Hi friends! No big news to share, but I wanted to do a quick update that includes a few different pieces of this adoption puzzle.
Where we are now:
Our dossier is currently in the hands of the China Consulate in New York City. This is the first time since we started this process that our dossier has been mailed anywhere (we just walked it in to all the other places), so it’s a weird feeling not to have it close by. Currently the wait time for processing is 6-8 business days, so we should have it back by the first week of February. Then, it’s on to critical review with our agency (about 9-11 business days) and then on to China where we should get an official Log in Date within about 5-7 days. The end is in sight! I look back over the last 6 months and am blown away by how much we accomplished in that time.
Telling people about Jia:
I thought maybe some of you would be interested in how we told people we were matched. We got matched a lot sooner then we expected so we didn’t have a lot of time to think about how to announce the news to Eden, our parents and siblings, but I think we did okay. We printed out sheets of paper that looked like this, but personalized them for each person,
And put them in red envelopes and gave them to people as Christmas presents. Everyone’s reaction was a little shock mixed with a lot of joy. It was so fun to get to tell people in person and in a special way.
I also wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who left your excited well wishes on Facebook and elsewhere. Getting to share this experience with all of you has made this process even more special.
What’s next:
Once we have our LID, we wait for our “hard” Letter of Approval, and then we start filling out more paperwork that I don’t even know about yet because I think our agency doesn’t want to overwhelm us (too late!!). We will travel 3-6 months after our Log in Date in China so we’re still on target to travel sometime between June and August assuming nothing significant changes. Josh and I both keep having moment of “at this time next year, Jia will be ______” or, my favorite from the other day as we were sitting at lunch “holy crap, we’re going to have two kids.” We’ve already starting making plans for the summer with the tentative “well, we’re not sure when we’re traveling, so we probably can, but…”. I mean, things are getting real, folks!
We are also working on grants and fundraising right now, so more paperwork! We’ll keep you updated as we get fundraisers planned!
So, that’s our update for now. Nothing earth shaking and it’s hard to beat my last post, but I wanted to keep you all in the loop as we wait for our girl to come home!