We found our daughter... Friday April 29, 2011

As some may know, in March we were called with the news that the little girl we had thought was to be ours was switched by the CCCWA from Special Needs to Healthy. Now we are no longer qualified to adopt her. We cried, hugged, felt a bit crushed. Then we got our minds back to reviewing the waiting children available from China & started reviewing shared lists and agency specific lists to try and find our child. Many disappointing leads, then one that looked like she may be "the one". On Friday we heard back from a couple of the professionals we had sent this little girl's file to. All were very positive and hopeful, so Friday evening, we put in our letter of acceptance for the referral of Xiao, a 6 year old cutie who has convergent strabismus in her right eye, and Apraxia of speech, a neurological condition that effects her ability to speak. Both conditions are treatable. The eyes w/ vision therapy, corrective lenses, and possible one time surgery. The speech w/ intensive speech therapy. So nothing that is life threatening, or requires lifelong treatment. So on we go on another adventure with our Family. Our agency will send our referral aggreement on to the CCCWA, they will review and send us the "PA" or pre-approval.

Our Dossier specialist told us today that our FL docs arrived in Tallahassee on Friday, and were hand delivered via courier that morning. She is due to receive them back this afternoon. Tomorrow, all docs will go to her DC courier, who will walk them thru the US State Dept and the DC China Consulate. Then they will be turned around, so that she should have them back by next Monday (May 9th). Then our Dossier will be ready to send to our agency GWCA. After they have reviewed and approved, it will be sent on to China with our Letter of Intent, to adopt Xiao.  



Our agency said it has been averaging around 6-7 months from this point on before we would be able to travel, due mostly to all the additional regulations adhering to the Hague Convention. Hopefully we will be able to make the trip before the year ends, as the adoption tax credit is also ending this year, and that's a lot of money.

As soon as we are able to share more details and pictures, we will gladly do so. For now we are feeling so relieved that we have found our daughter, and she is relatively healthy and seems to have a very sweet personality.

I-797C Fingerprint Approval Received Today!

Well, life does not always play out the way we would like it. After months of looking at the picture of who we had thought would be our daughter we were told on March 11th, that she had been re-evaluated physically and was deemed "healthy" so she was reclassified & moved over to the "Healthy" Child list, which means that our Family is no longer "qualified" to adopt her. We have been approved to adopt a waiting child w/ special needs. Today, April 18th we received our I-797A approval from Immigration to adopt a waiting girl child from China. Now we just need a child to adopt. We are praying that she comes along soon, we are so looking forward to meeting her and have her join our Family.

Time flies...

Time flies by so quickly these days. I know it is the same calendar and clock to measure it by, but it still seems to pass me by too quickly. We have a great little family, a wonderful home, work, things to do, just not enough hours in the day to do all of them. I don't want to miss a moment of my children growing up, and becoming who they are meant to be. I don't want to miss a second with my husband, as he has become so important to me. I can't wait until the next time I see my sisters and brother and cousins and friends, but when I am with them the time passes too fast. If could create the perfect invention, it would freeze time, so that we could "live in the moment" forever.

Received our Fingerprint Appointment for Adoption 3

We sent in our I-800A paperwork on Feb. 15th, to get approval from US Immigration to adopt a child from a foreign country. On Monday, Mar. 7th we received our appointment to be fingerprinted on April 1, at 9 AM. Once we have this completed, our agency told me the average wait is now 6-8 weeks after before you receive your I-797 Approval. We need this one last document in order to send our Dossier to the CCAA in China to adopt our daughter. We are still hoping we will be able to get everything completed in time to get her over the summer, but it's looking more likely it will be in the fall.