The answer is no

Yesterday, we went to our biometrics appointment in Buffalo. The whole appointment, from start to finish, was less than 15 minutes, and we were home by 11:30. On the way to Buffalo, I asked David once again if he thought we should adopt two children this trip. He said, "No." He worries that we won't be able to give KangChao enough attention. I really think that he remembers that John was NOT nice to Ben when we adopted them together, and David is afraid a similar situation will occur if we again adopt two at once. Later, David said that we can consider adopting two more boys after Austin graduates from high school. I will be 50 years old by then, so maybe we'll decide against it, but for now I guess we are going to just concentrate on bringing KangChao home. I have a feeling that this topic will be revisited though. David takes awhile to warm up to my brilliant ideas!

Memorial Weekend 2011

This weekend we went to Washington DC to see our nation's capitol. While we were there, we were lucky enough to be able to coordinate a visit with a family who adopted a boy that is one of John's friends!! They haven't seen each other in 18 months, and it was a nice reunion for everyone. This family adopted four children from China over the years, and they brought five (of their 9) children to see us in Washington. Collectively, our two families had 9 children, six of whom were adopted from China, and we managed to feed them all dinner and watch them swim without any trouble at all. We told the family about our upcoming adoption of KangChao (Logan) and we think he lives in the same orphanage that their daughter Emma lived before her adoption. What a small world! We also went to the National Zoo to see the two panda bears that are on loan from China. Ben was so excited! We tried to see pandas in the Guangzhou Zoo, but for some reason they weren't in their cage that day. Overall, it was a fabulous weekend.

Biometrics appointment

We finally received the Appointment Notice from the Department of Homeland Securty U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office. Our "biometrics" (a fancy way of saying fingerprints) appointment is June 6th at 9am. Darn. I was supposed to go on a field trip with Ben's school to the zoo that day. Obviously, I'll have to let the teacher know that I can't go anymore. We can't reschedule the appointment again. We lost almost two months by rescheduling the first appointment. Luckily, we have done this once before, and we know that no matter what we do or how much we hurry, the adoption will take over a year to finalize. That's just how long it takes, period.

No progress

It's been over a month since I sent the notice to the Dept. of Homeland Security asking them to reschedule our finger-print appointment, and we still haven't heard anything back. I've called them twice and left two messages, with no response. In the meantime, I booked our next cruise vacation for Feb. 2012, and we reserved a room large enough to include Logan too, just in case we have him home by then. I've been reading a blog lately, entitled two tots and a teen, and the family just adopted two more adorable little boys from China, ages 3.5 and 18 months. Yes, it made me wonder if we should adopt two more boys again. We have the room, and six is a nice even number. Three teens and three little ones...hmmm. I mentioned the idea to David, and he is thinking about it now too. Elizabeth Rose is in China right now, visiting two orphanages in the Shandong province, where Logan is currently residing. When Elizabeth Rose gets back, maybe she'll have new information about Logan, and maybe she will send us more videos of little boys!

USCIS fingerprints

Well, we finally received the USCIS letter notifying us of our "appointment" to get our biometrics (yes, fingerprints again!) complete at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Buffalo. Wouldn't you know it, the appointment is for when we are on vacation so we have to reschedule. I called the number on the notice to try to reschedule, but I was told I had to return the official Notice of Action with the box checked "Request for Rescheduling." I asked the woman if she could check to see when the next appointment is, so that I can mark it on the calendar, and she said no. We can only ask for a reschedule one time, and we MUST go to that appointment or we'll be denied the next time. Uh oh. We can only hope that the next appointment date that they send us works ok with our calendar. If not, we'll have to move mountains to make the appointment anyway. On another note, the same day that we received the notice for our fingerprint appointment, we also received the form to apply for John and Ben's birth-certificate. Just over a year after our adoption was finalized, I am able to complete the very last form to prove that they are our sons. The birth-certificate will show me as Mother and David as Father!

Contracts all signed

Last week we received the contracts from WACAP to sign. Essentially, we had to agree that we would not hold WACAP responsible if things did not go smoothly, and we had to sign that we read all the material that WACAP sent us about adoption. We had to sign six different forms and mail them back with our first agency payment. We will pay three different installments to WACAP for their adoption services, in addition to the home-study fee and all the fees to the government. I wish adoption was more affordable. I know several families who would adopt if it wasn't so complicated and expensive. On Wed. night I received a call from Elizabeth Rose telling me that we should be receiving another finger-print appointment soon. Yes, we already had our finger-prints taken for this adoption, and several times for adopting Ben and John, but they need to do them yet again. This time we will need to go to the immigration department in Buffalo. As soon as we get our finger-print appointment (and go to Buffalo) we can pursue our I-800A approval. Then the entire packet gets sent to China. Hopefully, they will still let us use our dossier from last year and we won't have to re-do that big mountain of paperwork!!! That will save us months and months, and quite a bit of money too. I read today online that China is making the post-placement and pre-placement requirements more arduous. We will have to have six post-placement visits from the social worker (instead of two) and provide letters from Logan's teachers saying that we are good parents. The social worker will even have to visit us two and five years after the adoption!! Yikes! What a whole lot of effort we adoptive parents put forth. It's worth it though. Look at how well John and Ben are doing!

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.