I-800A

I received a call yesterday from Elizabeth Rose. She is now in charge of our paperwork, now that our home-study is complete. Elizabeth Rose called to say that we are officially accepted into the China program! Elizabeth also needed us to fill out another form, send her copies of our tax returns from the last two years, along with a check for $890 made out to the USICS. Our I-800A form, the check and our home-study needs to be sent to the US. Department of Homeland Security. It took me awhile to realize that the USICS and the Dept. of Homeland Security are one and the same thing. I don't know what the acronym USICS actually stands for, but I now understand that the Department of Homeland Security is where the I-800A and I-800 are processed. The I-800A is the Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country. The I-800 is Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative.

shopping!

The other day, Ben and I went to Rochester to a Dr. appointment at Strong Memorial Hospital to see the pulmonary specialist. On the way there, we stopped at a store to shop and to have a few photos printed up to give the Social Worker for her next visit on March 18th. While we waited for the photos, we wandered around the store. On the shelf near the photo lab, there was a toy that when dropped or banged on, it lit up. Ben recognized the toy immediately as the same type of toy that Logan was playing with in the video that we saw! Ben decided we should buy two of these types of toys to mail to Logan in China. We also purchased an inexpensive digital camera to send to him too. We know he might not actually receive these gifts, and we can't mail them to him yet because China has not yet approved the adoption, but it was fun to shop for Logan for the first time.

home study almost done!

We received the first draft of our home-study by email today! Hooray! We just need to sign and return the form saying that it's correct, and then it will be sent to WACAP for review. Once the home-study is accepted, we'll be officially accepted into the China program and submitted for approval. Our social worker, Sue, has to come visit us again on March 18th, and then we're done seeing her for a little while. In the meantime, we wonder if Logan will like skiing, taekwondo, basketball, running, swimming and boating. We are such an active family, always on the go, that we hope Logan likes to be busy too. We skied with Ben all day today, and we are looking forward to teaching Logan how to ski too! This week we are buying a new (and bigger) van. Now that we know that we really will have five boys, we decided that we needed an even larger car. Most vans and SUV's fit seven passengers, but we always seem to take at least one friend with us where-ever we go. This weekend, John's friend Tyler is over for the entire weekend. We went skiing today, and we'll go skiing again tomorrow. So yes, we need a van that is almost as large as a school bus!

Almost two months now!

Already it's been almost two months since we put in the application to adopt Logan. Today I emailed our social worker to ask if she received all the documents she needs. She has, but she's out of town. She promises to finish up our home-study by the end of next week. So, in case someone is reading this and is wondering about the time-frame to adopt, a home-study takes at least two months. Things could go faster, but not much. We already had a previous home-study from which to work, and we had all the documents completed. When we adopted Ben and John, it took us about five months to complete the home-study phase. On another note, this past weekend we took the kids on a ski trip to Holiday Valley. David and I had to stay with Ben on the beginner hills, and the other three big kids went off on their own to tear up the mountain. It reminded us again of why we decided to adopt Logan. The teens are all growing up so quickly, and Ben is going to need a brother his own age. We hope that we are able to go get Logan before next ski season! We wonder if Logan has ever even seen snow, since he is in a province about 5 hours south of Beijing. Ben and John had both seen a little snow before, but nothing like the amount of snow that we receive here in the winter. Ben was just enraptured the first time we had a significant snowfall. We hope Logan likes to ski too!

OUR NEW SON!

Here is a photo of our new son, Logan!! John and I watched a bunch of videos of boys 4-6 years old, and John immediately liked Fu, Kang Chao. He seems spirited, and I think he looks a lot like John! We're working hard to get all the papers completed so that we can bring him home soon.

One of the most important things when adopting is to get everyone involved in the adoption to communicate with each other. Today, our social worker (the one who visited our home) sent an email to our home-study coordinator at WACAP asking for copies of our home-study documents. Over a week ago I emailed WACAP just to make certain that they have everything they need for the home-study, and now it appears that they never sent the documents on to the social worker so that she can finish the home-study report. For the home-study, we had to fill out a financial disclosure (and get it notarized), medical reports for each of us (and get them notarized), child abuse clearance forms (sent to the child abuse registry), police clearance reports, finger-prints, and letters of reference. We can re-use our dossier for the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs, but US immigration requires all new documents for the home-study. Now if only I can get WACAP to get the documents to the social worker in Buffalo, we'll be all set. Until the next stack of documents anyway!

Chinese lessons

Everyday, I spend at least 2-3 hours in the car driving children to and from their activities. No lie. I fill up the gas tank several times each week, and I only drive the kids back and forth to school and sports. The upside of all this driving, is that I am able to listen to my Chinese lessons, uninterrupted, for several hours a day. Boring? Absolutely. But, I am slowly, slowly beginning to understand a little Chinese. I also think it's good for Ben to hear Mandarin everyday. He is forgetting so much of his language so fast, that we have to make a concentrated effort to help him remember. I hope that Ben will be able to speak to Logan when he comes!!!

homestudy visit

Yesterday was our first home-study visit. It was great to see Sue again and fill her in on all the boys' activities. I wasn't stressed out about the home-study at all, although David was a little tense. He doesn't like the feeling of being put under a microscope. The only preparation I did for the home-study visit was to quickly mop the kitchen floor. The last time Sue came for our post-placement visit I was a nervous wreck, and cleaned the entire house, top to bottom. After all my stress and fuss, Sue didn't even step out of the kitchen! This time I was much more relaxed. Actually, it was nice to openly talk about our pending adoption with Sue. We haven't told very many people that we are adopting again, simply because we don't want to hear their criticism. We heard enough of it the first time we adopted, and we already know people don't understand our motivation to adopt. People often wonder why we'd want a large family; they can't fathom taking care of 4 boys, let alone 5!! After dinner last night, we all sat and watched the video of Fu, KangChao (Logan) again. Did I mention that we already refer to him by his future American name? It took us months and months to name John, and this time it was so easy. David has always liked the name Logan, and Ben likes it too.