Update on Isaac

We've been sitting on some VERY GOOD NEWS waiting for the ok to share it.  It is now public information on the website of the organization that has been responsible for "Peter's" care.  Here is their announcement:

Update:  In mid August 2013, Peter joined his new foster family in China until his adoption.  The transition to his foster family went very well and he has started school.  His foster family is doing so much for him helping him adjust and he is doing great so far.

There are dozens of questions that I would like to ask about the paragraph above, but alas.  Getting this much information while waiting is actually pretty good!  We are totally and completely in awe as there were some obstacles, and it appeared as if Isaac would have to return to his orphanage.  We are so very thankful to the many people who worked together to make this foster placement a reality. 

China is just not set up to handle special needs.  (We experienced this in a very real way the two weeks we were in country with Jennifer.)  Unless an orphanage has a school within its building, most orphans with a physical need cannot attend school.  How amazing is it that Isaac is able to attend school while our papers are making their way around the world?

Another huge blessing of this foster home is in learning English. We've been speaking a strange combination of English/Chinese/Sign language with the Little Princesses around here for the past four months.  It works, but isn't ideal.  We're told the foster family speaks at least some English in the home which is going to help with his transition to us so much.

We are excited and anxious to meet our young man, but in the meantime it is comforting to know that he has a family looking after him. How I pray God will bless them richly for looking after Isaac while we are paperchasing.

A Special Friend Visits the Princesses

It is very hard when you love a child who lives on the opposite side of the world.  Getting information about them is difficult. They do so much growing up in the year or so that you are "in process" and there are NEVER enough photos.  One thing that adds a spring to your step while waiting is for another traveling family to check in on your child.

While we were paperchasing to bring the two Little Princesses home, a few online friends visited their orphanage.  One was a therapist, and the others were adoptive parents there with their own newly adopted children.  Beth was one of these friends to me.  She took the time to meet my girls, get photos and tell them that we were coming soon.  Priceless.  Golden.  The photos I looked at time after time after time while I waited; and they helped me to stay just a little bit more sane through the process.

I had another priceless moment on Friday when Beth and her adorable son, Bobby (who had appointments at a nearby medical facility) were able to come to our home for a visit.  Bobby and our girls lived in the same orphanage in China and attended school together there.  I showed Bobby's photo to the girls, and they obviously remembered him and called him by his Chinese name.

The princesses were very excited as our special visitors came up the driveway.  Abigail actually chased Bobby to give him a hug (we're a huggy group around our house) but he didn't want much to do with that nonsense! 

Abigail was right there to check out their arrival.

Jen watched from the porch.

I have to say that Bobby is a charming, well behaved little guy with lots of curiosity and an AMAZING command of the English language after having been home only six months!  After answering his burning questions about how many pets we have, their color, and their names, he was ready to go in the house.  Bobby was interested in looking around and especially in seeing the girls' room.  You've seen the photos on this blog of the princess canopy beds - yeah girls live here - girly girls.  I don't think he was super impressed, and quickly moved on to better things.  Things such as the beginnings of Wonder World in our back yard.

The three kids played happily while Beth and I visited.  They didn't really seem to play together,  but parallel played for quite some time.  They preferred to play on the back patio and outdoors, so we mostly stayed out there.

Bobby seemed to remember Jennifer more than Abigail - it is likely they may have slept in the same room whereas Abigail slept in a foster family's apartment.  Also, since Bobby and Jen are big kids (age 7) and Abigial is only six, it may be that they were in different classrooms at times.  Beth said that Bobby asked about Sha Mei (Jen), so it seems they knew each other fairly well.  It was sweet to see the three friends reunited in America.  It made the world seem pretty small to me!

I thoroughly enjoyed our visit and hope we can do it again very soon.

USCIS in Progress

We got the notification on Wednesday that our Supplement 3 - Request for Action on Approved Form I-800A has been received at the USCIS.  This document amends our "Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country."   That is a lot of words.  What does it mean?

Let's break this down.  The i800a requests approval to adopt from a Hague Adoption Convention country.  This is an international agreement to safeguard intercountry adoptions which took effect for the United States in April of 2008.  Basically it aims to prevent the abduction, sale of, or traffic in children, and it works to ensure that intercountry adoptions are in the best interests of children. It also recognizes intercountry adoption as a means of offering the advantage of a permanent home to a child when a suitable family has not been found in the child's country of origin.

We got our approval as "suitable" when we adopted the girls.  That means we met the requirements of adoption education, income, etc. etc. etc.  The Supplement 3 updates our family status to include Abigail and Jennifer, and asks that they find us suitable to add an additional child.  We were able to file just the supplement since our fingerprints had not yet expired from the time of our last approval.

If all goes according to plan (and our agency spent no small amount of time hashing this out with USCIS to determine the correct way to file) we should be assigned to the same officer we had with the girls, and be processed fairly quickly.  If the supplement attempt fails for whatever procedural reason, we will have to start over with a brand new i800a, likely meaning two additional months of waiting time.  So....we are hoping for the best!

Once our approval arrives in the mail, we'll immediately send it to our agency who will oversee its authentication for our dossier. If you followed the process with the girls you may remember that the dossier is the all important file of documents that will be sent to China. It contains the application and letter requesting permission to adopt a Chinese orphan, home study, police reports, immigration approval, reference letters, medical reports, marriage certificate, birth certificates, letters of employment, and photos of our family and house.

It is totally a guessing game when predicting travel dates on an adoption, but our past experience was almost five months from the time we sent our dossier until the time we adopted our girls.  At this point traveling in March seems to be the best guess.

Due to our income level and Isaac's particular needs, we were able to qualify for a grant with our agency towards a good piece of the fees that are due within the next month.  There are still very significant agency and international fees remaining however, so we need to begin some serious fundraising and applying for grants.  It is difficult to see how any family can possibly come up with the amount needed for an international adoption.  But I learned with the girls that God is bigger than the balances due.  He has clearly led us to this point, so we are doing all we possibly can, and attempting to trust Him (and not our checkbook) for the rest.  We know that where He guides, He provides.  

First Day of School

I've been educating my children at home since (gulp) 1986.  No that isn't a typo.  It really has been twenty-seven years!  As it turns out it was excellent training for the task I am currently facing - that of teaching the Little Princesses how to understand and communicate in English. 

Can you imagine attempting to learn a new name for everything in your life?  Food, your possessions, your emotions, the weather - EVERYTHING?  I am exhausted just thinking about it!  These two are doing wonderful though.  They are very smart and learning quickly.  While it may take quite awhile for speech therapy to kick in enough that their verbal skills are understandable, their comprehension just four months after coming home is pretty amazing!

I've been seeing back to school photos all over Facebook, and not to be outdone, here are ours from Tuesday:

Jen is usually smiling!  She is so much fun to work with, and she is a HARD WORKER too.

Oh the wonders of playdough!  Abigail is learning colors while getting  a great fine motor workout too.

 We purchased a new (to us) desk and Tikvah had fun painting the inside with chalkboard paint, green and PURPLE GLITTER paint!  I simply cannot believe that she is in middle school this year.  She is pretty excited about a unit study that we are doing and a new Language Arts curriculum that just came out in August.

The desk closes all up to protect her school computer and books from prying little hands.

Today we went to the first co-op of the year.  Our co-op meets once a week.  Tikvah's classes this year are Musical Theater, Art and Spanish.  The Little Princesses are in the preschool class since they are just learning the alphabet and to count in English.

Abigail and Jen were a little nervous, but very excited about carrying their backpacks and lunch boxes to this new adventure that we called, "school."  I am assisting in their class the entire time so that helped to reassure them.

I'm excited about our new year of learning, and better yet all three girls seem to be also.  I love it that we can spend the day together and I get the great privilege of being there when the proverbial light bulbs click ON and they understand something new.

Officially back in the China program

Our notarized homestudy has arrived at our placement agency, and we're officially back in the China program.  Since our USCIS applications have been at the agency just waiting on the updated homestudy to arrive, our case manager is currently assembling the documents to send out.  This "Supplement 3" to the i800a form (Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country) is the last document needed for our dossier to go back to China on its second round.  Unlike the last time, we don't need to be fingerprinted since our prints have not yet expired from our application with the Little Princesses.  Since the i800a is currently taking roughly twice as long for approval as it was last year at this time, we're hopeful that skipping that step will speed things along.

Homestudy Update Approved!

It seems as if the homestudy process for Issac has taken so much longer than the process with Abigail and Jen.  I anticipated that an "update" would take much less time than an entire homestudy.  As I compared the timetables, I discovered that our homestudy for the Princesses took fifty-four days from the beginning to approval by our placement agency, and this time it was only fifty-two days.  If it was two days shorter than why did it seem to take twice as long?

I believe the explanation may lie in where the time was spent.  The first time WE were busy fulfilling educational requirements, rushing around gathering documents, mailing things back and forth, gathering the dossier, etc.  This time our paperwork was pretty simple.  We had our documents turned in only eight days after beginning the process.  But then we had a longer wait.  Why?  Because other people were busy.  That left us simply in "wait" mode.

While  parents in the adoptive process normally live in some kind of a time warp where every day seems a week long, they are typically busy at this stage with the gathering of the dossier requirements.  Since we didn't need to do that this time, I believe we noticed the days even more.  Likely no one but fellow adoptive parents in process and my mother-in-law will care anything about this analysis, but since we APs are an obsessive bunch I will indulge myself.  The rest of you feel free to skip the next paragraph.

It took five days longer for the social worker to visit this time after we turned in our paperwork.  As our file was compiled at our homestudy agency, they discovered a few requirements that hadn't been included on the to-list we received from them.  This resulted in waiting on documents later in the process.  While it took only nine days after the social worker finished her visits to receive the rough draft with the girls, this time it took twenty days.  All told it was only ten days longer to approval after turning in our paperwork, but it honestly felt like months. 

What now?  Well.... we are waiting.  Once the placement agency receives the notarized copies of the approved homestudy they will send our paperwork to the USCIS.  There is some amount of confusion about how to approach this step since our fingerprints on file don't expire until mid January.  Here's hoping for a clear answer and a quick approval!  The clock never stops ticking on a parent's watch - especially when they are just waiting.

The Little Princesses get their teeth fixed

Friday morning came VERY early as we found ourselves in the van at 4 AM and heading to Indianapolis.  While I am certain that there are very capable pediatric dentists in Ohio, we've loved and trusted ours for over a decade.  When it came right down to it we couldn't make the switch after we moved.  Because of the amount of restoration that needed to be done he recommended doing it while they were under general anesthesia.  We arrived at the surgical center right on time at 6:30 AM.  The girls were fairly calm, albeit somewhat confused as to why we got them out of bed so early and put them in the van in their pajamas!

Jen was the first one on the schedule.  She was the more nervous of the two, and fussed a bit beforehand. 

She came out of the anesthesia very well, and was fairly cheerful when it was all done.  They were not able to save a couple of the teeth that were supposed to have had root canals.

Abigail was the opposite.  She was all cheerful before the surgery, excited for her turn to ride on the wheeling bed, and waved goodbye all the way down the hall.  She had only one tooth that could not be saved.  This Little Princess was NOT happy when she came out of recovery though and just wanted to GO HOME!

I believe they may have sprung us a little sooner since Abigail was so insistent that we leave. It was a long drive back to Cincinnati, and we had to pass the barf bucket around more than once.  (I really began to question my sanity on keeping our old dentist at this point.) We arrived back home right about noon.

The Little Princesses continue to be opposites.  Jen played happily (well except for being miffed that they took her teeth) but Abigail fought nausea for the rest of the day.  Thankfully when Saturday dawned, they were both back to normal.

I am so glad to have the dental issues behind us.  They both had a lot of decay and must have been uncomfortable living with those mouths!