So you might have seen some news on my FB status yesterday and wondered... What is this OOT all about? Well, OOT means that our dossier has moved from sitting in a pile in English to sitting in a pile in Mandarin Chinese. Yes, it sounds like a small step, and honestly it is.
HOWEVER, we rejoice in all things! This is great news for us because it means that our dossier has not been lost or stuck to some other dossier (which has happened). It took 56 days for us to move from pile one through translation and on into the next pile. This also means that we are "in process" which is a much better pile to be stacked in that "yet to be processed" right?
Our next step is LOA. LOA is a huge step in the process as the steps after it are more predictable in time. Predictable in time in the adoption world still means that there is a range, but the range is more comfortable. We are guessing that we will travel to China 10ish weeks (give or take 2 weeks) after we receive our LOA so you can do the math!
China's second biggest holiday time happens to start next week. This means that the officials who process dossiers will have about a week off. I know, bummer on the timing, right? Well, this means we could honestly wait another entire month to get our LOA. Please pray with us that this is not the case. Faith can do great things. We saw many miracles in our adoption of M and we continue to pray that God would move in the same way in YQ's adoption.
We are coming for you sweet baby girl!
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Funny things heard at our home!
*Some of these are older as I have not done a post like this in a while
M: L’s daddy in birds?
Me: Do you mean Belize?
M is totally in the potty talk and biology talk and private part talk stage of life. I don’t include those quotes here, but to show you how far his questions go, here is an example from this summer.
M... Gold have private parts?
Gotta love extra plurals!
M: Why I have feets?
M: Why I have two firetruckses? (He really likes to add the “ses” to the end of lots of words)
M: (playing doctor with daddy screaming) “I want yucky medicine.”
M: Slidebydown (upside down)
M: I communion (He was saying that he was a comedian)
M: While learning Mighty to Save (which he now knows) Thank you for the mountains, My God is mighty to save.
M: Concreek (concrete)
M: (whispers) I have to sleep... napKIN! This is how he learned to not say mapkin! He actually pretends to lay his head down to take a napKin! So cute!
Talking about months...
M: When is your Birthday?
Me: July.
M: When is your leg’s Birthday?
Me: July. My whole body was born in July
M: Oh
Me: When is your Birthday?
M: August
Me: So when is your leg’s Birthday?
M: September
M: Everybody stand up (on a kitchen chair) and make a boom truck (as he points to Brandon and I. Then he pauses) Oh no something happened. (Then he jumps off the chair.)
M: That was an AMAZING SIREN Daddy (after Brandon yawned one morning)
M: Oh no, my thumb is falling off (said totally seriously in his car seat one day)
M: Jesus says, eat the snake Adam and Eve. (Really bad summary of the story of Adam and Eve. Actually, M looks at his Jesus Storybook Bible and tells his own version of stories. If you see and MIV Bible, don’t trust the accuracy!)
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Day 50 and no news.
*Note: I will reference many technical abbreviations relating to our adoption. Please use previous posts and the sidebar adoption timeline to crack the adoption terms code!
We have entered day 50 in our LOA wait! Ahhh!!!! It will be 2 months on Sunday since we "got the call" and basically nothing has happened since then. Well that isn't true, my daughter has gotten two months older, in China, without us. I have debated what to write in this post, but I decided that to be fair and show all parts of adoption I am just going to be really raw. This is not going to be the typical Shelly post.
Please know I still believe that God is faithful. God is the Father to the fatherless. God's timing is so much better than ours. God sees a bigger picture that we don't see. I do believe those are true... but for the next few hundred words I am just going to vent.
After a super quick turn around from LID to PA (20 days) we were very excited. Travel before Christmas looked very possible. I know we didn't say that on the blog, but we were pretty sure it could happen, maybe even in November.
Our wait began on August 1st which is our PA date. We were watching to Olympics and had a "Go for the Gold" mentality as we saw some families get their LOA's at 30 some days. Well, 30 days have come and gone, and I don't think we will be getting any gold prizes.
You see, we are not even OOT on the road to our LOA. The fastest turn around from OOT to LOA is 2 weeks, but 3-5 or longer is more realistic. Yuck. To make matters worse there is a one week shut down happening in China the first week of October. That week of course doesn't count for anything as it relates to us other than make our number counts higher.
Basically we are waiting for a call from our case worker that we are OOT. Then we are waiting for a call from our case working that we have our LOA. Then we are process through all the steps at the timeline on the side.
Once we finally get our LOA we hope to be traveling about 10ish weeks later. Again, there is quite a range, but we think that time frame is pretty realistic.
Here is why it is hard:
We have not heard and will not hear a peep about our daughter. With M we had new photos and updates all the time. We could see him growing. We were falling in love with a child we knew was real. With YQ (Chinese name) we hear nothing. We don't even know where she is. We might be able to get a photo and update right before we travel, but children living in "foster homes" sometimes are not as easy to get updates for. Like here, foster homes range in quality. Unlike here, they might have 10 children in one room much like the "transition home" that M was in. There are some huge benefits to a foster home which we are grateful for, but a drawback is being unable to locate her as we wait.
She has medical unknowns. We can do nothing about them until we are home. It is hard. I don't think I need to say more, because I am pretty sure you can all imagine how it would feel if your child might need important care and you are not sure and have no way for them to get it.
She is getting older and we can't watch. We went through this to some degree with M, but the court trip and lots of photos and video sure made a huge difference. This is one of the hard things about international adoption.
Selfishly, we are getting passed! What? Well, because I am in FB groups where we share adoption stats all the time, I happen to know that many families who have LID's and PA's after us are OOT. This is very painful. There is no reason at all for this, but it happens all the time. I spoke with our case worker today and she said "maybe your dossier translator is slow." Great, huh? Nothing we can do to speed things along...
So now you know where we are at in the journey. We are enduring. We are treasuring time with M. We are very busy with exciting things at church. We are walking and laughing and playing and living life as though we don't have a daughter. This is one part good because we really are cherishing time, but one part bad as YQ isn't a part of it and besides obsessing about no news there is nothing we can do.
Brighter posts are coming soon. I have been collecting some great M quotes to share with you! Thanks for enduring with me and reading between the lines and knowing what to pray for. We covet your prayers.
We have entered day 50 in our LOA wait! Ahhh!!!! It will be 2 months on Sunday since we "got the call" and basically nothing has happened since then. Well that isn't true, my daughter has gotten two months older, in China, without us. I have debated what to write in this post, but I decided that to be fair and show all parts of adoption I am just going to be really raw. This is not going to be the typical Shelly post.
Please know I still believe that God is faithful. God is the Father to the fatherless. God's timing is so much better than ours. God sees a bigger picture that we don't see. I do believe those are true... but for the next few hundred words I am just going to vent.
After a super quick turn around from LID to PA (20 days) we were very excited. Travel before Christmas looked very possible. I know we didn't say that on the blog, but we were pretty sure it could happen, maybe even in November.
Our wait began on August 1st which is our PA date. We were watching to Olympics and had a "Go for the Gold" mentality as we saw some families get their LOA's at 30 some days. Well, 30 days have come and gone, and I don't think we will be getting any gold prizes.
You see, we are not even OOT on the road to our LOA. The fastest turn around from OOT to LOA is 2 weeks, but 3-5 or longer is more realistic. Yuck. To make matters worse there is a one week shut down happening in China the first week of October. That week of course doesn't count for anything as it relates to us other than make our number counts higher.
Basically we are waiting for a call from our case worker that we are OOT. Then we are waiting for a call from our case working that we have our LOA. Then we are process through all the steps at the timeline on the side.
Once we finally get our LOA we hope to be traveling about 10ish weeks later. Again, there is quite a range, but we think that time frame is pretty realistic.
Here is why it is hard:
We have not heard and will not hear a peep about our daughter. With M we had new photos and updates all the time. We could see him growing. We were falling in love with a child we knew was real. With YQ (Chinese name) we hear nothing. We don't even know where she is. We might be able to get a photo and update right before we travel, but children living in "foster homes" sometimes are not as easy to get updates for. Like here, foster homes range in quality. Unlike here, they might have 10 children in one room much like the "transition home" that M was in. There are some huge benefits to a foster home which we are grateful for, but a drawback is being unable to locate her as we wait.
She has medical unknowns. We can do nothing about them until we are home. It is hard. I don't think I need to say more, because I am pretty sure you can all imagine how it would feel if your child might need important care and you are not sure and have no way for them to get it.
She is getting older and we can't watch. We went through this to some degree with M, but the court trip and lots of photos and video sure made a huge difference. This is one of the hard things about international adoption.
Selfishly, we are getting passed! What? Well, because I am in FB groups where we share adoption stats all the time, I happen to know that many families who have LID's and PA's after us are OOT. This is very painful. There is no reason at all for this, but it happens all the time. I spoke with our case worker today and she said "maybe your dossier translator is slow." Great, huh? Nothing we can do to speed things along...
So now you know where we are at in the journey. We are enduring. We are treasuring time with M. We are very busy with exciting things at church. We are walking and laughing and playing and living life as though we don't have a daughter. This is one part good because we really are cherishing time, but one part bad as YQ isn't a part of it and besides obsessing about no news there is nothing we can do.
Brighter posts are coming soon. I have been collecting some great M quotes to share with you! Thanks for enduring with me and reading between the lines and knowing what to pray for. We covet your prayers.
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