Finding Adventure in Each Step

Look what we received this week!  We have a Spiderman with style on our hands!  Look at those eyes.  I love his expressions!

Our boy is:

8 years old

49.25 inches tall

50 pounds

loves basketball (Go Cats!)

 good at math

Getting new photos of him makes this mom want to go to China now...  But first we must complete many steps, sigh.


Currently, we are at the I800A step.  This step is a checks and balances process.  We get "pre approved" by the US that states we meet the requirements to adopt.  China requires our I800A approval in order to grant us acceptance to adopt a specific child.  Our I800A application was received by immigration on May 7th.

As part of the immigration process we have to be fingerprinted and a background check is conducted at the federal level (in addition to the other 4 background checks we did).  We received fingerprint appointments for June 10, but due to schedules, walked in early on May 22.  We ventured to Louisville to have our fingerprints scanned for the background check. 

We are on day 37 of waiting for this step and likely will be approved early next week.  Once we receive approval for our I800A, it will be sent to our agency and on for authentication.  The authentication process takes approximately 2 weeks and then our dossier (home study, reference letters, I800A approval, and a few other documents) will finally be sent to China.

Once our documents are sent, we are said to be DTC (Dossier to China).  China will log our documents into the system (Logged in Dossier or LID) and then we will wait for the infamous Letter of Acceptance (LOA) from China.  The LOA wait can the most brutal part of the process because the wait time for this step varies from 30-100 days or more!  Once our LOA is issued several other steps are taken and travel can occur with 2-3 months.  We hope to travel to China by the end of November, but as you can see there are many steps that have to be completed and each step can be an adventure.

As we wait for the I800A step and others to be completed, we will be busy with the logistics of where he will sleep, learning more about attachment, older child adoption and institutionalization, preparing our current kiddos for the transition, praying praying and praying for his heart, educating ourselves on strategies to help him succeed at learning, oh and savoring the kiddos God has given us now.  Plenty of adventure to keep us busy for now.  We ask that you pray for him too, specifically for his emotional and physical well being.