301 Families Ahead of Us

We moved up 16 spaces in the adoption line. There are now 301 families ahead of us. According to CHI in a November 24 email, "the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before November 30, 2009 and has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before May 23, 2006." 

Our documents were registered with CHI on August 23 ,2007. That's our Log in Date (LID). So, that gives you a sense of where we are in the process.

317 Families in Front of Us (and updated I171-h)

I actually learned this on October 11..... but am just now posting. 317. Hmpf.

And I don't know where my head has been, but we DID get our updated I171-h form. First we got one that had Brent's middle name spelled wrong, so I had to contact the Officer Higgins with USCIS to tell her that. She sent out another one and all is well!

349 Families in Front of Us

With CHI's latest note to us, we moved up 11 spaces in line. There are now 349 families in front of us. We still await the updated I171-H form. All our forms are in and we've both been fingerprinted.

Fingerprinting....check!

Ok, Brent and I have now both been fingerprinted. The coveted updated I-171h form should be forthcoming ASAP.

Home Study Finalized

Our social worker, Ashley, let us know today that she is finalizing the home study update and getting it in the mail to us today. Once received, I'll forward one copy to USCIS.

Only thing left after that is to get our fingerprints done, which we have appointments for.

Official Acknowledgment of Receipt

Yesterday we received this acknowledgment of receipt of our recent update package by the Department of Homeland Security. This letter basically says what I've been saying lately..that DHS is awaiting our updated home study from our agency and then they will proceed. Additionally, we each received fingerprint appointments. This is different than in the past in three ways: 1) We each got actual appointment days/times. Previously, the instruction was "show up any Wednesday between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. and you're good to go." No more.
2) We have appointments on DIFFERENT days. Sigh.3) We have to go to St. Louis rather than Kansas City. No idea why the change, but there it is. Progress...progress...progress.....

Sent from my HTC Tilt™ 2, a Windows® phone from AT&T

Delivery Confirmation of Adoption Update Packet

Wheeeeeew! I feel better. I still don't have the updated I-171h form in my hands, but I can now at least rest easy that the packet made it to Lewisville, TX before our deadline. It was signed for at USCIS, according to the USPS website, and then forwarded on to Dallas (not sure why). Additionally, the $830 check was cashed on June 4, 2010. When our social worker returns from Ethiopia, she'll update the home study and send that to USCIS. In the meantime we should receive a fingerprint appointment, and THEN we'll get the updated I-171h.

Scary immigration letter

Correspondence crossed in the mail. Explainable, but nerve-wracking all the same...

Sent from my HTC Tilt™ 2, a Windows® phone from AT&T

Hey check it out! I can update my blog from my phone. How cool is this?! Have I mentioned I think advanced technology is the bomb-diggety?

Third Home Study Update, Update

Whew! Well....that was close. Our current I-171h expires June 7, 2010. It's June 2! Last night I successfully got all the necessary information put together in a nice little package and overnighted it at lunch to an address in Texas. This is different than the last time, when we sent everything to the appropriate USCIS field office, which in our case is the Kansas City office. We will still have to go there to be fingerprinted I assume.

Anyway, the Texas location will forward all our information to Kansas City. I hope. It is truly a leap of faith that everything will work out....faith in our government. So far we've not had any problems. Fingers crossed.

I may have mentioned this, but all this is to update our I-171h form, the form that says we are eligible to adopt, and our fingerprints, which tell the authorities we are not any sort of criminals. In order to get the updated I-171h, we had to fill out a new and improved I-600A and attach all of the following:

• photocopies of our birth certificates

• photocopy of our marriage certificate

• original home study update (from November 2008)

• photocopy of previous home study (from 18 months earlier, in April 2007)

• a check for $830 ($670 I-600A filing fee and $80 each for fingerprinting)

• photocopy of current I-171H and current fingerprint expiration letter

• cover letter explaining we are submitting a "grandfathered" filing of the I-600A in order to update our I-171H

The updated home study will be sent to USCIS by our agency, CHI, once they get one more background check that they were still waiting on. Our social worker is in Ethiopia currently so this won't happen until she returns, in about two weeks.

Third Home Study Update

This has been SO confusing! Gak! This is the third time all the home study material has had to be updated. The first time, all instructions were very clearly laid out. If you can follow instructions, you can do it. It just takes patience, and some list-making skills. The second time was also fairly easy....same as first time, and free to boot. This third time, however, has been kind of a deal. The same updates are required (police reports, child abuse and neglect clearance, fingerprints, financial statement, etc.) and I think I've got that down, at least I should have by now! What's happened this time, though, is that I got thoroughly confused about the payment that was due, and what was required with USCIS (Immigration, Homeland Security) to update our I171-H form. This is the Notice of Approval, that we receive after filing the Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition, Form I-600A.

Luckily, while visiting our social worker at CHI yesterday, I asked "when do I pay the big chunk?" meaning the $830 to update the I171-H. She said, "Oh! You should have sent that in last week when you wrote to USCIS asking for a new fingerprint appointment!" Awesome. I did not do that. Also luckily, I still have 4 whole working days to figure this out! Gak! Our I171-H form expires June 7. I did not start this process soon enough. Note to self if I have to do this again.

I rewrote the letter, stating basically, that I was a dumb ass and didn't include the appropriate fees with the previous letter. The payment is what saves us a space in line, so to speak, with USCIS while they are awaiting our updated home study from CHI, which they can't receive until we get our fingerprints taken again. So, I have to overnight this on Tuesday, since it's a holiday weekend.

What I don't understand, still, is if I have to fill out another I600-A form. So I have to call CHI Tuesday before I can do all the above to clarify. Gak Gak Gak.

So, How's The Adoption Going?

A harmless question. A sincere question. Usually I respond with a half-smile and a shrug and say "Oh, OK. Slow. But OK." Many times this evokes a sort of pitied look on the part of the questioner. I know many people *think* that we are in this process because we long hopelessly for a baby, as if not having a child is in some way robbing us of a full life. I would like to be clear. This is not the case. Please don't feel sorry for us.

I was asked this question by a co-worker yesterday morning, and instead of my usual response or some variation of it, I said, "well, it's the craziest thing I've ever done in my whole life." Not crazy in a bad way. Just completely incredible. Again, this was not intended as a sob story. It simply is what it is. As I retold the history of major events since the beginning of this journey, I realized that I can't answer that seemingly simple, sincere question very quickly anymore. Here are just some of the things that have happened since we signed that initial piece of paper, sometime during the summer of 2006, exclaiming our interest in adopting an orphan from China (not necessarily in chronological order):

My dad died. My mom developed breast cancer, had chemo, radiation and is now cancer-free. Fingers crossed. There was an earthquake in May of 2008 in China's Sichuan Province that killed tens of thousands of children who perished when their shabbily constructed schools crushed them. The U.S. elected Barack Obama POTUS. The 2008 Olympics were held in Beijing. We sold our first house and bought a better one, which we've now lived in for just over three years. I left a good job for a better one. We got a dog. Our adoption agency lost its Hague accreditation because two employees in their Russian Program forged some documents. The agency has regained their accreditation. A desperate mother shipped her adopted Russian child back to Russia. The Qinghai region of China experienced another earthquake in 2010.What have I left out inadvertently?

When we began this process, there were over 900 families ahead of us. Now there are 360. To put this into even more perspective, the 360 is just CHI families. There are 15,000-20,000 dossiers in China from all over the world. Today we visited our adoption agency in St. Louis to update our home study for the third time. Soon we will head back to Kansas City to be fingerprinted again.

So, the adoption? Oh, it's going OK. Slow. But OK.

Little Movement and Updating Forms and Happy Anniversary to Us

A couple of happy items: Brent and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary yesterday over a fine meal at Sycamore in downtown Columbia. Love that place! Also, while there has been little movement as of late (what else is new?) with regard to referrals, we have moved up 48 spaces since I last posted. That is encouraging! There are now 65 LIDs and 360 families in front of us.

We are scheduled for a Home Study update on May 27. Will be making an appointment soon to get our fingerprints retaken, and then we can get an updated I171-H form, which tells us we are approved for a child from China. Again.

Here's a picture of the folder full of forms, documents, records, etc., that will eventually make us parents. :-)

To Switch or Not to Switch, Countries? Agency? Not Likely.

I am not inclined to switch countries or agencies. Oh sure, I have my moments when I want to throw up my hands, bail, and take a trip around the world. But no. I must be more patient than that.

It's been 8 months since I first posed this question.  It's been 4 months since I last updated the # of LIDs and families ahead of us. At that time, October of 2009, there were 71 LIDs and 450 families ahead of us. Today, there are 70 LIDs and 408 families ahead of us.  It's clear that families are bailing (or choosing to take waiting children) much faster than China is working its way through CHI's long list of log in dates.

In all of 2009, there were (roughly) 50, (only 50!) referrals out of China for CHI's China Program. I am not a mathmetician, but simple math once again gives me pause.

I went into this thinking the adoption of a baby was in my relatively near future. Most days I've made peace with the fact that things change and that we could very well end up with a not-so-baby child. That is OK. (Brent is not as hung up on the "as young as possible" request as I.) It is possibly we will be sitting here in another 2 years, in roughly the same spot in line. We've been logged in for 30 months. 30 months! CHI's website says the wait is 3+ years (36 months). Private emails to families in the program say it's 45 months. Will we get a referral in 15 months?

Technical stuff: (it's all pretty technical, but this stuff is particularly bad)
Our 2nd fingerprint approval expired last week. Our second I-171h form, the approval form from China that says we are fit for parenting a orphan from China, expires this June. We've used our one time free extension. Rather than get it extended for a third time, I think we have to file the I-600a again (the same form we filed to get the original I-717h approval. Ugh. And since our one-time extension is going to expire in June, we have to PAY again to file another I-600a. $670 filing fee plus $80 per person for another fingerprinting. And, USCIS requires an updated home study in order to file an additional I-600a. Ack.


And so we wait.