It's Been a Crazy Few Days

Our Article 5 paperwork was picked up on schedule last Tuesday, Dec. 3 and sent to Beijing to the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA). This began our TA (Travel Approval) wait. The TA wait is usually 10-21 days with 16 being the average lately. This past Tuesday I saw a few fellow adoptive mom's in my Facebook group had received their TA and their Article 5s were picked up the same day as ours. I was shocked and excited and emailed our social worker right away to check on ours.  A while later my cell phone rang and caller ID said it was Birmingham, AL. Over the last few months I get butterfly's in my stomach every time my caller ID says Birmingham, AL. Our adoption agency's main office is located there. They have a local branch here in Louisville, which is so convenient and part of the reason we chose them as our agency. Our social worker Sarah only calls with good or bad news. She usually emails if it is just a question about paperwork or something. Anyway, when I saw caller ID I couldn't believe it! I quickly answered and Sarah told me we had received our TA! It had been only one week after we began our TA wait which I was hoping and praying would be closer to 14-16 days rather than the 20+ days some families are waiting. Who ever expected to get it in 7 days? She explained that we had the option to leave the following week and pick Hadley up Dec. 23. This meant we would be gone of Christmas, but we decided we would celebrate early and the girl's wouldn't really know the difference. Although I have already begun packing and preparing to leave the girls with family for two weeks, I was overwhelmed at the thought of leaving in 10 days. I didn't know what to do or where to begin so I did dishes and cleaned the kitchen. I finally got it together and called a travel agent that everyone in the adoption community raves about. He quoted some prices and it was not pretty. It was more that twice what we thought we would be paying for airline tickets. Apparently the few weeks leading up to Christmas are the most expensive time of the year to fly. He was even shocked by the prices. He explained if we could go a couple weeks later it would drop significantly so we decided to look into that. After talking with our agency and their contacts in China it was decided that would not work. There were closures in China the second week of January which wouldn't allow that plan to work. That pushed us back another week to our original plan we have had for months of leaving Jan. 3. Although we had a very short TA wait, we were still leaving the day we were originally planning on leaving. Flights ended up being even a little cheaper that week so it worked out for the best. I am praying for our sweet Hadley and hoping that she is being loved and well cared for and another couple of weeks ultimately won't make much of a difference. 

So the plan is we will leave on Jan. 3, have our Gotcha Day (the day you get your child) on Monday, Jan. 6 and come home on Thursday, January 16. Although I would have loved to pick Hadley up sooner this plan will work better for everyone. We have time to pack and organize the girls and house, get to celebrate Christmas with the family and hopefully wrap up the majority of our attic renovation before leaving the first week of January. 

I like having dates confirmed and airline tickets booked. Two very big things knocked off of my growing to-do list and about a million small things left. Up next, pick paint colors for the girl's new rooms, beg the pediatrician for prescriptions (I have been avoiding this one), try to unpack some of the million things I have packed to keep us under the 44 lb. weight limit, call the credit card and cell phone companies, buy baby Melatonin, cook meals to freeze, stock up on food and paper products to have on hand for the girls and our parents, etc, etc, etc. (On a side note, the last two times I have been in nesting mode while pregnant with the girls I always panic when the time is coming and insist on stockpiling paper towels, toilet paper and garbage bags. I have some weird phobia about my family running out of these things while I am gone or us coming home with a newborn/or in this case new toddler and running out of paper towels. Heaven forbid we have to drive to the store that is literally two minutes away and grab a roll. I will be stocked up for months just in case!) I think it is a control issue and one small thing I am able to control while the rest of my life feels so hectic. Our hands will be dry and our trash will be bagged, no need to worry about that! 

Sweet Hadley's Finding Ad

I was so excited to receive Hadley's finding ad in the mail today. When a baby is abandoned in China they publish an ad in the paper with a picture, a brief description of where the baby was found and the child's suspected birthday. Here is our sweet girl as a newborn. She is so cute!!

We are officially waiting on Travel Approval!!!

I woke up to an email from China that our Article 5 (a bunch of paperwork that is at the US Consulate in China) has been picked up and is on its way to the CCCWA (China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption). They will issue us our TA (travel approval) in the next 2-3 weeks and then within 48 hours we will have our consulate appointment (CA) scheduled where we will complete the US side of the adoption in Guanghouz the second week we are in China. Once we have our TA and CA scheduled we can book plane tickets and hotel rooms and leave for China. I can't believe that this long process that we started almost 15 months ago is coming to its end. Then the real fun and adventure will begin! Everyone prayer that our TA comes quickly and we are able to finalize plans before Christmas. I am worried that our adoption agency will be closed for the holidays and we will be set back a few days which would set us back another week or worse if we start to run into Chinese New Year which starts mid January. 

So as travel is quickly approaching I better start checking some things off my extensive to do list. First task at hand, beg our pediatrician for presciptions to take with us just in case. Up next, continue my extensive packing while avoiding drywall dust and two busy little girls, choosing paint colors, finish Christmas shopping, not to mention a quick trip to the chiroprator and dentist to get myself put back together before this trip happens. I think this will be a busy whirlwind the next few weeks around our house! Yikes!!

The Unknowns of Adoption

As we count down the weeks (hopefully less than six) until we board the plane and head to China to pick up our sweet baby girl, I am starting to get a little nervous. Just two years ago I was in a very similar place. I was eight months pregnant, had a wild and crazy toddler, we were packing up our old house and doing a major renovation on our new house, I wanted to decorate for the holidays and nest but didn't know which house we would be in and couldn't prepare a baby's room until two weeks before my due date. Today I am in much the same place. I am less than six weeks from having another child, we are in the middle of another major renovation, I have a wild and crazy preschooler and a wild and crazy toddler, I want to decorate for the holidays and nest, but I don't know who will be in what room and when the renovations will be done. I finally came to the conclusion today that it will all work out. Last time it was fine and this time it will be fine too! I am a planner and organizer by nature and if it were up to me I would have the baby's room decorated and fully stocked half a year before the arrival. I guess it is good for my type A personality to be tested and stretched to the limits in the more stressful times in my life.

The good news is I have set up a crib up in our bedroom. Baby Hadley will have a place to sleep when she comes home! I kept both of our other girls in our rooms the first four months or so of their lives so it is only natural/fair/appropriate that Hadley should have the opportunity to spend some time sleeping in our room with us too. Although I had considered this to be the plan I didn't like the idea of sticking her in a pack and play. It didn't feel right to me. I was hoping to bring Hadley home and have her sleep in her room, in her crib right from the start to limit the number of unnecessary transitions for her. This poor baby is only fifteen months old and already suffered more loss and more uncertainty/lack of stability than most adults. To add to her unknown past, we will pick her up spend one night in our hotel with her, drive four hours back and forth to her home town (eight hours total in the car in one day with a baby and no carseat. They don't use carseats in China), spend another three nights or so in that same hotel, then take an in-country flight from Taiyuan, Shanxi to Guangzhou where we will spend another week or so then take several more flights including one very long flight home, then strap her in a carseat to drive to our house, then stick her in a house, with other kids and animals she has never seen before. I am stressed just thinking about all of those transitions and I am an adult who knows what is happening and knows what to expect (as much as I can at this point). So at least I have a place for her to sleep (with a real crib, not a pack and play) until the uncertainty of our bedrooms/renovation situation settles down and we get the older girls settled in their new rooms and then when Hadley is ready she can move into her own room in her own crib where she will stay. Unless she wants to bunk up with one of her sisters which I hope is the case down the road. I would love for her and Isla to share a room. They will only be seven months apart so I hope one day soon they will want to share a room and lay together, giggling and staying up too late.

I have started packing which should be a whole other post! I am a planner and over-packer by nature. Everything I read from other adoptive parents says to travel light. While I see the freedom and ease in that and wish I could, I know it will not happen. I overpack for a morning trip to the zoo, a weekend at the lake, a week trip to the beach. All of these places there are American products for purchase within a few minutes. How could I not overpack in this situation where I am going to another country to pick up a child that I know almost nothing about? I do not know what size clothes or diapers to pack, is she walking, crawling, eating regular food, baby food, formula, drinking from a bottle or sippy cup, will she be sick, will I get sick from the food and water (not to be a pessimist but I am expecting that I will)? All of these uncertainties lead to only one thing....serious overpacking! My small pile of things in the corner of the closet is slowly turning into a mountain of things that is spilling over and taking up my entire closet floor. I realize there are Walmarts in China, but will they carry my favorite brand of sensitive wipes and diaper cream that my other girls with sensitive skin require? Will they carry my favorite name brand, organic sensitive infant formula I insist on using...most likely, no. I am feeling guilty enough that I am going to have to give this baby formula when my other girls were EBF for the majority of their infancy. I am going to overpack and I am proud of it! Check with me again in mid-January when we are back and I will tell you what you really should and shouldn't take on your adoption trip and I will let you know what I donated/left behind. Unfortunately the weight limit for in-country flights in China is only 44 lbs. per bag. This could make my overpacking very tricky! I am going to have to spend the next five weeks packing and repacking to distribute that weight evenly amongst all our bags. Add in there Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping and decorating, major home renovations and preparing to leave the girls for two weeks and I am going to be one busy, stressed mommy, but I couldn't be more excited for what's to come!!!

Hadley Hope ChenTing Higginbotham: Big name...little girl!

We have officially decided on a name. Actually, Aaron has finally decided he likes our original name choice. I knew on the night of September 9, 2013 when we received her referral and saw her picture for the first time, that we would name her Hadley. I laid in bed that night thinking about her and I knew her name was going to be Hadley. We have called her baby Hope for the last year so we thought that was a fitting middle name, but we also wanted to keep her Chinese name. So that means that this little, tiny girl is going to have a big, long name...Hadley Hope ChenTing Higginbotham!

On the paperwork front a lot has happened in the last few weeks. In my last post I explained that we were waiting on US Immigration to approve our i800. On Oct. 24 USCIS (US Immigration) received our i800 and began processing it. On November 6, I received confirmation over the phone that they had approved it and we got the i800 hardcopy in the mail on November 12. From there it is forwarded to the NVC (National Visa Center) where they assign it to the correct US embassy. They notify you by issuing a cable letter that states your case was sent to the US Embassy in China. We received our cable letter this yesterday, Thursday November 14 via email. The next step is the Article 5. This is the process for issuing our daughter a visa at the consulate in China. This process takes exactly two weeks. I hope our Article 5 documents are dropped of by a courier at the US Consulate in China on Tuesday, November 19 and then picked up on Tuesday, December 3. I don't know if Thanksgiving will slow us down at all, hopefully not. Once our Article 5 is picked up it is sent overnight to Beijing and couriered to the CCCWA (Chinese Center of Children's Welfare and Adoption). Once they receive our Article 5 we are in the wait for TA (Travel Approval). That takes anywhere from about 1-3 weeks. Once we have our travel approval we can look into plane tickets and finalize our plans. We are getting so close! The final step once we have our travel approval is getting a consulate appointment (CA) which is where we finalize the US side of the adoption the second week we are in China. Once we have a scheduled CA we can book our plane tickets and head to China!

Updates and Pictures

We were told that once we received our LOA (Letter of Acceptance) we could ask the orphanage for an update. We were allowed to ask 5-10 questions so of course took full advantage of this and thought of ten questions and asked for pictures and videos of our sweetie. We waited a few weeks and finally received our update. While I am grateful for any information or pictures we can get, I am disappointed with the results. None of our ten questions were addressed and the three pictures we got were taken the same day and time as our previous two videos that we already have. It doesn't give a very good picture of how she is growing and changing over these last few months since we already have video from the same day when she was 12 months old. We also received updated measurements which were clearly inaccurate. They said she has gained five pounds in less than two months, now weighing 22 lbs. Isla doesn't weight 22 lbs. at 21 months. There is no way that this little girl weights 22 lbs. at 14 months. Apparently they weight them fully dressed (and the Chinese tend to dress their babies in A LOT of layers) so maybe this poor baby had 4-5 lbs. of clothes on during her latest measurements.

Here are a few additional pictures of our sweet girl at twelve months (she is 14 months now).

Although we didn't get any new updated pictures we were holding out hope because a family we have met online through Facebook are in China right now picking up their son from the same orphanage. Yesterday they had a chance to visit the orphanage and were planning on checking in on our sweet baby girl and getting some pictures for us. We held out hope this would be our way to get an updated photo. I obsessively checked my Facebook page and email and heard back from them last night. There is good news and bad news. The bad news is they were not able to get a picture or see her because she was not at the orphanage. The good news is they were not able to get a picture or see her because she is not living in the orphanage, but rather she lives in a foster home! This is wonderful news that we had heard may be a possibility but they were able to confirm it for us. This means that our little girl will know what it is like to live in a house with the love of a family. This is very good news for all of the attachment and bonding that we hope comes quickly and naturally once we get her. Kids who are raised in orphanages never learn to bond and attach to one specific caregiver and therefore often have a lot of issue attaching once you get them home. While she will grieve harder for the loss of her foster parents once we have her, we hope she will be able to easily learn to trust us and turn to us to meet her needs and love her. I pray everyday that someone is showing her love, attention and she isn't seen as a burden to anyone. Now that I know she has a foster family I believe there is a great chance that she is being hugged, kissed, talked to and played with every day by only a couple of people rather than the numerous caregivers she would have in the orphanage.

We are still waiting on US Customs and Immigration to get the next set of paperwork (our i800) back to us so we can move on to the next. I am hoping we will have it by the end of next week.

Stay tuned for two exciting updates that I will blog about soon. We have finally chosen a name and we hope to receive her finding ad soon. I will tell you more about finding ads in a later post.

Thanks for reading!

LOA!!!!

On Tuesday we received our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) from China. This is one of the most important pieces of paperwork through this whole process and the one that you generally wait the longest for. I am happy to report that our wait was only 41 days. Many families wait an average of 2-3 months and some have waited 100+ days so we lucked out. This paper says that China approves us to adopt the specific child that we have been matched with. We quickly signed our LOA and overnighted it back to our agency. They received early afternoon on Wednesday and overnighted it along with our i800 paperwork to the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). The i800 finalizes the immigration process for our new daughter and allows us to bring her home. We hope to receive our i800 approval in the next 2 weeks. From there our information is sent to the National Visa Center (NVC) and then sent to the U.S. Embassy in Guangzhou, China, which is the city where we will spent our second week finalizing the U.S. side of the adoption. They first week will be spent in Tiayuan, Shanxi, China, which is the capitol city of the province our daughter is from with a brief day trip to Datong City, Shanxi which is where her orphanage is located.

Once our information is send to the NVC, there are a few more weeks of paperwork back and forth between the U.S. Embassy in China and the CCCWA (China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption). Then hopefully in early December we will receive travel approval from China and a Consulate appointment for us to finalize things the second week we are there.  Once we receive travel approval we will be able to book our plane tickets and finalize our travel plans. It will be very last minute and we won't know our exact travel dates until a couple weeks before we leave at the most.

Hopefully the paperwork moves very quickly and we can have her in our arms before the New Year but there is a good chance we will leave for China on January 2 or 3.

Pray for our paperwork to move through all of the systems quickly and without any hold ups and pray for our sweet girl. I have talked with another family through a Facebook adoption group who are adopting a little boy from the same orphanage and they are on the flight to China right now to pick him up. They are going to try to visit the orphanage and check on our little one and get some pictures for us. Hopefully by the middle of next week we will have some new photos and updated information on our little girl. We are so grateful to this family for checking on her and can't wait to see the pictures of them with their new little guy and hopefully hear a good report about our sweetie. Thank you in advance Whichard Family for your generosity and good luck on Monday! (That is the day they will get their son, Evan. That day is known as "Gotcha Day").

We will keep you all up to date over the next few weeks as the paper work moves a little quicker through this point of the process. We will be boarding that LONG flight before we realize what hit us!

P.S. We are still trying to agree on a name. If you talk to my husband tell him to make a decision already!