Audrey Is Famous!!!

Audrey is so excited to be on the Great Wall Feb DTC Yahoo! group home page. Check her out here. This photo was taken on her 7th birthday, last April. All she wanted for her birthday was the Asian Cabbage Patch doll so she could practice taking care of her Mei Mei. Now, she would much rather have the real thing here instead!

Things I'll Be Doing Between DTC And Referral/Travel

1. Shopping!!! It's been a while since we could shop for little pink girly things!
2. Lots of housework-decorating, painting, getting the yard in shape, etc. (Won't be any time for that with 5 kids!)
3. Losing weight-12 pounds would be good, 17 would be great, and 27 would be amazing!
4. Getting Braces-should help with #3. No sugar, soda, popcorn,etc. for 9 months.
5. Learning some Mandarin.
6. Compiling and revising packing lists.
7. Catching up on scrapbooks.
8. Starting a Scrapbook for Meili.
9. Figuring out where to put her-none of our other kids have had a nursery, Meili will be no exception. I think she'll have a crib in our room when she comes home, then share with Audrey later once she has the whole "family" thing figured out and is secure.
10. Learning more about Chinese history.
11. Reading more about attachment/bonding.
12. Collecting Chinese children's books.
13. 100 Good Wishes Quilt-Curse whoever started this! I better do one or Meili's bound to hear about it one day and wonder where hers is at. Actually, I received our first square in the mail on Saturday (from Jackie, our home study social worker) and was so excited. I think the quilt will be fun afterall.

With all of this to do, there shouldn't be any time to worry about how long referrals might take...right? WRONG!!!

Video Attempts

I am trying to learn how to link video to our blog. If this works, you should be able to click here and see our video from our vacation to Mexico last October.

Noah Loves Meili

Dear China Girl,
I love you
Noah (age 4)

How cute is that? Now if we can just get him to call her 'Meili.'

'Happiness' is...

in Chinese on our car window! I never thought I would be a vinyl-sticker-on-the-back-of-my-car kind of girl but I have succumbed! It kind of looks like Oscar the Grouch peeking out of his garbage can but it is in fact the Chinese symbol for 'happiness'-at least that's what the guy at the mall told me. I really wanted the Chinese symbol for 'family' but they didn't have it. Once I got home, I realized that the Chinese symbol for 'patience' might have been more appropriate!

What's DTC? Is it Contagious???

We had a great time last Friday night celebrating our DTC status. Cake, party blowers, and confetti poppers were in order. Audrey was sick with strep and running a high fever so our plans to blast "China Girl" through the streets of Tucson will have to be postponed.















Since our DTC announcement last Friday, we have received lots of e-mails from family and friends asking questions about our adoption. Do we know who she is? Has she been born yet? What on Earth is DTC? Is it contagious??? All great questions!

For those of you who don't speak adoptionese, D.T.C. stands for "Dossier to China." Our dossier is all of the paperwork that we have been accumulating over the last 5+ months. DTC is such a momentous occasion because it means that our job is done-now we just sit back and wait!

We don't think that Meili has been born yet, but she could be born sometime very soon. It could be 10-12 months before we find out any information about our little girl. At that time, we will learn her Chinese name, her birthdate or estimated birth date, where she is at, and receive a few small photos along with a very brief medical history. We do not choose our daughter from a line-up. Instead, we are matched to her by a government agency in China. This 'match' along with the information that we will recieve about her is called a 'referral.' Don't worry, we'll make sure nobody misses it!

Let the Shopping Begin!!!

We ordered one of these for the whole family to wear while we wait for Meili. Cute, and just $2! Click here for more info. I remember finding these over a year ago and planning to get them once we were DTC. Can't believe we made it!!!

We are DTC!!!

Dear Family, Friends and Blog-Buddies,

Well, after 5 months and 11 days of being poked and prodded and subject to everything short of a full body cavity search, our paperwork is finally on it's way to China! We are pretty excited to finally declare ourselves "paper pregnant." Thank you all for your support and tolerance of Jenn's incessant China-adoption talk. Jenn's brother, James, commented recently that with as much as he has heard about her, it seems like we should have had Meili home for a couple of years by now! We are all just so excited. What a blessing for our family!

We now wait for the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) to register our paperwork and issue us a log-in date. That will be the day that the official countdown begins. Right now referrals are taking about 9 months but the wait is rumored to stretch to 10-12 months with travel happening 6-8 weeks after that. No worries! We have plenty to do to keep us busy in the meantime!!!

Please take a peek at our ultrasound photo. Can you see her in there??? The really weird thing is that this time it's Matt's!!!



Have a great day!

Matt, Jenn, Taylor, Audrey, Noah, and Xander

Here's The Whole Monstrosity!

Since we used our agency's dossier preparation service, we knew that we wouldn't actually get to see the completely certified and authenticated dossier. So, I e-mailed our dossier consultant a few weeks ago and asked her if she would snap a picture of it on her desk and e-mail it to us. (Thanks Cari!) I felt like an idiot asking for it but decided that I would feel like more of one if I didn't fully document the whole process for Meili. There will be so many holes in the story of her first months of life that I don't want there to be any that are my fault. I want her to know that every day that she spent in China without a family, we were thinking of her, loving her and trying to find a way to bring her home as soon as possible. It's been crazy but very, very worth it.

DTC Tomorrow!!!

I sent the kids off to school this morning then sat down at the computer with a plan to e-mail our agency and see if they could light a fire under someone's hiney at the Chinese Consulate in LA. It has been 22 days since our I-171H arrived there for authentication. Their website claims a 4 day turn-around. We once again missed our agency's Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. cut-off time for a Friday DTC so depression was definitely setting in. Instead I found this!:

Mathew and Jennifer,

Great News! Your I-171H is back from the Consulate. Your dossier will be sent to China tomorrow!

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Have a great day!

GWCA

I am still a bit teary as I type this. This is so exciting!!! Party tomorrow night at the Bouton house!!!

No News, No Worries...until the chocolate high wears off at least!!!

I knew that I had to get out of the house today. If I stayed home, I'd just stalk my email all day long. So, I did as much damage at the mall as a woman can do with 2 and 4 year old boys in tow(I think they enjoyed the bra-shopping the best) then buried my stress in a good and cheesy burrito. On the way home, I picked up dessert, just in case. These are pics of my Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory chocolate covered caramel apple-

before checking my e-mail ...

and after...

Needless to say, no news. We'll start crossing our fingers for the 17th-my grandma's birthday. Damn that red thread!!!!

Waaaaaaa!!!

Well, we didn't make the Wednesday at 10:00 am cut-off to be DTC today. Our Dossier Consultant at Great Wall did say that since everything else is in order, if the authenticated I-171H were to show up sometime yesterday or even early today then she could still get it sent out by this afternoon. She is supposed to e-mail if that happens. So far.....nothing.

So, I don't know if we are going to be celebrating DTC tonight as a family or if I am going to go to a scrapbook party with a neighbor. I think if the former doesn't happen, only a chocolate covered caramel apple from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory will do the trick. I may just do that anyway since I am getting BRACES in a few weeks and won't be able to manage the caramel for at least 9 months. Also, I had a crazy idea about going sugar-free from DTC to referral just to see if that might take care of these pesky 15 pounds that have taken up permanent residence on my hind-quarters-so the apple could be my one last hurrah! It's the Braces/Referral Wait diet plan...hope it works!

Will post later if I get any exciting news. Should have broken down and used the courier, I guess.

Don't Worry, The Bowie is Temporary!

I was so impressed with myself to be able to stick some music code into my blog (with some help from my sister Janine) that I'm going to temporarily let go the fact that it is in the wrong place. The snipit will play everytime you go to another link within the blog-gets pretty annoying. I'll either fix it or take it out...eventually.

Soooo Close!!!

...to being DTC, that is! I noticed this weekend that Matt's passport was not signed which means that the copies of his passport that we sent along with our dossier to our agency are not signed either. I did e-mail new copies today so I'm hoping that we won't find any related problems later on. We received this e-mail from our agency today:

Hi Jenn,

The passport copy should be fine. You can see all of the important information, so it won’t present a problem.
I haven’t received your I 171 H back from the consulate yet, but I am hoping to have it by Wednesday. I think you will be DTC this Friday.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Have a great day!

Cari Brown

So, we are keeping our fingers crossed that the authenticated I-171H makes its way to GWCA by Wednesday morning at 10 am. We are so looking forward to celebrating DTC on Friday night. I think that we are going to decorate our car and drive around town like a bunch of lunatics blasting David Bowie's "China Girl" from the speakers unless we think of something else. (Any ideas?) We just want our daughter/sister to know how excited we were to be one giant step closer to bringing her home!!!

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

I woke up this morning thinking that next year I will have to make up for my lack of enthusiasm about this holiday this year. Right now it just means closures and delays in our dossier finally reaching China! Our I-171H should have arrived at the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles last Friday. It will be closed today and tomorrow. We should be able to have the I-171H authenticated and returned to our agency by Wednesday of next week. That would mean a DTC date of February 10th. Then the celebrating will begin!

Wouldn't Ya Know It!!!

After taking matters into my own hands yesterday and hauling the kids downtown to re-certify our I-171H, the original certified document was mysteriously delivered by FedEx to our agency this morning! The tracking information shows that it was picked up at the AZ Secretary of State's office yesterday morning-8 days after they swear that it had left their building. NICE. To them it's just a piece of paper; to me that's 8 more days that our daughter lays in a crib in an orphanage in a third-world country. THANKS! ;O/

My First Negative Comment! I've arrived!

I have enjoyed reading other people's China-adoption websites and blogs for well over a year now. The process has been educational on many levels...I knew that it was only a matter of time before this happened to me...so hilarious! This comment was left on my post yesterday. The comments from "anonymous" are in italics. My responses are not:

Congratulations on your new addition to the family. (Thank you!) But are you really going to name your kid Meili? (Why, yes! I certainly am.) Most Chinese people consider that name to be very "tu" which means "tacky" or "unrefined". (Great! If she lives up to her name, she'll fit in around here even better than we anticipated!!!) Maybe you should consult with some Chinese friends to come up with a more meaningful name. (Hmm...Did you read my long-winded post entitled "I think she has a name!?" If so, you would see that the name has enough meaning to suit our needs.) Meili is NOT a good name. Actually it's terrible. (So, what's your name? Maybe I'll name her after you!) I'm not trying to be mean. (Really?) I'm just being honest. (Like you were when you signed your name "anonymous?") But then again, my family is Chinese but they're from Taiwan. Maybe they do names differently in China. (Perhaps. Luckily for her in this matter, she will spend most of her time here in U.S. where just about anything goes. I have other children who have names that are far worse and are pulling it off with style. I expect that she will do the same. Just wait... "Meili" will be making a comeback!)

So...if you are currently or soon-to-be processing an adoption from China, consider yourself educated or at least informed of the negative comment inevitability. It's not all rainbows and kittens in cyberspace. To each his own!

The Earth is Back On It's Axis!

Well, at around 3pm today Cari from Great Wall called to say that our certified I-171H is probably permanently MIA. The Sec. of State claims that it was sent out through FedEx on the 17th and FedEx has no record of ever touching it. So, at 3:15 I loaded all 4 kids including 2 sick with the flu into the car and headed out on "Operation I-171H." I was prepared to drive to Phoenix and get the darn thing certified in person but when I called to get directions and office hours I learned that there is a satellite office right here in Tucson! So two stops, three dollars and 1 1/2 hours later...The I-171H is certified.!!!...AGAIN!!!!

It was actually quite easy. I was expecting a DMVesque line and hassle but instead found our way into a very small office with 1 guy at a desk. I was the only dossier-crazed pre-adoptive parent in sight.

I especially enjoyed all of the stupid comments that I received on the way up to the office with 4 kids in tow. We got the usual, "You've got your hands full!!!" and "Wow, you brought the whole tribe!" We also got a handful of that look in people's eyes that says, "Lady, are you nuts?" I refrained from informing anyone that we were there to process paperwork for #5. They may have fainted on the spot. Can't wait to hear the lovely things we will get once Meili joins the brood!

We were in and out of there in about 10 minutes-most of our time was spent in traffic and finding a parking space. It was kind of fun to see the certification process and expose the mystery of it all since our agency has done all of this for us and we had not yet seen what any of it looked like. (Whoop-dee-do!)

Tomorrow, our dossier consultant is going to e-mail to us the cover sheet for the authentication process and we will send it directly to the courier ourselves instead of paying for more FedEx shipping than this UPS-family cares to think about. We are now crossing our fingers for a Feb. 3rd DTC date!

OK, I am officially an IDIOT!

I posted to my DTC group what must have sounded like a raging fit about the AZ Secretary of State losing our I-171H. A few fellow group members kindly reminded me that what is lost is actually a COPY of the I-171H and not the original!!! So it's not the end of the world afterall. If it isn't found by tomorrow, I'll just make another copy, have it notarized and send it off in the mail. We don't have any chance to be DTC before CNY anyway, so whats another few steps in this process??? It's just too bad that I consumed what must have been a 1500 calorie burrito before I figured this out...SHEESH!

Where, Oh Where is My I-171H???

I just got off the phone with the notary department at the Arizona Secretary of State's office in Phoenix. We had anticipated a 1 week turn-around time for our I-171H certification and as of this morning there is no tracking info on the FedEx website. Anyway, the person I spoke with said that it was processed and sent out on the 17th which was a week after it was recieved and almost a week ago at this point. My agency sent a FedEx overnight envelope along with it so where in the heck is that thing??? I have left a message with our dossier consultant. Surely she would have sent an e-mail if they had received it certified and had sent it off for authentication. They know that we care about the details, right?

A few hours later... I came home to a message from the dossier consultant at Great Wall saying that she also contacted the Arizona Secretary of State and confirmed what I already knew but also that they have no record of sending it out. In addition, she is having Fed Ex run a trace. So...basically, the stupid thing is lost. AZ SoS is supposed to be checking their desks and out boxes for it. I hope it turns up. It would suck nuts to have to wait for the I-171H to be resubmitted from USCIS again. AAAHHHHH!!!!! Calgon, take me away!!!!!!!!!