Wednesday, April 18, 2012

What in the world will I do after DTC?

There's a good chance I'll be done with the paperwork in a matter of days.  So few that I can count them on one hand.  Even though the light is at the end of this tunnel, it's still hard to imagine reaching it.  I spend at least some part of each day reading, reviewing or completing paperwork. Or simply being a nutjob and re-reading, re-reviewing or re-doing it!

I decided to go ahead and high tail it to Sacramento and back today.  I'm sure I'll be sweating my butt off worrying about getting home in time for pick ups, but I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.  I called the Notaries Division at the Secretary of State's Office yesterday and they told me it's just a 30 minute wait.  I'm going to pad it to 1 hour.  I drop the little guy off at 8:45 and the big kid at 9:10.  Allowing a pit stop for coffee and a prepaid UPS envelope and I'll be on the road by 9:30.  I should arrive at the capitol around 11:00.  If I get my docs in by 11:30, I should be back on the road by 12:30 and back to Moraga by 2.  The big kid is in an after school program till 2:30.  The little guy normally gets picked up on Wednesday, his late day, at 1:45 but he can stay till 2:45, which I'm sure he'll need to do.  I'm totally sweating it already.  So much so that I couldn't go back to sleep after Parker kissed me goodbye at 5am.  There is no time to spare.  Parker, ironically, is working on a big deal for the state this week and they'll be in his office today and his dinner dates tonight, so he can't swoop out to save me if I can't make pick ups in time.  My girlfriend kindly offered to pick up the boys if I get in a jam, so I have a back up plan but I think I can manage it.  This is where the prepaid UPS envelope comes into play. I'm going to stop and get one from my buddy Doug at the local UPS store.  I've seen him more in the last few months than I have any of my friends thanks to all the notarizations, copies and shipments I've had to make!  I'm going to have him print me up a fancy, prepaid return envelope so that just in case my documents aren't ready by the time I have to leave Sacramento to get back to pick up the boys, I can just have them pop my docs into the envelope and send them back to me overnight.  So I'll either walk away with them today, and if not, will have them in my hands tomorrow.  Relief washes over me as I keep my eye on the prize.  State certified documents .. state certified documents .. state certified documents.  Oh yeah.

The next step is authentication at the Chinese Embassy.  I was just going to have our agency take care of this and the previous step, but for those of you that know me, you know I'm a tad bit of a control freak and since I CAN control the timing of these steps, I WANT to, of course.  Duh!  It seems like a no brainer to knock out the last two steps myself in as little time as possible.  It really is a race now. A race to Macey folks!  She's sitting there in an orphanage in dirty clothes watching sheep sheep and gray wolf, so you betcha I'm doing all I can to get to her as fast as I can!  Who knows how long these two steps would take our coordinator at the agency.  She's totally bogged down right now after having been traveling for the last week or two. I still haven't heard back from her on an email I sent on Monday so I doubt that our docs would get processed in the timing I need them to. So, if I get to bring the documents home with me today, I'll take the little guy with me tomorrow to the embassy in the city to get them authenticated.  If I don't get to bring the docs home with me today, and instead they're delivered tomorrow afternoon, I'll have to cancel my Friday morning workout (oh darn) and just take them in after I drop the boys at school.  Either way, by Friday, I'll be done.  Done.  DONE!  Our dossier will be complete and ready to send to China (or for my fellow adoption nerds, to the CCCWA).

I'm trying not to go totally buggy about the timing, but it's tough.  Our coordinator told us we should plan on traveling about 4 1/2 months after DTC.  If we are DTC by May 1, we should be traveling September 15.  Macey's birthday is September 23.  Fist shaking please make it happen, close!  Both fortunately and unfortunately, however, I've read many cases where the LOA comes in under a month, and as many where it's over 100 days!  I may have to wean myself off of all the blogs, yahoo groups and discussion forums as of DTC, otherwise I know I'll totally stress and obsess about who is getting LOA and how long it took, and why haven't we gotten ours and other things that may make me break my no wine till after the kids go to bed rule.  Once our dossier has a log in date, LID, we just have to wait for LOA.  There is nothing we can do to influence timing.  We simply have to wait.  I haven't given a process update in a while, and there are far fewer steps now, so here goes:

DTC: Dossier to China. Party time! The paperchase is complete. This is the date our dossier is mailed to China.
LID: Log In Date. This is the date that our dossier is “logged in” or received by the CCCWA. 1-4 weeks after DTC
LOA: Letter of Acceptance. This is after LID and is the official approval from China to adopt Macey.  1-4 months after LID
I-800:  We will file this form with USCIS to classify orphan as an immediate relative.  This will be our application to adopt our specific child from China.  Not to be confused with the earlier I-800A, which was our application just to adopt.   2-4 weeks after LOA
NVC: National Visa Center. After I-800 approval, our officer will forward it to the NVC.  NVC will upload the approval into their system and cable it to the US consulate.  It will take about 1 week to cable and another week to get the letter stating it was done.  As soon as we receive the letter we send it right to our agency, who will deliver it to the consulate in China.
Article 5:  Consulate pre-approving our child for an immigrant visa. They will issue it 2-5 weeks after receipt.  Our agency will have a courier pick up the Article 5 right away and deliver it to the CCCWA.
TA: Travel Approval. CCCWA will issue travel approval 2-4 weeks after they receive the Article 5.

CA: Consulate Appointment. This is the date we will go to the Consulate in China to fill out paperwork to get Macey's visa to enter the USA!


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