Our Princess

We got the best surprise last week...a fellow "mom-in-waiting" emailed me and said she may have pictures of Livvie and asked if I'd be interested in seeing them. Ummm..YES PLEASE! She emailed me pictures of her daughters birthday party at the orphanage and there was our little Livvie, wearing a princess crown and eating birthday cake. These pictures are the best Christmas present we could have asked for!

Family Pictures with a 3 year old (and a dog)

Those of you with toddlers will see the title of this posting and probably groan out loud. You know what I am going to say and will take a secret amount of comfort knowing that I have gone through the same horror you have. Let me start out by saying that I was looking forward to having our family pictures taken all week. I shopped and bought coordinated outfits (taking great care to try to create a cohesive theme without being too "matchy-matchy"), made sure Lucky stayed free of lumps, bumps, and bruises all week (not an easy feat with a fearless three year old who seems to have some sort of super magnet in his head that attracts wooden tables, concrete stairs, and the undersides of most counter tops), and carefully planned our schedule out to make sure Lucky would get a good nap before the pictures, thus ensuring a happy, cooperative, perfect little boy for the pictures (I can already hear you snickering).

I could see the perfect pictures in my head -- happy, smiling, all-american family...the kind the photography studios put on their websites and flyers to entice customers. Well, I'm quite certain we won't end up on any flyers or websites, unless our pictures happen to make it over to AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com (which by the way is an awesome site).

The photos went something like this..."Lucky stop jumping around", "Lucky, stop rolling on the floor", "Lucky, stop touching that!", "I'm serious stop touching that!", "Lucky, smile"..."please buddy, smile",... "just one smile?", "Fine, don't smile, but at least look at the camera!" "Fine, you're done - me and Dad are having pictures all by ourselves then!" (insert toddler meltdown here).

And that my friends is family pictures with a three year old. Oh, and if you remember the title of my post also included (and a dog). Well, in all the chaos, we pretty much forgot Penny even came along with us and she didn't end up in any of the pictures.....She's going to be quite upset with us when she sees the proofs.

LOA = WOO-HOO

Hooray, Hooray, Hooray - our LOA came today!!! This means we can start the next step in the travel process. Traveling in February is looking pretty realistic!

Update on Ladybug!

TGIF! We received a update on Livvie today. The orphanage sent us five new pictures and a short developmental update. She's healthy and happy and they confirmed she received the photo album we sent her. I was hoping they would say more about if she liked the pictures, stickers, and lullaby CD we sent, but at least it's good to know it got to her. We also found out her nickname is "A Shuai" which phonetically sounds like "a shwaay". For the first few weeks with her, we're planning to try to use her American and Chinese name together "Livvie a shuai". Hopefully it will help her get used to her new name with minimal confusion.

Still no LOA from China and we're getting a a bit frustrated that it's taking so long. Without the LOA we stuck in limbo and can't start piecing together a travel timeline. I'm still hoping for a Feb travel date, but if the LOA doesn't come soon, that may not happen.

Introducing Livvie Abra Xinshuai Laessig

We were matched with our beautiful baby girl on Monday 9/20. She is two years old and we think she is adorable! We've officially submitted our Letter of Intent to China stating we want to adopt her and now will need to wait 1-2 months to hear back with China's approval. Once we have that, we can begin to make travel plans. We will most likely travel in the early Spring (Feb or March).

Based on the medical records we rec'd, Livvie is healthy and happy! C'mon Spring!!!

Good Day!

August 30th
WOO-HOO....we got our LID! I just checked the agency website and it was updated today. So now we are officially eligible to be matched with a child - hopefully from the next list that comes out at the end of September. We have no idea how many other parents are on the waiting list, but we're praying we get matched the first month. Man - it's going to be a loooong month.


August 28th
Still waiting for our log in date (LID). Our agency told me that it typically takes 2-4 weeks for China to notify them of the official LID, so hopefully we'll hear something soon. The next referral list comes out towards the end of September, so I'm hopeful we'll be logged-in for that. Our agency posts the LID's on their website the day they receive them....I've been checking the link 10 times (okay 20 times) a day! It's unreal to think we could possibly be matched with a little girl within the next month!! The wait is killing me!!!

Lucky had a great 3rd birthday with a super-cute turtle cake (so cute it was a shame to cut into it!). I can't believe my baby turtle is three. I guess I can't really call him baby turtle anymore...he tells me now he's just a "regular" turtle.


UPDATE August 9th:
We just heard from our agency that our dossier is officially ready to be shipped to China!! They send them every Friday, so ours will be sent this Friday 8/13. Once it arrives in China and gets logged-in, we're officially eligible for a referral. That means we could get a referral as soon as September!! Good thing we started painting her room this weekend, we've got some serious work to do to get ready!

I would also like to take a moment to apologize to Penny the Dog for insinuating she is not very smart. It appears I've hurt her feelings and she is refusing to hunt any more houseflies (or chipmunks) until the proper apologies are made. Turns out crashing into walls while chasing flies is all part of the hunt. Who knew.....



August 3rd
Wow, my very first post on my very first blog.  I tried desperately to come up with something clever or witty to post, but I'm just too tired right now.  I'm sick, Lucky's sick, and Cale's sick...Penny the Dog is the only one in our house who's not sick and she doesn't really feel like blogging right now...too busy hunting and chasing houseflies around the house.  So I apologize in advance for the blah post - I promise I'll be witty tomorrow.


So let's get to the point of this whole blog thing.  I hope this will be a great way for all our friends and family to follow along on our journey in adopting our little girl from China.  Everyone has been so excited for us and eager to hear details of what's going on.  So "ask and you shall receive".....this blog will contain all the details you ever wanted to know (and probably some you didn't).


Right now our dossier is at the Chinese Consulate in Chicago being "authenticated".  I'm not really sure what authenticating means, but I'm quite sure it's very complex and expensive (as is everything in the adoption process).  The dossier was sent to the Consulate last Friday and the agency told us it can take 2-3 weeks.

Once our dossier is properly authenticated and approved, it's officially ready to be sent to China to be logged in.  Our agency will send it to China (they call it DTC...dossier to China) and then wait for our LID (log in date).  The LID is the magical date we're waiting for right now.  Once we have a LID, we are eligible to be matched with a child from the waiting list.  The waiting child list comes out once per month and we're crossing our fingers that we'll be eligible for the September list.

So that's where we are right now.  TTFN....