Visa info is in Guangzhou

Got our letter yesterday informing us that Jed's visa information has been sent to the consulate in Guangzhou. Our agency will send some more paperwork, along with a copy of that letter, to Guangzhou, and then they will start working on his visa.

Once his visa is almost ready, they will issue an Article 5. That piece of paper will be sent to the CCAA and will start the process for travel approval. We should hear about our Article 5 in about 3 weeks.

I-800 APPROVED!

Provisionally. Apparently it doesn't get fully finalized until after we pick up Jed, and they still reserve the right to deny it, if you read the small print. But we've never heard of that happening. We were approved last Wednesday and got the notification letter in the mail yesterday.

Next step: USCIS has sent our I-800 to the National Visa Center, where they will begin processing paperwork for Jed's visa. They will send an official electronic communication to the US Consulate in Guangzhou so that they can open a file for him there. Recently the Consulate has begun requiring a copy of the notification letter that the NVC sends the family just to tell them something has been done on their behalf. This is DESPITE the fact that they already hold the official communication, and since the NVC letter is worthless in all other instances its arrival can be 4 days - 2 weeks after the official communication, slowing down the process AGAIN. Why did the Consulate add this ridiculous requirement? The adoptive parent community has been speculating for months (because the Consulate didn't offer any information with the abrupt change in policy). No one has ANY idea. Our government at work, people.

We should have an update on the NVC step in 2-3 weeks.

Visas have landed

We are now the proud possessors of three visas to visit China up to twice within the next six months. Here's hoping that twice won't be necessary, and that cutting it close won't even be a question.

Visas away!

Yesterday we Fedex'd out our visa applications. For reasons we do not understand, you cannot send your application directly to the Consulate. Someone must hand-carry it inside. Since we do not have time to drive down to NYC and hand-deliver our visa applications, we sent it to a courier who does this for a living.

They are not cheap. It'll cost almost $500 for our 3 visas, wow.

In other news, Gus is eagerly anticipating his brother's arrival. He asks me if tomorrow we will be going on our big trip to pick up his Jed. I tell him that it will be summer before we go (and possibly the end of summer, sigh!).

I-800 in the lockbox

We mailed out our I-800 (along with its accompanying verification paperwork) to the Dallas lockbox last Wednesday. It was picked up at 9:44 on Sunday night. Seriously? I'm delighted you picked it up, but it could have waited until Monday morning.

The I-800 will now be collated with the official version of the pre-approved I-800A and whatever else they have there, then sent to Missouri where our USCIS officer will review and approve it. Hopefully that will take about 2 weeks.

LOA!!!!!

Our Letter of Acceptance arrived from China today, day 89. It's been a long three months. This letter is the final approval from China for our son. Now we need the U.S. to process his visa, but barring unexpected acts of God he is our boy!

We were waiting for the LOA to talk with Gus about him, since the wait will still be around 3 months before we can travel. We told him that he had a little brother, that we would all be going on a big trip to get him and bring him home. He wanted to know if I would be sleeping in his room too, and we said no, just your little brother. He seemed pretty chill with it.

Now we will also share his name. He will be Josiah Junwei O'Donnell. And in keeping with the 3-letter nickname rule of the house (if you don't have a three-letter nickname, you can't get in, apparently), the names in this house will now consist of Jim, Reb, Gus, and Jed.

What happens next: another whole series of paperwork.

Tomorrow we stop by the agency to sign the LOA and have our I-800 proofread, then send it to USCIS. The I-800A (application to adopt A child) has been approved; the I-800 is the approval for THIS child.

Once that is approved, USCIS sends our file to the National Visa Center, which processes his visa papers. They will cable that information to the US Consulate in Guangzhou. However, the Consulate will not do anything until we send them a hard copy of the letter which the NVC sends to us confirming the paperwork. This is stupid and redundant, but unfortunately we can't fix that. The Consulate will review the paperwork and issue an Article 5, which goes to the Chinese government and then they issue a travel approval. Once we have that, our agency can schedule a Consulate Appointment and we schedule our travel around that. Travel in July sounds realistic, barring unusual paperwork holdups.

Please, if you haven't yet contacted your senators about the immunization issue, please do. Also, if you live in Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Vermont, or Indiana, your senators are cosponsors and may be able to push the vote to sooner rather than Christmas.

Call to Action Tuesday

I was hoping for LOA yesterday (a lot of them come on Mondays). Nope. We've now been waiting 75 days.

But in the meantime, there's something important we'd like to ask your help with.

Background: A few years ago, the US government approved the Hague Treaty that deals with international adoption. Our first adoption took place under the old rules, this adoption will take place under the new ones. In our last adoption, we signed a paper promising to get Gus's immunizations up to date as fast as reasonably possible, and we did. However, when the new legislation was typed up, a clerk accidentally left out the paragraph that allows for that to happen. OOOPS!!! But now it's US law. The result is that no child can come home under the new rules without being completely up to date on shots.

That means that after approximately a week with Little Dragon, just as he's starting to trust us, we will have to take him to the Embassy doctor and give him up to 8 shots in one day. That is BAD for a few reasons.

1) Attachment. Terrible! He will just be starting to trust us and then this happens. And then a few days later we will enclose him in a tube for 18 hours. Terrible.

2) Health. I am a big fan of immunizations (I am an immunologist, after all), but 8 shots in a day is too much stress for a little system. ESPECIALLY for a child with KNOWN special needs. ESPECIALLY for a child in less than the best of health (like one who has been in an institution). There was a recent case in which a little girl became very sick after her shots.

I am very concerned about Little Dragon's shots. I could apply for a medical waiver, but the Embassy has a history of not honoring them. I cannot apply for an exemption, because I would have to prove that I am categorically against shots (which I am not, just against shots done dangerously).

And to add insult to injury, several children have needed their shots redone anyway when they arrive home, because the shots given at the Embassy didn't "take".

I would like to have my child's immunizations performed under the supervision of the doctors we trust in the US, under a reasonable schedule. And there is a way. Unfortunately it will take an act of Congress! The Senate has finally cleared a bill through the Judiciary Committee and the State Department to deal with the typing oops. The bill is 1376, the International Adoption Simplification Act. But it is number 330 on their to-do list.

Please call your Senators today and ask them for quick and favorable resolution on this bill. Little Dragon would thank you.

Care Package Away!

We mailed out a care package to Little Dragon and his friends. You really can't have too many "personal" toys in an orphanage, so we just sent a couple of special objects for him and the rest is for sharing.

For sharing, we sent a bunch of warm hats, some pants and mittens that I made, a couple of soft toys, and a couple bags of dark chocolate.

For Little Dragon, we sent a ribbon-tagged blanket with dragons on one side (Jim slept with this for a few days), a stuffed panda bear with my perfume on it, and a baby picture book of his new family and room.

We've now been waiting 39 days for our LOA. The average for people in our situation is 77 days, but it doesn't stop me hoping that we'll be fast!

Update: care package was delivered at 11 a.m. on Saturday. We've now been waiting 45 days for our LOA.

Lotsa Shots

Yesterday we had an appointment at our (very) friendly neighborhood travel clinic. We got three shots each (typhoid, HepA, and Tdap), and a blood draw to check titers for HepB and MMR. You know you have a three-year-old when five minutes are happily spent counting the bandaids on your arm when you come home.

Next up, making an appointment at the children's travel clinic for Little Bear. I think he'll only need typhoid and H1N1.

Unfortunately, Little Dragon will also likely need shots before leaving China. It's a bad idea to require 8 or so shots into a small person only a few days before they get on a 12-hour flight (and I'm a pro-vaccine immunologist, so I'm not just being crazy here). It used to be that parents could promise to get their kids up-to-date on a reasonable immunization schedule, but then another rule changed and the kids (including those with medical needs) were swept up in the change too. A bill has been put forward to restore this exemption so that kids can be vaccinated on a more healthy schedule. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-1376 If your Senator is on the Judiciary Committee, where this bill is bottled up, please email to ask for it to be moved forward. Thanks!

Update: Good thing we had that blood work done. Our HepB titers are fine (I've actually been wondering about that for a decade), but Jim's mumps (like the unfortunate 1500 people in NYC right now) needs boosting, so he gets to go back for yet another shot.

Update 2: Jim has been re-mumpsed. And Gus's appointment is scheduled for the beginning of April.

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.

Pre-approved

It looks like China thinks we'll do all right at this parenting thing. Today we got our pre-approval notice which is not unlike getting pre-approval on a mortgage. Assuming that our official dossier, once they receive it, matches the information we sent China in our Letter of Intent, China will let us adopt this young man.

Since we didn't lie in our dossier, that's good news for us!

Biometricated

Yesterday morning we went downtown to our friendly local USCIS franchise to get our fingerprints taken. We did this 3 years ago, and presumably the fingerprints haven't changed a whole lot since then, but what the hey. All told, it was probably the quickest interaction I've ever had with our federal bureaucracy. We were in and out of there in 15 minutes. I totally made it to my 9:00 meeting at work. Applying for my library card took longer than that.

So that's another hurdle out of the way. Now we wait for the governments to agree that we're fit parents.

Paper Progress

And now back to the waiting part...

We got a letter that our I-800A had indeed been received, and then were summoned for our fingerprinting appointment next Friday (and I do mean summoned: if we decide not to show up or reschedule by *mail* (what century is this?), our entire application will be canceled). So we'll be there.

Jim finished our LOI and our agency has now sent it to China. LOI stands for Letter of Intent. Although our homestudy approved us for a number of medical needs, the LOI requires us to address how we plan to handle the needs of the specific child whose referral we have accepted. So we wrote about the excellent pediatric cardiology in Boston and lots of snuggles.

Our agency hopes to have pre-approval back from China soon (that letter means that as long as our homestudy backs up what we wrote in the LOI, we should be cleared to adopt that child). They want to send our pre-approval with our completed US governmental paperwork, so that everything will move quickly. I had no idea we could do these steps concurrently!

We've winnowed the field down to two American names for the little dragon, but we're still working on it.

Our second son

Our homestudy hadn't been in our hands a week yet. We just got the money order to send to USCIS (to pay people's salaries to open a file, then fingerprint and cross-check us). I was going to post the I-800A when I discovered a typo on the first page (our address, kinda important), so we got that fixed and posted it the next day.

The other thing that happened that day was we got a referral!!!!!!!!!!!!! We weren't planning to look at files until around February when our completed and authenticated dossier would be sent to China. But our agency received a list of kiddos just for them, and since I think we're the only family they have who is open to a boy referral, they emailed us to see if we would be interested in looking.

Well, how could we not look? The little boy is 18 months old and has a congenital heart defect, which has already been successfully operated on. And Reb works in the best place--within minutes his blood work was being checked by our ER doctor, our visiting fellow from China (who is from his hometown!) was helping me pronounce his name, and another Chinese fellow was helping to translate some of the medical documents. He brought the rest home to his wife, who is also Chinese and also a cardiologist, so that she can explain them to us. And she got recommendations of two pediatric cardiologists with whom to discuss the diagnosis. The help was pretty amazing, and it would have been more fun if she hadn't been almost hyperventilating. She kept saying, "But we didn't expect this until February!" Wait shmait. Hah.

After the myriad consultations, we decided to accept the referral, and we're now full steam ahead again putting together acceptance documents and paying in-country fees. We're also still working on figuring out what his name's going to be (down to 9 candidates). We have 2 kids! Now we just have to get us all together.

I-800A on the way

It was posted last Thursday. Sorry in the blogging delay, we've been combined busy and sick for almost a week now. Bad combo.

I checked the tracking today to see where it was, and was informed that it had been dropped off at 9:12 on Thursday. I know that, I was there.

This application opens a file for us with the USCIS and included our homestudy. Hopefully we'll get a fingerprinting appointment in around a month.

Homestudy Complete!

Our social worker sent us the first draft by email this week. We found a few typos (for example we met in 1996, not 1966). Thanks to all of our recommenders! She included some quotes, and we're rather embarrassed by the gushing. Maybe that's a second reason that recommendations are (mostly, apparently) anonymous.

In the meantime we filled out the I-800, the big government form that gets our process officially moving in the USCIS realm. We couldn't figure out a couple of questions, so we emailed that to our agency and asked for help. Can you believe it, a government form to which the answers aren't clear to reasonably average but overeducated people? We got that cleared up this week too.

So next week we should get our official copies of the homestudy in the mail, and send one out with the I-800. Then we wait for our fingerprinting appointment (probably in about a month).

First big step done

We met with our social worker again yesterday, and gave her all the rest of the paperwork required for our dossier (and some special stuff the agency requires too). The only thing potentially missing are the background checks from Texas, but since those were mailed directly to the agency we think they're probably sitting on a pile there. But we submitted all the letters and pictures and clearances we had. Thank you, writers of references!

Next we wait a few weeks for our social worker to write up our homestudy. Meanwhile we can begin filling out the I-800A (16 pages!) to petition for the privilege to adopt "a" child internationally. (Once we identify "the" child, we file another form called the I-800.)

After we submit the I-800A with the homestudy, we will wait for the government to process it, get our fingerprints done and processed, and wait again for final approval. All this should take about 3 months.

Almost Dossier'd

We picked up our medical clearances today (I flunked my hearing test in one ear, possibly due to that slow-draining cold, but the doctor wrote that it would not alter either my longevity or parenting ability, so we should be fine). Now we only need to collect some pictures (of the apartment and the family), write a cover letter to China, and schedule another meeting with our social worker. Well, and then fill out the big USCIS form.

Jim picked up another crib mattress today, since Gus is using his mattress in the toddler bed and I developed a hangup about taking a picture of the kids' room with only the crib springs showing.