OMG DTC!!

Happy Friday!  Even Happier Wednesday - We are officially DTC as of Wednesday, 2/20/13!   DTC means Dossier to China.  So ALL of the paperwork we (meaning I) have been working on since October has just been finally sent to China.   After having it all notarized, and then authenticated by the Sec of State, the Federal State Department and the Chinese Consulate - it's off.    Whoohoo!

So what does that really mean?  Mostly a big long wait for the next major milestone.  The next thing is that the dossier will hit someone's desk in China, who will log it in, and then we will have a "LID".   That should happen in the next week or so.  The papers will sit for another 30 - 60 days, and then another person will pick it up and start processing it, and send us our Letter of Acceptance - official chinese approval to adopt Chunwu Han.  And that's as far as I will go with the steps - because I like to focus on one step at a time.  So we're hoping that sometime mid April to May we will get LOA.

In the meantime, we are working on a care package to send Cora.  There is a lady in China who helps coordinate and she is great.  Since Cora's birthday is March 14th, she will get a birthday cake!  Also we send a zip drive, with the hope that the nanny's will take pictures and save them to the drive for us.  And maybe we'll be lucky enough that we will get a few via email.  She'll also get a toy, and the big thing is a photo album full of 20 or so pictures of us, the house, Sheeta, etc.  Ann, in China, will put captions in Chinese, so she knows who everyone is.  We'll send some gifts to the nanny's, and candy, clothes etc. for the other children as well.  We'd love to send boxes and boxes of stuff to Cora, but they recommend not overdoing it.  It makes it hard to keep track of the things, and also makes it hard on the other children.  But we are so excited for her to get the birthday cake, and we wonder what she will think?  Will she understand that we are coming for her soon?   Will the nannies try to explain that her family has found her?  It's hard to say how much of it she will process.

OH - and we will start working on her room soon!  I know it's still 4 months off, but it's going to creep up on us, and the last 2 months we will busy with all sorts of stuff.  So we are excited to start on that project.

We think about Cora every day, it's going to be a long 4 months.  I will post as soon as we get any new pictures.  Our agency also requested an update today, so I hope they answer some of our questions!

Michelle

The night we got PA!    

This is Sophie practicing her Chinese words

The very long but short history of Cora

I've been saying I need to keep a blog for a while now for a few reasons:  1. to keep track of important dates and feelings as we go through this process and 2. to give my family and friends a place to come if they want a quick update on the "cora status".  So here we go! (and btw, now that i am done writing this - there is no short part!  skip to the bottom if you'd like!)

The very long part of this, is the fact that James and I have been trying to adopt for the last almost 7 years.  As soon as we knew we could not have more children after my radiation treatments, we were on the stick.  As you can tell, it didn't work, and wasn't that easy.  After being told no from several different groups, countries and crazy christian groups, we had pretty much given up hope. Summer of 2012, after spending many hours with our new neighbors and now great friends, we were intrigued enough to start exploring the idea of the China Waiting Children program.  They adopted their gorgeous little girl through this program, and had a very good experience.

For 2 or 3 months we went back and forth with China about my medical history. During these months, we were having many many discussions about the sanity of this journey - after so long as a family of 3, is this still what we really want?  Sophie is now almost 9, and is a very independent, well adjusted, "happy as a clam to be a spoiled only child" little girl.  Sleeps all night, gets herself ready for school every day, is a rockin' traveller, and overall life is great and easy.   But in our hearts, we still knew how much joy another child would bring to all of us, and we knew how much love we had to offer.  And even though Sophie would be pissed for a while about having to share her animals, it would be wonderful for her.  So we just threw it up into the universe, as our friend Carrie would say, and waited to hear the answer from China.  The answer was "yes".  And I think what really made us know what to do, was how excited we were when we got that "yes".  even though we downplayed it, and said, "well if China says no, that just means it wasn't meant to be", we were genuinely giddy when we got their response.

So October 1st, we started the craziness of the dossier preparation.   We'd gone through it before, so knew what an immense undertaking it was, but it is still inconceivable the amount work work that goes into collecting papers.  I won't bore you with any details, but it is hours and hours of admin.

Once the paperwork is getting close to being completed, our agency started sending us "files" of waiting children.  I think the first one came in early December.  You get to see pictures, sometimes video, and a narrative about the child and where they are developmentally.  We were looking at either boy or girl, between the ages of 4-6.  You also get all the medical reports and test results.  This was the most overwhelming, emotional and stressful thing we had ever gone through.  We thought we would maybe get 2 or 3 files in total, but boy were we wrong.  We got almost 20 I bet, within the first month.  They all just started to meld together, and it seemed like an impossible task.  All of these children have special medical needs, and not being medical people, we just didn't know what half of it meant.  I continued to be emotional about all of them, while James was always rational and calm and was not going to be pushed into anything.   He was firm, when I couldn't be, on what "needs" were were equipped to handle.  Always reminding me of what we had agreed on together, in the beginning.  Because when you see these beautiful kids smiling, it is just hard to stay objective.  I often think what a good team James and I are - complementing each other, not being clones of one another.

But it was not easy on him either, and we got to a point where we were just losing it.  Really thinking that maybe we were not going to find our child.  We had a wine and chat night with the neighbors, and got ourselves in a better space to continue on.  But man, it was rough.   Literally, the next day, January 24th (my mom's birthday) 8am, we got the file for Chunwu Han.  We both looked at it, and did not say "this is it" - but said, "wow, this could really be it".  It was a Friday  and we scrambled to have her file looked at by an eye specialist, and tried to set up an appt with an international adoption physician to review her file as well.  Cora was born without sight in her left eye. She will turn 5 on March 14th, and was abandoned at birth, living in the orphanage ever since.    Both conversations went well, and on saturday the 26th, we told our agency Yes - we would accept the referral!

Sophie was part of all the discussions - not really having a vote, per se, but listening to much of the talk, and putting her input in here and there.  We all were very excited, but still a little hesitant, because we had to wait for PA - preliminary approval.  We were still processing, but coming to terms with it in our own time.

There were a few panic days on my part in the last week, because PA was not coming in, and I was convinced they were going to change their minds, as they started asking again about my medical history.  But PA came in yesterday, February 7th!!

So YEAY - we can finally start telling everyone about our daughter, and feeling pretty certain, that this is going to happen!  There are very very few cases where you have been given PA, and not brought your child home.  So in my mind, it is a done deal.  I'm allowing myself to continue falling in love with this little girl, and start planning for her arrival!  It will likely be June or July of 2013 that we will travel to China to pick her up.  More to come on that as we hit the next milestones.

But for now, we will keep praying for little sister Cora, and for her caregivers in china.  We hope that someone there is loving her and that she is loving them.   And she will be home with her forever family soon .

The top pic is from october 2012. The bottom, is from sometime in early 2011 we think. She is the girl farthest in the back.  We just want to squeeze her!!