Bargain Day!

I gave away our preschool toys several years ago; so I was quite excited today when I went to the Once Upon a Child clearance sale.  As advertised, anything with a clearance tag was just ONE DOLLAR!

I have outfitted the little princesses playroom with lots of "new" toys, and only spent $10.00! 

There is a set of building toys with TWO plates - to build flowers
A little mop and bucket
Tag Reader, six books, and two National Geographic Kids Activity card sets to go with it
Polly Pocket play set
Four different computerized sounds/colors/shapes/songs toys
Fisher Price monkey with his little hut and bananas
Two View-Masters with several reels

Just take a look at this haul!

As amazing as that $10.00 buy is, just wait till you see how I rounded out their wardrobe!  Stay tuned.  My washer and dryer have been working all evening making them fresh.  I'll try to get a picture of them tomorrow.

Have you ever gone to one of these sales?  It was amazing!

Waiting is Hard

I guess it is obvious that waiting is hard.  We have all experienced that whether it be waiting for the birth of a child, waiting for an adoption, waiting for Christmas or waiting for our birthday as a child!  Now that we are within that target range of "could be any time" the wait for LOA (Letter of Acceptance) is nagging at me.  I just want to get our daughters home!

We were discussing this wait at dinner last night.  Someone told me I needed to be patient.  Hmmmm...  So I've been evaluating the whole scope of emotions over this wait, and I can honestly say it isn't that I'm pushing against the Lord's timing, being a control freak or any of those things.  I couldn't quite explain it, but I think the story and definition of "impatience" that I found on a friend's blog last night sums it up very well.  Thanks for sharing this Jane!

 

I "stole" this from a friend over at Adoption Makes Six

 

A journal post from an anonymous adoptive parent:

"Here's something I wrote about 2/3 through our first adoption process. I surely did not understand before being an expectant-adoptive-parent how hard the wait was. I did not understand how love grows before you actually meet your child. When watching my friend go through an adoption (before ours) I kept wondering why she was worried or not trusting in God's timing. I had no clue really about the emotions involved. I have since apologized to her! :-) So I have to keep that in mind when talking to people who don't understand ... to understand that I was the same way once. However, I had to "write this" to counter all the comments sent my way about trusting God (even from my husband!) I had to put into words that I could still trust in the Lord and be "impatient" but impatience had to be defined….

Impatience Defined

In our adoption process…

Impatience does not mean I don’t think everything will work out okay;

Impatience does not mean I am a control freak;

Impatience does not mean I do not trust in Providence;

Impatience does not mean I do not have confidence in my agency;

Impatience does not mean I don’t suppose my child is being cared for until I’m united;

Impatience does not mean I do not believe God’s timing is best.

Impatience simply means…I miss my child!"

Working Weekend...

Daddy of the princesses spent much of the weekend working on the big surprise.   There were multiple scavenger trips to the garage and the home improvement store.  Big sister Tikvah assisted at times.

There is still quite a bit to do, but it is starting to look like what we intended.

Funny the things that adoptive parents find to do while we wait for LOA.

Three Hints

Yesterday I showed you a special project in the works for the two princesses.

Today I will give you three hints as to what this is.  I went to Goodwill again last night.  Here are some very vital parts of our project:

1. a dowel rod
2. a stainless steel bowl
3. two knobs taken off pan lids

I promise, this is going to be so cool!

Playroom for Princesses

Living Room

 As I told you in my last post,  we've been rearranging the house and are transforming our living room into a play room.  I had really hoped to be finished by now, but alas, my timetable seems to be too ambitious again.  We have made a lot of progress, however.  Here is a glimpse at what is happening at our house.

Play/School Room

 The living room furniture has made way for a table (IKEA clearance, folks!) and my husband made it shorter by cutting the legs down several inches.  We can't have the little princesses struggling to reach the table!  Four smaller chairs (red!) are in the works.

The large, red shelving unit moved up from the basement and now holds a wealth of toys and books. Tikvah's desk has moved down from her room, and fits nicely in the corner on the left.   My favorite chair is to the right of the shelves, so we are all set for playing and doing school work in this room.

  
And do you see that thing on the right?   

On Saturday, this "mystery item" was an U-G-L-Y entertainment center purchased at Goodwill - on clearance, of course.  It was fake oak with glass doors.  We removed the doors, and you can see that it has become red, black and white....why?  A friend gave me a GOOD IDEA!  Stay tuned.  You won't believe it!

Got an update...sort of

We aren't allowed to request updates from the orphanage very often,  so when we do I am soooo anxious to get them!  I was especially excited about this one because it was the first we've been able to request additional information about Jennifer.  We have so little information about her (literally half of what we have about Abigail) and very few photos.  I have been waiting an entire month for the orphanage to respond to this request.

Sadly there were NO photos of either of our girls, and the questions I asked about each of them got scrambled in translation or something.  The reports obviously mixed the two of them up with one another in places, the questions weren't really addressed, AND there are just two short paragraphs about each girl.  Yup, I'm whining a bit.  This momma's heart longs for news about them!

About the only new thing they told me about Jennifer is that her favorite color is red!  Not sure if that is accurate or not, but if it is she is for sure going to like her new home!  If you have ever been here you know how much I love the color red; and it is all over the house.

This week I have been working on transforming the living room into a play room for the little princesses.  Since neither of them are very steady on their feet, I just couldn't stand the thought of them having to go to the basement play room or upstairs to their bedroom to play.  I have recently papered this room with some bold, red flower print so I think it will be a perfect, cheerful place to play.  It is also on the main floor so I can keep them very close to me throughout the day.

This rearranging the of house is a slow process for sure, and it looks as though we have just moved in at this point.  We are making progress however, so I'm hopeful to have a before and after photo to share here by the end of this week.   My goal is to have all the rearranging and setting up done by the time we receive our LOA.  We can send them photos at that time, and I want the photos that we send to them to accurately reflect what they will see when they arrive home.

Progress is Good!

I began this blog nearly six months ago, primarily because "someone" in my life likes to know the details - and lots of them!  This person shall remain nameless, but my mother-in-law knows who she is.  (Love you, Mom!) So, this post is full of those details.  They may not interest most people, but I know she will enjoy them. Perhaps it will also serve to take a bit of the mystery out of the process for someone else.

We've had nearly two months of just waiting around for our paperwork to make its way through the system.  Since our initial immigration forms in November, there has been very little paperwork.  Hmmm.....it wasn't over yet!

As we get closer to the long awaited LOA (Letter of Acceptance) things are changing.  Suddenly our agency uses Priority mail to get papers to us.  They indicate we should process them quickly so they are back at the office and ready to go when our LOA arrives.  I like that - QUICKLY!  There has been very little "quickly" in this whole process.

Ethan and I spent roughly six hours last night on this latest paperwork.  We began with the USCIS Forms I800 (not to be confused with Form I-800A that we filed earlier) and I-864W. Form I-800 is the Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative. It's to get approval from USCIS to adopt the children we are matched with specifically. 

I-864W goes to USCIS along with the I-800 application. According to China Adoption Online  "When a person is immigrating to the United States, USCIS wants to make sure that the new immigrant won't be a burden on the US welfare system. To do this, they require new immigrants to be 'sponsored' by an existing US citizen who will provide for them financially until the new immigrant can become a US citizen.

"However, with adoptive children, the situation is a bit different. They don't need to be sponsored they will be automatic US citizens. So Form I-864W is just saying that the immigrant that will be coming to the US is an adopted child under 18 and thus doesn't need a sponsor."

These forms will be mailed by our agency the same day that our Letter Seeking Confirmation (LSC), or Letter of Acceptance (LOA) arrives at the agency. Most people call it the LOA.


Again, according to China Adoption Online current wait times for LOA depend on a lot of things!!

• It depends somewhat upon your agency, although no one has ever been able to prove this for sure.
• It depends on whether you accepted your referral before or after you received your Log In Date (LID).
• It Depends on the time of year (whether there are holidays during your wait, or other CCCWA closures).
• It depends on whether or not the CCCWA requests more information from you after reviewing your dossier. Doesn't happen often, but once in awhile it does!

Currently, families are waiting anywhere from 30-70 days for LOA, with 50-60 days being probably the average.

Once the LOA comes and the immigration papers are sent, their current average approval time frame is around three weeks.  Funny how my life is currently dominated by the stats of the number of waiting days and weeks, and the current adoption acronyms connected with the process!

Along these same lines, we completed the "Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration" for both Abigail and Jennifer.  It is on this form that we specify the American names that they will be given to go along with their Chinese names that they are also keeping.


We also were required to sign and date each individual sheet of information we have received about the girls.  There were forty-nine papers for Abigail but only half that for Jennifer.  We aren't sure why Abigail has so much more documentation, though some of it is accounted for with updates we've received on her.  We have yet to get any additional information about Jennifer.  Hopefully we'll have our requested update soon with some new photos and some of our questions answered.

Tonight we need to have several forms notarized, one confirming what information we received for each girl, a form for each about their vaccinations, and the "Agreement for Referral Acceptance and Post-Adoption Services," which is a contract with our agency.  

So, there you have it.  This latest flurry of paperwork has to mean we are making progress, and progress is good!  I cannot wait to have my girls home!