Hey look! I'm blogging! I feel rather self-conscious....a rather shy person sending my wordwaves out to whoever.
Just for the record, I'm starting this blog to keep a record of a new venture in our lives. Our family is adopting a new daughter, and the ups and downs and ins and outs of the process may be of interest to her someday.
We're already a large-ish family,with some kids grown and some still at home. We have (I have) always wanted to adopt. And now, our youngest biological child is a teenager and my husband is also excited about adopting. He says the house is too quiet with only three teenagers around!
Our family now: Ray, 54, Allison 49, Sarah (off and married with 3 kids of her own), Carolee (Likewise married and similarly occupied with husband and a daughter), Caitlin 22, serving a mission in Taiwan, John, 19, about to leave on a mission to Sao Paulo, Brazil, Laura 15, and Kirsten, 13. And....waiting in Loudi City, Hunan Province, Peoples' Republic of China...Lou Juan, age ten. She knows she is going to be adopted, and (so far) is happy about that.
The paperwork for the adoption process, as well as the beaureaucratic hoop-jumping, is long, ardudous and frustrating. We received our PA (provisional acceptance as an adoptive family) from China on Feb 12, 2008. Our homestudy seemed to take forever to complete...we finally got it done in late May. Now we're going through the 1-800A process with the USCIS, which is brand new, and nobody really knows how long it will take for that to get done.
We are waiting to be told our homestudy needs to be revised (so far, all of the homestudies sent
with the 1-800A have required revision) and then will send it all off again. It is supposed to take a month to get the bad news, and then another month (we hope it's only that long) to get the paperwork approved. After that, our massive dossier of thirteen important documents gets sent to China for official approval...the coveted LOA (letter of acceptance). And then...after that...we wait for the TA (travel approval). And after that, we have three months to travel and bring Lou Juan home.
She's known she was going to be adopted for five months. She is anxious to get to the United States and have a family. We have hired a tutor to teach her English. The tutor has become a friend and liaison for us, a great blessing. We can send packages to Lou Juan, and messages through her tutor, Fiona. But mostly, we wait. We feel a degree of impatience with the process, but maybe it's good to have time to contemplate the huge thing we're doing...taking a little girl from everything she's ever known, and turning her world upside down in the hope that, ultimately, things will be better for her here.
8 comments:
Hi, mom! I'm excited to see a picture of Lou Juan. You'll have to post a lot about your process so I can feed off of it while I wait... :)
Welcome to the wonderful and addictive world of bloggetry.
welcome, welcome! I'm excited to read all about this process!
i have been blogging 6 months to your daughter nosurfsarah and have of course fallen in loave with her, her poetry and god forbid her politcs
i am not welcome in my neighborhood, in this town or county because of your daughter, yes i give her all the blame...alll....all i said is that i dn't want a hundred year war and my son tony disowned me from the family...the one with horse shit all over his boots and is a RE PUB LIKE ANNN
Yay! Welcome! I'm a BIG fan of the three of your daughters that I know :) and LOVE the picture at the top of your blog - that little blond is a favorite of mine, too. :)
And THRILLED that you and NoSurf are going through this process so close to the same time.
Nice to meet you. :)
Wow, I turn my back for a day and I have five comments on my random, not very well planned post. I am glad to meet everyone (I already know Sarah and Adele) and am now much more selfconscious about writing...
Putz, Sarah is very good at knocking the edge off diehard republicans. My 19 year old son John (a Sarah-influenced Obama lover)has had some lively discussions with my MIL who is so conservative that they haven't even GOT a candidate to represent her views. Fortunately, she loves him anyway.
What fun to see your new blog! My daughters get so frustrated with their Mom for not commenting very often on their blogs and enjoying looking at the wonderful pictures without saying anything. Love those beautiful pictures of your family! I had no idea you were planning to adopt. How exciting! We will be eager to meet her too. We also want to hear the minute Caitlin gets home. When does John leave? Keep the news coming. . .
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