Dossier Submitted

Well, we finally made it--finally got all the paperwork filled out, letters written, appointments made, then everything notarized, certified and authenticated, and this morning I FedExed our Dossier to our adoption agency. If all goes well, if everything is there and complete and correct, they'll be sending to China on Friday! It's a huge relief to be done with this part of the process.

Next, Chip and I will be taking online classes to fulfill the 10-hour Hague Training requirement. I'm really looking forward to doing this, because the classes will cover issues like attachment and bonding, traveling to pick up your child, what life is like inside an orphanage, becoming a family, etc., a lot of things I've been wondering about and want to be prepared for.

Beyond that, we'll be waiting for our DTC date, which is the date our Dossier arrives in China. When we travel will be based on this date. We'll also be getting our "official" approval from China, and then we can post photos of our little cutie! Hopefully it won't be too long!

I was thinking the other day of a song that makes me think of Hannah, of longing for her and wishing she were not so far away, but at the same time gives me strength to hang on until the day we meet her:

SOMEWHERE OUT THERE

Somewhere out there,
Beneath the pale blue night,
Someone's thinking of me,
And loving me tonight.
Somewhere out there,
Someone's saying a prayer,
Then we'll find one another,
In that big somewhere out there.

And even though I know how very far apart we are,
It helps to think we might be wishing
On the same bright star,
And when the night will start to sing
A lonesome lullaby,
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the
Same big sky.

Somewhere out there,
If love can see us through,
Then, we'll be together,
Somewhere out there,
out where dreams, come true.

We Found Hannah!

I didn't think it would happen this soon, but we found Hannah!!! On Thursday I requested information on a little girl from the shared list of waiting children. Friday afternoon I got an email with her file attached. I forwarded the file to Chip while he was at work and then I called him. We discussed it quickly, then I called the Waiting Child Program Manager at Great Wall, and talked with her about how everything works. Basically, if we wanted to consider this child to adopt, we would need to "lock" her file to prevent anyone else from looking at it. She recommended that we have a doctor who specializes in international adoption look over her file first, but we decided to go with our heart, skip that step, and move forward. The information in her file told us she is healthy and we just felt that this little girl was Hannah.

Hannah is 3 and a half years old and was born with microtia of her left ear. "Microtia" means "abnormal smallness of the external ear." We've done research on this condition, and found that most children with this condition have normal hearing in the ear not affected with microtia, and in some cases, treatment is available to restore their hearing in the affected ear. There are also amazing treatments available to reconstruct the external ear to a more "normal" appearance.

Our daughter is a beautiful little girl, such a little cutie! She was born in February of 2006, so she's right at 2 years younger than Miles. We are told that it should be 7-9 months until we travel to China to get her. We can't wait to have two kids running around here!

Thank you for all your prayers thus far. Please continue to pray for us and for Hannah.

Waiting Child

Chip and I decided recently that we would like to adopt a little bit older child after all. In the beginning of thinking of adoption, this is what we wanted, a little girl closer in age to Miles so that they would grow up together and have a closer bond. Then after talking with our social worker and learning about the harsh conditions in some Chinese orphanages, we thought we might should adopt an infant. But lately, it has weighed heavily on our hearts that we really want a little girl 2-3 years younger than Miles. We want them both to have a playmate close to their age, someone in our family to identify with and someone with whom to share common memories of growing up.

We've prayed about this and it just feels like the right thing for us to do. As a result of this change, we are now pursuing the "waiting child" program, and are looking for a little girl with some possible mild special needs. Because of switching programs, we may have our little Hannah with us much sooner than we had thought, within 7-9 months, as opposed to 3+ years, if we find her soon. I say "find" her because with the waiting child program, we have the opportunity to look at available children beforehand and request information on them. Then, when we decide to pursue a particular child and everything goes well, that is the child we get to adopt. So, rather than someone else matching us with a child, we have more of a say in being matched.

We ask that you all keep us in your prayers about finding Hannah. We know that God has already chosen her for us; he knows exactly which little girl is our Hannah Claire. She is somewhere in China right now waiting for us to come and get her. Knowing that is exciting in a way, but also makes me more apprehensive and so anxious to finally see her in person. We need prayers for patience and for God's guidance.

Approved at Last!!!

We've been waiting several weeks, but our home study has finally been approved!!! We can now go forward with completing the I-800A, which is the last major document that we have to submit and have processed. It still may be a few more months, but we are now well on our way to getting everything in our dossier submitted! What a relief!

Home Study Submitted

Well, we finally got in all our paperwork for the Home Study into our social worker last week, and she submitted it for review to Great Wall. It takes about 3 weeks to find out if it's approved, and there are usually changes that need to be made. So it will probably be a several weeks before we know for sure that we are once and for all eligible to adopt.

One Step Closer

Week before last we sent off our adoption documents to Austin to be certified by the Secretary of State, then got them back yesterday. So I made copies of everything and this morning repackaged them and sent them to the Chinese Consulate in Houston, where the documents will be authenticated, meaning we are one step closer to getting all our documents ready to submit our dossier to our adoption agency, Great Wall China Adoptions.

We applied for our passports about 3 weeks ago and had to provide certified birth certificates that were sent in with the applications. I didn't think to make photocopies of the birth certificates, which I now need to complete our home study, so I'm going to check the status of our passports tonight. If it looks like it will be a while before we get them back, we'll go ahead and order more birth certificates so we can finally get our home study in to Great Wall and, Lord willing, approved.

As I said in my previous post, as much as a pain as this "paperchase" might seem, I actually find it enjoyable! I guess it's kind of like pregnancy. For those of us who had a very uncomfortable one, it was a pain that was not without reward. And that's how I see the hassle of assembling all the paperwork. At the very end, when I'm standing there holding my baby in my arms, I will know all that "labor" (and years of waiting) was SO worth it!

Paperwork Pregnancy

I've heard people refer to the process of adoption as a "paperwork pregnancy" before, and now I see why! We are slowly but surely getting all the paperwork filled out and notarized, then getting ready to send it to Austin to be certified, then to Houston to be authenticated. Tomorrow we're all three going to apply for passports and get police reports, as well as getting some more documents notarized afterward. Miles and I have had our shots and physicals, and Chip's physical is scheduled for Friday. At times it seems a little overwhelming, but overall, it's really not as bad as I thought it would be. I put off even getting started on it all for a long time (too long), but now that we've started, it's actually moving along pretty quickly.

I'm actually finding recently that I'm enjoying this part of the process! I like the challenge of getting it all done, knowing that all the hard work will lead us to the reward of our precious daughter.