I am excited to say that we are almost finished preparing our dossier to be sent to China. For those of you who aren't in adoption land, the dossier is a set of documents that will be presented to the in-country adoption authority for review and approval to adopt. Included in the dossier are things like birth certificates, marriage certificates, our home study, pictures of our home and family, background checks and financial verification.
At the moment, our documents are waiting at the Chinese consulate for authentication, then they will go to our agency. Our agency will hold onto the dossier until the last piece of the puzzle is obtained from the US government- our USCIS immigration approval.
We are on day 20 of waiting for that approval, so I am hoping it will come very soon. In recent weeks, other families have been reporting approval in 25-30 days so maybe this will be our week.
After we get that approval, everything can be sent to China and the paper chase is pretty much over. The waiting....well that is just beginning!
During our wait time we will read lots of books on international adoption, attachment and research her medical condition.
We'll also get to do some fun things- buy her more clothes (we have already started that), get her a few toys of her very own, send her a birthday cake and some care packages, work through as much Rosetta Stone as we can and learn more about China.
Since I like to plan things, I'll tell you what happens next:
- Dossier to China (aka DTC)- guessing this will be around June 10th
- Log In Date-(LID)- this can take anywhere from a few days to a month - just for fun I'll guess June 25
- Letter of Acceptance (LOA) - can take anywhere from 1-4 months or longer- I'll guess August 25
- I-800 approval- 1-3 weeks- let's guess Sept. 10
- NVC cable- about 2 weeks, so maybe around September 24
- Article 5-about 2 weeks- maybe October 8
- Travel approval- 2-5 weeks- maybe November 8
- Travel to get Lily- guessing Mid- December!
Yes, I do know that this process is so unpredictable and that the LOA times can be much longer or much shorter and things can happen to hold up the process or speed things up and really we have no idea, but if we are looking at averages I think it is pretty safe to plan on December travel.