The US CIS ( I600 becomes I171H)

Department of Homeland Security. I know I haven't seen the last of them. I believe this is an important step in the adoption process, but PLEASE. I have a child that is 9 1/2 living in another country. I could not bring her home until this step in the process was done. We applied for our fingers to be printed September 28th. Our home study was done, but the final draft had yet to be printed. They would not grant us an appointment until they had homestudy in hand. Finally we received an appointment for November 28 - TWO months later. They had the homestudy October 4th. I thought okay it's over, wait a week and we will keep on moving. Yeah Right! On January 5th after contacting Bill Pearce, Myriam and Amy D @ DHS we finally received our I171H. Only to find out from Myriam on January 10th we still needed a second page. Once it arrived it had to be authenticated and translated to put with the Dossier and off to China. One big Hurdle!

Homestudy

We are working with an adoption agency in Tacoma Washington. With Tia the adoption agency was in our home state, so they had a social worker to do our home study. This time I had to call around and find one that was certified. I could have used another gal, she sounded great. But was going to cost another $1000 to make a certification connection. We all know money doesn't grow on trees :(

We worked with Bill Pearce from Ankeny. We were both working around vacation schedules, so this took longer than anticipated. We had to meet 4 times. Two times were to be in home and two could be anywhere.

We started 8/2/07 and finished 10/4/07.

LOI ( Letter of Intent )

We finalized the letter of intent. I think it was May of 1999 that I created Tia's LOI. I didn't have a clue of what I wrote. I started Xiao's pretty simple and sent it to a fellow adoptive mom for her thoughts. She let me know it needed some meat to it. So I started in again. Once I got started it was easy to beef it up. The feeling was there, I just needed to know if was okay to write it. It had to contain the usual "we will treat her the same as our other children, love and care for her. We will be able to meet any need she may have."

I believe this may have been the first thing to be notorized. Jeff our controller at work was the first outside of the immediate family to learn of our addition. (Thanks Jeff!)

Is It Really You?

On June 23, 2007 I sent an email to Faith International Adoption Agency. On June 25th I received a reply. It was from Myriam; Thank you for your interest in our waiting children from China . We currently have the following children available for adoption through our special needs program:
boy who is almost 3 years old and his special need is albinism
boy, one year old and he has clubbed hands
Girl who is reportedly healthy and is 9 1/2 years old
Boy, almost three years old and has a repaired cleft lip and palate.
There you are amongst the boys. Myriam gave me the passwords to view your picture. Your dad and I didn't have money available to start all the paperwork. I was doing some serious thinking of how I was going to make this happen. Myriam also sent me a Faith China packet and a questionnaire. I then asked for more information on you and when Myriam replied, she was calling you Marsha. I knew you were my daughter when I received that email. My sisters name is Marcia and your birthday is the day before your dads. With this email I received your medical and 3 pictures.
Development Report of Li Xiao Xue
1) Initial entrance
Li Xiaoxue, female, was born on October 16 2997, was found in front of the gate of community commission of Dongguan City. Since efforts to seek his birth parents and relatives were unsuccessful. She was sent to the abandoned baby center and stayed there till Dec. 29, 2005. She was transferred to our Institute under the approval of the Home Affair Office of the government of Rijing City. Our medical staff gave her an entry physical examination and she was diagnosed as a healthy child.
2) Physical Development Condition
Development Condition and feeding condition
Age 9.5 years old
Height 116 cm
Weight 20 kg
Head circ 50cm
Chest circ 55 cm
Teeth 24
Considering her healthy growth, we sent her to a family to feed at the second day after entering the institute. Physical and Intelligence development Condition Li Xiaoxue has normal physical and mental development: she was not good at speaking when entering the institute. Her words were lack of logic. She used Cantonese instead of Mandarin. With a little bullheadedness, she was impolite when talking with other people. Later, teachers in the institute and her foster parents taught her with great patience and guidance. She changed in a lot of aspects. For example, she now can speak Mandarin to people. She will show respect to old people, care for them and accept suggestions from other people. Gradually, she took interest in study and was able to concentrate in classes and finish homework on time after school. She treats every subject carefully so her school record is getting better. Li knows how to make friends with other children and how to get on with family members. Now she is able to put her things in order. Sometimes the foster parents say that they can even get help from her.
3) Character and hobbies Li Xiaoxue is active and restless with active mind. She is clever so she learns new things fast. Art and physical activities are her favorite and she often takes part in kinds of performance and entertainment actively. In these shows, she has good performance. Her hobbies are singing, dancing and reading story books and cartoons.
4) Medical history Li Xiaoxue hasn’t got any serious illness since she came to the center. Instead, she got a cold or coughs for one or two times and recovered soon after receiving care from doctors. She has no allergic record. We established immunization card for Li Xiaoxue right after she entered our institute. She had all her immunization shots according to requirement. She now had MV booster 1 time and HBV booster 1 time.
Sealed by: Dongguan Children’s Welfare Institute.
Signed by: Director
Date: Nov 18, 2006