Journey to Our Chinese Princess

Open for business

2006-12-26T18:15:00.000-08:00

Well, our new blog is open for businee. Please click on the following link: http://journeytoourchild.blogspot.com/ to follow our journey. I will no longer be posting here, so make sure you book mark the new site.

Link to New Blog Coming Soon!!!

2006-12-26T16:37:00.000-08:00

Stay tuned!!!

Vietnam!!!

2006-12-16T20:13:00.000-08:00

Have no time for anything else, but I will eventually. Life is just hectic right now being the holidays and all. I can't wait to share more, but just don't have the time right now! Patience, please!

Our Decision is...

2006-12-15T04:14:00.000-08:00

Uh, I got to unfortunately, sign off & get ready for work. But I should post this weekend. Sorry to keep you in suspense, but I have a train to catch in 45 minutes!

New Regulations for China adoptions

2006-12-12T07:25:00.000-08:00

I don't have much time to post, but those of you who aren't involved in your own adoption might be interested to know this. The CCAA the governmental agency responsible for adoptions in China had a BIG meeting on December 8th and came up with the following regulations to lower the numbers of dossiers that prospective adoptive parents are sending in. Supposedly they have/are getting twice the number of dossiers than they have paper-ready children. They do have other children, but for some reason they aren't ready to adopt.

The New Regulations

Married couples only. No singles. Agencies may continue to submit singles dossiers within their 8% constraints until May 1, 2007 and then the CCAA will not accept any more single dossiers.
Married couples must be married over 2 years if there are no previous marriages. If there are previous marriages then the present marriage must be over 5 years. However, no more than two previous marriages will be allowed (it is unclear if this is two per person or two per couple)

Each parent must be 30 to 50 years old. No parent can be outside of this range. Upper limit can be 55 for a family in the waiting child program (and that “can be” kind of looks like it’s going to be on a case by case basis, not an absolute, but it’s hard to tell).

The CCAA wants healthy parents - no infectious disease, no mental disease (including depression or anxiety), no blindness, and no serious disease or disability. There is a note about waiting to see what the CCAA’s formal notice says, which sounds to me like they hope there will be more information in the formal notice about these things. There is another note that cancer was not specifically mentioned.

Both parents must have a BMI under 40.

At least one parent must have a stable job. Income requirement is $10,000 per family member including the child to be adopted. Family’s net assets must be over $80,000.

Each parent must have a high school education or higher.

No more than five children in the home including the child to be adopted. The youngest child in the home must be over 1 year old. Exceptions will be considered for the waiting child program.

No criminal record. There is a note about the CCAA not elaborating so we will again have to wait to see what the formal notice says.

The CCAA fees are also changing - going from $410 to $620

Well, we meet almost all these new requirements, except if there is a previous marriage, one must be married 5 years. Although, Kevin divorced in 92 and did not marry until after 11 years, we still need to meet the 5 year requirement and have only been married since September 2003. Therefore, after speaking to our agency, they recommended that we change countries; although the new rules don't go into effect until May 1, 2007 with all the things that must be done and all the governmental agencies involved, there is a very high chance that we wouln't beat the deadline, especially since our agency wants all dossiers in by April 1st, so they have enough time to check them and get them to China. So, we have decided to switch countries. We will love a child no matter what country. I am suppose to get a call from our agency's adoption consultant from the country we have chosen, but that means you will have to wait until I talk to them, before I let you in on what country it will be. Stay tuned for more information.

Received Finally!

2006-12-06T13:48:00.000-08:00

Today, in the mail we finally received the packet from CHI, our adoption agency. I had to look at it briefly, but I'm being good and not going to really read it until after I finish a few things around here, namely finishing the Christmas letter. I've done the rough draft by hand, but I need to type it , edit it and have Kevin approve it. The e-mail that we received on the 29th approving us said the packet would be mailed out that day or the following day. The postmark though is stamped December 4th. Now that makes more sense that it would take 2 days or less to get here from St Louis.

Our 1st Snowstorm of the Season

2006-12-05T20:09:00.000-08:00

Here are pictures from the snowstorm we had last Friday. They were actually taken on Saturday.

Still nothing in the mail. I'm taking a vacation day tomorrow, so if we don't receive it in the mail tomorrow, I'll send the woman who e-mailed me that it was on the way; even with the snowstorm, we should have gotten it in the mail by now; it has been a week or will by tomorrow. The main office is only in St. Louis, which is only about 5 or 6 hours from here. Maybe it got lost in the mail or something. Although, it is early, I am going to go to bed and just get up early in the morning; even an hour and a half extra sleep will feel great and then I am going to bed a little bit earlier than I do sometimes.

2006-12-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

We're still waiting for the agency contract & other materials. I guess this is a way to prepare us for the long wait that is just getting longer. We also had a big snowstorm in the midwest. Our part of Chicagoland got over a foot of snow. And now the temperatures have been extremely cold, single digit lows near zero. It's hard to believe, but over Thanksgiving weekend, we hit record highs. It was so unseasonably warm, but a week later and everything is just the opposite almost. I wonder if they are still calling for mild winter. After the past several days, it sure doesn't feel like it. But things can change quickly here in Chicagoland. We could even be wearing shorts over Christmas. OK, maybe not shorts, but we have had some extremely warm Christmases in the 60's even. It would be nice, since Kevin & I are on vacation the week between Christmas and New Years. We will be staying home, unless we go up to the U.P for a few days to visit Kevin's family. When I get home, I'll post a few pictures of our snowstorm on Friday.

New referrals are on their way!

2006-11-30T03:49:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to everyone of you, who are going to finally, see your babies' faces. For those of you without prior knowledge the China adoption world. The CCAA is the governmental gency in China that matches adoptive parents to their child who is waiting in China. Parents who's paperwork was logged in to China between August 26th and September 8th, 2005 will now be seeing their 1st glimpses of their child. They will probably travel in 6-8 weeks or usually, that is how it goes, but with Chinese New Year aroundthat time , it will probably be more like 10-12 weeks.

Now the big question will be, when will those referrals start flying in! Then in a few weeks, there will be the big question as to whether there will be another batch of referrals before the end of the year! There had been a lot of rumours a week or so ago that the CCAA may start rolling out full months and then the wait would begin to stabilize. But since they only covered 19 days, it does not look like the wait will be stabilizing in the near future. At this pace and the fact that we are only at the very beginning of the process, who knows when we may actually have a little one. Ithink the wait is now about 15 months from LID (Log-In-Date - when you are officially in the computer system in China) to Referral.

We're officially approved!!

2006-11-29T19:06:00.000-08:00

We received the following e-mail this afternoon:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
November 29, 2006
Dear Kevin and Kathryn
Congratulations! Your application for adoption has been approved by the Program Director.

We will be mailing out your approval packet today or tomorrow with instructions on how to proceed.

We are very excited for you, and wish you well as you begin your adoption journey!

The Intake Department
Children’s Hope International/St. Louis Home Office
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

St. Louis is about 5-7 hours southwest of us, so there's a good chance we'll get it by Saturday, if not before.! We're definitely on our way!

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR PURSE HAS BEEN?

2006-11-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed gals who sit their purses on public restroom floors - that go directly to their dining tables? Happens a lot! It's not
always the 'restaurant food' that causes stomach distress. Sometimes "what
you don't know 'will' hurt you"! Read on...

Mom got so upset when a guest came in the door and plopped their purses down
on the counter where she was cooking or setting up the buffet. She always
said that purses are really dirty, because of where they have been. Smart
Momma!!!

It's something just about every woman carries with them. While we may know
what's inside our purses, do you have any idea what's on the outside? Shauna
Lake put purses to the test - for bacteria - with surprising results. You
may think twice about where you put your purse.

Women carry purses everywhere; from the office to public restrooms to the
floor of the car. Most women won't be caught without their purses, but did
you ever stop to think about where your purse goes during the day?

"I drive a school bus, so my purse has been on the floor of the bus a lot,"
says one woman. "On the floor of my car ... probably in restrooms."

"I put my purse in grocery shopping carts, on the floor of bathroom stalls while changing a diaper," says another woman and of course in my home
which should be clean." We decided to find out if purses harbor a lot of
bacteria. We learned how to test them at Nelson Laboratories in Salt Lake ,
then we set out to test the average woman's purse.

Most women told us they didn't stop to think about what was on the bottom of
their purse. Most said they usually set their purses on top of kitchen
tables and counters where food is prepared. Most of the ladies we talked to
told us they wouldn't be surprised if their purses were at least a little
bit dirty. It turns out purses are so surprisingly dirty, even the
microbiologist who tested them was shocked.

Microbiologist Amy Karen of Nelson Labs says nearly all of the purses tested
were not only high in bacteria, but high in harmful kinds of bacteria.
Pseudomonas can cause eye infections, staphylococcus aurous can cause
serious skin infections, and salmonella and e-coli found on the purses could
make people very sick. In one sampling, four of five purses tested positive
for salmonella, and that's not the worst of it. "There is fecal
contamination on the purses," says Amy. Leather or vinyl purses tended to be
cleaner than cloth purses, and lifestyle seemed to play a role.

People with kids tended to have dirtier purses than those without, with one
exception. The purse of one single woman who frequented nightclubs had one
of the worst contaminations of all.

"Some type of feces, or even possibly vomit or something like that," says
Amy. So the moral of this story - your purse won't kill you, but it does
have the potential to make you very sick if you keep it on places where you
eat. Use hooks to hang your purse at home and in restrooms, and don't put it
on your desk, a restaurant table, or on your kitchen countertop. Experts say
you should think of your purse the same way you would a pair of shoes. "If
you think about putting a pair of shoes onto your countertops, that's the
same thing you're doing when you put your purse on the countertops" - your
purse has gone where every individual before you has spat, coughed,
urinated, emptied bowels, etc! Do you really want to bring that home with you? The microbiologists at Nelson also said cleaning a purse will help.
Wash cloth purses and use leather cleaner to clean the bottom of leather
purses.

THE AGENCY JUST CALLED!

2006-11-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

She said everything looks good and she will be sending it to St. Louis (the main headquarters) and they will be sending a contract and we'll need to send a check for $300 with the signed contract. Then we'll be in touch soon after regarding the home study. Well gotta run! I'm at work, but had to post this new exciting news. Hopefully the wait times will either lessen or just stop increasing and hold steady at 14 to 16 months, once your dossier is logged in in China. Could we hear the pittaer patter of 2 little feet sometime in 2008? LET"S HOPE SO!

Day from you-know-where!

2006-11-20T20:24:00.000-08:00

Today was the most infuriating day in a long time. Since it is Thanksgiving week, I am the only civil litigation paralegal at work. The other 2 took the week off. Mondays are usually bad, but this one was worse than most in quite awhile! We had 5 new cases and since Evelyn was out I had to remember how to do the conflict checks (and we had some weird cases) and then call the clients to give them the name of the attorney assigned to them. Then I had to run to court for routine motions and filing. Well routines are usually held between 8:45 and 9;15 or 9:30, so as long as you get there by 9:15, you are fine. Well, one of the clerks told me that there court held routines 8-8:45 and they were only giving a grace period for the last year for it to last until 9. Well, no where is that posted, so how are we to know if we aren't told. So, that routine motion has to be redone for next week. Of course other things came up. Plus I had to go to the other side of downtown to Federal Court to get some documents from the file copied. While there, I find out I could have done it online, since we have this one kind of account with the Federal Courts. It would have taken only a few minutes to do online but probably close to an hour walking to and from Federal court, plus a good chunk of time there. Now with all the time I spent blowing off steam, I don't have time to type anything more since it is now almost 10:30 and past my bedtime since I want to be on the 6:25 train. Hopefully tomorrow will be a more productive day, at least in getting what need to get done, done.

Check out comments for my replies to your comments

2006-11-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

MORE LADYBUGS!

2006-11-19T10:42:00.000-08:00

Look at the cute ladybug jewelry case I saw while at Kohl's.

Is it just me or does it seem that they are coming out with more and more ladybug-themed things?

2006-11-17T22:03:00.000-08:00

IT'S OFFICIAL; THE APPLICATION IS IN THE MAIL!!

The Ball will start rolling

2006-11-16T20:21:00.000-08:00

Our initial application to the agency will be mailed tomorrow!!!!

2006-11-12T16:25:00.000-08:00

I just was over at e-bay looking around and look at the most adorable diaper bag I found. I just couldn't resist posting it here. Of course, we are not yet at a point where I will be buying anything, but I still can look.

2006-11-09T19:55:00.000-08:00

Can't believe it's been so long since I posted here. Just too busy with life, I guess. We are getting close to sending out our initial application for adopting. We have decided on Children's Hope International for the agency, which has their headquarters in St. Louis, MO, but has a local office in nearby Des Plaines, IL. I'll add their website to my links soon as I can. I need to finalize some financial info. for the application & get some pictures made. I'm hoping we can send this off before my birthday on the 19th. I better get going since I want to be at work again early since I'm so extremely busy. Today was a pretty good day though since I got a couple assignments finished and started on another. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish that one up, if not too many other things come up that have to be taken care of right away.

Why China?

2006-10-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

I believe I posted this a while back but this is the best I have found and it mewntions a couple things I think I had not previously mentioned

Why China? China is a country whose culture dates back to the earliest records known to man. At first glance, some of China's beliefs may seem quite different than those we hold in the western world. One example of this is the cultural preference for a male child. There are several reasons why Chinese families might prefer a boy over a girl. In rural provinces, a family's livelihood depends directly on the output of its family members. Because of this, a family with sons would be at a considerable advantage than one with daughters. Historically, it is also the son's honored responsibility to take care of his parents in their old age. A daughter, however, would be expected to care for her husband's parents rather than her own. In this regard, the Chinese believe that having a son is crucial to their livelihood, as well as a form of social security for the parents when they grow older.

Although in recent years, China has done much to change these belief systems, many families, especially in rural areas, still strongly favor the birth of a male child. This situation is further complicated by China's One-Child Policy, which prohibits families from having more than one child. As a result of this policy, there are thousands of abandoned children throughout China, with the vast majority of them being healthy girls.

China, it will be!!!

2006-10-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

Well, we had the info meeting at Children's Hope on Thursday night. We just loved the agency! We decided to stay with our original choice of China. Our hearts are really set on that country. We both ove Chinese food and Chicago has a relatively large and active Chinatown. I don't really know much about Vietnam, other than what I've seen and heard in movies and for the most part, I really don't like war movies, so I've only seen a few (Good Morning, Vietnam and Born on Fourth of July; plus in high school, we had to watch The Bridge Over the River Kwai -- was that Vietnam or Korea though?) Yes, the wait time is increasing, but it's also high especially for a girl in Vietnam. Plus, if you are a childless couple, like we are, you need to be open to either a girl or boy, which we would be, but I just really have my heart on a girl and with China over 95% are girls. It's remarkable how quick time goes when you are on the internet. I better go, so I can put away the laundry, figure what to have for dinner (since it's only me tonight), and I want to weatch some of my Netflix DVD of the 4th season of The Dead Zone or else Working Girl. Tomorrow, Kevin will be home in the early afternoon and then my parents will be coming over.

China or Vietnam

2006-10-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

Since we have not yet even applied with an adoption agency and the waiting time is drastically increasing for adopting from China, (the current wait is about 13-14 months and is expected to increase possibly to a year and a half or 2 years or more) and also in the past year, Vietnam has reopened after a 2 or 3 year moratorium, so we are considering Vietnam. The agency, we had decided to go with for China has not yet been approved by Vietnam for adoptions there, so we would have to find a different agency, unless they get approved very quickly. Tomorrow night, we are attending an informational meeting at Children's Hope International that has a local office in the suburbs. They also participate in Chinese adoptions and are a much larger agency. So we have a decision to come to soon. I know there are many good agencies that are not necessarily in Illinois and it is not necessary that the agency be located in the same state, but I would prefer working with an agency that can do both our home study and any post-placement studies, as well as the rest of the adoption process. If we do go with Vietnam, I will have to change to a different blog "Chinese" just can't appear in the title if we end up going with Vietnam and "princess" won't work either since a boy is more common in Vietnam, plus childless adoptive parents have to be open to either a boy or girl; kind of like a real pregnancy, you don't know until that 20-week ultrasound and only if he/she is cooperative at that.

Workhas been extremely busy, but also very productive. Kevin will be heading up to visit his dad and brother in the U.P., this weekend. I'll stay home since they are planning o going to H.S. football games, which is not my cup of tea, plus the weather is even colder up there and last week they had 6-12 inches of snow already. I'll be watching movies and DVD's, probably surfing the internet more than I should and just the usual household tasks that you put off during the work week. Also on Friday night, I should be getting together with a friend of mine from elementary and high school. We try to get together every month, but it works out to every 2-3 months, with our schedules and all. Usually, we get together for lunch, but this time, we are going to do dinner so we shouldn't be in such a rush and have to squeeze everything into an hour. Recently, she went to our 20 year high school reunion, so I am looking forward to hearing about that.

Just found out

2006-10-12T04:18:00.000-07:00

Just found out that the company was a Fortune 500 company. I never knew that; kinda neat I guess, but actually it doesn't mean that anything is better about working at a Fortune 500 company, The other day, I had to fill out the online employee survey and was looking forward to providing some feedbackon a couple issues, as we have always been asked to do in the past. Well, this survey was through a different HR company or whatever and they did not ask us for any comments, just asking us a lot of stupid questions. Several of which no one in their right mind would answer honestly. Questions, such as do you ever give the company less than your all? do you think you will look for another job within the next year? are you actively seeking employment elsewhere? I know they say that it is totally anonymous (that they delete anyway for it to track back to you), but who is going to take the chance. Several of us were joking about it today. It's like "hello, we weren't born yesterday, like we would admit that somedays, we just waste time on the internet too much, make personal phone calls or run to the local Starbuck's everyday. And come on, who doesn't have those days, when they hate their job (last week for me)and other times when they love it (this week is turning out to be pretty good.)

BRRR ... IT'S COLD!!!

2006-10-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

Brrr. The temp is showing almost 33 degrees, it is suppose to get down to 29 tonight! We finally turned our heat on!!!

2006-10-01T19:52:00.000-07:00

Finally after the past few week of ever colder weather, we got back into the 70s, they are even talking 80s on Monday and Tuesday. We'll see! It sure would be nice to not freeze in the morning taking a shower and all. We just couldn't get ourselves to turn on the heat and now it looks like, we shouldn't have to for at least the rest of the week. Our tomato and cucumber plants are now dead and our petunias are close to it, but the celosia and mums are beautiful. Here are a few pictures that I took the other week thinking that the cold was going to kill everything. But, we have not yet had a frost, so we still have another warm-up (Indian Summer) to look forward to.