LOA!!!! LOA!!!!!!! LOA!!!!!!

We received our LOA (Letter of Acceptance)!!  
(A lot of people liked my questions and answers before, so here we go again.) 
 

What does that mean?
It means that as far as we're concerned, Tu Xue Hua is no longer an orphan, but a part of the Morrow family.  She will officially become our little girl 24 hours after she is placed in our arms, but this is as close as we will get before going over to China. 


So what happens now?
Well, now we start to freak out over how much we have left to do.  See a post I did a week or so ago to explain exactly, but basically we were originally approved by USCIS to bring an orphan from China home to our family. Now they will take that approval and match it up with this approval from China and match Tu Xue Hua to our family. This allows her and only her to be a part of our family and to be a US Citizen upon her arrival home.


When do we go get her? 
I would get on a plane now if I could, but it will still be another 10-14 weeks. Most of the adoptive parents who are in China now went from LOA to travel in about 2 months.  Unfortunately, with Chinese New Years coming in a week and a half, I don't see that happening for us. That puts us around early April, probably.  We hope to get in and out and miss the trade fair in Guangzhou, which starts April 15.  That might not be possible, but that is my hope.


So what do we still need to do to get ready for her? 
We need to make her nursery in to a nursery and not a guest room.  We have so many wonderful friends that have handed down or loaned us many of the items we needed, like a crib, bedding, high chair, clothing, etc.  We are so very blessed!!! We still need to paint and arrange it all and find a new home for the guest room.  We still have some things we need to buy, we must apply for our own Visas, start to arrange doctor's appointments, get ourselves ready and packed--including some rather random items and donations to her foster care home and stay under 44 pounds per checked bag, which is the in-China weight limit.  We need to buy all the gifts that are needed for the officials and nannys, try to get our doctors to give us some recommended prescriptions for ourselves and for her, maybe get a couple vaccines, arrange stuff with our work and a ton of other little things. Unfortunately, we still need to get the last of our money together.  I have my own little medical thing going on.  Luckily it does not appear to be something major, though we were afraid for a while it might have been. But I still have a lot of doctor visits and follow up over the next month or so. Although I am ready to go, it's good that we have some time still to finish getting ready.


When will we have exact dates?
To me, this is still the weirdest thing. Believe it or not, we will not know EXACTLY when we are going until about a week before we hop on a plane.  We will start to get a rough idea, but will not know exactly until we get a call that we have TA (travel approval.)  Then they will give us some rough dates and request a CA (consulate appointment).  Then we will get a date, rush through some travel arrangements and be on our way.  Our agency arranges everything within China and we generally travel with a group, but getting there and back is on our own.  We would love to use some of David's frequent flier miles or a friend even volunteered Delta buddy passes, but we will probably not be able to use them.  We will get a call and will have about a week to meet our group in China, probably in Beijing. That means it will be too late to get any great discounts or use frequent flier miles and we can't take the risk with buddy passes of missing our group.


How can you pray?
There is so much that we will ask you to pray for over the next few months, but let us start here.
* Pray for the details.  I (Melissa) am a detail person, but I also get overwhelmed by details.  (a weird combo) Pray that everything will come together and that we will go to China as soon as possible, but also exactly when we are supposed to.  Pray that all the details come together just as they should and that we are still able to have some quality family time over the next 10-14 weeks.  We want to have a ton of fun before we leave our boys for 17 days.
* Pray for our health.  That we would be strong and healthy before our trip.
* Pray that the boys would stay healthy and that we would emotionally prepare them to stay with our friends and their grandma for 2 1/2 weeks.  We have never been apart for that long.  We want them to be excited about it and not sad.  Pray that they are emotionally prepared for us to come home and be exhausted and jet lagged.  Pray that they will welcome a grieving, needy, fragile little sister in to their hearts and lives easily and readily. 
* Pray that their caregivers stay healthy and are emotionally prepared to be long term caregivers. 17 days is a long time.  That will get tiring. 
* Finally, Pray for our little Caitlyn Noel XueHua.  We pray that God goes before her and prepares her heart to become a Morrow and prepares her heart to enter a loving, Christian, American home.  She is only 18 months old next Monday. She has no idea what is happening to her.  People always say that orphans are so lucky to get out of the orphanage and be part of a family and yes, she is absolutely very blessed, but she is also going to lose everything she knows, the language, the food, the smell, her crib, the only people she knows.  Pray that even now her caregivers can somehow prepare her for the changes coming her way and that she will be ready.

What's after LOA?

One of my friends on my adoption group just did a great post on this, so rather than recreate the wheel, if you want to know what happens after we finally get LOA, read this. 

After LOA

75, no 83, days waiting for LOA

75, Yes 75 days we have been waiting for LOA..... Actually change that.  I started this post 8 days ago.  It has now been 83 days that we have been waiting for LOA!!!

What does that mean? Well, it means that we received pre-approval (PA) to adopt our Caitie 83 days ago, but we are still waiting to receive our official Letter of Acceptance (LOA).  The average wait right now for receiving this piece of paper for people who are PA after their file is logged in (LID) is 60 days.  We are way past that.  I was hoping that we would get it the first of January, but found out around the first of January that we were out of translation (OOT) on Christmas day. (Which was a regular day in China, since Christmas is not celebrated there.)  You receive your LOA approximately 4-6 weeks after you are OOT.  It has come as early as 2 weeks after OOT, so I have been hoping since about January 7. :(  

If we get our LOA at 4 weeks, it should be here by this Tuesday.  If we have to wait 6 weeks, we will join what is unofficially called the century club, meaning we will be part of the unfortunate group that has to wait 100 days for their LOA.  If it doesn't come by then, it will be bumped back even further because the offices in China will be closed for a week for Chinese New Year. At that point, you might want to leave me alone until it comes. (Just kidding, sort of.)  It is all in God's hands, I realize his timing was perfect, but it is hard to wait and know your child is not in the best of situations, while you wait on paperwork.  UGH!!!

Until now we have been hoping to have Caitie home by Easter, but that isn't possible now.  We didn't want to travel over Easter because we didn't want to miss a holiday with the boys and we didn't want to travel during Spring Break because that would mean our friends would have to find something to do with our kids during the day for a whole week and that is not ideal for them, but it looks like that may be when we travel.  Unfortunately there is a big trade fair in Guangzhou from April 15-May 5, that doubles or triples travel costs during that period.  Unfortunately that is just not possible for us to absorb, so we would have to wait to travel after the fair if we could not go before then.  It would make me really sad if money stood in our way of getting our girl, but it is what it is and it will happen when it is supposed to.  

Chinese names

This is copied from the Eagles Wings blog and explains a lot about Chinese names.

Just some naming trivia. In traditional Chinese families (less common now) the second name is a family name, kind of how we might think of a middle name. Usually the paternal grandfather chooses the name that all children of the next generation will have. Two kids that we have taken care of who are sibilings were Wang Hong Yan and Wang Hong Wei. Wang is the last name, Hong is the generation name and Yan and Wei are their personal names. Sometimes orphanages follow this by having all kids for one year have that same second name. Nicknames are usually the final name doubled...my second daughter was Fu Ya Tian. The name she went by (and still does) is TianTIan.  She didn't even know the "ya" part until after she was adopted. There was also a Ya Mei, and a few other kids with the Ya. Even if the final name is not doubled, many kids are called only by that third name so that is the one they associate with most closely.  

In other cases the two names are really not used as separate names but one word with two syllables. Guo Ce is GuoCe, we would never just say Guo or Ce. Kids with these kinds of names are GaoJing, WenJia, JunFei. Since they are used to this being their name, splitting it up is like calling a Maryellen just Mary or Ellen, or an Elizabeth, Eliza or Beth. 

Of course naming is a personal thing for your family to decide, but I thought perhaps understanding what the kids have been called and how they think of their name might be useful.

Caitlyn's name before we adopt her is Xue Hua (pronounced Shway ha).  She is called XueHua, all one word and sound, or Hua Hua (pronounced ha ha).   We will make her name Caitlyn Noel XueHua.  We had talked about calling her Caitie Xue, but based on what we are learning about naming, that won't really make sense.  We will also not call her ha ha, since that is just not appropriate here. (ha ha)

Caitlyn received her care package

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