I sent Mallory out to the mailbox tonight... it is Sunday but I have been so sick all weekend that I didn't care what was in the mail yesterday...and it is official... we have a 171-H!! This time it came with Jay as my husband and we are approved to adopt from TAIWAN!! I am so excited. Now we just have to sit back and wait for a match on the other end!
Earlier tonight Jay was watching the video of our Gotcha Day with Ali... and he cried. It is so emotional, this whole experience. Christopher, number one son, came over today and started in on me again about why are we adopting another child (he has the first child, most spoiled syndrome) and he stared talking like my mother "Jay is only doing this because you want him to mom"... thank goodness Jay stepped in and told Christopher what I have been telling my mom all along... Jay is adopting because Jay wants to adopt and Jay and Ginnie are a team and the decision was made as a team.
I hear this from so many couples that are in the process of adopting that they get tired of the opinions from their families. We all tip toe on egg shells for our parents.
I called my dad the day we sent our request off for the adoption in China and because I wanted to scream from the roof tops of every building in the world with my excitement I felt I just had to tell someone! My conversation started as this, "Dad, you know I have done things in my life that you don't approve of but always in the end it works out and everything is wonderful, right?" and he says, "Yes?" and I say, "I want to say something and I want a positive response from you, okay?" and he says, "Okay"... "Jay and I just applied to adopt another baby!!!" I won't write what he said...but it wasn't positive or reinforcing....why?
Sitting there that night I cried and though I have the most un-supportive family ever... but I talk to other families and other woman and I am not alone.
Mallory told me she is adopting five kids and guess what.. I am going to be there as the best, most supportive grandma in the world when the time comes!! At least my daughters understand this!
Watch out Taiwan here we come!! Now it is time for the fund raiser!!
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
CIS I-171H
I just got a call from Immigrations for Jay... they lost his finger prints we had taken on November 3, 2007. Jay has that kind of luck! When we got our 171-h back for Ali in July 2005.. it was issued to ME and some guy with the last name Warlick??
I called Jay laughing at him saying the government feels my new husband Mr. Warlick and I are acceptable to adopt a child from China! It took us about ten days to finally get straight and have a new paper issued with Jay's name on it!
The guy at CIS was very nice and he checked a few places and finally found Jay's fingerprints! I am so glad as Jay said he hated going to get them and we have done it three times now because of the long wait for Ali our first set expired... we have 15 months from November to bring our new little one home or he is going to have to go take the prints again! Sorry Jay!!
The man also said they were trying to expedite our papers and they had everything so I should see my 171 in no time!! Thanks CIS Orlando!!!
I called Jay laughing at him saying the government feels my new husband Mr. Warlick and I are acceptable to adopt a child from China! It took us about ten days to finally get straight and have a new paper issued with Jay's name on it!
The guy at CIS was very nice and he checked a few places and finally found Jay's fingerprints! I am so glad as Jay said he hated going to get them and we have done it three times now because of the long wait for Ali our first set expired... we have 15 months from November to bring our new little one home or he is going to have to go take the prints again! Sorry Jay!!
The man also said they were trying to expedite our papers and they had everything so I should see my 171 in no time!! Thanks CIS Orlando!!!
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Dossier to Agency
Well my dossier was Fed Ex'd to the agency today (minus the 171-H which should follow in a short bit) The CIS office in Orlando is so great and they get things done quick!! I just had to get these papers over to ASIA today so that I could forget about them. Actually I was getting myself so confused between the China adoption and the Taiwan adoption I have no clue if I did anything right... so I am praying the girls will once again babysit me and make sure I have the correct paperwork!
Now let's pray for a quick referral. I just don't want Ali to be years older than this little one... which is what happened between Chase and Ali.
And the agency said that the errors were so small in the HS that it didn't matter. It was not something that would stop the adoption! That was good news!
Now let's pray for a quick referral. I just don't want Ali to be years older than this little one... which is what happened between Chase and Ali.
And the agency said that the errors were so small in the HS that it didn't matter. It was not something that would stop the adoption! That was good news!
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Happy ....Sad
I know I can get upset over the little things and I shouldn't, but all the silly paperwork that has to be done for an adoption is crazy. I told my social worker in August that I needed a home study for adoption number two. We finally got together in November... yep November. She had sent me the papers for our child abuse clearance that I mailed back right away in October but the last page wasn't there so when she came to the house I was able to give her this page, which meant the paper didn't go out to the DCF until mid November... at this time we were still waiting on our approval from China so there wasn't a huge rush... I just wanted it all done so that when the approval came I could have my dossier totally done and out the door to our agency.
Well as you know, we got turned down from China on December 4th so after the few days of crying our agency said, "let's move you over to our new Taiwan program"... this is a whole different game... you start out by having your Home Study submitted and then go from there on the paperwork.. the only way we could get in line was to have this HS.
So now I became a maniac!! I called the SW and told her I needed it TODAY.. but we needed the clearance and she said, "it should be here this Thursday if not for sure next Thursday" So I waited. But neither Thursday did it show up and I think she went out of town for a few days and I was going INSANE!! My agency said they didn't think another family was ready to submit their HS but they would let me know.. and THERE WAS ONLY TWO SPOTS LEFT!!
I finally could not take it any longer and started calling a woman I know at the Dept of Child Services who gave me a number to call. I upset my "person"... my social worker but I could not just sit and wait!!! I don't want her upset but I was upset and had to do something!
Then the agency told me that another family sent their HS... so now there was only ONE spot left!
Finally the woman from DCF called to my agency and said if I gave permission she would run our backgrounds right then and there and give us a clearance... and I said YES OF COURSE YOU CAN.
We had a clearance in 15 minutes and the next morning I had a HS! I felt a HUGE ton fell from my shoulders! Our SW got it signed and sent and we then were logged in...
BUT THERE IS MORE!
SW needed a letter from me to attach to HS to send to CIS for the 171-H clearance for bringing a baby through immigrations.. and I forgot.. I really forgot!... but I did finally get it to her and today I recieved my signed original HOME STUDY!
and please don't tell her.. but there are a few errors in there and I have to call her tomorrow and have her correct and resend!!.. SHE IS GOING TO KILL ME!
There has to be an easier way to get these babies to a loving home! There just has to be!
Well as you know, we got turned down from China on December 4th so after the few days of crying our agency said, "let's move you over to our new Taiwan program"... this is a whole different game... you start out by having your Home Study submitted and then go from there on the paperwork.. the only way we could get in line was to have this HS.
So now I became a maniac!! I called the SW and told her I needed it TODAY.. but we needed the clearance and she said, "it should be here this Thursday if not for sure next Thursday" So I waited. But neither Thursday did it show up and I think she went out of town for a few days and I was going INSANE!! My agency said they didn't think another family was ready to submit their HS but they would let me know.. and THERE WAS ONLY TWO SPOTS LEFT!!
I finally could not take it any longer and started calling a woman I know at the Dept of Child Services who gave me a number to call. I upset my "person"... my social worker but I could not just sit and wait!!! I don't want her upset but I was upset and had to do something!
Then the agency told me that another family sent their HS... so now there was only ONE spot left!
Finally the woman from DCF called to my agency and said if I gave permission she would run our backgrounds right then and there and give us a clearance... and I said YES OF COURSE YOU CAN.
We had a clearance in 15 minutes and the next morning I had a HS! I felt a HUGE ton fell from my shoulders! Our SW got it signed and sent and we then were logged in...
BUT THERE IS MORE!
SW needed a letter from me to attach to HS to send to CIS for the 171-H clearance for bringing a baby through immigrations.. and I forgot.. I really forgot!... but I did finally get it to her and today I recieved my signed original HOME STUDY!
and please don't tell her.. but there are a few errors in there and I have to call her tomorrow and have her correct and resend!!.. SHE IS GOING TO KILL ME!
There has to be an easier way to get these babies to a loving home! There just has to be!
Sunday, January 6, 2008
We are going to try again!
Well sometime into the summer after having Alexis home for about five months, my husband and I decided that we would really like to do the adoption thing again. So I started researching our options.. knowing that China has changed their "rules" I looked into the other countries. I am stubborn, (wonder where my kids get it from) but decided that I wanted another child from China. I did my homework on all the options and countries but really felt that was where Jay's and my heart was! So we started calling the agencies to see if we could find one that would work with us, to advocate for us and maybe, just maybe, we could convince CCAA that we were a good family for another child from their country.
There were many, many disappointments along the way. We started gathering our dossier paperwork again in August, spoke to an agency that works with Taiwan that said we would not qualify for a program called Birth Mothers for Taiwan, applied through an agency for a special needs girl in China that no other family had asked for- but got turned down at the last minute because another family turned up that fit the CCAA's rules, we checked out Vietnam but just didn't think we could swing that amount of money... tears, tears and more tears...until we call our new agency, ASIA, out of Portland, Oregon that said they would advocate for us and they had a little girl they wanted us to take a look at.
When we got her file we sent it to our doctor, who looked everything over and said this was a "special need" we could handle. So we jumped with joy and rushed to get our letter of intent sent to China. This little girl was even more special and more perfect than we could imagine, her birth date was the day after Alexis' but she was one year older and that made her born the day after Jay and I got married. God sent us this kid! So the paper chase began. Along with the wait.
After not hearing from CCAA for weeks and weeks my hopes started to rise that they were going to approve us.. why turn someone down after keeping them on edge for so long??!!
And we waited and we waited and we waited for CCAA to give us our pre approval for this little girl, saying they would accept us even though we didn't meet the new rules,and we waited and we waited until one terrible email day in December when we got a message from our agency saying that CCAA turned us down for our Martial Situation (we hadn't been married long enough under the new rules) The only thing to do was to cry. It really felt like we had loss our child.
After a few days I decided that I was being selfish. If I couldn't have her I needed to find her a family, so I started sending emails out on the special needs yahoo groups to find her a family. A few have called, but here is it six weeks later and not one family has sent another letter of intent for her. She sits in an orphanage in China waiting for a family.
What was our next option to complete our family? Our agency had just opened a program with an orphanage in Taiwan called Chung Yi and they felt we were qualified under the rules of Taiwan to adopt a non special needs baby from Taiwan. So I pushed my poor social worker and the agency to get my papers done and sent to Taiwan to get in line. The agency would only take four families at a time and at that moment only had two. A few days before our Home Study was complete a third family got in line. We were waiting on the child abuse clearance for the state to get back to our social worker so she could give us a good report. I was getting upset and frustrated that I was waiting and waiting again, so I stirred the pot and started making phone calls and emails.
Well thank the good Lord we found a wonderful woman that worked with Child Services that could complete our clearance and send it over to Marci at our agency. (Marci was helping and pushing for us and she did a GREAT job in getting that clearance to our social worker!) and then the next day we got our HOME STUDY and off to Taiwan it went on December 21, 2007!!! So we are now in line as family number four!!
What the future brings we don't know. We could still be rejected. Taiwan wants families that don't have kids.. .we have many kids. Taiwan has a different system then China, there is a Judge you have to go through and we just pray we get past that point. How long it will take we don't know. Family #1 got their referral on December 28, 2007 just five weeks after sending in their Home Study but we could wait for a year before getting ours (but we are now family #3!!!!) So I wanted to continue with this blog of our life with Alexis and our other children and think how lucky I am today to have the children I have.
And in my heart I pray that China changes the rules back and we can still apply for the child we fell in love with. Maybe that is why another family hasn't come along because she is being saved for us!
There were many, many disappointments along the way. We started gathering our dossier paperwork again in August, spoke to an agency that works with Taiwan that said we would not qualify for a program called Birth Mothers for Taiwan, applied through an agency for a special needs girl in China that no other family had asked for- but got turned down at the last minute because another family turned up that fit the CCAA's rules, we checked out Vietnam but just didn't think we could swing that amount of money... tears, tears and more tears...until we call our new agency, ASIA, out of Portland, Oregon that said they would advocate for us and they had a little girl they wanted us to take a look at.
When we got her file we sent it to our doctor, who looked everything over and said this was a "special need" we could handle. So we jumped with joy and rushed to get our letter of intent sent to China. This little girl was even more special and more perfect than we could imagine, her birth date was the day after Alexis' but she was one year older and that made her born the day after Jay and I got married. God sent us this kid! So the paper chase began. Along with the wait.
After not hearing from CCAA for weeks and weeks my hopes started to rise that they were going to approve us.. why turn someone down after keeping them on edge for so long??!!
And we waited and we waited and we waited for CCAA to give us our pre approval for this little girl, saying they would accept us even though we didn't meet the new rules,and we waited and we waited until one terrible email day in December when we got a message from our agency saying that CCAA turned us down for our Martial Situation (we hadn't been married long enough under the new rules) The only thing to do was to cry. It really felt like we had loss our child.
After a few days I decided that I was being selfish. If I couldn't have her I needed to find her a family, so I started sending emails out on the special needs yahoo groups to find her a family. A few have called, but here is it six weeks later and not one family has sent another letter of intent for her. She sits in an orphanage in China waiting for a family.
What was our next option to complete our family? Our agency had just opened a program with an orphanage in Taiwan called Chung Yi and they felt we were qualified under the rules of Taiwan to adopt a non special needs baby from Taiwan. So I pushed my poor social worker and the agency to get my papers done and sent to Taiwan to get in line. The agency would only take four families at a time and at that moment only had two. A few days before our Home Study was complete a third family got in line. We were waiting on the child abuse clearance for the state to get back to our social worker so she could give us a good report. I was getting upset and frustrated that I was waiting and waiting again, so I stirred the pot and started making phone calls and emails.
Well thank the good Lord we found a wonderful woman that worked with Child Services that could complete our clearance and send it over to Marci at our agency. (Marci was helping and pushing for us and she did a GREAT job in getting that clearance to our social worker!) and then the next day we got our HOME STUDY and off to Taiwan it went on December 21, 2007!!! So we are now in line as family number four!!
What the future brings we don't know. We could still be rejected. Taiwan wants families that don't have kids.. .we have many kids. Taiwan has a different system then China, there is a Judge you have to go through and we just pray we get past that point. How long it will take we don't know. Family #1 got their referral on December 28, 2007 just five weeks after sending in their Home Study but we could wait for a year before getting ours (but we are now family #3!!!!) So I wanted to continue with this blog of our life with Alexis and our other children and think how lucky I am today to have the children I have.
And in my heart I pray that China changes the rules back and we can still apply for the child we fell in love with. Maybe that is why another family hasn't come along because she is being saved for us!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
