More OK's needed.....

If you look at the sidebar of our blog (to the right) I have created a timeline of milestones on our adoption. For this adoption we have to jump through many more hoops to get all the approvals needed for the Chinese government to issue our travel approval. It's the US government that's the hold up in going. We just got our NVC (National Visa Center) letter last week telling us that our I-800A immigration approval was sent to Guangzhou, China to the American Consulate for our next approval. But the American Consulate have yet to receive our 230 document from our agency in the USA. They need this document in order to issue our Article 5 that is then picked up by our agency representative in China and taken to the Chinese government (the CCAA) for them to issue our Travel approval. Have I put you to sleep yet? Could they have made this any more complicated? I think not. Will keep you posted on the status of all this hoop jumping.

FINALLY.... An American name for our daughter!

It seems as though it has taken forever to come up with an American name for our daughter. Almost every name Dave liked, I didn't, and every name I liked, he didn't. We tossed around more names than I can even believe we tossed around. Nothing seemed to stick, other than "Wennie". For those of you who like the name "Wennie", sorry. The name isn't Wennie. Some people have informed us that the name we chose is pretty, but there are tons of little girls with this name. She will be one of many with the same name in her class at school. Well, so be it. Having a last name that starts with a letter that happens to be close to the beginning of the alphabet she will most likely be #1 of this name. That works. Am I just dragging this out too long? OK, a drumroll please............... scroll down please........

Abigail Wen Bailey

(Abbey)

Waiting for our I-800A preapproval....

There are many changes with the way immigration handles international adoption now. We are waiting for our I-800A preapproval to come. Even though we haven't adopted "Wennie", we had to fill out an I-800A form with immigration to classify her as an immediate relative before we go to China. When we got Meigan we didn't fill that form out until we were in China. Then there's another approval we need after that one, called an Article 5. Don't really know what that one is, but we will find out after the I-800A preapproval comes. We are pretty sure we will be traveling to China sometime between April and June. They way time flies, we will be going before we know it!

We got LOA!!!!!!!!

On Monday evening emails starting coming in. The first one told us that we would be receiving a Fed-x package on Tuesday from our agency's accounting dept. Just the tracking information for the package. Then we got an email congratulating us on our LOA but it was addressed to someone else but sent to us. We emailed our agency back and questioned what was going on. This of course was after they closed for the day. So we waited for a response and figured the story of what was going on would be evident in the Fed-x package. So we get the Fed-x package and it's our Letter of Approval to adopt "Wennie"!



Late Tuesday night (about 10:00 pm)an email comes telling us that the info they sent us from the accounting dept was intended for us. Later (like 11:00 pm) an email finally comes congratulating us and telling us that we would be getting our LOA by Fed-x on Tuesday before 4:30 pm. How weird was all of that?



Here's the cool part to the story. We got our LOA to adopt "Wennie" on the same day that we received our referral for Meigan exactly three years later! What were the chances of that?

Dang Qing Wen pics

We finally received our Pre-Approval to adopt Wennie (nickname for now - still grapling with her American name). Here are a few pics of her. We are on track to travel this spring (we hope).

Preapproval....maybe this week.

We sent in our Letter of Intent to adopt on 1/5/10. It takes on the average about 14 to 20 days to get this preapproval from China. This preapproval is what we need to say with complete certainty that our little girl has been put on hold for us at the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs).

We have been working on an American name for our daughter. We have had a lot of fun trying to come up with a name. Her middle name will be Wen. The Chinese that speak Mandarin Chinese say that it is pronounced "won". We will pronounce it as it looks. "wen". Anyway, we will let you know when we get our preapproval and when we come up with her complete name. That's when we will post her picture! YAY!

We have been calling her "Wennie" at this point. Some of you will cringe at that one and some will say "that's so cute". Her legal name will not be Wennie.

Hope to have some good news soon!

A little birdie told us something important..........

As some of you know and most don't, we have gotten "THE CALL" from our agency! I think something happened, maybe someone intervened, that ended our wait, it wasn't our immigration paperwork, it's still out of date. We are scheduled to get refingerprinted next week. All I can say is that our little girl made her appearance to our agency and they referred her to us, in spite of what they had said. They finally matched us with a little girl that has the special need we indicated we were the most open to. I wish I could post some pictures at this point, but our agency has requested that until we receive the official word from the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs that they have preapproved us we can't post any pictures of her. Sorry!

But I will tell you that she is 2 years old. She has a repaired cleft lip and repaired cleft palate. She is reported to be smart, extroverted, easy going and we think she is BEAUTIFUL!

When we are allowed to post pictures we will!

We are so happy and are looking forward to going to China to get our new daughter! (not the plane ride! ) We went to China in economy class last time. About 12 hours into the flight I told David that people in prison get more room than we do and get better service too.