem like they may not be doing as good of a job now.  I now it sounds goofy, but you really do start to think some strange things when you wait.  I need to read "Oh the places you'll go" again.

There was the post about bureaucracy being bureaucracy, no matter what country or what language is being spoken.  This would have to do with our experience's with the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco.  Most of them good and several just made us scratch our heads.   (Don't even get us started on passports for Canada.)

The post about the hormonal changes that take place in adoption, it may be even worse than the changes that take place with the biological mother.  I wont give Dayna too much grief over this and she is getting better here in the 4th Trimester.  Heck I have even been nesting.  We were at Fred Meyers and I saw the cutest little dress with the most precious pattern and the bodice was just darling.  I had to to have it, not for myself, for Na Hui.    

So I should get to this posts actual point.  On Monday the 20th when we were at Walmart looking for a carry-on for me to take to China we revived the call we have been waiting for.  We received our LOA from China.  ( Note LOA is our approval from China to adopt)  The average from the pool of people we sampled for LOA's was 66 days.  We made it in 62 days. 

So here we are on Wednesday night with our Fed-X package from Holt with the actual LOA from China and a pile of papers to be filled out, signed, notarized, copied and mailed back to Holt. 

We  had to do an updated home study after I quit my job and we are waiting for it to come back.  We should have it by the first of next week.  When we receive this we will send it off to the USCIS (United states citizen's and immigration service) with our I-800.  This is the official document allowing Na Hui to become a US citizen.  

In the mean time we are getting our Visa Applications in order.  Aunt Mary is coming with us to China and she is getting her hands soiled by the reams of paper work now as well. 

So. keep checking back each week my friends your sure to get a smile from seven stranded castaways here on Gilligan's Isle.

Day 42 of the LOA wait!

Well we are on day 42 of the LOA wait. Fred and I thought it would be fun to find the average wait time which we have determined to be about 66 days. Day 66 is my birthday so receiving our LOA for Na Hui would be a great B-day present since Fred has informed me I won't be getting anything else. We just completed our second letter to Na Hui with pictures and stories about her family (that is us) and her new home. We also sent her some stickers. We can send little things, nothing heavy or bulky. Obviously we are getting excited about going to get Na Hui. She should know that she has a family by now and is just waiting like us. I hope she is excited too and not worried. I would hate it if she was spending these months worrying about the unknown. Definitely think about that later. Anyway just a quick update to say that nothing has really changed but that we are still waiting and anticipating the new addition to our family. Not to much longer and the Weiler's will be 5 instead of 4.

Update and New Picture

Yesterday we received an update and a new picture of Na Hui. Yay! She is living in a foster home with an older brother, 11, two younger brothers who are about 5, and a younger sister 3. These are not her biological siblings. It is called a foster home, but I am told that in the US we would call it a group home. The home has a foster mother and father and is located on the grounds of the institution. I am told that the father generally works outside of the home and the mother stays home and takes care of the kids. I am part of a forum for parents who have or are adopting from Na Hui's orphanages and have met (online) a few families that are adopting from Hefei and may be traveling at the same time we are. I have also met some folks that have already adopted from Hefei. They have mostly good things to say about the institution and that their children really seemed to be loved by the "Aunties". This was very nice to hear as we wait to bring our daughter home. One individual even sent me pictures that she took when she was in Hefei to pick up her son. The photos may contain pictures of Na Hui when she was younger. It is challenging to identify a 1 year from her picture when she is 6. On Na Hui's "Gotcha Day", we are supposed to receive a book of pictures and milestone for Na Hui from while she has been at the institution. I am hoping that there will be at least one picture from when she was 1 or 2 years old that I can use to compare to the picture I received from the other parent. I just have to wait and be patient.”Patients” is rather the theme these days.

We didn't get much new information, but the little we did is comforting. We know that she likes to sing and dance, recite Tang poetry, and play with building blocks. We know that she has grown 3 cm and gained 2.5 kg since her paper work was done in Sept 10, 2011 and we know she wears size 10/10.5 shoes. It is funny how much it pleases me to know what size shoes she wears. She is getting bigger everyday and we are missing it! Remember patients.

To help pass the time while we wait, as well as trying to learn everything we can, Fred and I have been following a blog of some folks that are on a forum that I am a part of. We have never talked to these people but really love reading their blog and keeping up with their adoption. They are in China right now adopting two boys, one 11 and the other 10. If you are interested in reading a long the blog is at http://www.andyweiwright.blogspot.com . It is fun to read about their experiences in China.

No new news on the LOA, not that we were expecting any, but we are still hoping to be traveling in the early part of June.

On the fund raising front, we have sold more than half of the mittens we made and are planning to make more soon. I just love my pair; they are just so warm and soft on the inside. I have been thinking about making a little jumper for Na Hui out of the larger scraps of wool (the scraps that are too small for mittens but can still be sewn together to make a fun patchwork).

Okay, I guess that is all I know for now.
Cheers

Etta's Essentials

So, for the past year, I have been collecting old wool sweaters and 3 days ago I finally became inspired to make something out of them. Fred and I have been making mittens. The outside is old felted wool sweats and then they are lined with polar fleece. The mittens are absolutely fabulous. We have made 21 pairs so far and are hoping that people will want to make a donation to our "Sponsor A Weiler" in exchange for their chosen pair of mittens. Anyway their is a link to the blog where the mittens are displayed on the upper left hand corner of this blog or you can cut and paste ettasessentials.blogspot.com in to the address bar.  Please check out Etta's Essentials and share the blog with your friends.