I-800 Approval!

Today in the mail we received our Notice of Provisional Approval of our Form I-800 (Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative) from US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Our paperwork now goes to the USCIS National Visa Center (NVC) where it will be processed and a 'cable' (which I suspect is really an email these days) will be sent to the US Consulate in Guangzhou, China to let them know we have approval for Mei Mei's US Visa. An 'Article 5' letter will then be generated by the US Consulate in Guangzhou. Our agency will send a courier to pick up that letter and ship it to the China Center of Adoption Affairs in Beijing. China will then process our final paperwork and issue our Travel Approval. Then, once we actually get to China and adopt Mei Mei in China, we get to do a bunch more paperwork and processing at the US Consulate in Guangzhou, including a medical exam for her, TB testing and vaccinations, and an oath-taking ceremony, in order to actually obtain her US immigrant Visa. Doesn't this process sound simple and straight forward - HA!

We are getting so close now! We hope to get TA sometime in January and complete the adoption formalities before the beginning of Chinese New Year, which begins February 14th, and perhaps stay for some of the festivities.

Oh, and here are pictures of the birthday cake we sent to Mei Mei and the fruit basket for her foster family. The cake has the Chinese characters for 'Happy Birthday' and the little animal is a snake - Mei Mei was born in the Year of the Snake.

We used a regular Chinese delivery service rather than an adoption care package service , so no pics of her with her cake, unfortunately. It was much faster and less expensive that way and I have a package on the way. I am having too much fun shopping for gifts for Mei Mei, most of which we will bring with us to China. We are bringing her her own digital camera to take pictures and a Leapster 2 handheld game and cartridges for entertainment and to help with language acquisition. Lots of markers, notepads. Next on my list are clothes! If you have suggestions for your favorite place to clothes shop for an 8 year old girl, please do tell! I need to bring lots of layers - it will be cold in Wuhan and even colder in Beijing if we can get her there, and in the 60's in Guangzhou. Need a bathing suit, too for indoor pools! Of course, we can shop in China too (and almost certainly will)!

Hugs, Laura Beth

Happy Birthday, Mei Mei!

Our girl turned 8 today! We had a birthday cake delivered to her and a fruit basket for her foster family. I am putting a care package in the mail this week with some more goodies for her too. I so wish she could have been home with us for this birthday! I have bought her lots of things, but plan on taking many of them with us to China to surprise her with, to break the ice, and to keep her entertained.

A few days after we sent our previous care package, we received a brief email (in Chinese) from Wuhan Children's Welfare Institute confirming its receipt...along with an quick update and two pictures! According to the email, Mei Mei is 130cm tall and 30kg, or about 4 feet 3 inches tall, and 66 pounds. I am having a hard time believing the weight, which would put her near the 80th percentile on the US growth charts. Especially looking at the way her pants are drooping off her little body in her new pics! I think she was weighed with all of her clothes and her coat on (and maybe her bicycle or something, too???)

I was very surprised, to say the least, that Mei Mei's cute pigtails are gone! Her hair has been cropped quite short, as you can see. Sort of a boy cut, unfortunately. I know it is shallow to be upset about someone chopping off my daughter's hair, but I will freely admit that I am. I have no idea why they would have cut her hair so severely. Of course hair will grow. And I am very glad that I found out now, rather than when we meet her face to face for the first time in China! I am not sure that I would have been able to disguise my surprise! So, I will leave all the cute pony tail holders at home and pack lots of hair clippies and some head bands instead, and some feminine looking clothes, so our beautiful girl won't be mistaken for a boy. I think that she has lovely, delicate features. Now, if we can just put a real smile back on her face!

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I am trying not to read to much into her expressions in these photos (sadness, apprehension, perhaps fear?) and I am hoping that she was just in a big rush, whisked off to the Wuhan Children's Institute for quick measurements and an unexpected photo shoot. I see that she is wearing the same Snoopy coat that she was wearing in her photos in March, which is much too large for her. Hopefully she got her new pink coat from us the same day! I was hoping for a big smile so that I could see if she has front teeth now.

Long hair, shorn hair or no hair at all, she is our daughter and we think that she is beautiful. As a matter of fact, it was the picture below, taken when she was about the same age as Eliana is now and about to go in for her shunt surgery, that made me fall in love with her:

With beauty like this, who needs hair???? Just look into those eyes. She has a beautiful soul and has been through way too much for one so young - too much sadness. I can hardly wait to meet her face to face and love on her. I just hope she will let me.

Hugs,
Laura Beth

LOA or LSC or whatever - Approval at last!

Today, 82 days after our LID (log in date of our dossier in China), we have received the official (and literal) 'red stamp of approval' from China to adopt Wu Ling Mei! Hooray!!!! It was signed in China on Friday the 13th, exactly 6 months after our PreApproval was signed. For me, thirteen has always been a lucky number! Incidentally, we also waited exactly 82 days from LID for approval to adopt Eliana. So I guess 82 is now my lucky number, too!

In other happy news, some local friend of ours with an LID about a month after ours also received their approval today, very unexpectedly! So, we may get to see spend some time with our friends from Virginia in China! Their son is in a different province than Mei Mei, but perhaps in Guangzhou or for the Lunar New Year, if that works out. They have a daughter the same age as Eliana, and it would be wonderful if they could have each other as playmates for part of the trip!

It is snowing in Wuhan this week!!!! Not bad winter storms as they had last year, just flurries. And more snow possible on Thursday. As we speak, a care package with some extra warm clothes is on its way to Mei Mei from her new family. :o) I used Ann at Red Thread China to send it from within China to get it to Mei Mei more quickly. There is also some nice tea for her foster family and also for Director Chen. I have enclosed some self addressed stamped envelopes (and also our email address to the Director) and am REALLY hoping for some correspondence back from Mei Mei, in whatever form it takes.

I quickly need to get to work on her birthday care package. Our little girl turns eight on December 1st! I so wanted to be with her for her birthday this year. And then we were hoping maybe over winter break or New Year, but we will not have travel approval in time now. But at least it looks like we will be with her for Chinese New Year for sure! Depending on how our Travel Approval dates work out, we may even be able to complete the adoption process and then stick around to ring in the Year of the Tiger in China with Mei Mei. Now THAT would be extraordinary!

Hugs from Virginia,

Laura Beth

We have LID (Log In Date)! Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Finally, we have our Log In Date from China! It was 8/26/2009, which puts us on Day 41 of our official count already - yippee! I have seen some families get their LOA/LSC (Letter of Acceptance, now Letter Seeking Confirmation) in 49 days lately, but many have waitied 80 or more days. We shall see...



There are several new hoops to jump through between this next approval from China and our Travel Approval (TA). These are new since Eliana's adoption and are due to the implementation of the Hague treaty on international adoption. With the new steps, it appears to be taking somewhere along the line of 60 days from LOA to TA currently. That means if we get LOA at the end of October, we would hopefully receive TA at the end of December and travel in January. I am still hoping for winter break travel (at least by the end of winter break?), but unless we get LOA very soon, this is looking less and less likely. The next steps for us are:

• LOA/LSC from China
• I-800 application to USCIS (immigration) - not to be confused with I-800A, which we already did before our dossier went to China
• I-800 approval from USCIS aka
• Cable sent from USCIS-NVC to US Consulate in Guangzhou, China
• Article 5 approval from US Consulate
• Article 5 approval is delivered by our agency to CCAA in China
• Travel Approval issued from China

I hope I have all of that right. Truly, I am not familiar as I should be with what all of the above steps entail. Our agency completes the I-800 for us and we just sign it and send it on. That much I know! I will become intimately familiar with all of these steps over the next days and weeks.

We may be pressing our luck to hope to ring in 2010 in China, but it looks likely we will have Mei Mei home in time for Chinese New Year - Year of the Tiger, which starts February 14, 2010. Let's certainly hope so, because otherwise we would have to wait until March to travel . Traveling to China to adopt during lunar new year really is not possible - all offices are shut down and booking flights and trains within China is very difficult and expensive as the Earth's largest annual migration of human beings takes place and virtually all Chinese citizens travel to their hometowns to celebrate with their families.


Speaking of celebrations, we are in the process of celebrating the Jewish festival of Sukkot, and also the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival. I will try to get some pics up soon. Here is the package that Mei Mei received from us for Moon Festival - a box of moon cakes to share with her foster family, a Barbie doll, a photo album and a letter from us, and also a cover letter from us to the Director of Wuhan Children's Welfare Institute and a box of mooncakes for him as well. I included my email address to him and we were thrilled to received email confirmation (in Chinese, of course) of the receipt of our package. I used a service within China to do all of this, which is much less expensive than buying items here and shipping them to China. I plan on doing several packages in that manner as well, though.

I hope to have good news to share very soon!

Laura Beth

Oops - where did the comments go?

I just figured out that I have had comment moderation turned on for this blog the whole time - oops! I had been receiving comments in my Inbox and just noticed they weren't showing up on the blog. So, I have approved all the comments and turned off moderation and some other settings that weren't allowing some folks to comment. So, comment away! (And thanks to those who have been persistently trying to leave comments)!

Hugs, LB

We are DTC!

(Dossier to China) WOOOOHOOO! And, I have the DHL tracking number to prove it. We are on our way to our official count down to Mei Mei! We are looking forward to hearing our log in date (LID) from China. I will get busy planning potential itineraries for our travel. We are requesting through our agency that her case be expedited because of the length of time her file has been with a US agency for adoption (2 years and counting).

I also told Adam that we had better select Mei Mei's legal first name for her adoption paperwork! Her middle name will either be Mei or Ling-Mei, and we will call her by the name she is used to, Mei Mei, unless she wants us to use a more 'American' sounding name. We have to decide before we meet her, so we really can't ask for her input. I am open to suggestions. Her legal first name should probably be Hebrew/Biblical in origin in keeping with the family trend. I am thinking Hannah Mei is nice. Adam joked she could be Ellie Mei (Clampett). Of course, Eliana could be shortened to Elli someday, so that probably won't work. Sarah Mei? Sally Mei? No, that brings up bad memories of our student loans that took forever to pay off... Abigail is a nice Hebrew name - Abbi Mei?

I love the name Maggie Mei, but not so crazy about the name Margaret. I think Maggie is super cute when it is short for Magnolia (it must be the southerner in me - or the chorus nerd who watched Show Boat one too many times...though she was Nolie for short). However, the name Magnolia Cohn is just asking for trouble! Kind of like naming your daughter Pine Cohn, or Snow Cohn. :o) I guess Maggie could just be Maggie, but not sure it fits in with the Hebrew names Adam, Benjamin & Eliana.

It is fun to think about names and getting a room prepared and buying stuff for Mei Mei. Much more fun that paperchasing. And this part of the wait is out of our hands. So...off to go look at our Marriott Rewards account and start planning!

Hugs, LB

Immigration approval received!

Guess what I found in my mailbox this morning? The last piece of paper we need to complete our dossier - our I-797C approval notice. Hooray!

Tomorrow I will go into DC, have a copy notarized as being a "true and exact" copy, take that to the DC authentications office to get the seal stating that the notarization is authentic, take that to the Department of State to get another piece of paper added on top from the US Secretary of State (yes, Hillary Clinton) verifying that the DC authentication is authentic, and then take that to the Chinese Embassy to get their seal of approval added onto the back of the Dept of State authentication. That will be added to my stack of 15 other documents that have been through this same, excruciating process for each state involved (Florida, Illinois & Virginia), and the whole precious packed will be overnighted to our adoption agency, who will scan it in and submit it to China for translation and approval, and ship the originals as well. Whew!

After that, the ball will be in China's court. Frankly, I am more comfortable with our fate being in the hands of the Chinese government than the US government. Sad, but true! We will see if the CCAA is willing to expedite Mei Mei's file because she has been waiting 2 years now for a forever family to adopt her.

Hang on, Mei Mei, we are coming for you!

Jumping through hoops!

Well, it is the week of our original deadline to have our dossier to China to adopt Mei Mei and we are STILL waiting on USCIS (immigration) approval. I emailed the officer in charge of our case this morning and she just received a file she needed in order to complete the investigation and thinks she "should be good to finish the case sometime this week." As expected, we had a set of fingerprints come back as 'unclassifiable' and jumped through some extra hoops for that. Though, to USCIS's credit, they let us skip one of their usual hoops - a second fingerprint failure - and proceed directly to giving a sworn statement.

Our adoption agency, Madison Adoption Associates, requested an extension of our paperwork deadline from China and this morning they forwarded me a copy of the approval notice. We now have until November 11th to submit our dossier to the CCAA. I originally hoped to be in China getting Mei Mei close to that time! Even with the delays we should be DTC by the end of August - hopefully even by the end of next week. This seems to put our travel into December under the best of circumstances. January seems more likely, especially given that under the new Hague regulations there is an extra step in between receiving our approval from China and getting our US Consulate appointment following travel approval.

There are some additional potential obstacles that we are also hoping to avoid that have nothing to do with our specific case. Swine flu being the first. Swine flu has caused some delays for adoptions in China. For a while Travel Approvals were not being issued by China, some SWIs have stopped allowing foreign visitors altogether, some adoptive families have been put into quarantine upon their arrival in China, and some parents and children have even been separated in the process. Everyone is on high alert and if anyone on your plane is found to be sick, the whole plane full will go into quarantine. Since a vaccine is being fast tracked through the US CDC and the WHO, hopefully things will settle down a bit and this will not impact our trip.

The second concern is a new US CDC (Center for Disease Control) policy that went into effect on July 1st of this year regarding testing all persons entering the US on an immigrant visa, including newly adopted children of US citizens, for TB. Because of the type of vaccine used in Chinese orphanages, many children adopted in China will have a positive reaction to the TB skin test. That test alone requires 3 days to be read once it is administered to the child in Guangzhou. If the skin test should be positive, a chest x-ray is required to determine if TB is present. If the chest x-ray is positive, the consequences are disastrous for the family and child involved. The first adoption related case that I am aware of that is testing the new policy involves a Virginia family who used our home study agency, Adoptions Together, as their adoption/placement agency. They now have a new 4 year old daughter who they had to leave behind in China until she tests negative for TB, which could take many months. You can follow their heartbreaking story on their blog: http://jayscruggs.livejournal.com.

I hope to post with good news soon! I will request new pictures and updates when we submit our dossier. :o)

Laura Beth

We have a new daughter!

Introducing, Mei Mei!

Some of you may know that the Chinese word for little sister is also 'mei mei'. There are many different Chinese characters with many different meanings that are pronounced 'mei', or as we would spell it in English, 'may', all spoken in Chinese with an associated tone that changes the meaning. OUR Mei Mei's full name is Wu (last name) Ling Mei and she has the Chinese character Mei that represents 'beautiful' for her name. It is a completely different Chinese character from 'mei' character that represents a little sister. The Chinese word for BIG sister is jie jie (which is pronounced almost like Gsa Gsa Gabor's first name, but with the 'uh' vowel sound instead of the 'ah'). So, our jie jie is Mei Mei, which is sort of ironic! We think that whoever chose her name was right on target, though! Isn't she beautiful? We especially love her most recent photo where she is showing off her sweet, nearly toothless smile! I can just picture her enjoying slurping noodles through that enormous gap - how fun!

Mei Mei turned 7 years old in December and has lived with a foster family in Wuhan city in the province of Hubei, China for nearly 4 years. She currently attends Kindergarten and enjoys drawing, singing, dancing and watching television with her foster family in the evening. :o) Mei Mei has a condition known as hydrocephalus for which she had a surgery when she was 34 months old. She is a very healthy, active, smart little girl. She speaks the Wuhan dialect of Chinese but she would also understand some Mandarin since that is the official language of China and what she would be taught in school. We are so happy that she will be joining our family!

Mei Mei is currently 49" tall and supposedly weighs 53 pounds, but we think the weight is a little high based on her photos. Her updated information also states she wears a size 24 (Chinese/European size) shoe. Either she has very tiny feet, or her shoe measurments are not right either. She would be about a child's size 7 dress and a toddler shoe size of 8 based on her March measurements. I will try to resist buying shoes, but everyone knows I can not help myself when it comes to buying dresses!

Enjoy a look back at how much she has grown and changed already! :o)

We sent our Letter of Intent to adopt Mei Mei to our agency on March 27th, they received it March 31st and they FINALLY sent it out on April 14th (long story)! On Thursday May 14th, we received word that China has PreApproved us to adopt Mei Mei! WOOOHOOO! The PA is dated on May 13th and we have until August 13th to get our dossier logged in. Our home study is finally out of review and we will have to hope for the best for a speedy immigration approval now. Approval is taking as little as 20 days in some cases, but more like 30-50 in most cases. However, we anticipate fingerprinting problems again. I have sent an email to the National Benefits Center (NBC) to find out if the procedure for fingerprint failures has changed with the switch to the I-800A (instead of the I-600A pre-Hague) and to the centralized NBC. I have the most important dossier docs ready to go and have just a few little local notarizations left to get done so that all of our paperwork is in order once we receive our USCIS approval. Maybe we can set some paperchasing records!

I am very fortunate to have friends with connections in Wuhan! [Shelli, you are my hero. :o) ] Enjoy the most recent pics I received (taken March 31st) and put your left ear on your left shoulder to enjoy Mei Mei's rendition of "Beijing Welcomes You" from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I think she has a lovely signing voice! Our contact asked her what she would like from her new family, and she said a photo album of her new family, and a Barbie doll. Okay - we can do that!

In April Adam and I attended an Attachment Parenting conference at Johns Hopkins, led by nationally recognized attachment therapist Dan Hughes. We really liked him! Mei Mei is very attached to her foster family, which is a really great sign that she is an emotionally healthy little girl. We are hoping for the best for her transition to our family, but we are adding tools to our 'parenting toolbox' and will be prepared for the worst case scenario, just in case!

We hope to be in China before Mei Mei's 8th birthday this year. I will keep you posted on our approval process!

We are blessed beyond belief!
Laura Beth (mama to THREE beautiful children)!!!!!