Metcha Day

I made it to Landia yesterday! And I got to meet the girls today and bring them back to my apartment here. We met the girls in the morning, had a break and lunch, in the early afternoon went to court, and then went back to the orphanage to pick up the girls. They asked me if I wanted to take the girls this afternoon or tomorrow so that I could get ready. Tomorrow probably would have been the logical choice, but I went with my heart instead.
Beach balls and bubbles have been a hit so far.  They just fell asleep after I made a rookie mistake of giving them too much liquid before going to bed. Faith already used her little potty, apparently I am not waiting until we get back to the States to potty train as the orphanage asked that I continue to put them on the potty at regular intervals to not undo their work.
So far they have been so quiet and rather shell shocked. I am waiting for the "scandels" as my translator called them. They are definitely shy and somewhat reserved.  I am guessing that Hope will have a harder time attaching. I haven't gotten any laughs out of her and scarcely a smile either and she definitely avoids eye contact.

Travel Dates

I got travel dates on Tuesday.  I leave for Landia in about three weeks.  This past week I have spent trying to figure out paperwork such as insurance and leave.  Most of it still isn't figured out.  I also sent out an email to lots of friends and family to update them on the current status of the adoption and what happens from here.  This means that I now have readers!

I also bought plane tickets and reserved an apartment for the month that I will be in Landia.  Now I need to finish cleaning and purging items from my apartment, so that I can make room for two more people and all of their stuff.  My mom is visiting next weekend to attend my shower, but also to help with childproofing, finishing some of my home improvement projects, and gardening.

Frenzy

I have been staying busy this week.  I took on extra hours of work and have tried to finish various projects and trying to make sure that my apartment is ready.  There is still so much to do.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a doctor that specializes in internationally adopted children.  It did not go how I expected it to.  She basically thought that most of what was listed in the files was probably not any issue.  That is good news, but also strange to hear because I thought that their diagnoses were definite.  I guess that I will find out once they get to the States.

Tomorrow I am going to do some childproofing.  Yay!

I was wrong

I got a surprise email yesterday afternoon...a referral.  I was not expecting that in the least.  It is for the two year old twins.  I have not accepted it yet, but do plan to.  Now the hectic craziness begins :)

Not Today, Not Today, Not This Week...

Every afternoon this week, I have had the moment where I realized that my official referral was not going to come that day.  Tuesday marked the one week from submission point, which was the earliest that I realistically thought that I could get a referral.  This afternoon I was on the elevator when I realized that it wasn't going to be this week.  However, at the end of the day I received an email from my agency asking about travel dates with the expectation that official referral will be coming soon.  I am now hopeful for Monday :)

Out of Translation

Translation of my dossier is done!  This means that my paperwork was submitted to Landia's Ministry this morning.  They will now review and approve my application.  My agency is hopeful that I will have a referral in a few weeks.  I have restarted my countdown until the end of the month, which is an arbitrary date to pick as my expected referral date, but it is as good as any.

Got it!

The I-800a approval arrived in the mail on Saturday.  I got it on Sunday night after I got home and scanned and sent it off to my agency ASAP.  Now I am just waiting for my dossier to finish being translated.  In my head I am aiming for a March 20th submission date, but that is probably because is just two weeks from today.  I am sure that on Monday I will be saying that it will be submitted one week from then, because Monday will be exactly one month since it theoretically could have started being translated.  Basically I am at the point that I am expecting to hear news soon.  I am so excited, but scared too.  I just spent 30 minutes trying to calculate my leave at work.  If I leave for Landia on Memorial Day weekend, I can take leave all the way until Labor Day.  This is the plan if I am granted permission to host the children between trips.

I have started learning some Latvian.  I don't know how useful knowing colors and being able to count up to ten will be, but that is about how proficient I will be.  I never did make that to do list, but I have mostly gotten out of my can do nothing but try to figure out the future.  Maybe that is because it is getting closer.  I just realized that in April I should be Landia's public list of adopters with files in their system.  It is just a simple chart with dates and information about the kinds of children that the adopters would be open to adopting, but one of those lines will be mine.

Lost in the mail?

I emailed USCIS on Monday and my officer told me that my I800a had been approved on Friday.  I thought that I would have the hard copy today, but no such luck.  If it doesn't arrive tomorrow, I will call USCIS again on Monday and ask them to send another copy.

The waiting has been getting to me lately.  It is hard to not have anything productive to do towards the goal.  Last night in my church's small group we talked about Genesis 12, which is all about acting/waiting on God's promises.  I loved that it was so relevant and that I am not the only one in a waiting stage of life.  This weekend I hope to make a list of things that I want to finish before travel, so that I have concrete projects to work on.  Unfortunately, many of the items on my list will have to wait until the referral.  Maybe I will make two lists instead.

This weekend to put my anxious energy to good use I am heading up north again to my parents' house.  I will be helping my little brother figure out what he is doing with his life and my parents clean/organize before my grandfather moves in next weekend.  My grandfather's health has been deteriorating and at 89 years old he is finally willing to admit that he can no longer live alone in a farmhouse that is about twice as old as he is.I am not looking forward to the long drive there and back, but I am glad to see them and to have a productive use of my time.

In other news, my computer was moved and as of Monday I started my new job.  Things are going quite well so far.

Things that I have learned

This week I have learned that the information that I have been obsessively trying to figure out is on the China Adoption Facebook groups, specifically the DTC or TRAVEL groups.  I joined because even though more than half of the conversation is not relevant much of it is very relevant.  There isn't enough people on the Landia adoption groups to crowdsource the answers to the questions that I am currently trying to answer.  Just an hour ago someone asked the current timeline for I800a approvals.  I was able to share the dates in my timeline, but also see some other recent timelines.  Even more exciting, I was able to figure out how to email my assigned officer and to hear a few accounts of her work.  If I don't get anything in the mail tomorrow, I will be emailing her.

I also found a blog of a couple adopting from Landia right now.  This was really exciting because in 2012 and 2013 only around 80 children each year were adopted from Landia in the US.  That means that there just aren't that many blogs.  To give a comparison, 2,306 children were adopted from China in 2013.  Even more exciting was the fact that the three kids that they are adopting are 6 or under.  To give context to that, in 2012 and 2013 only 6 kids total were adopted from Landia that were 4 or younger.  This means that blogs about toddlers/preschoolers that are adopted from Landia are pretty much non existent.  It has been really useful to read about their experiences what has worked, what hasn't.  I am trying to figure out a way to contact the family.  I am fairly sure that they use the same agency as me, but maybe I just need to leave a comment on their blog.

Another birthday!

My newest nephew was born two days ago.  I am going up north to go meet him this weekend.  The adoption is moving along steadily.  My dossier is off to Landia tomorrow with another adoptive family and I had my fingerprints done this morning.  It took me about an hour, but I got to read inspirational signs such as "A hug is a gift that is one size fits all" and Don't let the love of Power overpower the Power of Love."
Have a great weekend!

Happy Birthday!

Today is the birthday of two little girls in Landia.  The twins are turning two years old and there is a chance that by their next birthday they will be at home here with me.  For now I will call them Faith and Hope.  I won't know for a few more months whether they will definitely be my daughters, but it is a definite possibility. As I have been telling people, it is up to God and the Bureaucracy at this point, but I have an absurd trust in both of them, although much more in the first than the second.



In other news, I got a great birthday present for them in the mail today: my fingerprinting appointment letter.  This is the letter that USCIS sends to let me know that I can now get my biometrics done to get approval to adopt children internationally.  The appointment is for one week from today, which is the day before my dossier will fly off to Landia with a family that is finishing their adoption process.  The dossier will take about a month to translate by which time I should have USCIS approval.  I have a general timeframe that I think the rest of the process will take, but it is a little early for me to publicly speak about it.  Let's just say that I am hoping to be in Landia sometime late Spring or early Summer.

Yet another quick update?

I am keeping to my one post a week, but just barely. :)  I was successful on Friday.  I actually made it to my last destination 2.5 hours early.  As of today, my entire dossier is complete, except for USCIS approval.  I hope that I can send it off to Landia this week or next.  I am also praying that my appointment for my USCIS fingerprint session will be in the mail tomorrow.  Things have been moving fast, but from here there will be a lot of waiting.    For now I can just be happy that I have a whole bunch of these gold stickers:

Another quick update

On Friday, I got my I-800a application sent out to Texas, my passport renewal to Pennsylvania, and copies of my birth certificate to Illinois.  They all arrived at their destinations on Tuesday.  I got my birth certificates back today with the required seals.  I don't have any information about the other items except that they arrived at their destinations.  I am trying to be patient.  Tomorrow I am taking off work and I have grand plans to visit four different cities in my state.  Without calculating the time at each location it will take me three hours just to drive to the five different stops that I need to make.  My goal is to leave at 8 am tomorrow.  If each stop takes an hour, I will be able to accomplish everything with 2 hours to spare, because I have to be at the last destination at 5 pm.  I'll let you know how this paperwork chase goes.

Quick update

I got my copies of the home study!  This means that I can ship off the I800a form for approval to adopt from the USCIS.  I am praying that this is a quick turn around.  I'm getting impatient.

My Big News

I am adopting!  I started the process to adopt from an Eastern European country (referred to as Landia in this blog) this summer.  I was told that my homestudy would be finalized today, which is what I was waiting for the news to no longer be a somewhat secret.

I have known since I was a child that I would adopt one day from a former Soviet country and it is crazy to think that I am very close to making that dream happen.  I have had quite a few people ask me why now and my answer is usually something along the lines of why not now.  Basically I know that I am still on the younger side and single, but I have the space, I have a stable good income, and I have a fantastic support system.  The later three are much more important to me than the first two in order to start this process.  I also don't like deferring dreams for things that aren't mandatory.

From here the timeline is vague, but as soon as I have my finalized homestudy in hand, I get to ship it out to get approval from USCIS to adopt.  This approval takes about 8 weeks.  Then I ship that approval and a whole bunch of other paperwork (in triplicate) to Landia for translation and submission.  That process takes a month.  After that a referral could come immediately or six months later or really anytime.  I have approximately a month between accepting the referral and my first trip to Landia.  That trip will take about a month and I will possibly bring the child(ren) back to the US to be hosted with me until the adoption is finalized on the third trip, which happens 5-6 months after the first trip.  The second trip is a quick trip for a court hearing that in this case the child(ren) do not need to attend.  And of course throughout the whole process there is a lot of paperwork :)

I will cover why the country that I chose and put up a page on the timeline up to this point later, but I have places to be and paperwork to fill out.

New Job

This isn't my big news, but it is big news!  I decided right at the end of last year to pursue a new position at my current organization.  This has been a long time coming, but was a very hard decision to make.  I have worked at the same place building up the library from ruins to a functional space for almost five years.  I am very attached to the library and to my co-workers and am very sad to be leaving it.

The library shortly after I started working there.

However, I have had a very poor working relationship with my first and second line supervisors for a long time and it had only been deteriorating.  This summer I reached my breaking point and I decided that I needed to do something about changing my situation.  I had some conversations with others that I knew in the building to let them know that I was looking for a new job and to feel out the possibilities.  I also had very candid conversations with my middle management to determine if there was any way that things could change whether to improve the current situation or change my supervisor.  At that time, I thought that one of those was a possibility, so I asked to do a three month rotation to help make the necessary changes while I was out of the immediate position.

For the past two months, I have been working for the head of the agency working on a special project.  It sounds very fancy, but really it isn't.  A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with my middle management to determine if any changes were going to happen and I also mentioned that I had an unofficial job offer working for the office that I had been working with while on rotation.  She told me that I should take the new job because the changes wouldn't happen in time and I shouldn't make myself miserable waiting for them.  That very day I went back to the office that had offered me the position and told them that we should start things moving.  Last week, I had a conversation with my direct supervisors and told them that I wouldn't be coming back from my rotation as I had a job offer.  Their response was basically how soon can it be done so that we can hire your replacement.  Thus it looks like I will be starting the new job in February.

When I told my sister that I had got a new job, she told me that I didn't know how lucky I was to have gotten a job without applying and without an interview.  The way that I see it though, I had a six month long interview.  

I am really excited because the new job has more flexibility with working hours and telework, which will be useful for my other big news.

Happy New Year/Blog!

For me, 2014 was a year of big decisions/changes and it looks like several of those decisions will be coming to fulfillment in 2015. I am usually opposed to New Year resolutions, but this year I am going to make an exception and publicly commit to blogging at least once a week over the coming year. I hope that next week I will be at the point where I can reveal my biggest decision and how I came to make it. So, come back then for my big news, although I suspect that most people who will read this next week will be people that already know my news. :)

Now some background as to who I am; I am a Millennial living and working in the Washington, DC area for the federal government as a librarian. That really doesn't give much information, but I think that I would rather gradually reveal who I am than simply tell you in the first post. I will tell you that this blog gets its title from 2 Corinthians 9:6 "The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." This is a fervent wish of mine to be someone who sows bountifully rather than sparingly. I want to live a full and complete life in a manner that is true to who I am and that I don't settle for the easy when the beautiful is possible.

I will leave it at that and hope that the one (if I am lucky) person that reads this will come back next week because it is so much easier for me to write for an audience than just to myself, which is why I have never enjoyed journaling.