L.I.D.

Are you keeping up with the adoption lingo acronyms? ...that's Log In Date

I wrote this entry several weeks ago and never got around to posting it...

So we were kind of figuring that this milestone had probably come and passed and we just hadn't heard yet.

Log In Date is when our documents are officially marked as being entered into the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs system. Our documents had gone to China on May 16th so we were hoping they were logged in by now. Well it turns out that Tina had gotten an email from our agency on the 21st (the solstice), but was in Cheney with Ben, visiting her Dad and her brother's family. Turns out our dossier was logged in on June 2nd! So it only took two weeks from when we sent in our documents.

The time frame now is about 8 to 9 weeks from log in date to Travel Approval (TA) and then two to three weeks from TA to actually getting on the plane and going to get him!!

So let's see... If we count out 12 weeks from our Log In Date, we will almost certainly be traveling by the 25th of August! But that's almost a "worst case scenario" timeline. Of course anything could happen, and it might take a bit longer than that... But Hey! Anything could happen, and we may well be traveling a bit sooner than that!!!

We are hoping that we travel before school starts so the trip doesn't interfere with Cam and Ben's schoolwork/attendance. Even if we do get pushed back into September, we will still take them with us. Tina and I feel that this is too important of a change in our family for them not to be there with us. And the opportunity to visit China is, in our minds, a more than worthy reason to miss a few days of public school.

Thoughts while we wait...

just kinda been thinking...

While we are in this final waiting period, We've had time to reflect on what we are doing. I feel this process is happening as it should and there is a feeling of destiny unfolding. I know I have written about this before, but it's on my mind again now

Tina and I keep looking at each other and asking, "Do we REALLY know what we're doing?" The answer is always a wild, crazy and ecstatic "NO!"

Getting a baby this way contrasts with the organic way we produced our first two in that their is a lot of technical, and formal work involved. But I feel that in spite of that, our motivation has been the same as it was with Cam and Ben, in that this adventure is being driven by our hearts and not our heads. Which I feel is at it should be.

Babies come through acts of love and passion. I try to keep my feeling for Kai and his coming arrival wrapped in sense of wonder and mystery. I know that there is plenty of hard reality ahead of us, and I should be cautious about over-romanticizing it all, but the same thing can be said for making babies the old fashioned way. Given that, I think it's best to enjoy the romance in it!

The Brown Envelope!

Mail From China...

When Cameron picked up the mail on Saturday this was in the mailbox!

It's an information packet from the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou. It contains forms we need to fill out for Kai's immigration visa and adoption process in China. These are sent out when the I-171 form from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Bureau of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is processed.

In reality, this isn't that big of a step in the process, and not everybody even gets one. The forms inside it are all available online, but it was really cool to have it show up. It's another tangible marker along the path.

One of the forms inside was all written in Chinese, and there is a Xerox copy of a little tourism map of Guangzhou.

Anyway, it got us fired up again as we wait to hear from the CCAA in China. To recap where we are in the process...

We were DTC (documents to China) on May 16. The next step is LID (log in date), when the CCAA (Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs) officially marks our dossier as being in their system. We hope this has happened already but we haven't heard, and may not. What we are really waiting on right now is our TA (travel approval). For most people adopting waiting children right now, the time from DTC to TA is about 8 to 12 weeks. Travel usually happens about 2 to 3 weeks after TA. So worst case scenario, we will be traveling the first week in September, but it could be as soon as the first week of August.

The Nursery is Coming Together

Tina has been working hard on Kai's room...

Well, we started thinking twice about not having a crib. We figure this will be what Kai has been used to sleeping in, so maybe a toddler bed isn't the best idea. And while we plan on having him in our bedroom with us for quite a while when he first comes home, our room is too small to keep an empty crib in before he gets here. So we made a big push to convert the "Green Room" back into a nursery.

Decorating a nursery again at our age is different. There's lots of nostalgia that it brings up.

The one big decision was the theme. We thought about something Chinese, like pandas or dragons, but in the end we went with Winnie the Pooh. There's a lot of really nice "Classic Pooh" stuff out now that has a soft relaxed look, not the loud Disney version.

We took some pictures and put them on a webpage you can see by CLICKING HERE.

Neighborhood Graffiti...

Finally Cleaned the White Board

This has been on our refrigerator white board for about a month now. i finally scanned it so we could wipe it off. Our 14 year old neighbor, Traesti Gudmundson (Ben's best friend) drew this one afternoon. Amazingly "ON" caricatures if you ask me! Well, the pictures we have of Kai are about a year old now, so I'm not real sure about his, but I think Traesti caught him in spirit.

Lucky Number 834798817500

We Are DTC!!!

DTC is adoption lingo for "Dossier To China".

834798817500 is the FedEx tracking number on the package going to China with our Dossier.

We are amazed that we are at this point already! The process we began last December has come to its first major goal. I feel like I've said that a number of times on this journal, but this one is really big. We don't have any more of the busy-work, paper chase tasks to complete. We have some waiting to do, and then we start the REAL process.

So how much waiting is there now?

Well, first we are waiting for LID. That's "Log In Date", the day our dossier is "logged-in" at the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs). This will probably take one to two weeks -- could be a few days, could be a month. Once we get there, it will take about 8 - 9 weeks to get TA (Travel Approval).

Once we have TA it's pretty much get our tickets and go. If you do the math it looks like we will be traveling by early August! This has pretty much been our "aggressive" goal. We wanted to make this happen as quickly as possible. There were a number of times when things seemed to slow down for us, but really it has gone pretty smoothly. This is because Tina has been doing an amazing job of keeping everything organized and following up on everything each step of the way.

It won't be long now, and we will be on our way to bring Kai home!

The Last Piece of Our Paper Chase Puzzle!!

We Got The I-171H !!

That's it! We've got all the pieces of paper we need now to complete our dossier!

We have to get a copy of it notarized, then we send it and a bunch of other forms to Olympia for "authentication". Then we send them all off one more time to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco for authentication (yes, again!) and that's it!

Well almost. Then the whole packet goes to our Agency where it's translated and then sent to China. Since we already have "placement approval" to adopt Kai, the CCAA just has to confirm all our paper work is in order and then we should get our travel approval. Our agency thinks that August is a reasonable timeline to go!

Fingerprinting

Road Trip to the Department of Homeland Security!

Last Monday Tina and I had our appointment to be fingerprinted as part of the process of getting our I171H. We had to be down in Tukwilla, near the SeaTac airport by 10:00 AM. It was a beautiful day and there was very light traffic on the way down. We made great time and had no trouble finding our way to the place.

We cleared the metal detectors and had our belongings x-rayed, it was just like the airport. Then we got in line with a bunch of people who may have been weak and weary, yearning to breath free, but they mostly just appeared to be very concerned as to wether or not they had the correct forms with them. I didn't see any obvious terrorists, so maybe the system is working.

Anyway, they had some really great hi-tech gear for scanning our fingerprints. Everything was digital, no ink! The whole process from beginning to end only took a half an hour.

We headed back north and stopped in Mount Vernon for lunch at the Skagit River Brewery, then went to the Skagit County Health Dept. to get the second round of our Hep A and B vaccine series.

It was actually a pretty fun day and it felt good to be moving forward in the process again.

They told us that it might be helpful if we contacted the offices in Yakima and let them know that we were adopting a child with special needs. So we waited a few days then emailed them the following note:

We are writing to request that our I600A application be expedited. We

have received official approval from the China Center for Adoption

Affairs to adopt a waiting child with special needs. His name is Dang

Hui, he is living in a Social Welfare Institute (orphanage) in Baoding

China. He is 28 months old, and waiting for medical care at Children's

Hospital in Seattle. We have attached a copy of the letter for your

review.

We were fingerprinted in Seattle on Monday, April 18th for our

application for foreign adoption. Our filing date is March 07, 2005.

Many of the documents we have gathered are already notarized are date

sensitive, and will expire if we do not have our dossier sent to China

by late May.

Can you please let us know the status of our application, and the

anticipated time frame for processing our 171H? We appreciate your time

and help in this matter.

Thank you,

Scott and Christine Ocheltree

We were really surprised when we got the following message back yesterday, Monday 4/26...

Scott & Christine,

I gave your request to Adjudicating Officer and he would like to see a

letter from Children's Hospital explaining the disability of the child, what kind

treatment they will be doing and when the child has an appointment to be

there.

You case should be done in 2 or 3 weeks but if you can get that information

we can do it faster.

Thanks

Adoptions Unit

415 N. 3rd. St.

Yakima, WA 98903

((509) 225-6838 (fax)

+Yakima.Adoptions@DHS.GOV

We're not sure how we are supposed to have an appointment at Children's when we can't get travel approval from China without the document we are waiting for from Yakima, but we are going to have our family doctor write a letter for us to fax in. Either way, this is WAY faster than we had anticipated. So things are moving pretty quickly again!!

Fingerprinting Appointment

I guess it is true: When it Rains, it Pours!

So here is my second post in one day, after weeks of no posting.

When Tina checked the mail today she found a package from the USCIS! They have us scheduled to get our fingerprinting done at 10:00 AM on Monday, April 18th!

This means we won't be driving to Yakima next Thursday. I'm kind of bummed about that a bit now, because Pat McCutcheon had asked me if we would stop by their place on our way. It would have been great to see him and Paula and Jasper. I guess we'll have to wait to see them now.

The good news though is that things are moving forward again. The whole idea of scheduling the review in Yakima was actually in hopes of getting them to move on our application before the appointment, and it worked. This was an idea Tina got from other people on the internet who had done the same thing. Funny, ask for an appointment to find out what's taking so long, and suddenly you get your appointment. Apparently all the cliches are true: "when it rains, it pours", and "the squeaky wheel gets the oil".

So stay tooned, it looks like this blog might be getting more interesting here for a while!

PA Arrived!!

Things are starting to happen again!


Today we received the following document via email from our adoption agency. This is the document from the Chinese government saying they approve of our adoption of Kai (Dang Hui). There had been a big lull in seeing anybody receive these since the Chinese New Year celebration. Suddenly the internet boards were all buzzing yesterday as people started to hear from their agencies that their Prior Approvals were arriving via email from China.

Tina was certain that ours would be here any minute. Then last night our internet connection at the house went out so we couldn't check our email. When I got to work this morning I checked my email, and this had arrived at 6:06 PM last night.










The next big hurdle still ahead of us is getting the I-171H form from the

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

(USCIS). Now that they are part of the "Department of Homeland Security" this process has become very slow in Washington state.

Tina and I have scheduled an appointment to drive over to Yakima next Thursday to "review our application". Our hope is that we will be able to get them to make some forward movement in the process for us.

Been Waiting For an Update?

well these days it's all about the waiting...

I can't even remember my last post now. The paper work game has kind of mostly wrapped up and we've been waiting to hear back from different government agencies.

I got my birth certificate back from the Garden State with a really official letter explaining that it really is my birth certificate and that it really is from New Jersey. I immediately sent if back to the courier service in New York to get the Chinese Consulate to confirm that it really is my birth certificate and it really is from New Jersey.

We sent our I-600A off to Yakima weeks ago. They sat on it for weeks, then sent it back and said we were supposed to send in the fingerprinting fee with it. We thought we paid that one when we got fingerprinted. So we wrote another check and sent it off again. A little over a week later and it appears they have cashed both our checks so we think that's a good sign. We hope it won't be too long now before we get our fingerprinting appointment so we can get the I-700H and finish assembling our dossier for China.

We are also still waiting to hear back from the CCAA in China. We sent off our LOI (letter of intent) back in early February, and still haven't heard anything there.

We were beginning to feel frustrated with our agency, as we are sitting out here in limbo, so Tina wrote the director an email asking for help, or at least an update. She promptly wrote back a very nice message that basically explained that yes, we are in the hard part of the process now.

It's called waiting.

Who's Idea Was it That I Should be Born in New Jersey?

My parents are in trouble...

I am a Washingtonian! I swear I am. It's the only place I can remember living. Okay, so there's some pretty strong documentation that indicates I spent a bit of time early on in New Jersey, but hey, that was not my fault!

My mother is a native of Washington, shouldn't I get credit for that? My wife and both my kids are native Washingtonians. I like that word, Washingtonian. I like Bellinghamster even better, and since I've lived here longer than anywhere else, I claim that designation too! Hey, are people from Vermont called Vermontsters?

Anyway, my birth certificate has to be "Authenticated" by the Secretary of State of New Jersey's office.

Apparently you can just walk right in there on any business day and they'll take care of it for you while you wait. Isn't that convenient? What a great service! Maybe I'll just head on over there on my lunch break tomorrow and get that thing authenticated. Oh wait, their office is in Trenton!

Time zones, UPS, Return Postage....

Heavy sigh, count to 10

yi
er
san
si
wo
liu
qi
ba
jiu
shi

(that's counting to 10 in Mandarin)

So, I wonder if Kai will think of himself as a Washingtonian? As he grows up, will he remember anything from his life in China? I hope we can visit the SWI where he is living, and that we will meet the "aunties" who are caring for him. I want to have video for him to see as he grows up, so he can see and remember the people who have loved and cared for him.

Hmmm... His birth certificate is going to be from China. Man, I hope that's not a big problem for him when he's 43. I guess I'll quit complaining about the whole New Jersey thing...

Destiny and Adoption

Everything is happening for a reason...

This idea of destiny has really been on our minds a lot lately. This feeling that Kai is meant to be with us and that we are meant to be with him.

The concept of destiny is popular with adoptive families. It is reassuring in many ways. I recently read an article in the magazine "Adoptive Families" by Bonnie Perkel that talked about this, at one point Ms. Perkel says:

"

I spoke with some of my philosophy professors about the theme of adoption and destiny. One said that international adoption may be a new kind of conception, in which “a being may be going through whatever body they can” to arrive in the family and culture where they belong. In other words, destiny will bring them to a new kind of family not based on biology."

When I read this I thought her philosophy professors must be anthroposophists (Waldorf word, sorry). This idea of incarnating souls choosing a path into this world fits right in with their ideas.

Could this be what's happening? What explains all the coincidences and strong feelings we have around this?

I like the quote from the end of the movie, Forrest Gump, where Forrest says, "

I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin' around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it's both, maybe both happening at the same time."

I-600A Is Off To Yakima

Great News From Work!

School Specialty Announced a New Adoption Assistance Benefit Program.

This is one of those amazing things that comes along and makes you think, "maybe we are supposed to be doing this now!"

Today at work I got an email with the following information in it:

School Specialty, Inc. has established an Adoption Assistance Plan to reimburse Associates for all or a portion of the cost of adopting a child. The Plan will apply to adoptions that become finalized on/after February 1, 2005. The maximum aggregate amount that will be reimbursed for the adoption of any one child under this Plan, less applicable withholdings, is $5,000.00.

WOOO HOOOO!!!

This is SO cool!! Major kudo's to School Specialty Inc.!! Which is a pretty amazing thing coming from me as I usually have a pretty good rant on the evils of this corporation. So anyway, in recognition of their potential help with bringing Kai home, here's their logo:

And it's even linked to their corporate website. If you'd like to check them out, click away!

We Finished Our Home Study!

Monday was our home visit, and the boys officially gave their permission for us to adopt.

It's been pretty busy, so the blogging is slowing down a little.

Yesterday was Monday, and we had our home visit with our social worker, JoAnn. She has really been a great resource for us as she has so much personal experience. She has three adopted children of her own: a 24 year old son from Colombia, a 20 year old daughter from Korea, and a 15 year old son from Colorado.

She's very easy to talk with, and I know she's on our side, but I still would feel somewhat anxious when thinking about our interviews beforehand. When we actually did the interviews, I focused on relaxing and just being as honest and open. It was actually a very interesting process. It's kind of cathartic to talk to someone about your life. At times I would get somewhat self conscious, as the conversation seemed kind of one sided. I like talking about myself, but I usually try to keep things balanced, and ask questions about the other person. That's now how these conversations go.

Anyway, she came to our house on Tuesday afternoon. We had cleaned and cleaned and cleaned! I don't think she cared much about the cleaning though. She had us show her around, and she was very nice and complementary. Tina thought that she really liked our house. I think she probably did, but I know that she probably looks as lots of people's homes so the cynic in me can't help but think she might just have been being nice. She did want to see the labyrinth because she had read about it here on the blog. We talked to her about the neighborhood, and showed her the different things we had done to the house. We even dragged her into our bedroom closet to see how amazing it is. I think that it's hard to appreciate though if you haven't lived with it in it's prior condition for years and years.

She didn't seem concerned by the fact that there is no obvious nursery. She asked to see the fire extinguisher, and that we demonstrate a working smoke detector. Thankfully she had warned us she would need to see these. We had a working smoke detector, but we didn't have a fire extinguisher before, so we had picked one up over the weekend. we also had replaced the battery in the smoke detector, just to make sure. And we added two more smoke detectors: one in the kitchen, and one in the garage. Our friends Alex and Kim will be so proud of us!

All that left was her interviews with Cam and Ben. We still don't know exactly what she asked in those conversations, but they each lasted about 15 minutes, one on one, in the other room with the door closed. JoAnn told us that she asked each boy if we had their permission to adopt. This is a requirement of China's. She told us they both said yes.

I was really glad that this was part of the process. Because no matter how much time and energy the boys see us focusing on this, I worried that to them this might still be just some abstract dinnertime conversation. I think that having an outside third person take them aside and directly ask what they think about it makes it much more concrete and real for them.

So that's done! she will be sending the final draft of her report to the agency later this week. It will be translated and put into our dossier for China. Now that we have completed this we can apply for the I-600A, make appointments to be fingerprinted, and even apply for some grants.

And lastly, we asked JoAnn what she thought our schedule might be looking like now, She said we might be traveling as soon as May or June!

Nesting - or... Closet Excavation

A very busy weekend

On Friday Tina and I each met with our SW individually. We both felt like our meetings went well. JoAnn is very easy to talk to, and has been very helpful in providing information and perspective on international adoption. She scheduled her home visit for Tuesday; she'll meet with each of the boys at that time.

Now so you know, I think we keep the house pretty clean. We're not as compulsive about it as my sister, and we don't use a housecleaning service like my brother, so the place isn't spotless, but considering the amount of stuff we've got in the amount (or lack thereof) space we have, it's pretty clean. Okay, so that being said, a home visit from a social worker doing a "study" is probably more than enough motivation to kick the weekend chores into overdrive.

Our ultimate goal right now of course is to convert our "extra" room into a nursery. The problem with this is that this room is not really "extra". There is no extra space in the house. We don't call the room the "extra" room, we call it "The Green Room", because when we remodeled about 10 years ago, we wallpapered one of the walls dark green and decorated with green colors. We started jokingly referring to it as The Green Room. It eventually stuck, and now it is The Green Room. And that Green Room is used for everything!

Now pretty much everything has to come out of there. But where will it go? Time to rethink all the other storage spaces in the house. Step one, Scott & Tina's closet. This was a crazy idea, but it did need to happen. We bought 2 of these ClosetMAID Systems. Then we took everything (I mean EVERYTHING) out of our closet so we could install them. When we got everything out of that closet we rediscovered the walls had needed painting when we moved into that closet 18 years ago. Se we went and got spackle and paint. Good thing we got up early.

While the paint was drying we took the old dog house to the dump, and the old dresser out of our closet to GoodWill. We were ready to start installing the closet systems by about 4:00PM.

I wonder which of the language sets on the instruction sheet has all the instructions? It's not the English set. Since we had two full sets to install we actually did the second set correctly the first time through. We planned to sleep in the living room if we didn't finish the project in one day, but we pressed on through, till 1:00AM and got the whole thing put back together, and slept in our own bed. I have to say, it was worth it! Tina and I both go in the closet now and marvel at the space. It is very different than before. We took a second huge load to GoodWill the next day, and got through most of the housework. Thank goodness the SW's home visit isn't till Tuesday!

We are going to do pantry and the coat closet too. We are hoping that we will gain some more space there for relocating stuff out of The Green Room.

Soon to be "Kai's Room"!!

A Complete Set...

Cam's passport came today so now we have all four!

LOI in Translation! - Plus Nesting & Hand-Me-Downs,

We got an e-mail from Stefani, boxes from friends, and managed to dig a bit out...

We received the following email today:

From: Stefani
Date: February 3, 2005 10:58:52 AM PST
To: Tina Ocheltree <

tocheltree@mac.com

>
Subject: Re: LOI

Charlene is translating the LOI now so hopefully we'll see it off to China in the next couple of days. So glad the other Christine Ocheltree didn't hold you up and we are off and running right on schedule.

Stefani Ellison
China Program Coordinator
Children's House International

http://www.childrenshouseinternational.com

Fully Licensed in Florida, Utah, and Washington
Read about my incredible daughter Taisha at

http://www.waitingchild.org/taisha.html

This feels big, like it's really happening now. Someone is translating our letter into Chinese and it's going to be sent to the CCAA. I know that the wheels have really been in motion from the moment we sent in our application, but now the little steps we've been taking are starting to add up!

We have also begun to receive unsolicited hand-me-downs. One of Tina's pre-school parents brought her a box of clothes yesterday, and a woman I'm friends with at work brought me a bag of clothes her grandson has outgrown. It's funny looking through piles of little boy clothes.

We cleaned out a dresser to make room for the clothes. We are beginning to purge areas to make room. I think I'm going to try to take before and after pictures of the reclamation process in the "green room".

We ended our evening by watching some videos on China. We're down to the dregs of the library's collection. I'm going to have to start reading books now.

What Matters Most

I have really been enjoying writing this blog. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback, and I'm glad people are taking an interest in it.

In reading through the last several entries, some of them sound to me like I'm complaining. There is a lot of anxiety around the waiting, and the paper chase. It's easy to get caught up in the little petty details and lose perspective. Sometimes I forget what it must be like for Kai, and all the other little ones on the other side of this process.

Tina forwarded the following text to me. Our agency administrator, Stefani Ellison wrote this and posted it on a website. It makes me stop and think about why we are doing this, and helps me remember that bureaucratic mix-ups, walk-in clinic fees, and closet space doesn't matter. These are all just the little steps along the way. If we're going to get there, we need to keep focused on the goal, and not let the little stumbles along the way distract us.

So if I haven't made you cry while reading this for a while, I'll let someone else take a shot at it. This is from the perspective of someone who has been through the process of international adoption...
.

There is a reason that we call this an adoption journey. It’s because it is process and there is actually no end. Yes, the adoption is completed but its effects last a lifetime. Your mind is changed, your heart is changed, and you are no longer the person you were when you began.

So, when you come home and you don't fit in, you are right... you don't. No longer can you sit through pointless social gatherings and you become glassy eyed at the long spirited conversation your neighbors have about whose dog upset the trash can like it really matters. THINGS and the chasing, collecting and maintaining of those THINGS lose their glitter when you think of the sparkle that could be put on the face of a child for mere donated pennies or some of our time tying blankets. You lose patience with those who cannot understand the urgency of the task before you.... that children are crying. Children are dying. And the world keeps on shopping. Spending billions of dollars on things... that... don't.... matter...

When you look into the eyes of a child in the SWI you visit, your eyes never see the world the same again. Most of the world "doesn't get it" and to those that do, we must stick together because otherwise it’s a lonely place. For those of us who continually hear in the back of our minds the crying of the children left behind, we cannot rest because we cannot forget. There is no silence. Our friends, families, spouses may not understand and we ourselves may not understand why we cannot make the crying stop or make the urgency end. So we do what we can do. We give what we can give. And often, we join in the crying.