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Monday, August 31, 2015

The Problem With Acronyms


(AKA: We are still not DTC)

Sigh.

In my desire to get "there", I assumed that our papers would fly off to China within a day or two of being received in New York last Tuesday. No one told me that would happen. I just believed it was so and spent an exhausting week waiting for an email that never came. And then when an email did show up it was only to request more pictures or a different set of pictures and not to tell me we had those three little letters.. DTC.

Exhausting.

DTC, Date To China, is like the first time you see the building come into view as you drive up to the business. It's not even opening the door, not walking in or even getting in line....

The problem with all these "acronyms" (DTC, LID, LOA, I800, "Article 5" and  TA... ) is simply that they allow us to focus on little incremental points along this big long path and every little step carries so much weight or ... wait..... too much room for all the worries to grow in. At first having these little steps to aim for seemed good, like hopping across a lake stone by stone, but looking at your feet the whole way, you forget to look up and when you do it can be a little overwhelming how far away the shore still is. Once we have DTC we will then begin the WAIT for LID and then the WAIT for LOA and then the WAIT for... and so on and so on you see..... until we have him in our arms.

I am going to do my best to let go of all the acronyms..... ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.

(But maybe we will be DTC tomorrow and that would be auspicious as it is Steven's Birthday.... )

Sigh.... It's hard.

We have been told we don't even have a snowball's chance in hell of getting to China in 2015. We were hoping for December. Now we are just praying it's before Chinese New Year and before he turns 3.....

So, the paper work if complete and now we settle in and wait and hope and wait and try not to let it make us just a little crazy that half way across the globe there is a little baby boy, who we love already, waiting for us too.

xo
A

Friday, August 21, 2015

Our Dossier Is Complete!


Off to China next week!

Maybe he though I was a little bit crazy...haha!

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Sacramento Paper Trip....

Norah and Daddy posing at the State Capital after having the last of the papers certificated.  Norah gave up a horse back ride at Spring Lake to drive with us to Sacramento to complete our paperwork. What a sweet big sister!

Thursday, August 13, 2015

USA Approved!


We received our I800A approval today. Our approval from Homeland Security U.S.A. to bring our son home. We have been eagerly and not so patiently waiting for this letter to arrive. I posted earlier today about my feelings regarding this part of the wait... how "limbo" it all felt. And then the mail arrived and here is the letter...  So tomorrow we will drive to Sacramento to have the document "certificated" after having it notarized. And then we will Fed Ex that document and two others to a courier who will bring them to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco to have them Authenticated.

We will then put all the dossier documents together, add 8 pictures of our family in front of our home, in the kitchen, in the backyard and front room and Fed Ex them to our wonderful agency in New York. They will be double checked and mailed to China.

We should be there by the end of August. DTC (Date To China) finally...

And then the wait will begin. For, although we will be finished with the paper chase, that we started in January 2015, we will have just begun our the "real" wait. Our papers will arrive in China and then get translated and after translation they will be "logged in" to the CCCWA  (China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption) Don't you just love all the acronyms....?

The Real Wait:

It takes CCCWA "a few days or 30 days" to log us in.... LID (Log In Date). From there it is a four to six month wait to travel... 4 to 6 months.... FOUR to SIX months.... God help us.


So tomorrow August 14, 2015 (his 2.5 month birthday) we will hurry as fast as we can
and then we will wait.... as patiently as we can.



The song says it all......

Sunday, August 9, 2015

《月兒明 風兒靜》 北京天使合唱團 (東北民歌 \ 搖籃曲) ♥ ♪♫*•♪

While we are waiting for you.... we are listening to this bed time lullaby Wei used to listen...