L-O-Yay!

Yesterday, while checking my email during the day, I noticed there was an email from our agency saying that we received our LOA from China! Wow--that was unexpectedly soon! For those outside the China adoption realm, the LOA is technically called the Letter Seeking Confirmation from Adopter, also called a Letter of Acceptance, shortened to LOA. It's a big step. It doesn't seem like a big step at this moment, because it really just seems to add up to more waiting. But it is our confirmation to China that we are still planning to follow through for Ellie and to tell them to issue our travel approval. Our timeline to travel at this point is in "11 to 15 weeks," which I guess is a quote with the average wait times for other families at this point.

This is a good thing. Through the maze of paperwork and waiting, we hold onto that stuff that we can and celebrate the big steps along the way. I love and appreciate having the confirmation that we are on track.

On another note, I suppose I should start getting my act together because time is running out to prepare to add a 3rd child to our family. We did move her crib into her room, but I haven't bought sheets yet. I'm still waiting to paint her dresser that was a gift from a friend. Meanwhile, her clothes are hanging or piled in various places. Shouldn't I be more prepared? What is the deal? I've always had a hard time with this part... I don't like to set everything up and have it sitting there, waiting to be used, but with no child here yet to use it. I don't like to see the empty room and the empty crib and the clothes hanging sweetly in the closet. Someone asked me recently about how I'm coping with the wait. As I've said here, I think I'm coping fine. I'm actually so busy that I sometimes fail to notice how quickly this wait is passing by because so many hours are taken up by the two children who are already here. Or, maybe I just cope by staying busy so I won't have to think about my girl, waiting over there. Anyway, I then end up putting things off until the last minute, until it is one week until we leave for China and I'm doing last minute shopping and arranging, trying to get everything in order, while simultaneously packing to fly overseas. Do other people do this?

Asher=3

What a busy week this has been! Each week, I think that maybe there will be a little more downtime, somewhere. Each week, I find out that I am wrong. I had thoughts that when both boys started preschool this fall that there might have been a few extra moments of sanity, but instead, I seem to spend the time catching up on all the things that I can't get done any other time when they are home. Oh well, to quote Natalie Merchant, these are the days we will remember.

Asher turned 3 this past week. What a guy. Seriously. I love this kid, even though of course, I love all of my children. But still, Asher has this sweet and kind way about him that I just cherish. And his laugh--when you tickle him, he laughs this deep belly laugh that you can't help but laugh along with.I can really see how he was given a Chinese name that meant "happy" before his adoption, something we tried to carry forward by naming him Asher, since it too means happy.

We celebrated by having a small party with our little family at home and thenon Friday night, we went to my parents house for dinner, cake and ice cream. He did great; he understands now what to do with a present, and he had a wonderful time opening gifts! Actually, a few hours earlier, we had been at the doctor's office for his 3-year appointment, where he received several shots for school. So, he wasn't feeling the greatest at first and simply hung out with Russ for a while, sort of spacing out and clutching a cracker. I wondered how long this would go one, but eventually, he came out of his shell and seemed to do better with a little birthday cake and Tylenol.

This morning, Caleb and I participated in a Fun Run as a fundraiser for his school. It was a1-mile run around the neighborhood. I was pretty impressed with Caleb, as he ran practically the whole thing. I actually went into the thing assuming we would walk most of it--I guess I underestimated Caleb'senergy levels--and right up until the start when the gun went off, I had walking in mind. Except that everyone else started running, including Caleb, and then we just didn't slow down. Afterward, we celebrated with some bagels and bananas and he has already told me that he wants to do another race.

Following the run, we then went to the zoo for a free morning for Asher's school. They boys are in 2 different schools this year, plus neither one of them is in our district where we live. Last spring, Caleb was in preschool with the public school system, but since he technically turned 5 in August, he was eligible for Kindergarten. We opted to keep him out one more year, and since we were trying to movein the spring, we weren't sure where to send him for a preK program. We finally decided on the school he goes to now, since we needed to make a decision to go somewhere, lest he end up being homeschooled becausewe couldn't decide on anything at all. His school is on the north end of the city. Asher, on the other hand, was slated to begin in the same program that Caleb was in last year, but since we moved, he was unable to go to our old school. So, they chose a new school for him, which is in the other direction, south of our house. Between driving 2different directions in the mornings and keeping track of show-and-share days, library days and teacher's notes, it has been a lot of running around. Still, it's only one school year of this. But, case in point, we ended up attending 2 events on Saturday for 2 different schools.

We did have a great time at the zoo as well. Asher is prettybig into animals, and is often fearless at times. There were a lot of kids from school there, as well as some former teachers for Caleb, so he was pretty excited to see them. Well, we all were, because we actually think the program is pretty great. Between the train ride, seeing the camels and petting jumbo-sized grasshoppers, I think the boys had a great time. And then it was time to go home to get some rest!

Ellie Update!

Well, I'm so excited because today we heard from our agency and were sent a little updated information about Ellie! It was such a nice surprise!

We had sent a care package to her foster family in August. I must admit, I wanted her to have a few things from us, but I also hoped we would get some updates by doing this as well. In the past, we had sent gifts to both boys before their adoptions. In both cases, they arrived on adoption day with one or two of the items we had sent. For Asher, it was the photo album of our family that we gave him so he might have a betteridea of who we are. Caleb arrived with both his photo album and the stuffed beagle we sent to slightly prepare him for Owen (although no one can truly be prepared for Owen....)

Anyway, we followed suit and sent Ellie a care package about a month ago with a stuffed puppy, some socks, a photo album and some chocolates for her foster family. We also sent a disposable camera in case they were inclined to take some pictures of her between now and the day that we meet. We were pleasantly surprised tofind that today they sent an update about how she is doing, saying that they received the package. She has been with the same foster family for over a year, and they have a son and a daughter who live there. I'm so thankful for this...I just can't say. Although I don't know exactly how great the foster family is, she is probably "getting" the idea of family a lot more in this way than by living in an orphanage, we hope.

She has also been saying some words, and has been healthy. They gave us updated measurements, which I had to plot out on the growth chart on my own to see where she was...but it wasn't too bad...18% for her weight.....which is way better than either of our skinny little boys when they first arrived!

I'm so excited to see what she looks like. They only sent one new picture, but it is like gold to me....such a sweet face and little smile. I wonder how she is doing, about her hearing and where she is at on that spectrum. I hope she is happy. I can't wait to see her in person!

Day 37

Lately, I've had a few people ask me about where we are at in the wait for Ellie and when we think we will travel. Well, the answer is this:

"We are on day 37 of our wait for LOA, then when we get that, we'll file the I-800, then we wait for TA, then we can go."

But, because that sounds like a certain amount of jibberish to many people, I instead usually just say something like this:

"We're hoping to go in January."

So, that's where we are. The adoption process hasn't changed a ton since we started with Caleb's, although there are added requirements that do seem to make the whole thing go longer. We tend to wait at least a little while before announcing our new child to the world because the wait does seem long after that point. With the boys, we waited 8 and 9 months between the time we found out they existed until we actually met them in person. It's long, yes, and pregnancy is a similar timeline, but at least with pregnancy, the baby is already housed with Mom, not learning to walk in an orphanage on the other side of the world. That might sound harsh, but really, I don't have bitterness about it at all. I've come to accept that it does take quite a while for administrative purposes and communication. That's just how it is.

We're waiting for our Letter of Acceptance (LOA), which is a piece of paper saying that we are approved to adopt Ellie. We get this, even though it's already been pre-approved. Writing that down makes it sound like we really are on some type of paperwork runaround, but that's the system. The LOA usually arrives between about 50 and 100 days after our stuff is logged into China. We sign it and then send it back and then file the I-800, a form for U.S. immigration purposes. It didn't use to be this way. With Caleb's we got our LOA and then waited to find out when we could go. But, things have changed and it is for the better since the U.S. became party to the Hague Convention--a step that works to protect children from trafficking and such. So, the I-800 gets filed, which takes a few weeks, and then we wait for our Travel Approval (TA), the point at which they tell us we can go. Most people travel within 2 to 4 weeks after getting the TA.

So, for anyone still reading through that jargon, that is our timeline to Ellie. It might also be easier to say that we are expecting January because her timeline is following Asher's very closely, but we are also being optimistic. We received Asher's referral in 2009 on the same day that we received Ellie's in 2011 (June 3). We also were logged in to China at roughly the same time, 2 years apart in mid-August. And since we left for China in late February of 2010 for Asher, we are being optimistic that perhaps we will leave just a bit sooner this time around? I can always hope.

It's funny how things change. When we were waiting for Caleb, we didn't have children and the wait seemed impossibly long. We were members of a Yahoo! group with other waiting families from our agency, and I followed how everyone else was faring with the timeline. But now, 4 years later, sometimes I barely have time to check on things. I had to calculate that we were 37 days into the wait before I wrote this post, which used to be something I knew every day until we got our LOA. That's how it goes, I guess, so maybe if we don't actually go in January and it ends up being March again, that will be OK. It will work out, I know it.

Air Show 2011

Yesterday, we went to see an air show with the Blue Angels, sponsored by the U.S. military. It was an awesome display--one that I tried to take pictures of but the planes were going way too fast for my camera. We did have a good time, though. Asher loved the planes and the air displays and kept yelling, "hey! Fast!" The planes are actually quite loud when flying directly overhead, which scared him quite a bit, but after a minute or two, he was back to being excited.

Here's the thing that I thought was the greatest part of the day: right after we arrived, an explosion went off in the distant part of the air field, a sort of fake "bomb" that a plane had pretended to drop as it went by. Asher was a little stunned and he just turned around, practically jumping into my arms because he was afraid. That shouldn't be a big deal, except that a year ago, there would have been no effort to seek his Mom at all....he would have just cried because he didn't necessarily find me all that comforting either! It has taken Asher a long time to "get" that we're family. It was the sweetest thing for me when periodicallyduring the show, turned to me and said, "I'm scared." He's come such a long way, this little trooper of mine.

So, it was a great day in the sunshine, enjoying being part of a family and celebrating our freedom. I could not ask for more!

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

Trouble? Who...me?