March goes Out Like a Lamb

...a great big, white fluffy lamb. We woke up to 4 inches of snow this morning, and it's still coming. Last week, we visited my parents for Easter, and I left Callie's coat there. I assured her she'd be okay. After all, it's spring--a jacket should be enough. Oops!

Tomorrow is Alex's birthday. I wonder what he'll be doing at the orphanage. I've been thinking we would have a party here, but things are so crazy, maybe we'll just have to eat cake and call it good!

Take a Deep Breath

I walk around with a huge knot in my chest these days. I'm a worrier, and there's so much to worry about with international adoption. I'm also having a hard time staying focused on the normal, everyday routine.

Good News First: The financial director for our agency has been in Taiwan visiting St. Lucy's this week. One of the people there kept putting a baby on his lap and saying "It's the Peterson baby." Well, he knew there were no Petersons from the agency with referrals, but she kept insisting this baby belonged to one of FEC's families. So he took lots of pictures just in case, and sent them to the home office for identification. It was Alex! (But we are not the Petersons, so I hope the Petersons don't beat us there and take him first). I've heard he looks very handsome, but I haven't seen the pictures yet. Maybe they'll get here before we leave, and I can post them. It's been 2 months since our last update. How much has he grown?

Next, Why I've been so knotty: Our criminal clearances finally made it to our social worker on Monday, so we were ready to go with the update--or so we thought. As she looked over things, she realized we needed a note faxed to her from our doctor--fortunately, just a note and not a full medical form. I rushed something over, talked to the nurse, and thought it was taken care of. But our social worker had not received it by last night. I worked on that all morning today. It turns out the doctor's office had not used the right area code.

OK, if the homestudy takes 3 days to get to us, and we can get it to USCIS in 3 days, and they can process it in 3 more days, and mail it back in 3 more, we'll have our I-171H in time to fly out on the 12th. Yea, it's cutting it close. I'd better not make any mistakes

Then, the Bad News: Two families from our agency have been hit with a new USCIS requirement just as they were preparing to fly out. We are not yet sure if it will affect us. The U.S. government issues two different kinds of visas to adoptees, depending on whether or not the adoptive parents met the child before the adoption was finalized. If the parents do not meet the child, they are required to re-adopt the child in the United States before he/she becomes a citizen. They are required to meet certain pre-adoption requirements. Always before, that was verified on the visa application form with a check mark that these requirements have been met. Now our government is requiring a formal certificate of some families, and it requires a lot of paperwork. Our agency has asked us to submit our documents as soon as possible to the Amercian Institute in Taiwan (AIT) in hopes they will promptly notify us if we need a certificate from our state. Uh, would that include the aforementioned homestudy update?

Finally, the travel news: As of yesterday, our appointment with AIT has been confirmed for April 17. So now we have permission to begin booking flights. We are looking to leave April 12 and return April 19. We'll be home before we know it.

What are the Chances?

What are the chances that I get a weekly e-mail from LuXuRy rOleX rePliCas, but the most important e-mails I could ever receive from my adoption agency don't get to me--not even in my junk box?

I didn't tell the whole story before, because I was trying to figure out what was going on.  Back on March 10th, when I contacted my agency, I heard back from one person who said they didn't know anything yet, but I should hear something soon.  Apparently, later that night, an e-mail was sent to me informing me that we had received our final decree.  I never received that e-mail.

Later that week, I e-mailed the agency again and never heard anything.  So on March 17th, I wrote again.  Leigh received a forward of the message that had been sent to me 10 minutes earlier--a message I never got.  This was the message that said there was no problem, and it mentioned that I should have received an e-mail with the news a full week earlier.  

Over the past few days, Leigh has received several e-mails about travel arrangements and such.  They all have my e-mail address correctly typed on the to line, but none of them get to me, not even in my junk box!  I did, however, receive the online invoice that originated from a different person at the agency (Sure, I get the bill)!  Finally, I contacted my e-mail service provider.  They said they think the originating address is being blocked by their spam filters, and it will take at least a week to correct the problem.

These are probably the most important e-mail messages I will ever receive, and msn "cans" them because it thinks they are spam!  What are the chances?

Travel Dates

Yes! We are scheduled to pick up Alex at St. Lucy's Center at 10:30 AM on Wednesday, April 16th. We'll go for our visa appointment at 8:00 AM the next day. By coincidence, both the US adoption coordinator and the in-country coordinator will be at St. Lucy's teaching a class at that time, so they'll be with us on our orphanage visit.

We haven't figured out any details yet about when we'll leave or where we'll stay. We were really quite surprised to be given a date just 4 weeks away. Most of the other families we know from our agency have traveled 5-6 weeks later.

A baby changes your life forever, and we're getting "broken in" quickly on making changes. Leigh had scheduled a research trip to California April 10-13. He was supposed to give his last lecture and a final exam the week of the 14th, and the girls have spring break that week. Laura's 6th birthday is on the 10th. I guess we'll have to change some plans before we hold Alex in our arms. I hope we'll get another update about him before then.

Meanwhile, the good news is that our social worker told me not to worry--we can get everything done in time for us to leave in 3 weeks. The bad news is that USCIS informed me that the extra 17 days on Alex's age requires us to file "form I-290B" and pay a fee of $585. It hardly seems fair, since they changed how they look at the age midway through our adoption process. But as with other adoption requirements, you just jump through every hoop and fork over every penny they ask for, because you don't want anything to delay getting your baby home!

The Good News is...

Our adoption has been finalized!

Yesterday I e-mailed the agency to ask if there was some problem. I just couldn't believe that, unless our file was just completely lost, that after 3 weeks of inquiring, no one could find out anything about our case. An e-mail came back saying, "There's no problem. Your adoption has been finalized."

Wow. I can't believe it! We are really going to be bringing Alex home soon. We still don't know anything about travel dates. I hope it's soon--but not too soon, because we still have to wait for our social worker to update our homestudy and then get the USCIS * to amend our I-171H** . Right now, our I-171H says we will adopt a baby that is 0-12 months old, and Alex will turn one before we travel.

I'm sure everything will fall into place and work out fine. But in the meantime, I know I will be frantic. I'm the kind of person who likes to worry every chance I get!

*The government agency that can give us permission to apply for a US visa for a foreign-born child. It's basically the Department of Homeland Security.
**The document that gives us permission to apply for the US visa.

6 Months Ago Today

I remember exactly what was happening the moment the news came. It was Saturday night. I was frustrated, because I could not get my e-mail to work, and I was sitting at the computer. The girls were in bed already, and Leigh was in the living room doing stuff for work on his laptop (Yea, Saturday nights are pretty wild around here).

Leigh decided to check his e-mail before he went to take a shower, so he got the news first. He walked to where I was sitting, and I made some comment to him about how I could not believe we had not heard anything from our agency yet. It had been more than a month since they contacted us with the news that our file had been sent to St. Lucy's Center for approval, and that they expected to hear something within a week. Leigh figured that, since I was on the computer, I would be getting the good news for myself any moment. He offered a word or two of consolation and walked off.

A few minutes later, he returned from the shower, and I exclaimed in disgust that I still could not get my e-mail to work. He said, "Well, I have something I want to show you."
We sat on the bed with his laptop, and on the screen I saw this adorable face. This sweet little boy had been referred to us. Together, we looked at the other two photographs , and read the information provided. There was no doubt in our minds or our hearts that Yueh Hsiang Lee was the baby our Heavenly Father intended to have join our family.

That little baby gazing out at us from the computer looked so huggable. Since we couldn't hold him in our arms, we held him in our hearts, and he has been growing there ever since.

Another Glimpse of Alex

Judy was also in Taiwan last week, picking up her son William. She was kind enough to watch for Alex and give me this update when she returned home:

"We saw Alex standing in a pack 'n play with Lucy (so cute that the two were together). The playpen had a hole in the mesh. I noticed that Alex had bright, inquisitive eyes that followed our gaze wherever we went. One of his socks had come off. He was clearly well-taken care of and content."

It's not nearly as good as being there myself, but I am so grateful to get any information I can on our little boy.

I checked with our agency yesterday to see if they have been able to find out anything about what is happening with our case in the courts. It's been more than two weeks since they told me they'd check, but they still have not been able to get any information. For months Leigh has been saying that we'll eventually find out that our file has been under a pile on someone's desk and nothing has been done with it. He was half joking, but sadly, it could be true. Just last week, Lucy's mom asked her agency what was happening with their case and found out that the judge is still "reviewing" one of their documents. He hasn't done anything in all this time. Unless you have been through an experience like this, it's hard to appreciate just how devastating this kind of news can be.

There's Been an Alex Sighting!

While I was peacefully dreaming this morning, my friend Mel was at St. Lucy's Center picking up her son Odin. The orphanage has a policy that adoptive parents are not allowed to hold or take pictures of other children. But Mel saw Alex! He was in a pack and play with a baby named Lucy whose parents have also been waiting since September to bring her home. I am very grateful to Mel for watching for Alex and taking notice of his appearance and what he was doing. This was her moment--her time to enjoy finally getting to have her baby in her arms, and she took time to think of Alex and Lucy's parents.

Here's what she said about Alex:
"Alex is so friendly and sweet - he immediately smiled at me through the window. He looks like he's grown a good bit and he looks very healthy. I saw some teeth, maybe 2 or 3 on bottom and two on top I think. He and Lucy seemed to be having a lot of fun playing together (chasing each other in the pack-n-play) but one of the nannies picked him up I didn't get to talk to him much. Before that, though I had already kissed his forehead and told him his Mommy loved him and was coming soon to get him."

It is so reassuring to know he is healthy and happy, and just hours ago he was chasing around in a pack and play!

What's in a Name?

One of the first things we did after receiving Alex's referral was to try to find out the meaning of his Chinese name. There are several websites where you can type in the pinyin, and it will show a list of Chinese characters that are spelled out with the same pinyin. Then all you have to do is match the Chinese character to the one on the official document, and you can find the meaning. But we tried each of his names (Lee Yueh Hsiang) at several sites with no luck. No characters came up for any of the names. The closest thing we found was some sort of business with the name YuehHsiang. We knew that couldn't be right.

Lucky for us, we have a friend from mainland China. We sent him a copy of the Chinese characters, and this is what he sent back as the name:

Li yue-xiang; "Li" is the family name meaning "plum", "yue" means
"mountain", and "xiang" means "detail" or "kind / mildness".

We immediately picked up on the different spelling. Sure enough, when we went back to the translation websites and used the spelling from our friend, we had no trouble getting the characters to be displayed.

That got our curiosity up, so we did a little research, and found there are several different forms of Chinese pinyin. This really isn't surprising, because to native speakers of Mandarin, it's the character that really matters. The pinyin is just a device to help people unfamiliar with the characters know how to pronounce them. The interesting thing is that in Taiwan, there are 3 different pinyins used--one declared to be the official version in 2002, one that is preferred by people who favor reunification with China, and the traditional version that everyone grew up with (this was the pinyin on our documents).

So our son's name means "Plum, kind mountain" Cool. Lee is the surname for his birth family. Yueh is a portion of the name given to all the boys born in 2007 who were placed at St. Lucy's Center. Hsiang is the unique portion of his name, chosen just for him.

And the name Alex? Well, we had no small amount of difficulty choosing that name. It was actually the first name that we all liked, and I even called our son Alex for the first 2 weeks after receiving the referral, but for whatever reason, we just couldn't commit. For the next few months, we went through the name book dozens of times, made list after list and rated each others'choices. And after all that, we came back to our original favorite around the middle of February. Alex comes from Alexander the Great, and it means "the great defender." You know, with 3 older sisters, it probably will be fortunate if he learns to defend himself!