Tag Archives: paperwork

DTC

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Three letters that say so much- we are finally DTC! This is the Chinese adoptive families community’s acronym for Dossier To China, or All Systems Go! Our complete application has been processed through our agency, filed, and overnighted to Beijing. Probably within a week, we’ll be logged in to the official system, and we’ll be ready to meet our future son or daughter!

In other news, our Sunday night dinners took an exciting turn, as we tried making bao for the first time. For those who aren’t familiar, bao is a steamed bun often filled with meat or vegetables. We made bbq and ginger pork bao– which turned out fantastic! We cheated by using this recipe for a lazy Sunday night dinner, but for our first time, they turned out wonderfully!

Anyone have any tips on cleaning bamboo steamer baskets?

 

Done

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Our life story– portrayed in state approved documents.

Close to 100 pages. Every page scrutinized by the State and the Consulate. Photos of our life and family, and pledge to be the best parents we can be. Incredibly detailed medical evaluations. I think I reached my breaking point when our home printer decided not to accept the newly purchased ink cartridge– my loud muttering (“HP garbage helpdesk!”) and foot stamping must have intimidated it enough, as a quick printhead cleaning later it decided it would cooperate.

Brian will be hand-delivering our dossier tomorrow to our agency. At that point, it’ll go into final review to make sure nothing is missing, and will then be whisked off to China to be logged in. Hopefully, the next time we hear from our agency, it will be with the news that we have a log-in-date and are eligible for a referral.

Our attention now turns to checking out pediatric specialists for our future son or daughter, but for tonight, we can rest and celebrate. I can’t believe we did it!

Great News

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I saw it the minute the car turned off our street into our driveway.  As my friend backed out of the driveway, his headlights focused on the big white envelope tucked into our door.

It’s here! True to their word, the Consulate mailed all of our dossier back to us today. I ripped open the envelope the second I got into the door… and I’m thrilled to share happy news! The Consulate authenticated all of our documents, which means our completed dossier will be on its way to our agency first thing Monday morning, and will most likely arrive in China at the CCAA before the end of next week! As soon as we turn our dossier in to our agency next week, then all we have to do is just wait for The Big Phone Call!

Thank you again to all who are joining us in prayer and positive thoughts on this journey. We are incredibly grateful– and we have a long way to go!

 

A surprisingly refreshing break

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As you’ve seen (or more appropriately haven’t seen), there hasn’t been much to update you on as of late. Our failed efforts at the Consulate has forced us to regroup, make a few changes to our dossier, and take a step back for a few weeks. Our agency has been incredibly kind and supportive to us, and our friends have bent over backwards to offer help– one dear friend even offered to courier some out-of-state documents for us!

The slight “break” from all the paperwork has been wonderful, and it’s given me a chance to begin to clean up our garden for the year and plan for my fall bulb planting. Now our little adoption hiatus has most likely come to a close, as our final document for state and Consulate processing should be coming in any day. That means I’ll be making my hopefully last trip to the Secretary of State and the Consulate early next week.

If the unexpected delay and slight backtracking has taught me anything, it’s that there will be setbacks during this adventure. To quote our fantastic coordinator, “You know first hand that adoption is not a 50 yard dash, but a marathon.” So for now we’ll take things day by day, and soon enough we’ll find ourselves in Beijing!

Approved!

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One reason for keeping this adoption journey blog is to be able to update friends and family when we experience successes and setbacks. Today, I have the pleasure of sharing happy news!

Even though we had our biometrics appointment with the USCIS on Friday, I decided to give a call to Our Government at lunchtime today to see if our prints were received and if we were assigned an immigration officer. As I’ve mentioned a few times before, the usual time frame for getting the official Federal Government Two Thumbs Up ™ takes between 60-90 days in total, with the approval coming in about at least a month or so after the appointment.

When I inquired today, a very friendly employee over at USCIS happily informed me that not only had we been assigned an immigration officer, but that they had approved our application for adoption the day we had our fingerprints taken! This is an approval time of less than 24 hours!

So now, we just wait for the official clearance document to submit with our dossier. This is the final little bit of dossier that we need to gather, and then it all gets sealed by the Chinese Consulate.

When the preparation and documentation process is this involved, you have to celebrate every victory. Today is a great day indeed!

 

The waiting game

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Though we haven’t had too many big updates in the last week or so, we’ve been pulling together the last bits of our dossier.  Hopefully, we’ll be receiving our authenticated Pennsylvania documents from the New York Chinese Consulate sometime this week.  I head to the Secretary of State office on Wednesday morning, and we have our official “Biometrics” appointment this Friday. I’m sure that we’ll have something exciting to report as Our Government records our fingerprints for the second time.  Thank goodness USCIS has a service office in Naperville, so at least we don’t have to schlep downtown for the appointment.

Once the fingerprints are done, then starts our campaign to “get things moving” at the National Benefits Center in MO. Though the official line is that they have 90 days to process our immigration approval from day of acceptance to delivery, it sounds as though a little gentle prodding can change that window to a little over 40 days.

On the home front, we’ve started dismantling what has been our office/stuff-it-all-away room in order to begin creating our child’s room.  We have a long way to go in order to get things set up, but it’s a start.

 

 

Two steps forward, one step back

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For those of you playing along at home, the last few days have felt like a game of Chutes and Ladders.  I spent a good chunk of this week trying to get in touch with a special courier in New York that services adoptive families. As mentioned in previous posts about our dossier prep, our Pennsylvania documents have to be authenticated in New York City at the Chinese Consulate– who also happens to not take mail-in forms. This means that we needed to find a person who’d be willing to stand in line forever at the NY Consulate and hand-deliver our forms to be reviewed– then pick them up a week later and ship them back to us. Continue reading →

An update for fans of The Office

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Monday morning, I woke up to Our Government’s version of a wuphf.

If you don’t get the reference, check out this great video clip below from The Office:

Yes sir, I was greeted at 12:01 AM by both an email and an SMS  from “Do Not Reply” indicating that our big packet-o-immigration papers for Uncle Sam was received and is now comfortably sitting in the National Benefits Center Lockbox. I have no idea what “the lockbox” is, but I do know that it is a magical place that assesses us as appropriate parents and our future child as a good future citizen– and all of this in 90 days or less! (Let’s hope for less!) And just in case I didn’t get my text or email, we’ll get a paper copy of the exactly same thing in 7-10 business days. Hopefully, along with the receipt or a few days after, we’ll get an “invitation” for a biometrics appointment at our local USCIS Office to be fingerprinted a second time for the FBI. You can’t say they aren’t thorough.

In the meantime, I’ll let you all know if I get a Facebook friend request from “Do Not Reply.”