Jan 2007
Road Trip to Yakima
January 25, 2007
This week marked a big step forward on our Adoption
Journey Number Two.
Tina and Kai and I all drove over the mountains to go to the Citizenship & Immigration Services Office (USCIS) in Yakima to turn our I-600A form and get fingerprinted at the same time. When we adopted Kai we didn't know we could do this. We had sent in our I-600A application form on February 12th, 2005 and waited until April 22nd for a fingerprinting appointment in Tukwilla. By driving our application over the mountains and getting fingerprinted when we turned it in we're 3 months ahead of where we were the first time on this piece of the puzzle. We still have to wait for them to send us our I-171H. With Kai we got that on May 2nd, which at 10 days from fingerprinting was REALLY fast compared to how long it's taking most people now(we know people who are currently at over 30 days). Part of why it was so quick with Kai was that we got our Doctor's office to fax a letter to the USCIS explaining the need for him to receive medical attention. At the time we honestly believed Kai would likely require some kind of corrective surgery for his hand. When I think about this now it's almost funny. So I'm a bit unsure about doing it again. I'm not sure what kind of medical attention Yu Heng will need. He has no hand, but knowing what I do now about children with limb differences I doubt he'll need any immediate procedures. I do know that he definitely needs to be home with his family as soon as possible, so I'm willing to pretend I don't know that children who are born with only one hand are not "missing" a hand - they are one-handed. There is a big difference.
So it was a great trip over "the hill". This is really NOT the time of year to drive over the cascades, but we scored on the weather. It was a beautiful drive over with bare, dry roads and light traffic. The other great part of the trip was that we were able to visit really good friends we haven't seen in too long! Lisa and Jack, and their two sons Darrin (14) and Troy (11). Tina and Lisa have been friends since kindergarten, and they used to live near us. Since they moved away we haven't been able to see them as much, and this was the first time they have gotten to meet Kai.
Kai was in great form for the whole trip. When we got in the door at Lisa and Jack's he turned on the charm and set to bossing Darren and Troy around. Actually he wasn't bossy, but he very much enjoyed going off with the big boys and being entertained by them, he was not the least bit clingy or shy. We ended up staying way too late and didn't get to our hotel until almost 10:30. Kai was a bit confused by this arrangement, but was still very excited about the adventure - we fixed him his bedtime oatmeal, tucked him in with us and he passed out cold.
We made it to the USCIS office by 8:30 AM the next morning and got everything done in less than an hour. The offices are much smaller than the ones on this side of the state, and everyone there was very nice and helpful. We met two other couples from the Seattle area there who were also adopting from China. They really enjoyed seeing Kai, and hearing a little of our story. We were through the whole process in less than an hour and headed home.
We had one last stop on our way and that was to visit Kai's friend Jasper in Ellensburg. Jasper's dad was at work, but we had a really good time visiting with his mom Paula, and were really glad we got to see them.
When we got home Tina had email from a director at our agency with a tracking number for our "Letter of Intent": it was received in Beijing on Tuesday! So now the race is on to see if the U.S. will get us our I-171H before China gets us our "Prior Approval" (P.A.). We are thinking about starting a pool on bureaucracy will move faster.
Tina and Kai and I all drove over the mountains to go to the Citizenship & Immigration Services Office (USCIS) in Yakima to turn our I-600A form and get fingerprinted at the same time. When we adopted Kai we didn't know we could do this. We had sent in our I-600A application form on February 12th, 2005 and waited until April 22nd for a fingerprinting appointment in Tukwilla. By driving our application over the mountains and getting fingerprinted when we turned it in we're 3 months ahead of where we were the first time on this piece of the puzzle. We still have to wait for them to send us our I-171H. With Kai we got that on May 2nd, which at 10 days from fingerprinting was REALLY fast compared to how long it's taking most people now(we know people who are currently at over 30 days). Part of why it was so quick with Kai was that we got our Doctor's office to fax a letter to the USCIS explaining the need for him to receive medical attention. At the time we honestly believed Kai would likely require some kind of corrective surgery for his hand. When I think about this now it's almost funny. So I'm a bit unsure about doing it again. I'm not sure what kind of medical attention Yu Heng will need. He has no hand, but knowing what I do now about children with limb differences I doubt he'll need any immediate procedures. I do know that he definitely needs to be home with his family as soon as possible, so I'm willing to pretend I don't know that children who are born with only one hand are not "missing" a hand - they are one-handed. There is a big difference.
So it was a great trip over "the hill". This is really NOT the time of year to drive over the cascades, but we scored on the weather. It was a beautiful drive over with bare, dry roads and light traffic. The other great part of the trip was that we were able to visit really good friends we haven't seen in too long! Lisa and Jack, and their two sons Darrin (14) and Troy (11). Tina and Lisa have been friends since kindergarten, and they used to live near us. Since they moved away we haven't been able to see them as much, and this was the first time they have gotten to meet Kai.
Kai was in great form for the whole trip. When we got in the door at Lisa and Jack's he turned on the charm and set to bossing Darren and Troy around. Actually he wasn't bossy, but he very much enjoyed going off with the big boys and being entertained by them, he was not the least bit clingy or shy. We ended up staying way too late and didn't get to our hotel until almost 10:30. Kai was a bit confused by this arrangement, but was still very excited about the adventure - we fixed him his bedtime oatmeal, tucked him in with us and he passed out cold.
We made it to the USCIS office by 8:30 AM the next morning and got everything done in less than an hour. The offices are much smaller than the ones on this side of the state, and everyone there was very nice and helpful. We met two other couples from the Seattle area there who were also adopting from China. They really enjoyed seeing Kai, and hearing a little of our story. We were through the whole process in less than an hour and headed home.
We had one last stop on our way and that was to visit Kai's friend Jasper in Ellensburg. Jasper's dad was at work, but we had a really good time visiting with his mom Paula, and were really glad we got to see them.
When we got home Tina had email from a director at our agency with a tracking number for our "Letter of Intent": it was received in Beijing on Tuesday! So now the race is on to see if the U.S. will get us our I-171H before China gets us our "Prior Approval" (P.A.). We are thinking about starting a pool on bureaucracy will move faster.
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More to the story...
January 13, 2007
Two years ago, when we started the process to adopt
Kai we didn't have any clear plans about a second
adoption. Going through the process of international
adoption for the first time was overwhelming enough.
Once we had Kai with us though, we knew we would want
to do this again. It has really been an amazing
experience. I won't tell you that we never had second
thoughts about going again, there have been many
times when we've thought for certain we are too old,
too tired, too poor, too... fill in the blank.
But we feel strongly that a sibling close in age would be a very good thing for Kai, and that it would be nice for him to have someone else in the family who shares his ethnic background. With these thoughts in mind we made the decision to start the process again. I'd be lying if I told you we didn't start with a girl in mind this time (we did with Kai too), but somehow we were drawn to a little boy on our agency's list again.
And so we found YuHeng. We are guessing his nickname is YuYu. We've been working on a name to give him, but haven't finalized that decision yet, so for now he's YuYu. He was born missing his right hand. He's almost exactly one year younger than Kai, but will be about exactly one year older than Kai was when we get him.
Here are a few more pictures of him...
I apologize for not blogging more the last couple weeks, but we have been really busy. We feel we did pretty well at rushing through the paper-chase to get Kai - it took us only 9 months from the date we turned in our agency application to the day we received him in China. We are doing everything in our power to make our "chase" to YuYu even quicker. There's an odd mix of issues working both for and against us. As we have been through this gauntlet before we know the path and have many of the necessary documents on hand. However, the process has changed a bit since two years ago, and there are wait times for some things that have increased. All we can do now is get through the steps we can ASAP. So what have we gotten done?
Our agency approved us to adopt Kai on January 20th, 2005.
Our agency approved us to adopt YuYu on January 2nd 2007.
Our social worker has finished our homestudy and emailed us a draft last night.
With Kai our home study wasn't complete until February 9th.
We finished our "Letter of Intent" (LOI) this is the official letter we send to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) asking permission to adopt YuYu, and sent it in to our agency on January 12th. We didn't send in Kai's until January 26th. Now that this is on it's way we are waiting for China's response which should be in the form of a Prior-Approval (PA). This will take up to two months.
The next big step is to submit our I-600A to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office in Yakima and get fingerprinted for our I-171H. With Kai we sent in the I-600A on Feb 12, we got fingerprinted April 26th and received the I-171H on May 2nd. We are hoping that we can speed this step up quite a bit this time.
There are a few other items on our to-do list but these are the big ones which involve waiting on the U.S. and P.R.C. governments. Once we we have these we'll have the rest of our dossier ready to send to China and start waiting for the CCAA to send us the Signing Commitment (SC) this is a new step in the process we didn't have to do with Kai. Then we start the wait for Travel Approval (TA).
We've seen wait times on these things fluctuate so much over the last two years that we are hesitant to project our travel timeline yet, but we're hopeful it will be before then end of summer. So that's kind of a quick recap of what we've been up to, and where we are in the process of "Adoption #2".
But we feel strongly that a sibling close in age would be a very good thing for Kai, and that it would be nice for him to have someone else in the family who shares his ethnic background. With these thoughts in mind we made the decision to start the process again. I'd be lying if I told you we didn't start with a girl in mind this time (we did with Kai too), but somehow we were drawn to a little boy on our agency's list again.
And so we found YuHeng. We are guessing his nickname is YuYu. We've been working on a name to give him, but haven't finalized that decision yet, so for now he's YuYu. He was born missing his right hand. He's almost exactly one year younger than Kai, but will be about exactly one year older than Kai was when we get him.
Here are a few more pictures of him...
I apologize for not blogging more the last couple weeks, but we have been really busy. We feel we did pretty well at rushing through the paper-chase to get Kai - it took us only 9 months from the date we turned in our agency application to the day we received him in China. We are doing everything in our power to make our "chase" to YuYu even quicker. There's an odd mix of issues working both for and against us. As we have been through this gauntlet before we know the path and have many of the necessary documents on hand. However, the process has changed a bit since two years ago, and there are wait times for some things that have increased. All we can do now is get through the steps we can ASAP. So what have we gotten done?
Our agency approved us to adopt Kai on January 20th, 2005.
Our agency approved us to adopt YuYu on January 2nd 2007.
Our social worker has finished our homestudy and emailed us a draft last night.
With Kai our home study wasn't complete until February 9th.
We finished our "Letter of Intent" (LOI) this is the official letter we send to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) asking permission to adopt YuYu, and sent it in to our agency on January 12th. We didn't send in Kai's until January 26th. Now that this is on it's way we are waiting for China's response which should be in the form of a Prior-Approval (PA). This will take up to two months.
The next big step is to submit our I-600A to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office in Yakima and get fingerprinted for our I-171H. With Kai we sent in the I-600A on Feb 12, we got fingerprinted April 26th and received the I-171H on May 2nd. We are hoping that we can speed this step up quite a bit this time.
There are a few other items on our to-do list but these are the big ones which involve waiting on the U.S. and P.R.C. governments. Once we we have these we'll have the rest of our dossier ready to send to China and start waiting for the CCAA to send us the Signing Commitment (SC) this is a new step in the process we didn't have to do with Kai. Then we start the wait for Travel Approval (TA).
We've seen wait times on these things fluctuate so much over the last two years that we are hesitant to project our travel timeline yet, but we're hopeful it will be before then end of summer. So that's kind of a quick recap of what we've been up to, and where we are in the process of "Adoption #2".
