David, Indigo and I are very excited to announce that before too long we'll be a family of four! Our journey started around March 12th of this year when we saw the file of a little boy on China's waiting child list. We had not been certain about whether we would adopt again - we have our lives so wonderfully fulfilled and filled by our precious Indigo. However, we had also been saying that if we wanted to adopt again, that it needed to be sooner as we're getting old, old, old and this whole parenting gig sure does require a lot of energy. I think we had also assumed that if we adopted again, it would be another daughter from China, but then we saw this adorable little boy and decided to proceed. We did the application with the agency and started to hit the paperwork trail. China is now a Hague convention country, so although it's hard to believe, the requirements are even more stringent than before. Paperchasing involved physicals for all three of us, birth certificates, marriage license, fingerprinting at our local VA police station as well as fingerprinting for FBI clearances. Applicant letter to China, letters of employment for each of us, letters from the State Police stating that we have no criminal background, VA state criminal and child abuse clearances, California child abuse clearances, the home study with a social worker, 10 hours of Hague accredited adoption training, a whole financial statement etc. Each of the documents we had to obtain had to be notarized, authenticated by the State in which the notary is licensed, authenticated at the US Department of State and to the Chinese Consulate. Amazingly, it did seem easier to do the second time around. We filed our I800A with USCIS around mid July and our Letter of Intent (LOI) with China on July 31, 2009. Amazingly we received Pre-Approval (PA) on August 4, 2009 which basically meant that as long as China received our Dossier within 3 months and everything matched what we had told them in our LOI, that we would be matched with this little boy.
Our dossier went to China (DTC) September 14, 2009 and we received confirmation of our official LID (log in date) September 28, 2009. We then settled in to wait for Letter of Acceptance (LOA). Amazingly and far sooner than we expected, we received a call on Monday saying that our LOA had arrived with the agency and was being overnighted to us. We received the LOA November 17, 2009 and signed it, along with filling out the I800, the ds230 and the 864W and some other papers our agency had sent us to complete and overnighted it back to the agency who will probably send it to NBC (National Benefits Center) today for their approval. Then NBC sends the approval to the NVC (National Visa Center) where the information is cabled to the US Embassy in Guangzhou, China. When the Embassy approves the cable and signs off on the Article 5 letter, then the info is sent by courier to the CCAA (Chinese Center for Adoptive Affairs) which is where our Travel Approval (TA) process is initiated. This process can take about 6-8 weeks and there are some holidays during that time period which could prolong things. We can't plan travel until we get TA, but the count down is on for another trip to China. We are naming our son Isaac which means "laughter".
After our Letter of Acceptance I sent another care package. There is a photo of the items included in the care package which included a soft blanket, a backpack with a stuffed pig on the back (he was born in the year of the pig), an airplane toy, tea, cookies and candy for his caretakers, a stuffed panda toy and a cake which he received. Today we received these updated photos taken of him when he received the care package. He is so cute. We cannot wait to travel to China to meet our son.
