Hurry up and wait

What could possibly be taking so long?

That seems to be the question most people ask when they give me the quizzical look every time they ask me how the adoption is going and I tell them “just waiting.” 

Most people who haven’t been through an adoption believe it’s just a matter if filling out some forms, doing a background check and “Voila!” you fly to China to pick up your gurgling, giggling, pooping baby bundle.   If only it was that easy.    

Most of us have dealt with the inefficiency and layers of bureaucracy when trying to get something accomplished with a government agency.  It’s an endless maze of jumping through hoops, paperwork shuffling and lots of begging.  Now think what it would be like to do this with two countries, and you will begin to get a picture of what we are dealing with.  Right now we are in the phase of “hurry up and wait.”  Waiting on China to finish their approvals, waiting on the U.S. to finish the immigration approvals …. waiting …. and waiting. 

When we were matched with Matthew we received a “pre-approval” from China on August 9, which is a confirmation that our dossier was received by the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) and our paperwork will then be moved to the next phase. 

So now here I sit and wait for our LOA – the Letter of Approval which is officially the “official” acceptance of us to be the child’s parents.  Keep in mind we had to be approved when we turned in our initial application to the agency, plus approved by the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) before we even turned in our dossier to be mailed to China. 

The problem now is we have no idea how long it will take for us to get our LOA.   Our dossier has to get translated into Chinese by the CCCWA and then reviewed by that agency to make sure everything is complete and there are no other questions or documentation needed by China before issuing that approval.   Therein lies the mystery … no one, not even the adoption agencies it seems, know how far along each family is in the review process.  An agency may know if a family is out of translation and under review but that’s about it.   These days it may take anywhere from 40 to 120 days for the LOA to be issued (and that’s a very rough guestimate).   There are some families who receive it in just over a month and other who have to wait almost four months and no one knows why there is such a fluctuation in approval times.  Some families do have issues with their paperwork that need to be corrected but there are others that have no apparent reason for the longer wait. 

As of September 12th we are on day 35 waiting for the LOA.  That’s a lot of time to be obsessively checking email for the notification, chocolate eating and otherwise driving Jason crazy.  It doesn’t help that I work a night shift so when it’s quiet and I’m bored I can’t help but think about the child waiting for us in an orphanage on the other side of the world. 

Plus, how do you get a four-year-old to understand why we can’t go ahead and leave to get her brother?  Julia knows Matthew is her brother and she’s excited so I hate having to tell her we can’t go get him yet. 

Once we get our LOA there are a few more bridges to cross before we can travel and I will get into that at a later time.   Until then, I wait and Matthew waits. 

I really can’t wait to kiss those cheeks. 

The excited big sister

Packing up the care package. 

Julia has really become excited about getting a little brother.  She has "called" Matthew in China on her toy phone and she talks about flying on the big plane to China, loving on him and playing with him when he comes home.  She's also been spending time in his room playing with the Tonka trucks we've bought for him and she's decided that we still need to buy a dump truck and a crane (don't ask).  She initially was disappointed that he wasn't going to be older but now I think she's getting behind the idea of helping Mommy take care of him, which totally appeals to her bossy nature.   :-)  

She's also been very excited about picking out toys for a care package to send to him in China.  Tonight we boxed up some toys, blanket, disposable camera and candy to send to Matthew's orphanage.  We also sent one to Julia when she was in China and the orphanage kept most of the items, which was fine by me.   The only items I really want to get back is a photo book and the disposable camera that, hopefully, the nannies will use to take photos of his life in the orphanage. 

I think watching us prepare for Matthew (and stress over the paperwork!)  is really helping Julia process how she came to be in our family.   I hope it continues to open avenues for her to ask more questions and spark some interesting conversations with her about it.   I plan on spending the months prior to travel showing her more photos of China and discussing what will happen once we get to China.   She's a brave little girl and not much fazes her so I'm optimistic about  bringing her with us to get Matthew.  I really don't want her to miss such a valuable opportunity to visit her homeland. 

 

Introducing .. Matthew Xiao Fu Lewis

Our little man!

We have a son!!

Wow, it’s amazing to finally be able to say that.   Months of paperchasing, worrying about FedEx losing our documents and dreaming about our new addition has finally brought us to this place.   Jason and I will now be parents to a little boy who turned one on July 29, 2012.   Let me gush a little before I tell you more about him:   He is so adorable!  Looking at his pictures just makes my heart swell in my chest and I’m thrilled he appears to be healthy and well-cared for.  It is all I can do not to jump on a plane to China.  

His name is Luo Min Fu and he has been living at the Luoshan County Orphan Care and Administration Center  in Henan Province since he was  four days old.   His background information says he “likes you to put your face close to his and chat with you.  If the chat is very lively, he will laugh so much that his body shakes.”    The nannies at the orphanage have nicknamed him “Xiao Fu” (little fortune). 

China with Henan province shown in red

Luoshan County is a mountainous area on the south border of Henan near Xinyang City.  It is a small community by China standards (population of less than a million) and more than 90 percent of its citizens live in rural areas.  I have learned his orphanage is very small and there are usually less than ten children that live there.  I hope that is good for him in that he gets the attention and care he needs.    There are, unfortunately, so many orphanages that have too many children and the nannies don’t have time to meet their emotional needs.   We were lucky that Julia was in a foster care family in China before she came home and she learned to bond and was able to experience being in a family.    

We were matched with Min Fu off our agency’s list of waiting children.  I actually saw him on the website before our paperwork was in China and when I saw his little face and read his description my first thought was “That’s our son!!”   I showed him to Jason but he didn’t even want to look at his picture because he knew our paperwork wasn’t complete.   I asked our agency if we could look at his file and she refused because she didn’t want us to get too attached.   Fast forward a couple of weeks and our paperwork made it to China and was logged in remarkably fast on July 24^th.  I immediately called our agency and asked for his file but another family was reviewing it.     For the next week  I checked the website every day to see if the other family was going to adopt him.  

On July 31^st I was home napping with Jason and I turned off my cell phone so the phone wouldn’t wake us up and, wouldn’t you know it, that was when our agency tried to call and tell us Min Fu’s file was available!     You can imagine – I was quite anxious when I realized what happened and paced around the kitchen until I got in touch with our agency rep. 

We finally received his file and decided that day he would be our son.  Jason was just as smitten as me and we submitted LOI (letter of intent) to China to adopt him.  We received Pre-Approval from China on August 9^th which basically means China has recognized our intent to adopt him and our paperwork will move forward to obtain the final approvals.   

If all goes as expected we hope to travel to bring him home in December or January! 

Adoption IS a child "of my own"

The other night I was talking to a co-worker about our latest adoption.  He congratulated me and then mentioned that he and his wife want another child but may not be able to conceive.  He has thought about adoption but the idea that the child would not be a child "of his own" bothered him.  I understood he meant that in the biological sense and I tried to explain the beauty of adoption.  (If you're reading this, I wasn't offended but it gives me a platform for discussion.)

I'm the mother of two beautiful girls - one through pregnancy and the other through adoption.  I consider myself lucky to have experienced both and it's hard to describe the similarities, yet differences, between both ways of adding to the family. 

I wasn't a happy pregnant person.  I gained 65 pounds, waddled everywhere and was generally grumpy - definitely not one of the "cutely pregnant" women I envied.  I also couldn't work as a police officer and so had to spend almost the entire pregnancy on "light duty" doing various administrative duties at the police department.  I've always had a hard time dealing with desk work and this was no exception.   But the reward at the end of the painful process - a beautiful, blonde-haired baby named Anna that to this day I can't seem to kiss enough.

When we adopted Julia we went through paperwork hell - not physically painful like the pregnancy, but painful nonetheless.  The adoption process from China slowed down considerably and what we thought would only be a six-month wait to be matched turned into a 2 1/2 year wait.  Some adoptive parents use the term "paper pregnant" and it's true.  Once you know your future child is out there - may even already have been born - the wait takes on a life of its own and the anticipation/agony builds while you wait for your agency to call you.

Then one day the magic call happens - all of a sudden you know there is a precious 11-month-old baby girl out there waiting for you to come pick her up and bring her home.  You get photos of her and a description that tells you she loves to laugh and is very extroverted.  You just know, from that moment forward, that the child in the picture is yours and you can't wait to bring her home.  You send her toys, a blanket and family photos for her caretakers to show her. 

Four months later all of the immigration paperwork is finally completed.  You take the excrutiatingly long flight to China, all the while hoping your new child won't be too traumatized but also looking forward to the day when you can finally hold her instead of just looking at a well-worn photo.    
Finally the day arrives - a scared, timid baby is placed in your arms at the civil affairs office and your arms and heart are now full.  This is your daughter.  That was our daughter. 

As I've mentioned before, it's been three years since Julia was placed in our arms in the civil affairs office in Zhengzhou, China.  It's amazing to us how seamlessly she has become a part of our family and the fact we don't share the same genes is just a technicality.  My parents and sister always say it feels like she's always been with us and it's true.  She just fits in that well with us. 

When I look at her I don't see a person different from us.  She IS "us."  I do recognize her Chinese heritage and I hope I can help her grow up proud of being Chinese and to realize that it's OK to be a little different. 

She wasn't born in my tummy, but she was truly born in my heart.  

Time to go to bed and dream about the little boy/girl that is halfway around the world waiting for us. 

Three years later, here we are!

It's been just over three years since we met Julia and brought her home.  It's been three years of pure joy having her in our lives and watching her grow from a 14-month-old baby to a giggly little girl.  Sometimes I sit back and just watch her and Anna and relish about how lucky I am to have two such sweet, beautiful little girls in my life that I just can't stop hugging.  Julia continues to blossom and Anna is still progressing and fighting the good fight against mitochondrial disease.  Her seizures have dwindled to almost none and for that I am very thankful. 

Ever since we were in China to bring Julia home I've had a desire to go back.  I truly believe that when our plane left Beijing to come back to the U.S. that I left a part of my heart there.  Even if you don't agree with a country's politics you can still appreciate the heritage and the warmness of the people.   China is a part of Julia and so I will always love China. 

Every now and then I would jokingly bring up the possibility of adopting again to Jason but he would only say "yeah, right." One morning in early February he called me into the kitchen and, much to my surprise, told me he had been thinking about it and was ready to adopt again.   Who am I to say no?  :-)   After I told him this wasn't going to get him off the hook for Valentine's Day we had a private celebration with the kids and called our agency, CCAI (Chinese Children Adoption International). 

For those of you who didn't follow my first blog, we used CCAI for Julia's adoption and they were wonderful so it was a no-brainer for us to use them again.  We also used them again in the hope that we can return to Henan province for this child.   We filed our application with the agency on February 21st (my birthday!) and our application to adopt was approved on February 28th. 
We are now in the "paperchasing" stage of the process and this won't be finished until we have our dossier compiled and sent to China for a "log-in date."   The dossier includes paperwork such as birth certificates, financial statements, physical exams and a home study.  Then there's another set of documents we have to compile just for the home study.  Our social worker has already visited our home so we're hopeful the home study will be complete soon. 

Once we compile everything for the dossier it all has to be notarized, certified by the state and authenticated by the U.S.   But wait - we're still not done.  After all of this we still need the immigration approval forms from the U.S.   The dossier will then be translated into Chinese by our agency and sent to China.  All of this takes anywhere from three to five months, sometimes longer if there's problems obtaining some documents.  We will probably be matched after we're logged in with China but it's possible we may be matched before then (I'm not going to hold my breath).  After we get matched it will be another four to five months before we travel to China (more paperwork/red tape).  

The million-dollar question - boy or girl?  We've been discussing this for a while now and Jason insists it doesn't matter to him.  In the end, it also doesn't matter to me so we've decided to put "either" and leave it to fate.  We're also open to a wide age range - one up to four years old.  If we get an older toddler that would be just fine with us and give Julia someone to play with (and torment!)
Family is the most important part of my life and we are so thrilled to add another child through adoption.  It has been an amazing experience and I feel privileged to build our family this way.  I look forward to sharing this next chapter in our lives with our family and friends.