LID

Our application is now sitting in a pile on someone's desk in China. Our LID was 1/21/10. Now we wait for LOA, our final approval from China, which is taking an average of 90 days. In the meantime we have some forms to fill out and a care package to prepare. After we get our LOA there's a slow-motion flurry of forms from several US agencies and the consulate. Assuming no snags, we will probably be able to travel around 3 months after LOA, which puts us an estimated 6 months out from travel as of now.

We are DTC!

That's Dossier to China, as of Tuesday afternoon. All the US approvals etc. are finally on their way.

The next acronym we wait for is LID, for Logged In Date, which means we'll have been officially entered into China's system.

I-800A approval

Arrived in Monday's mail in the form of a very boring-looking letter called an I-797, with information about where to send the subsequent I-800 that is already out of date. However, our goverment was at work and has provisionally approved us to adopt a child from a country which is party to the Hague Convention on the Rights of the Child. Excellent! Once we get the final approval from China we file that I-800 which will approve us for our specific child.

What's important about the I-800A approval is that it's the final piece of paper needed for our dossier. So I took it to our agency yesterday afternoon, and they will doublecheck the whole paper stack and then send it to China.