Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Travel Approval

Last night May 23, 2016, late late, late... I received an email from our agency letting us know that we had TA or Travel Approval. Christie called me from the US and needless to say, it was such a bad connection. We did get to discuss issues particular to our case. We're hoping to get positive answers. We want so dearly to be able to come home as a family of four immediately after China. We're going to see if it's possible. We do have the option to just fly to the US; but we're longing to spend a few days alone as a family. We want to show Meimei her room, her toys, her home.


Saturday, May 21, 2016

Introducing...

Our beloved





LOA 3.25.2016

This is the step which China approves us to adopt a particular child. They send a Letter of Acceptance, also called Letter Seeking Confirmation. These are all like contracts between all parties. "We accept you to adopt this child. Do you agree?"





This is how the document looks:



Yes, yes we do accept. Thank you :)

Referral 2/19/16

On February 19, 2016, early in the morning our time; a Friday, I received an email from Nicole, one of our agency's fabulous rep. She said she had a preliminary file of a little girl we might be interested in. She would be working late and asked me to call her to chat. So I did. She started telling me a bit about a little girl whom she had met in November when she went to visit the partnerships. She explained that she had a video but it was taken outside of the orphanage as this particular one didn't have a playroom because all the children are fostered. She told me that it was a bit hectic and that the little girl was extremely shy and scared. She was overwhelmed by the strangers. Nicole said that they went ahead and got a second video of her in her own environment and to please look at both.
When I watched the first one, I understood that she meant. It's tough to make such a decision based on that video. But then... I saw the second video and I cried. My husband walked in at the very moment and was like "uh-oh! You can't start getting like that so soon. We have to make sure." LOL
The file was pretty plain. I couldn't understand measurements. Info was lacking. And I was a bit unsure what to think. We sent the file to a dr who is a friend of the family - great doctor, zero experience with int'l adoptions. The review was very negative. But something happened. Mama Bear came out. I tried to reason with that though. So to be sure, we sent in the file and paid for an int'l adoption specialist dr to review her file.
The dr called me and gave me a rundown of what she saw and it sounded pretty good. But she wanted for me to send them a list of questions and request photos and video of her doing typical developmental things such as talking, following directions, etc...
Well... (fanfare please)

We received a surprise. Our in country coordinator, the fantabulous Judy... called us on a video chat. We got to "meet" her. It was quite amazing. Judy spent the whole day with her and her foster family. They went out to eat, hung out in the neighborhood, and went to the playground. And she filmed it all. We got tons of videos with this little Blossom doing all kinds of developmental skills. We didn't need anything else.  We were pretty content with it all. We let ourselves talk about it and let it sink in for a few days. We also sent all the videos to Dr. Chambers.
But. I. Prayed.
I prayed specifically that if this little girl was meant to be ours, that confirmation would come from my husband. The very next morning after the prayer, hubby said "I don't think we need to wait around for the dr to reply. I mean, I'm fine with what we saw. Let's just say yes. What if they give her file to someone else?" :)
(they weren't. he doesn't know too much about how all of this works)

So, we said YES!
On March 8, 2016 I sent an email to Nicole officially accepting the referral of our little girl!
And submitted a letter of intent - LOI - to adopt this particular child.

Her file was a prefile, however. So we needed to wait for the official file to come in. And they couldn't send China our LOI until it did.

And then, after much anticipation, on March 21 it finally arrived.
We looked it over and requested for LOI to be sent immediately.

Friday, May 20, 2016

LID 1/27/16

We were LID - Log in Date on January 27. This means that our documents arrived in China and it was logged into the system.




We Were DTC 1/22/16

We were DTC (Dossier to China) on January 22, 2016