Don't hate me because I (might be) expedited

Wow, it's been two months since letting this blog slide and almost a year from when I started it in the first place. I have been trying to follow all of my favorite adoption blogs, as well as some of my new found craft and book blogs. I have missed Forks & Chopsticks though and figured I would give you all a little update. I also thought this might be a fun experiment to see who still has me on their bloglines!!

Anyway, a lot has been going on in the two plus months that I have been away from this blog. The end of 2006 was a hard one for our family. We suffered the loss of two very close friends. Then my girlfriend suffered a terrible and heartbreaking loss. My daughter Leah also had a seizure and it was confirmed that she has epilepsy. Since she is young and her brain is still developing, there is a good chance that with her medication she can actually grow out of it. It won't be for another 2-3 years before we know for sure. Needless to say, I was more than happy to say hello to 2007!

There has been one truly bright spot of 2007 so far (and it wasn't the fact that our Septic Tank backed up into the house, I assure you). I spoke with our agency yesterday to see if they received any expedited referrals in the last (December) batch. Indeed they did! The parents had a total wait of 11 months from their log-in-date. Our agency told us that they spoke to their rep in China who said that the expedited referrals should continue and that they would be shaving about 4 months off the typical wait time. With a LID of May 18, 2006 I am looking at the possibility of receiving a referral early this summer! Of course, this is by no means a guarantee, but it does give me a little hope for the future. I have even gone back to knitting this, in the hopes that I will have a child to put it on this coming fall. You can see an updated photo of the sweater here.

In other news, we still have our lovely foreign exchange student with us. Her parents will be visiting the US for the first time in June to attend her graduation.

I will be updating this blog again every once in a while, so hope you will stop on by to check in. Thanks for being such good listeners.

Something to think about

As most of you already may be aware of, and was mentioned on a blog I frequent, a few families in the China adoption community who received their referrals last month were surprised by referrals for boys, instead of the requested girls. I read this on the Rumor Queens site also, but have yet to see who actually received this referral.

I decided not to write about this until I thought it over for a few days. When we began this process in November, we didn't even consider requesting a boy. We already had a daughter and felt that another girl would be a perfect addition to our family. We even picked out a name for her, Maya, and we regularly use her name when speaking about Leah's little sister. A referral for a boy would come as a shock to us and leave us with a lot of explaining to do to Leah.

Having said that, I had to really consider why we started this adoption in the first place. It is not due to infertility (my daughter Leah is biological) but more about what we have always believed a family is.

Before we were married, Joe and I talked about infertility issues. What if we were faced with the same upsetting circumstances as thousands of other couples? Both of us decided right then and there that if we couldn't have children on our own, we would opt for adoption right away, in other words skip all medical intervention. It was just something that neither of us was willing to do because we didn't have a strong NEED for biological children. I know that it sounds strange (and maybe you are saying to yourself "easy for her to say" since I did have a successful pregnancy) but the fact is that I always knew I didn't have to give birth to a child to actually love him or her.

Which brings us to the present time. When Leah was 3 1/2 I started thinking about having another child. Could I have gotten pregnant again? I guess so. But I didn't want to. We really truly felt that adoption could and should be the way to grow our family.

Having said that all of that, we decided that we wouldn't turn down a referral based on gender. Sure I have my heart set on a girl, but am I adopting because I really want a girl or am I doing it because I want to be a mother again?

P.S. I am sure that everyone has a strong opinion on this subject. I am just writing about how I feel. Each family has different circumstances, so if your opinion differs from mine, that's cool too.

P.P.S. When I was pregnant with Leah we didn't find out her sex we really enjoyed the element of surprise. My neice, Kira, found out she was having a girl and then gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Julian. Sure it was a shocker to us all (especially her), but she feels so lucky to have been truly blessed with a wonderful child. I guess nothing in this world is certain.

One more step completed!

This morning my husband and I took the 45 minute drive to the Immigration office in Newark, NJ to have our fingerprinting done. Our appointment was at 8 a.m. On the invitation letter from Immigration, they tell you that you should expect 3-4 hours worth of delays. We arrived and parked the car by 7:30 and by some miracle we were finished with the entire process by 8:30! My husband, who became a US citizen in 1998, was shocked to find that we had gotten through so quickly. He had been to this office many times while working toward his US citizenship and has always had a long and crowded wait.

Anyway, now we just have to wait for the approval form, which takes an estimated three weeks. After that our agency with authenticate our documents (another 4 weeks) and then our dossier will be off to China!

Oh, and thank you Mom and Dad for getting up really early, driving over to our house and getting Leah ready for preschool. We really appreciate your help.

Then & Now AND Adoption Update!

Above is a picture of my backyard buried under 2 feet of snow this past Sunday. Below is the same back yard only five short days later. What turned my backyard from a Winter Wonderland to this barren wet wasteland? Could it be the fact that we just had two days of 60 degree weather? Weird, huh! Anyway, a cold front is moving in and we will be up to a balmy 28 degrees by Sunday.


In other news, we received our invitation to be fingerprinted in a week and a half! Our completed homestudy was sent to the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Service) on February 6th and we just got the invitation today. I am happy that it came so quickly. Let's just hope the rest of this stuff goes just as fast. To see an estimated timeline, just check out my previous post from January 26th (it can be found in the January Archive link to the right).

Why are we adopting?

Years ago, when Joe and I first started dating, we talked about having children. He always joked about one day having 11 kids (since he is the youngest of 11), but in all seriousness, we knew that we would like to become parents. We also talked about fertility issues, and that if we couldn't have biological children, then we would both be interested in becoming adoptive parents. Of course, a few years later Leah was born. End of discussion, right?

Actually, the thought of adoption has always been at the back of my mind. I would often feel a great sadness after watching documentaries about foreign orphanages. Then, as fate would have it, we started sitting next to a couple in church - Debbie & Ray. They have three beautiful adopted children - two teenagers and one toddler. The more we got to know them, the more I realized that adoption is really a wonderful way to build a family.

In the fall of last year, I asked Joe if we could send away for some information from three adoption agencies, just to take a look. By the time we had watched the DVD sent to us from Lavida (the same agency that Debbie & Ray used), I was convinced that this was something we should do. Joe and I decided then to open our hearts to a new little girl for our family.

So that is our story. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we wait for our second daughter, all the way from China.

Stephanie

Adoption Update

As all of you know from our Christmas Newsletter, Joe and I are in the middle of the adoption process. So far one of three things that needs to be completed before sending our information to the Chinese government has been finished. Joe and I have pounded the pavement looking for and notarizing all sorts of information - financial status, birth certificates, background checks, employment verification, etc (you name it, we had to get it)!

The other two things that need to be completed is our homestudy and getting US government approval. Our social worker, who is writing up our homestudy, will be stopping at our home for a final visit this coming Tuesday. The Chinese government requires four face to face meetings to complete a homestudy report, which is really just a biography of our family. We are hoping that the homestudy will be finished and sent to the adoption agency by the end of January (keep your fingers crossed).

Next, Joe and I have to get our finger prints taken on a federal level to be approved by the US government to adopt a foreign child. The approval form is called a 171H and once we receive that then our paperwork will be send to China. Of course, then it takes another few weeks for the Chinese government to log it into their system. Your log in date (LID) is really when your actual waiting period begins. Right now the typical wait from LID is 8.25 months. Since Joe is Chinese and was born in Hong Kong, we hope that the Chinese government will expedite and then our waiting period would be more like 4 to 5 months. Of course, the rumor currently going around is that they have been busy with a lot of paperwork recently (i.e. many adoptive parents), therefore the waiting period may begin to creep up. We just have to wait and see.

Leah is really excited about becoming a big sister. She loves to pretend and has recently been sitting on our couch pretending to be in an airplane on her way to China to pick up her little sister. It is really sweet and I cannot wait to be able to see them together.

I will keep you all up-to-date with our progress here on this blog.

Stephanie

P.S. If you are interested, you can check out our adoption agency by following the link below.
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