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