1 Year + 4 months......

Today Madi turns 1 year + 4 months & we are really starting to loose our patience not knowing anything else about her. For months now, we only have her original developmental report & 3 photos. 

 3 PHOTOS ONLY of our precious daughter!

We have tried our best to be patient as we are on the last process with the governments waiting on 2 more documents before they can assign us a travel date & consulate appointment in China. 

In the meantime, our agency has been trying to get us an updated report with new photos, but has been unsuccessful. With the new rules under the Hague Treaty, agencies should really not be having any contact with the orphanages while families are waiting for final travel approvals from the US. 

We understand these new rules are to ultimately protect the children, 

however.......we are real people, with real feelings and we are heartbroken, and desperate for any new information. It seems almost cruel to only give a few details to new parents who have waited years to see their baby's face for the first time, a few outdated photos, and then have them wait even more, not knowing whether their baby is walking, talking, happy, sad.....

So.....in comes Ann from RedThreadChina to the rescue!

Ann is pretty well known throughout the China Adoption community, and we are kicking ourselves for not contacting her much earlier. Ann lives in Guanzhou, China, near where the Consulate is & where we will go to on our last leg of our trip to complete Madi's adoption. 

Ann's business specializes in sending care packages to your child's orphanage, handling donations, translations, etc. & with a minimum purchase of $60 she will ( try her very best ) to get updated photos of our daughter and any other information she can ). We have already exchanged a few emails & although nothing is certain yet, we already love her & feel confident she will help us, as she has helped many other families with much success. 

Please pray that she will be successful so this mama and baba can have a little bit of peace knowing that our little one is still growing healthy & is being prepared as much as possible to know that we are coming for her. 

Adoption Process Update:

We are waiting to hear word from USCIS on whether our I800 application was approved, then cabled to China.

Once this is done, we will wait on what they call an Article 5, which is a document that allows us to gain custody of Madeline.

Then after our Article 5 is received, we should receive our travel approval.

We are looking at a minimum of 5 more weeks....however there is a big national holiday in China happening in October in addition to a trade fair, so we are not exactly sure what this will do to our travel plans.

For now, we will not even think about it, and will be easily content with having just a few more photos & updated details on our daughter to keep us happy while we continue to wait.

Thank you to all who have been following & sending us your support!

Our Pre Travel to China Celebration!

Our Dear Friends from our Marriage Enrichment hosted a huge celebration for us this past Saturday August 25, 2012 and it was Beautiful! 

We are working on a photo slide show to post soon. In the meantime, you can watch the video we presented during the party.  Just scroll down....

Music is by Christina Perri, & we hope we can share it before it gets muted by youtube....

1 year + 3 months...

Our daughter is 1 year old plus 3 months today. 

I've yet to meet her in person.....but I miss her....and I Love her so much already.

And I may only be a Mom to her in my heart from a distance for now, but I never miss an opportunity to share with others just how much I love having this title. Even if it means wearing a locket with her cute little chubby face. 

Her Baba got this for me soon after our referral from one of my favorite collectibles store Brighton. 

Adoption Process Status: 

Still waiting on USCIS approval on our I800A form.......was told that maybe we'll receive it this week. 

Then we will need to file our I800, I864w, and DS230 forms with USCIS. 

Then we can apply for our Chinese Visas and get closer to travel. We were hoping it would be in early September, but we are still not sure how long the other applications will take to process by USCIS. Although it is still a possibility it can happen in late September......we'll see. 

Reviewing Madi's Referral

About 3 days after receiving Madi's official referral, we were invited over for dinner by our good friends Lian & Jack who just recently returned from a trip back to their homeland of Taiwan. Although Lian has returned more recently, Jack had not been back for over 30 years! 

"So different now" he would say. They were really happy they got to spend almost a month in Taiwan visiting with their siblings and friends.  

After getting a chance to read over "Xing Yao's"  report and medicals, they both shook their head in agreement and said:

"You are very lucky there!" "You will get a very pretty baby". 

We couldn't agree with them more! We are indeed very lucky to have a beautiful little girl waiting for us in China. We hate the fact that we will still miss out a few more months of watching her grow. Hopefully it will not be more than 2-3 months.

We've never met her, or held her....but we already love her so much already. We wish we can just hop on a plane tonight to go get her! But there's still so much to do. 

This past Sunday night, we just dropped our i800A forms & payment to our Homestudy agency in Oceanside, while returning from a day in San Diego. This Thursday we will meet with our Doctor to formally review her medical report. And very soon after, we will be officially signing off on her referral & mail it to our international adoption agency in Ohio. And then, a few more immigration papers, more fingerprinting, then wait for an approval from USCIS so we can then apply for our Visa's as we wait for our travel dates. 

 Here's Baba Kris showing Jack a map of where Madi's currently residing. She's in a province called Jiangxi, China, which is more Southern China, almost North West of Taiwan. North of Hong Kong. We're still not certain if we will be flying straight into Hong Kong and go directly to Jiangxi. Our agency has recommended we go to Beijing a day or two prior so we can do a bit of sightseeing, as is traditionally done prior to picking up an adopted child. But I'm not sure how much I'm going to enjoy sightseeing knowing we will be just hours away from picking up our daughter. Personally, I think it would be nice to explore her province, so that we can collect as many photos and video, and anything else we can so we can share with her one day as she wants to learn more about her birth land. 

And here's Baba Kris enjoying dinner with Lian & Jack. Funny thing... our meal was Mexican, which is hilarious!  They used to own one of our very favorite Chinese restaurants for many years, but they recently sold it as they were ready to retire. 

Lian says "I don't want anything to do with Chinese food for a while....too much time to cook". So one of her hobbies lately has been trying out some new easy Mexican recipes. 

Too bad you can't taste how delicious these carne asada burritos were, & the salad was just as delicious!