The Finding Ad

We received something truly amazing in the mail yesterday. 

Virtually all adoptions in China are abandonments, so “finding ads”, or ads placed in newspapers that identify found children, are required before a child is placed for adoption.  This should give families a chance to find their children if indeed a child was lost or taken.  Of course, as with many aspects of adoption, the horror stories of finding ads being placed far away from a child’s hometown or after a child has been adopted out of the country are forefront in everyone’s minds. 

We hired a researcher to look for Little Guys finding ad, and he found it fairly quickly.  We received it in the mail yesterday, with a translation.  A few things stood out:

*We received the actual newspaper containing his finding ad.  The actual newspaper, not a copy.  And it’s a national paper, from his hometown, and printed about 3 months after he was found.  Holy cow.

*The story in the ad absolutely matches up to what we were told. 

And the big one.  Huge.  Enormous.

It contains a picture of him as an infant.

Be still, my heart. 

We now have an infant picture.   We never thought we would have something this important. 

We are so, so happy and so, so fortunate. 

LID

We are officially logged in!  Our LID (Logged In Date) is today! 

Next steps?  In the next 2-4 months we will (hopefully!) get our LOA, or Letter of Approval.  I can't think much beyond that. 

Until then?  We have lots of money to save, lots of things to get ready, and lots of books to read on toddlers, adoption, special needs and all things pertinent to Little Guy.  We will continue to spend inordinate amounts of time talking about him, wondering about him, and planning for him. 

And, of course, hoping for fast and careful bureaucratic processes.

DTC

We are officially Dossier-To-China today.  This means that our paperwork was approved by the powers-that-be in the US and was re-approved by various Chinese Embassies here in the States.  We are taking this as a good sign.

Next step: our paperwork is “logged in”, meaning that it is officially there and the officials in charge of adoptions are starting to work on it—getting it translated, etc.  After that, we hope for an approval notice.  This will likely take 3-6 months.

And so we wait.

And, just a little bit, to hope. 

Fingerprint Approval (Updated-yay hand surgeon!)

Our immigration approval came today--phew!!  One more thing to check off our list.

Next? 

Tomorrow our dossier documents from Washington, including a "true and exact" copy of our immigration approval letter, go to the Secretary of State in Olympia to be "verified".  This means that they have the seal of the Secretary of State attached to prove their authenticity.

When those documents are received back, we send the WA and CA documents to the Emba.ssy of the PRC in San Francisco to be authenticated there. 

After this, the entire kit and kaboodle will go to China, where it will be (eventually) logged in, and a final decision about our case will be made (this also takes quite a while).

I was going to drive our docs down to Olympia myself, but my darling hubs had a bit of an incident at work wherein part of his ring finger got chopped off (well, it's dangling).  So he's off for a fairly disgusting surgery tomorrow wherein they will sew two fingers together for a while to try to save the ring finger--something about blood flow to the cut-off portion. (Note: When we got married, my father-in-law said to me, "Welcome to the family.  It'll never be dull."  He was absolutely, totally and completely correct!)  We have a lot of faith in the hand surgeon, so hopefully all will go well.

Happy Friday!

(Update:  Surprisingly, the hand surgeon was able to reassemble Cory's finger without using skin from another finger, and he is on the mend.  YAY!)

A Waiting Weekend

Thursday and Friday of last week I called to check on the status of our fingerprints.  Hey, I'm a taxpayer and those things are darned expensive, so I feel like I can give a little ringy-dingy now and again.  Also, our case manager is heading out to a well-deserved 2-week vacay, so I really wanted to give her an update and develop a plan before she left as a lot happens really quickly once the approval document is received.  So anyway, when I called on Thursday, the woman who answered the helpline said that our fingerprints were "under review" and to call back Friday.  I called back Friday, was transferred to the officer in charge of our case, who was surprised I was calling as we weren't scheduled to be fingerprinted until 3/27, right?  True, that was our original fingerprinting date, but we were able to get in early (like, over 2 weeks ago!), which he had not been informed of because I hadn't called to tell him.  Was I supposed to do that?  That seems like an internal process to me, but of course I am in absolutely NO position to question the powers-that-be, so just was a nice as humanly possible and got off the phone.  He said that maybe he could bump us up, but I'm not betting on it.  So I guess getting in early was fairly pointless in the end, but it is what it is.

So we decided to go into denial mode this weekend, and pretend we are a normal, not-waiting, not-watching-every-penny couple and actually have some fun.  Mother Nature smiled on the Pacific Northwest this weekend with blue skies and sunshine.  On Sunday we spent the day diving in Edmonds, which is just north of Seattle and which hosts an underwater dive park with sunken boats and such.  We did 2 dives and they were unbelievable--everything from 4-foot starfish, 5-foot ling cod, octos and beautiful anemones.  It was much more challenging than any other dive we've done, as the park starts quite a ways out from shore and swimming with an inflated vest is actually really hard.  Sunken boats screw up compasses, so we did get turned around a bit, but the entire park is marked by rope lines so we just followed those back.  The advantage was that it is really shallow, and we never got lower than 32 feet. 

So a really fun weekend in the midst of it all, which was very much needed.

It was also my sister's b-day so a shout out to her--Happy Birthday, Amy!

The SUN!  My eyes!  My eyes!

Such a beautiful day!

Answers

We got some short answers from our many, many, many questions today.  I can't write anything particularly identifying, but here are some highlights:

*His favorite food is "snakes". Mmmmm!
*He's seriously HUGE.  So quite possibly older than we thought?  I think I need to start doing pushups.
*He is "irritable", "restless", and "active".  Well, he is two....

We did not receive pictures, but maybe at some point some will come through. 

We also found out that his name was completely wrong. It was very close, but has been written in a variety of orders and spellings.  However, his nickname confirms (for now) what his name actually is.  It may change again, who knows? 

Happy (early) St. Paddy's Day!

Fingerprinted!

We got our fingerprinting appointment letter in the mail a few days ago and, although the appointment wasn’t for another 3 weeks, we scurried on down to US.CIS today to have them done.  They accommodated us after I shamelessly flashed Little Guy’s picture to everyone in sight, and we are finished with that step.

This was a much better experience than our last fingerprinting date, which took place March 1, 2011 (for the Ethiopia program).  The woman who was working with me casually asked, “Where are you adopting from?”  When I replied that we were applying for Ethiopia, she thought for a second, and then said “Didn’t they close that program this morning?”  My heart fell into my toes and I thought, You know what? They probably did.  And while the program wasn’t actually closed, we all know what happened next.

Anyway, onward and upward!

Sunday Yummy

While we wait on our fingerprinting appointment, I've decided to spend some time learning more about the Chinese culture, especially in the nom-nom-nom category.  This weekend I tried a new favorite, Chinese Beef (which I think is a take on Mongolian Beef).  It would be amazing with tofu, chicken or shrimp as well. 

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Ingredients:

Sauce

2 tsp. Hot chili sesame oil (I'm a spice wimp and this was right on the edge of being too spicy)

1 tbsp. Garlic, chopped (I doubled this)

1/2 tsp. Ginger, minced (I doubled this)

1/2 Cup Water

1/2 Cup Soy Sauce

3/4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar

Meat

3/4 Cup Vegetable Oil

1 lb. Flank Steak, cut into 1/4” thin strips

1/4 Cup Cornstarch

1 large Green Onions

Directions:

Over Medium/Low heat, add 2 tsp. of vegetable oil to the wok.  Add the garlic, ginger, water, and soy sauce.

Dissolve the brown sugar, and raise the heat to medium to boil for 3 minutes, or until the sauce thickens.  And remove from the heat.

Dip the steak into cornstarch, a thin dusting to coat the steak.  Let it sit for 10 minutes.  Heat up the vegetable oil in the wok, and add the beef and stir-fry for 2 minutes. 

With a slotted spoon, take out the meat, and lay it onto paper towels and pour the oil out of the wok.

Place the meat back into the wok, and let simmer for a minute, add the sauce and cook for a minute longer.

Then add the onions and cook for another minute.

Remove and serve with rice.

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We are both pretty in love with this recipe, and I think it will become a regular menu item.

Enjoy!

Questions

We were finally submitted for fingerprinting, and are planning on showing up at US.CIS before our fingerprinting appointment, just to see if they'll let us in a bit early.  We shall see.  I'm now somewhat obsessively checking our bank account to see when the check clears, which means the paperwork is moving along.

In the meantime, we are choosing 10 questions we get to send to the orphanage.  The information and picture we have of Little Guy is from last April, so pretty darned old. We may get a response and we may not.  It sounds like most people get one update, so we really want to make these questions count.  We are gathering input from doctors, other adoptive parents, social workers and those who have 2-3 year olds, to see what they think would be important information for the future and for the transitional time into our home (if any of you have ideas or things you wish you had known, please send them over!). 

Since we only get 10 questions, they are currently along the lines of:

Please provide any updated medical information, including height, weight, head circumference and imaging, along with known allergies, sleep schedules, favorite toys, transitional objects and favorite foods.  Plus names of favorite caretakers and things you will remember about him after he has transitioned.

That counts as one question, right?

General Update

Where we are:

1. Little Guy turns 28 months tomorrow.  We would really like to meet him before prom.
2. We have not yet been submitted to immigration, to begin the next step in this adoption.  We had been waiting on a clearance from Montana, which took far, far too long in my adopting parent’s (so, you know, totally rational) opinion.  It was received on Thursday, and today we found out they were missing a document that was not listed on the instructions.  So we turned it around in an hour and it's on its way to the agency.  Once it is received, we can be submitted. 
3. 2 months ago today we were preliminarily approved to pursue this adoption.   This gives us 4 more months to be submitted, fingerprinted and approved by immigration, authenticate everything in Olympia, authenticate everything at the Chinese Embassy, and get everything to China.  Immigration alone took almost 3 months last time.  In the past two months, we’ve had our homestudy update, and that is it.  Seems like a piddly amount to have completed when the clock is counting down
4.  Little Guy has a doctor’s appointment—here in the US!  Seattle Children’s is notoriously difficult to get into, so on the advice of a friend that waited for months to get her little guy seen by a specialist, I called and booked him an appointment in September—the docs were already booking into August.  Really, really hoping he’s here by then.  During the call, the scheduler asked for the name and birth dates of the parents.  So I launched into a big explanation about Chinese adoption and that we really don’t have information on birth relatives, and she gently interrupted me and said, “No, I mean you.  You’re the mom.”  Oh.  Huh.  And then, of course, I got all teary (and I absolutely realize that I’m not the mom.  But maybe someday will be).  Is anyone else sick of random crying jags at inappropriate times? She was really nice about the weirdness of the moment, and then proceeded to inform me that now I’ll get pregnant, you know, since I’ve stopped worrying about things.   Worry-free, that's me! IIIII'm breezy! (name that 90's sitcom)
5. We have finished our dossier, and have the Montana and California docs authenticated and ready to send.  We are ready to roll with the next step. 

Question:  Has anyone out there just shown up at US.CIS (once their info has been received, of course) and asked to be fingerprinted on the spot?  I’m willing to give it a shot, but not sure if there’s a point.  Just wanting to speed this process along.