After months...
of us a getting to know one another and loving the big change in our lives. Lucy is finally legally ours. She came back from China on a R3 visa, so an added Kansas Legal readoption was necessary. Here is our day in court. The judge complemented the boys on being quiet, still and courteous, I was very proud.
taiwan then china
As we are so excited to see our new son in Taiwan, only a few days left before our longest flight so far...we get a call from our North Carolina social worker...she said, "Casey....pause....pause...I have some news for you..." I had to yell at the boys real quick because they were diving off of the dock at the lake. All I needed was my sons to fall in and drown while I am listening to info on my new daughter. She went on to say, "I don't have much information but she was born in October of 2010 and her name is Xi Han." She told us where her town is and some other details. As she is telling me some specifics, my 6 year old is looking at me as I am welling over with tears, "Mom what's wrong? Mom what's wrong?" Then my 8 year old says, "I think those are happy tears don't worry."
We don't have any pictures yet, but I am stalking the front door for the Fed ex guy.
It is like we are in a haze.
taiwan or bust
We found out that we travel to Taiwan to get our new son on July 10th. We meet him on the 12th and get him on the 13th. It is great timing to find out, because we just had a skype session and were kind of running out of things to talk about...we could tell he was a little tired of the skype calls too. We asked him if he wanted us to bring the boys with us and he was very excited. We had already planned on bringing them, but we just wanted to run it by him.
Finally our family of four will be five....can't wait!
china baby
Our adventure with adoption started about 6 years ago. After we had our little lovebug, we decided to start our journey to adopt a son or daughter. We have home studied and updated, fingerprinted and background checked and made what seems like hundreds of copies of marriage and birth certificates, driver's licenses, passports, medical reports, job verifications, I don't have a job verification and on and on. We have been on the China waiting list for five and a half years. Each month or so a box with log in dates (LID in adoption lingo) changes. Currently the box says June 20, 2006. This is wonderful for us, because our LID is July 5, 2006. The Chinese government approves about 5 days of LID's every 30 or so. It should be August by the time they get to our LID. Then we begin travel plans and visa applications. We should go to get our little girl in China about October.
Never did we think that we would be going to Taiwan to get our lovebug in July or August then get our Chinese daughter in September or October. These are the times I wish I were a type A personality and the rooms would be ready and all would be in order....but I just am not.
the wait
Just waiting now...it has been about 6 weeks since the final hearing...we should know soon when we travel to Taiwan. I am trying not to think about it, because it makes me so excited. Hopefully we hear by June 2, our next skype session with our Taiwanese lovebug.
skype session and final hearing...YEAH!
It was another great skype session. He is going to fit in to our family of lovebugs, like a glove. He asked us what his English name is going to be...we mentioned the name we like, but he seemed to poo poo it. I was surprised he ask us about a new name, because we were almost at the point of letting him keep his name. We just couldn't imagine our boys here at home, changing their names... it would be wierd. But I think our Taiwan lovebug's caregivers, must have told him that a name change will most likely happen. So we are on a name hunt, a name perfect for him.
Since the skype call we received a message from our social worker. She said, our little Taiwan lovebug, got up in front of the judge at the final hearing and said he wanted to move to America. With his statement and background paperwork complete the court has approved us. We are now waiting on the travel documents to get started with Visa's and travel approvals from the U.S. to go pick him up. We are anticipating July. Summer fun!
better late than never...
Don't ask me how this happened... but I just found an email from our Taiwan social worker, dated March 29,2011, unread...yes, it was in bold, unread...UNREAD. I can't believe it. It has updated info on our little Taiwan brother, with pictures. (I almost got a stomach ache from the UNREADness of this email)
I love him so much already!
SKYPE DAY!
April 4, 2011
We have had a long wait for our adoption journey to make a change. The mister and I have worked with a couple of birth mom's and after investing $30K into them and the facilitators, plus feeling unbareable heart ache we decided to stick with our long wait for an international adoption. Currently, we have a LID of 7/5/06 for a China adoption, which should come true this year. But even more excited is picking up our little boy in Taiwan in May of 2011.
