Hearing Date Scheduled!

We heard from our case manager today and our Hearing is Scheduled for April 22nd! We were very happy to hear this.

Our complete dossier was mailed off to Taiwan on March 13th. Once our dossier was received in Taiwan it goes through a review on by the Taiwanese goverment and gets logged into the court system. We then wait for 3 seperate steps/processes in the courts. The first is a Hearing Date. The second is the Civil Ruling(also known as the First Final ruling) and the third is the Final Ruling. The wait time between each step runs between 4-8 weeks. Our dossier went to Taiwan on 3/13 and our hearis is 4/22. With a 39 day wait, that puts us at almost the median wait time.

Though the total wait seems lengthy, we are very appreciative of the thoroughness of the Taiwanese courts. The whole point of the 3 hearings is to make sure that all parties involved are notified of the situation and to make sure the adoption is in the best interest of the child. It's easy to feel "I want my baby home now." Yet, there is great comfort in knowing that this is a very ethical program. As an adoptive parent the last thing in the world you want is anything unethical to happen. So while we wish for things to go quickly, we also want the judge to have all the information and time they need to make the ruling.

What does this all mean? First, it's great to hear that our dossier was reviewed by Taiwan and all our paperwork is o.k. Occasionally, the courts may ask a family for additional medical or finanicial information or they may ask for more pictures. It's nice to know that this phase of our paperchase is done. Second, it gives a better idea of travel. Of course, there is no guarantee and things can go faster or slower. If we continue to have the "average" wait, we'll likely travel mid-August. My instincts tell me we are likely to go the first part of September. I do know if we travel in August we are going to experience extreme heat and high airfare costs due to the Olympics. If we travel in September, we are also likely to find extreme heat and high airfares costs due to students returning to school. Many students in Taiwan come to the US for college. So, in any case, it looks like we need to figure out a way to stay cool and save up some $$$ for airfare. Of course, it goes without saying that no heat or travel costs could ever outweigh the joy of meeting our son! Hang on Andrew, Mom, Dad and Lily are 1 step closer to meeting you!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone has a lovely, and relaxing holiday. Unfortunately, some much needed spring weather doesn't appear to be coming our way. Despite the snow and cold, we plan on having a great holiday with the family. I am also looking forward to a much needed spring break!

Check out the new pictures of Lilianna as she visits "the" bunny! Enjoy!

Dossier in Taiwan

We are super duper happy to report that our complete dossier was mailed off to Taiwan last week!! It took us 7 weeks to completely redo our homestuy, complete the Taiwanese documents, and get immigration acceptance. We had to push aside the "should haves" and deal with the fact that it all had to be done so we could get our Andrew home. Honestly, it usually takes most families 3-5 weeks to just get the dossier documents done. I'm proud of what we were able to accomplish in such a small window. There were a few rough spots with all the tiny details each step requires. Despite those dark moments, our motivation remained high. I think having a little face staring at you in pictures and videos helped. Now we can officially sit back and wait as we go through the court process. We do ask everyone keep us in their thougts as we wish for a "speedy judge." :)

On another note, you may have noticed I continue to play around with the blog design around here. I've been hoping to fine tune and learn skills so I can participate in a really cool group. I am starting to do some charity work at Blogovers With Love. There are 3 of us who are digitial scrapbookers, blog designers and moms to children adopted internationally. We design blog/do blog-overs with all the profits going to charities for children in orphanages and foster care in Taiwan and China. You can see all the great work the other designers have done at Blogovers With Love

Update Day!

One of the nicest things during this wait are the monthly updates we get on our son. They tend to come the second week of the month for us and we find that we start checking our email frequently. Well today was the day! It doesn't matter if it's the first set of pictures of the 3rd set, it's always a thrill to see your child's little face.

We just love this set of pictures. Andrew looks so healthy and alert. It looks like some teeny tiny smiles are forming. New pictures and video are attached at the bottom of the page. Enjoy!

Going Bananas!

Don't let this beautiful picture of Lily fool you. Spring is no where to be found in Ohio. In fact, we are officially having a blizzard. Over a foot of snow is piled up outside our doors and we aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

I am very gratefull for the fact that we aren't trying to rush around to get the last of our documents completed, authenticated and mailed to Taiwan. In fact, I'm not sure we will have mail service anytime soon. We have verified that all our documents are safely waiting at our agency. All that needs to be done is our homestudy translation. I believe our agency contracts out all the translation to one woman. I sure hope she's a faster worker and can get the 30 some pages of our dossier translated quickly.

We actually received a call from our case manager on Saturday. She wasn't able to return our call on Friday and took the time to call us on Saturday morning. I sure appreciate someone going above and beyond to keep us informed. She's very optimistic that our dossier will be happily on it's way to Taiwan by Weds. That will feel great to know it's officially received and logged into the court system. Then we will wait for our 3 court procedures. We will now wait to hear word on our Hearing Date, First Ruling and Final ruling. It's pretty hard to estimate how long these 3 things will take. Our case worker feels like our best case scenario has us traveling in August and worst case scenario has us traveling in Oct. Like much of the adoption process, it's all out of our control. As many other waiting parents will tell you, all you can do is hope for the best, prepare for the worst and look for the positives how ever it transpires.

Need a little spring

Hi,

You may have noticed a bit of a "change" around here. I am working on applying my digital scrapbooking skills to blogs. I'm hoping that once my skills get good enough that I can do a little bit of charity work for a group called Blogoverswithlove. I've used some of my digital scrapbooking skills for Love Without Boundaries a charity for Chinese orphans. Blogoverswithlove benefits children in Taiwanese orphanages.

I also just had to use my friends, Kristi and Tami's new digital kit called "Renewal." After being really tired of all the snow and ice, it is a welcome little hint of spring.

On the adoption front, we just mailed out our authenticated documents to our agency. Now we wait for translation and our immigration approval. Once those items are done, our dossier will go to Taiwan and we will officially be logged into the court system and wait on hearings. We will keep everyone posted on those details. Untill then, we are celebrating the fact that our little "to do" list is done and it's all out of our hands for now.

Light at the end of the tunnel........

Hi,

There's not a lot of new news to report on our adoption journey. We are happily getting things done and crossing them off our "to do" list. We are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of this crazy paperchase.

In other news, Lily is becoming more excited about her new baby brother. Well actually, she refers to Andrew as "my baby." So we hear a lot of things like "When my baby comes home, I'm going to feed him a bottle." , "When my baby comes home, I'm going to give him some toys." Just when we thought she was the sweetest, big sister ever, Lily gave us something to think about. She informed Bill "If Andrew cries all night, you're going to have to shut his door so I can sleep." So much for taking care of "my baby." :)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to Everyone. May the Year of the Rat bring you good health and prosperity!

Ok, Chinese New Year was techincally on the 7th. Our local chapter of Families with Children from China hosted their New Year's Celebration. Our whole family attended and had a great time. It's always so fun to see all the children interact and have a good time. My favorite part is seeing all the families formed through adoption. Of course the little ones in their silks and squeaky shoes are beyond adorable. Seeing the parents, grand parents, younger and older siblings coming together for the celebration is also very special.

We also had a major Proud Parent experience at the party. Lilianna particpates in a kids culture and program on Saturdays. The 4 year old class did a "dance" on stage. Last year, Lily was extremely hesitant to go on stage. She cried and clung to me. This year, the show was on a much larger stage *and* parents couldn't accompany the children. We weren't sure if Lily would actually participate. Two days before the performance, she started voicing concerns about going on stage. We assured her that it's be fine, but Lily remained skeptical. So our hearts soared when her class lined up to go on stage and Lily willing went! No tears, no fears and no drama. She just went and did a great job! Now, she didn't look relaxed on stage, but this was a major accomplishment and we were just thrilled. It's so wonderful to see your child take a big step and conquer a fear!

Update from Taiwan

Happy Valentine's Day


As I was getting ready for work today, I thought "Gee, it'd be nice if we got new pictures of Andrew today. It'd be the perfect Valentine's Day gift." Then for some reason, I checked our email on my lunch break today. Well, to my surprise we had an email from our case manager and it contained new pictures! It was definately the perfect gift for all of us. We all love how he has such an expressive face and so much hair. Andrew is much like his sister by having an impressive amount of hair for a baby. We also love watching his video. He still gives the camera a very skeptical look and does a great job tracking the sounds. We also love how right at the end of the video it looks like he is waving to us. We hope you all had a wonderful holiday. Enjoy the pictures of our little guy!

Take care,
Bill, Melissa and Lily

Update!

Well, I'm happy to report all the drama and stress from this last part of the paperchase paid off! The final form was received and ok'd by our homestudy agency and everything is good to go. Our caseworker from CW says we are right on schedule and we can start working on the other things on our "to-do" list.

Paper Pregnancy Blues........

Hi Everyone,

I'm sure every pregnancy, physical or paper, has it's ups and downs. Our journey to Andrew is no different. Since receiving our referral, 3 weeks ago, we've been doing our paperchase at an incredibly intense speed. From the glass half full perspective, we've been able to get a lot done quickly. Many people and agencies have responded quickly and expedited procedures for us. We are very gratefull for that.

From the glass half empty perspective, we had a rough 48 hours. It started on Friday when we realized the person who was going to complete our very last document was on vacation for 2-3 weeks. Of course, you can't blame someone for wanting to go somewhere sunny and warm in February. It was just hard for us to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but not quite be able to get it all done. We checked into other resources and were quoted 8 and 12 week waits. Not the news we wanted to hear.

Saturday morning, I was lounging around the house while Bill and Lily were at Chinese school. I talked to my friend Lynn. After a few more phone calls, we would realize that we could possibly get this last document done after all! Our friend on vacation was willing to accept a fax at his hotel, fill out the form and fax it back!!! The only challenge was the fact that he was about to board a cruise ship and I had about 15 minutes to get it all done.

Flying around the house, I threw on some clothes and went out without my make-up and hair being done. For all of those who know me well, you know that I rarely ever do that. I dash off to the closest Kinkos copy center. I was so nervous that I made a wrong turn and cost myself some time. By the time I got to the store, I was feeling all panicky and had adrenaline rushing through my system. Bill met me at the store and we frantically filled out the cover sheet, got the return fax number and sent the fax. After receiving confirmation that our friend got the fax, was filling out the form and faxing it back, a victorious feeling came over me. Sure it had been a crazy half hour. Without a doubt, I looked like a disaster in the middle of Kinkos on a Saturday morning. But what did all that matter? I was getting the last paper chasing step done to get my baby home!

Unfortunately that victorious feeling was short lived. While waiting for the return fax, a Kinko's employee approaches me and asks "Um, Ma'am are you waiting for a fax?" I answered "Yes" and couldn't believe my ears when she says "Yeah, we're out of toner and you can't read the fax." Incredulously I ask "Can't you get more toner?!!" "Uh, we don't have any and it's gonna take a few days to order some." was her reply. I was beside myself. I'm standing in a room with about 12 copying machinces, 6 fax machines and various printers and they are out of toner! I also know from experience that copiers and fax machines indicate toner is low for multiple copies before it gets this bad. I firmly believe the employees are incompetent for directing us to the one machine that wasn't functioning in the whole store. To make matters worse, the employees delete the information so that we can't transfer the fax to another machine to print. All they can suggest is that we drive to a store about 20 minutes away and have our friend resend the fax. Of course, by now our friend has boarded a shuttle and is headed for a Disney cruise. He was kind enough to take a half hour of his day on vacation and help us immensely. We sure didn't want to pester him again. We were at a complete loss.

My husband was great at thinking on his feet and got the phone number of the hotel. He asked them to resend the fax to his parent's office. We frantically place the call, get their fax number and make several phone calls confirming the necessary document is received. Ultimately, we received the document yesterday and are sending it all out ot our agency on Monday. I am completely touched at the number of people (friends, family and strangers.......just not Kinko employees) who have helped us get so much done so quickly. Without their help, Andrew would have to spend a much longer time waiting for us. It's also easy to stay motivated during all this crazy work by looking at his little pictures and videos. All that said, Bill and I can't wait to be done with this paperchase.

Take care,
Bill, Meliss and Lily

Introduction

We are very excited to share the news of our referral. On January 18th, 2008 at 11:40 a.m., we received the news that we have a son! Liu Chih-Han was born on January 3rd, 2008. He was 5 pounds, 14 and 1/2 ounces and 18.9 inches. Our beautiful, new baby boy is currently living in Taiwan Women's and Children Association nursery in Taichung, Taiwan.

We are working very hard to finish the paperwork for our dossier. Fortunately, it's so much easier than the dossier for China. Once our paperwork is done and logged into the courts, we will wait for 3 hearings. After the third and final hearing, we will be granted permission to travel to Taiwan and bring Andrew home! It's very hard to predict how fast this process will go because each judge in Taiwan goes at their own pace. We can only hope for a speedy judge and anticipate that Andrew will be home sometime this summer!