The wait ends, the wait begins

Dear Eli,

I really wanted to have our Letter of Approval (LOA) for Christmas. In fact, if there had been no presents under the tree, just an email in my inbox, it would have made for a perfect Christmas. People in our Facebook group seemed to be getting them so quickly, after 32, 34, 37 days, and on Christmas Day we had been waiting 54 days. But the call didn't come, the inbox didn't ding. And as I tried to focus on the kids here at home,  I couldn't help but think about you in Xuzhou, and how you didn't even know it was Christmas. You're too little to care, but that didn't make it any easier.

I thought the call would come on the 26th. We went to see Les Miserables and I put my cell phone on vibrate and tucked it in my shirt, sure it would ring while we were at the movie. It didn't.

I thought the call would come on the 27th. We went to your Great-Uncle Bryant's funeral and I turned the phone off, convinced that when we left the church there would be a message waiting for me. There was no message.

By the 28th, I was not just sad-- I was mad. I read about someone on an adoption message board who got their Letter of Approval after just three weeks, and this was a family who had no special circumstances-- just good luck. I went to my adoption board on Facebook, hoping to be able to vent and find some solace, but there were all sorts of announcements that other families had gotten their approvals too, in record time. I went downstairs and found my godmother, Annie, and spent about an hour whining to her about how unfair the process can be, and how I wasn't sure I could bear much more.

And then, of course, the phone rang.

We waited 57 days for our approval, which is six days fewer than we waited with Rose last year, but I've never been a patient person, and I am, sadly, an intensely competitive person, so when other people started getting their approvals quickly, I wasn't happy for them, I was mad for myself. Both this year and last I've been forced to confront this ugly side of myself before the letter finally came.

But now it's here! And we have official approval to become your family!

So what comes next? We'll move back to the US side of the equation for the next three steps. We have sent off the paperwork for the I800 approval, which is our approval from USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration) to adopt you.  It typically takes about three weeks to get that approval. After that, the National Visa Center will cable our file to the US Consulate in Guangzhou (that step takes another week). After that, our Article 5 letter (official approval for your visa) will be approved by the US Embassy, which usually takes about two weeks, but will probably take three in our case because I expect that it will be held up by Chinese New Year. Once all of that is squared away, we will receive our Travel Approval from the CCCWA, which usually takes at least two more weeks. That all adds up to about nine weeks, or two months, which means we can probably expect our TA around March 1st. We hope to have you in our arms before the end of March.

Within three months, you will be our son. Rest assured that you are already my son in my heart.

Love,

Mommy