Fingerprinting Appointments!

We received our finger printing appointments for the USCIS!  We will head to Orlando on October 20 to get fingerprinted and should receive our approval about 3-4 weeks after that, then its Dossier to China (DTC)!!.  We are very excited and hope to have a referral by Christmas (hoping and hoping!).

We have finished putting together a care package for the Social Welfare Institute that Saiya is from.  We included toys, games, clothes and plenty of pictures and drawings from Saiya.  We included a letter (translate by my father) describing why we are sending the package and how well Saiya is doing.  I hope that they are excited to receive the package and maybe they will send us a letter in return.  Saiya is very excited as she helped pick out all of the pictures and toys to send to China.  It is good for her to remember where she is from and I know that she thinks about China often.

Paperwork Complete!

We have approved a final copy of our homestudy report and it has been submitted to our agency, who has reviewed it.  We are ready for the next step in the adoption process!  We will be filing with the USCIS this week!  Hopefully in about 2-4 weeks we will get fingerprinting appointments and soon after that our USCIS approval.  We are still waiting for a referral, but I am hoping that process will go by quickly.

In the mean time, we are putting together a care package for Saiya's Social Welfare Institute.  She has been home a whole year and we wanted to send them pictures to show them how much she has grown.  We have a care package filled with toys, clothes, pictures and some drawings Saiya made for the orphanage.  I know they will appreciate knowing how she is doing.

One Year

One Year, 12,700 miles, Three People, One Family

A new name, two strangers, a very long plane trip to her forever home.

Today is the one year anniversary of our adoption of Saiya!  So much has happened in the past year, it is amazing!  She has grown so much and learned so much in the past year.  She went to pre-k where she met friends, learned numbers and letters (as well as the english language), started school, learned to swim, and so much more!  She put her feet in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time and went to SeaWorld (as well as three or four different aquariums-- which she loves).  She has been up and down the eastern seaboard of the USA and traveled to Indiana over Christmas.  We played in the snow, sat on Santa's lap, and celebrated her fifth birthday.

There has been so much for her to discover and I know that there will be a universe more for her to explore.  We have learned as much from her, as she has from us.  The beginning was a little rough, but we managed to make it work and after so much uncertainty and nervousness, we are finally a family and we wouldn't want it any other way!

We love you, Saiya!  May you continue to grow and show us how amazing you are!  We really are lucky parents to have such a wonderful child to share our lives with.

August 30, 2010

August 30, 2011

10 Days

We had her file for ten days, which is way longer than the 72 hours that most families have to review files...  We are lucky.

However, after looking through the paperwork and having the files reviewed by a physician and a nurse (thank you both very much!!), we have come to the conclusion that the little girl we were referred is not right for our family.  She has some very disconcerting medical issues that we are not sure we are capable of handling at this time.  We have notified our agency and removed some special needs from our list.  I feel bad for this little girl and hope that she finds a great family in the very near future.

It was a somber weekend, but we are feeling confident in our decision.  Hopefully, we wont be waiting too long before we get another referral.  Its a shame that we can't adopt all of the children who need good, loving homes.

The First Casualty

Remember when I posted about the battle between the dogs and the little girl over the stuffed animals?

If not, click here!

I think the tide changed when we brought Nyxa home. Nyxa had been good for so long, but last night I was tucking Saiya into bed and noticed that she hasnt had her panda bear on her bed since before we left for New York. I asked her where it was and found it on her dresser. He was missing part of his foot and the stuffing of his leg was missing. Poor panda bear! Saiya said, "he's broken, we need a new one." To which I replied, "No, thats not how it works, you left it out where the puppy could get it, now you have to deal with it. You can either throw him away or mama can fix him for you, but we are not buying you a new one just because this one is a little holey".

What she doesnt know is that getting another one would be very difficult. That particular panda bear was purchased from the video store. It is one of those that you buy and you can name a star on the star registry. She lost it back in October and cried for a week! I found that one at Goodwill about three weeks later. It was an amazing find since they no longer sell them at the store.

So, I put her to bed, told her I would fix him, and proceeded to pull out some fabric and thread. I patched him up like a war hero! He looks cute. I washed him last night in the washing machine to get the doggie slobber off if it and gave him to her this morning. She looked at the patches and said "what's this??". I said "thats his battle wounds!" Saiya: "Oh, Ok!"

Back to the front we go!

How the CCAA system works

I thought I would post a little bit about how the matching process works from China just to give you an idea how hard it can be to find suitable children for families and why the wait is so long.

The CCAA database is massive, yet, Lillian, our agency director, was showing us that most of the children who are listed as "minor special needs" actually have major issues or birth defects. That makes it harder for her to match children with families (most of whom are willing to accept matches for minor special needs-- like us). When there are so many listed as "minor" but are actually "major" it is hard to sort through them all and find the ones who would make good matches for her families (for example, she showed us the file of a child china had listed as minor special needs, this child had Rickets, all of her fingers on both hands were bent at weird angles and she had severe developmental delays, mental retardation and couldnt walk or crawl-- she was 6 years old, it was very sad). She really does look out for each of her families and is hesitant to give referrals to families if the child has multiple issues or severe mental delays, knowing how hard these can be to deal with and that most of her families are looking for more "normal" children. At the same time, the CCAA shared list is shared by all the agencies authorized to match children. While we were there, we were looking at three files and when we switched screens, two of them were locked by other agencies. The "easy" (few special needs/minor special needs) children get swept up very quickly, which is another reason her job is so difficult. Its very much a game of chance or constant vigilance on the system to monitor new additions to the database and grab them as quickly as possible. I can imagine how hard it is for the smaller adoption agencies with fewer resources to match "good" children with their families. The CCAA used to issue individual lists to agencies, but they have stopped doing that. Now everyone matches from the shared list and it's a battle to find children for families when all of the agencies are competing for the "good" ones.  Even sadder is the number of children left on that list with severe special needs and no matching families.

Social Worker and Referral

Yesterday we had our last visit with Amber, our social worker for our second adoption.  We talked about the special needs training that we did as well as the older child training we completed.  It was a short meeting, but filled with lots of feedback and information.  We looked over the home study report one final time and approved it.  As soon as she gets it approved by her manager and notarized, we can send it to CAWLI and apply to the USCIS.

We settled on a name for our new daughter:  Xylie Austin

Chris really liked Austin for a middle name and Yumae didn’t really fit well, so we went with his second choice (but my first) which was Xylie.

We are currently in the process of reviewing a file for a little girl who is the same age as Saiya.  Nothing solid as of yet, we are waiting for more information on her, but wish us luck!