Details

I guess in all my excitement i forgot to post the details. oops.
Here are some of the things that were in her medical report

~Her Chinese name is Ruyi.
~We have decided to name her Maizie Ruyi. Everyone asks us how we came up with Maizie. It was the first name that we both really liked right away.
~She is about 14 months old.
~At 9 months she was 13 lbs.
~she can crawl but not sure if she can walk yet.
~her medical report says she sleeps for more then 10 hours! Lets hope that's true.
~she is fond of listening to music, playing and reading books.
~she has a quiet personality.
~she already has 12 teeth!

I feel like i have missed so much of her life already. Since our dossier isn't logged in China yet we are looking at 4-5 months until we travel. I am hoping to have her before my 31st birthday (April 24th). It will be close. I dont know how i am going to wait that long. Lets hope it goes by fast. We did just get our updated I-600a processed and it only took less then 2 weeks! Way to go USCIS!! Now that that is out of the way we have to have our social worker write up an addendum of our home study and we still have to get a few more documents together. Then have them signed, notarized, state certified and then off to the consulate for approval. Ok that seems like a lot to do but it really wont take that long...hopefully. I am hoping to have our dossier off to China by the end of January. Once our dossier is logged the long wait for our travel approval can begin.

As you can imagine T and I are SO SO SO excited. Maizie got her first Christmas presents this year. My mom and dad got her a little pink suitcase on rollers for when she visits them and some books. She already has a closet full of clothes. It is a little out of control but at least she will be the best dressed little girl!

BIG NEWS!!!!!

We have been waiting to share our news until after Christmas. We wanted to make sure our families knew before we announced it here. So.......WE ARE GOING TO BE PARENTS!!!!! We have officially accepted a referral of a beautiful little girl from China. We first saw her little face on December 8th. She was on our agencies Waiting Child list. We immediately fell in love with her but wanted a Doctor to look over her medical report. After we talked to a doctor that specializes in international adoption we knew she was going to be ours. And i may be a little bias but she is the cutest little girl we have ever seen. I know you probably want to see pictures so......introducing Maizie Ruyi.

Holidays

My favorite time of year is from Thanksgiving to Christmas. I love everything about it. I love going to 2 different tree lots just to find the perfect Christmas tree (Tracy might not love that as much as I do but he always likes the end result). I love digging out the lights for the tree and all the ornaments. I love putting up the lights on the outside of our house. I love baking cookies, and more cookies and then even more cookies. I don't mind the overcrowded malls and trying to find the perfect gift for everyone. It makes me happy to buy gifts for family and friends. I don't mind driving around the parking lot trying to find the perfect space (ok well maybe i mind that a little). Everything seems to magical this time of year. And to make it even more magical we are going to have a white Christmas!! Over the weekend we got a ton of snow. Friday we got about 14 inches, Saturday another 2-3 and then Sunday about 8-10 inches more. It really didn't stop snowing for 3 days. It was nice to have a reason to stay in and watch TV and make cookies. I feel bad for everyone who still doesn't have power after the ice storm. A little north of us got hit really bad and there are still some people with out power. Could you imagine being without power for 12 days in the freezing cold!

Anyway we are at my parents house in NY for Christmas eve (we always have the traditional 7 fish dinner and then my parents have some friends over for dessert) and then tomorrow we open gifts here then we travel to my Aunts (mom's side) house in Pleasant valley and then down to Long Island to my Aunts (dad's side) for a BIG Italian dinner. I look forward to Christmas dinner all year. Its so nice to be with family. We all sit at the same table (there are 28-30 of us) and in between courses we sing Christmas carols. Then the day after Christmas we are going to Tracy's moms house to have Christmas with his family. Lots of traveling but its worth it. Here are some pictures i took with my new camera!!

Our tree! I should have taken those box's out of the way.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!!!!

Mother Nature

Thursday night was a long night for us. I went to walk Kodi around 11, it was raining and starting to ice up. There were a few branches that were in the road but nothing too bad. All night long we heard little pops followed by a big bang. Trees were falling all around us. Neither T or I could sleep and Kodi was going crazy. He was so scared and wouldn't go to sleep. I was finally getting to sleep at 8am when there was a particularly loud bang. This is what was in the yard.

Thankfully we had power. Just about every school around us was closed. We knew it was going to be a slow day and we needed to check on some of our bank owned properties we have listed so out we went. This is just a little of what we found.

These pictures don't even do it justice. There were SO many tree branches down. Some roads weren't even passable. There were power lines down everywhere. Most of our town didn't have power. One of our neighbors had a tree fall on his truck and totaled it and another neighbor's shed was destroyed. But with all the fallen tree limbs it didn't look like many houses had damage. There were some cars that were hit but not too many. None of the houses we have listed had any damage. Our power did go out for about 2 1/2 hours on Friday. My parents still don't have power and they might not until at least Tuesday. I talked to them today. They didn't have any pipes burst and are now staying with friends. Luckily tomorrow it is going to be in the 50's.

You can really see all the ice on the trees in this picture. It was really pretty.

Thanksgiving

I want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Today starts our week of travels. Well it's not really a week but we will not be home again until Sunday. Today we are going to my parents house, then tomorrow we will be driving to Tracy's moms house(which is 2 hours from my parents house) to have Thanksgiving dinner at 1 then back to friends house to have dinner with my family and friends by 4. On Friday my mom and I brave the lines and go shopping. It had become a tradition for us to get up early (we are not part of the crazy people that get in a line at 4:30 am just to be the first person in the store early to us is leaving the house from 7- 8) of course we have to stop for coffee and a bagel and then its off to the mall. Although this year my mom said she didn't know if she wanted to go so i said that i will have to take Tracy with me. I think Tracy will talk her in to going with me. Tracy doesn't like shopping and he especially doesn't like shopping when there is 100,000 people in the mall that's 100 degrees. Oh course i would rather go shopping when there isn't as many people but it's Black Friday! Well i should get my butt in the shower. After giving Tracy a lecture about getting home at exactly 9:45 so we can get to my parents house around 12 so i have time to make my pies so i dont have to stay up to midnight doing it i probably should be ready when he gets here! Where is he you might ask? He has the unfortunate task of evicting someone out of their apartment. Before you go thinking we are horrible people for evicting someone the day before Thanksgiving it's not me that is evicting them. The property was foreclosed on and the bank that now owns the property is evicting all the tenants. We offered this guy cash for keys (cash for moving out by a certain time) but he blew us off and never showed up at the eviction hearings. I feel sorry for him but we did everything to help this guy. Sometimes they think they really wont get evicted.
Anyway it's almost Thanksgiving so

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Yesterday we had our last visit (well last visit until we have to do our post-placement visits) with our social worker (L). L came out to our house so we could fill out a "home safety form" for our agency. I thought a home safety form would have actual safety questions on it. I though we were going to be making sure all our smoke detectors worked and all our windows had some sort of child safety feature on them. I thought we would be going thru our house talking about where we need to do a little child proofing and what our plan is to child proof our house. It was nothing like that. We sat at the dining room table eating cookies, drinking coffee and making fun of the questions on the home safety form. One of the questions was "Do all of the bathrooms have enough toilet paper and soap". HA. There were a few other questions that were pretty funny, like is there food stored in our refrigerator, but that one takes the cake.
Hopefully our home study will be written this week and we will be able to submit it to our agency for final approval. Once we have final approval we can send our home study in for USCIS approval...again. While we are waiting for CIS approval i have to get a few more documents together for our dossier. Once we have all those together they will be notarized, state certified and then off to the China consulate to be certified and then translated and then off to China! My goal is to have our dossier logged in China by February 1st.

List

It's official!! We are on the list! Last week I sent in our signed agency contract. On Tuesday i spoke with our dossier consultant and then to the waiting child coordinator who officially put us on the waiting child list! So we are officially "waiting" again. What this means for us is once a child comes up on the waiting child list that matches our profile we will get to look over her profile and decide if we want to accept that referral. The waiting child program is a little different then the non-waiting child program in that there really isn't a "line" we are in. There is also no clear wait time. We could receive a referral at any time. The longest wait we were told is about 12-14 months for referral but most people receive their referral much sooner then that. I am really hoping we get a referral by Christmas but i know that it might not happen by then.

So now i have to get our dossier ready again. Our dossier will consist of our USCIS approval, birth certificates, marriage license, copies of our passport, a financial statement, employment records, medical forms, local police clearance, family photo's and our home study. Oh and did i mention we need 3 copies of each. All these will need to be notarized, state certified, then sent to the China consulate to be authenticated, then translated. Once all that is done our dossier can be sent to China to be logged in.
It may sound like a lot but i hope to have our dossier logged in by the end of the year. That is my goal. The only thing that might hold it up is our CIS approval. Well maybe not. We don't have to get re-approved, it's just a country change so hopefully it will only take a week or 2. OK maybe that's wishful thinking on my part.

I DID IT!!!

There are 3 things that should make you very proud of me.
#1 I VOTED!!
#2 AND I GOT TRACY TO VOTE TOO!! It was the first election he ever voted in.
#3 I got the first of my Hep. b series vaccines. and lived to tell about it. It was touch and go for a little while but i pulled thru, had a little juice, lied down while Tracy was getting his shots and now that it is over i am feeling a lot better. My arm is a little sore. Hopefully it wont get much worse. We also had to get a TB test but it was nothing. I didn't even feel it. Now lets see if i can make it thru the other 2 Hep B shots and the tetanus booster i need.

Ohhh the things we do for love.

whats been going on?

Well the answer to that question is not too much at all. We were accepted with an agency but after doing a little more research i found out that their travel fees are very high and we have to go thru them for all our travel arrangements. So i just sent my application off to another agency. Hopefully we will hear today that we have been accepted. Most people i have talked to have had nothing for good things to say about this agency. If all goes well we should be placed on the waiting list hopefully by the end of the month. And then anywhere from 6-12 months we could get a referral. There is a chance that we could get a referral faster then that (it would be GREAT to know who are baby is by Christmas) but i am not holding my breath. It will happen when it happens.
Lately Tracy and i have been talking about names. We had a name picked out when we were thought we were going to Vietnam but for some reason it just doesn't seem right to use that name anymore. We still love the name but we are trying to come up with some others. We don't really want a name that a lot of other girls in her class are going to have. We want something traditional but a little funky at the same time. I don't think we will be able to decide until we see her face.

accepted!

I got a call today from our agency rep. from our China agency and we have been officially accepted into their China program! Now I just have to read thru their very long contract, sign it and send them a big check. Then we will be officially enrolled in their program. Once we officially enroll in their program we can get on the "waiting child" waiting list.
Tomorrow is the last meeting with our social worker. Once that is done she will update our home study so we can send it in to the USCIS so we can switch our approval to China. Then i get to start our dossier all over. I am not looking forward to that but i did it once so i can do it again!

The things we do for love...

For those of you who know me know that i have an irrational fear of needles especially getting my blood taken. Before we started the adoption i couldn't remember the last time i had my blood sucked out of me. Thanks to my desire to adopt a child i have now had to get it taken 2 that's right 2 times the year! The very first time didn't go so well. Think of a 2 year old getting blood taken and that was me. I had to leave with out getting it done. So back i went a few days latter. This time i was armed (no not with a gun) with some good old fashion drugs. The kind that make you a little less tense and if you take too many a little sleepy. Fast forward 7 months and we are back in the same position we were then. I need to have more blood taken because China requires more blood tests. All i have to say is they better have taken more then they need because i am NEVER going back there again. But at least i did it. And it really doesn't hurt more then a pinch but i just have a fear of needles. Tracy said i at least acted like maybe a teenager instead of a toddler this time. So if getting blood taken is the worst thing that is going to happen this time around then i will take it.

so you want to know

We have decided to adopt a special needs child from China. The SN that we are interested in are very minor. In China SN consist of everything from a birthmark to Cerebral Palsy. Many of the children are in fact healthy. We get to choose the special needs we are open too. Some of the SN on our list are strabismus, Cleft lip and/or palate (repaired or still needing repair, Syndactyly (webbed fingers), VSD, Pstosis (droopy eyelid), Hearing Impairment, and birth marks. Most of these things are very minor. We are still researching some of the others on the list.
Now i bet you are wondering why China? When we first started looking into adoption we were drawn to China. The culture, the food and we were excited to travel there. China has an age requirement that both parents have to be 30. I was not 30 yet. Also the wait to adopt a healthy baby is 32 months. So we decided to adopt from Vietnam. They didn't have that age requirement. As you know that didn't turn out very well. When we found out that we didn't meet the deadline for Vietnam we started thinking about what we wanted to do. I had done some research on Korea and found an agency that could get us a child in about 6-8 months but we didn't have the option to travel and we had to start our home study all over. While we were in the process of doing research on Korea i emailed the social worker that did our Vietnam home study. She suggested we look into a few other countries and also the special needs program from China. I started thinking about it more and more and then talked to Tracy about it. I called our social worker and talked to her more about it and she got us in contact with a few agencies she works with. I also called a few more agencies. I talked at length to some of them asking them a ton of questions. Yesterday Tracy and i met with our social worker and decided to go for it! We have to update our home study to reflect the change in country and then we have to get USCIS (the former INS) approval again. We also get to travel to China to pick her up! We are so excited to do that. This just feels right for us. Korea was like our rebound country. Korea has a great adoption program where all the kids live with foster families instead of an orphanage but it just wasn't right for us. This just feels right. So we are now "expecting" a little girl from China!
Since we are part of the Waiting Child program there isn't a set time for a referral. It could be anywhere from 6-12 months from the time we submit our waiting child application which will be sent as soon as our updated home study is completed. So hopefully by mid to late October we should be on the list! Once we accept a referral we will get an invitation to travel in about 4-6 months later. So anywhere from 9-18 months we will be a family of 3!

wait for it....

We have an announcement to make regarding our adoption. But we haven't told our parents yet so...you will have to wait for it. It's not what you think. We didn't get a referral yet. There are just some changes we are making and we want to make sure our parents know about these changes. So check back soon!

moving on

So we have decided to move on from Vietnam. We are going to try to adopt from Korea! The Korea program is something we have been looking into for a few months. I just sent our application off to our new agency. We have to have another home study done. I am a little nervous about it but i am so excited about Korea. It is a very stable program. If all goes well we should have her/him home in 6-8 months! We wont be travelling to pick them up instead they will arrive at JFK and we will pick her/him up there. I am a little bummed about not travelling. I think it would have been great to experience our babys birth country but we will have pleanty of time to take them back when they are older.
I know my last post was a little depressing. I feel like i can breathe again. This time it seems a little more real. Once we finish our home study it wont be long before we get our referral (pictures and medical info on our child) and then 4-5 months later she will be at JFK waiting for us!

defeated

September 1st came...and went. It seemed like any other day. Life went on as usual. I thought it would be different. I guess i didn't really know what to expect. There was no total eclipse, no sonic boom nothing to signify the end of our hopes and dreams. It was just like any normal day.
I feel defeated in a way. Like Vietnam got the best of me. Like Vietnam was dangling an apple in front of me saying go ahead take a bite but before i can even take a bite they pull it away and laugh. I don't know weather to laugh or cry. All i can do is do on like business as usual. But i don't feel the same as i did a few weeks ago. I was hopeful then. Now i am defeated.
At this point all we can do it wait to see if Vietnam will open up anytime soon. I guess in the next few weeks we are going to talk about what to do next. If we are going to wait it out with Vietnam or move on.

lucky number 17

We are down to 17 days. Tomorrow will be 16, then 15, 14, 13, you get the picture. I am trying to remain hopeful but I know that there is a very small likely hood that we are going to get a match in the next 17 days. All that we can hope for is that Vietnam grandfathers in dossiers at least for a few more months. We are so close on the list. If we just had a few more months we would be able to be matched with a baby. But all we can do is wait.

25 DAYS.....

AND COUNTING! Until September 1st. The day that Vietnam adoptions will cease to continue. The day that we have to have our referral or match by.
When we started this process in January I never thought it would be this stressful. Every time the phone rings I jump. Forget about sleeping. I don't remember what a full nights sleep is like! I have no problem falling asleep at first but it is staying asleep that is the problem. And once i am awake i am awake for what seems like hours. My mind racing with the "what ifs". What if we don't get a match? What if we get a match but they decide not to grandfather us in? What if we get a match? What if what if what if!
If anyone has any thoughts on how to occupy my mind for the next 25 days it would be greatly appreciated.

No News...

Is killing me!! I talked to our agency last week and there is still no news. Not even a date when we might hear something. We were told that it is "week to week now". Whatever that means. I am trying not to stress out too much. It's the not knowing that is the hardest part. We are hoping to get a match by the end of the month but that is only 2 weeks away. September 1st (the date Vietnam closes to U.S. adoptions) is fast approaching. If we don't get a match in the next 6 weeks our only hope will be that the U.S. and Vietnam come to an agreement and let adoptions to continue.
I would love to blog more but my life really isn't that interesting. I get up, have my coffee, walk Kodi, go to work, come home, make dinner, watch TV and then go to bed. Like i said... not to interesting. Although sometimes funny things happen. I got a call the other day from a realtor that was showing one of my listings and she said there was a BIG snake in the basement! She wanted me to go get it out so she could take her buyers back!! HA I told her she was crazy if she thought i was going to go anywhere near a house with a snake in it much less go near the snake. So i called the owner. He couldn't find the snake.

news??? or not

So I emailed my agency today to get an update. No new news. No new nothing! We are now officially #9 on the waiting list. At least we are in the single digits. We are hoping to hear something in the next few weeks. Our agency did say if we were not in the next batch of referrals we will not get on before the cut off date of September 1st. So our only hope would be if Vietnam extended the cut off date. There is a chance that it might happen but I would much rather have our match before then. So keep your fingers crossed!

All work and no play.....

Makes Jess a cranky girl!! I have been so busy for the last few weeks but this past weekend i got a break. T and I went home to my parents house for the weekend. Tracy was invited by my dad to play in the 3-day member-guest tournament at their country club. Tracy had a great time and while he was golfing i got to spend some time with my friend Wiz (her name is really Liz but when my brother was little he couldn't say his L's so he called her Wiz and it kind-of stuck). It was so nice to get away for a few days. But all good things come to an end. Today we found out that another one of our bank owned listings had all the copper stolen out of it and all the windows smashed. So tomorrow i will be calling the Police department again so i can get a police report so the bank can file a claim with their insurance company. This will be the third time in about 2 weeks that i have had to call the police. For any of you looking to get into the real estate business run don't walk but run away. OK i cant complain i kind of like calling the police. It's like being on Cops! and some of them are really cute. Don't tell my husband i said that.

What a day

Today was one of those days where you wake up and think "maybe I should go back to bed" but in the end I just get up because the dog has to go out. As I look back on my day...i should have stayed in bed! I was about to leave the house and Tracy called to say that we had to go to one of our foreclosure listings (we work for a few major lending institutions selling their forclosed properties) to meet the sherif so we could evict the former owners. Turns out that the former owners are mostly moved out of their house so no drama there but they left behind a cat who looked like it had not been fed in several days. Tracy wanted to leave her there but I insisted that we take her to a shelter. We had to drive about 20 minutes out of the way to drop off the cat. If it had been any longer we would have become a 2 car household instead of a 1 cat house. She was the sweetest cat I have ever seen. The whole time in the car she sat in my lap. After we got back to the office Tracy said we had to go to another foreclosed property to take pictures of it and get it ready to post online for sale. When Tracy opened the door he saw a man trying to run out the back. We both flew off the porch and ran to the car. Tracy didn't even have a chance to get the key out of the door. Since we cant leave a property without securing it we had to go back and at least lock the front door, scary man inside or not. As he was trying to get the key out of the door the man told Tracy that he was just taking a nap and not to call the police on him .Of course I was already on the phone with the Worcester PD. The man left and we went inside. The house could have been nice...had all the copper still been in it! So we had to wait around for the police to come so they could fill out a report for the stolen copper. Like I said I should have stayed in bed!

Embassy!!

Tracy called our agency for an update on our dossier and we were pleasantly surprised to hear that it is at the Embassy already! It is going to be translated and then we will be DTV (dossier to Vietnam)!!!!!! Once it is in Vietnam it will be logged in and we will be officially logged in and waiting for a referral! We also got an update on our place in line and i am sad to report that we are only #10. 8 or 9 sounded so much better but i guess 10 isn't so bad. It is still looking good and we should know for sure if we are getting a referral or not in early August. August sounds so far away but when you think about it it's really only less then 3 months! Does anyone else know what is in August?? Our anniversary! Tracy and I will be celebrating our 5 year anniversary. So August could be a good month for us. We have been so busy with the work and running the office so August will be here before we know it.

Update!

I called my agency Tuesday morning and they had indeed received my package. So way to go fedex!!!

Decisions Decisions

We talked to our agency today and got some great news. Last week they got 12 (I think) referrals! We are now #8 or 9 on the girls list! So we are moving forward with Vietnam as planned. Our agency said it is looking good for us to get a referral by the cut off date (September 1st). There is still a chance that we might not get a referral by the cut off but it is looking good. So today I took our dossier (all the paperwork we need for the adoption) to Fedex to mail it to our agency. You would think taking a package to Fedex would be easy...well you would be wrong. To make a long story short, for some reason the zip code that i had (I do have the right zip code I checked 500 times) wasn't matching up with the town. So i had to put my package in the drop box. The fedex guy assured me that all would be good but i just tried the tracking number and still nothing! Tracy keeps telling me it will get there but if they still have not tracked it how is it going to get there by tomorrow morning! Deep breath. I'm #8 or 9 so everything is good today.

Closed???

So we got back from our vacation late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning I turn on my computer to find this. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_re_as/vietnam_us_adoption

We immediately, after I stopped sobbing, called our agency. They are trying to figure out how many children they are going to be able to refer out before the Sept. 1st deadline. We should know more in a few days. So again all I can do is wait. Wait for something I have NO control over. The only thing I can do is try to keep busy at work. Try to keep my mind off of it. So if anyone has an extra bottle of wine lying around I might need it!

18 Hours and Counting!!

18 hours and counting to what you might ask......to our vacation!! We are off to St Lucia for a week in the sun! We need a vacation. We haven't been on vacation in over a year. No phone, no computer...oh wait I am going to bring my laptop. Not because I want to but because our office has been so busy lately we need a way to stay some what connected to our agents. But no cell phone!! The hardest decision i am going to have to make is "what to drink" and "should we sit by the pool or on the beach". Am I making you jealous yet?? Why might you ask are we going on vacation now and not in the middle of the winter?? Well it's my birthday. On Thursday I am going to be 29.....again. 18 hours and counting and i have so much to do. I still have to do laundry and I haven't even started to pack yet! 18 hours and counting....I cant wait!!!

A Red Thread

"An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet,regardless of time, place, or circumstance.The thread may stretch or tangle,but it will never break."- an ancient Chinese belief

I'm Here!!

After months of reading adoption blogs like it's my job, I've decided to enter the world of blogging. I've learned so much about adoption through reading blogs and now I hope that someone can learn about adoption through mine! I also thought friends and family would be interested in updates on our adoption.
We started the whole process last September. It took us until January to decide on a country to adopt from and what agency to go with. Since then we have finished our home study and just received the coveted I-171 from the USCIS. Our ageny just put us on "the list" and we are #18 in line for a baby girl. I just sent off the last parts of our dossier to get start certified and as soon as we get them back then it is off to our agency to be translated and then we will be DTV!!