Time goes slowly by

Waiting for our dossier to be completed and sent back to us is going slowly. Still, they should be done today and on their way back to us, arriving next week. Once they are here, we will combine our family life photos, and passport photos with the dossier of documents, package them, and send them to our agency along with our next fee installment. Then, they will be translated into Chinese, and sent to the CCAA to be gone over with a fine tooth comb. This is where our notaries, and time stamps are most important.

As long as all is well, the CCAA will send us a LOA. They usually take months to send these out, average being 90 days, but, today I saw posted on another adoption website that someone received their LOA in less than 30 days, so, perhaps things are speeding up. Doesn't matter to us, really. We have planned a late fall trip, so, earlier would be ok, but, we are already settling in for the wait.

We sent Holly a package of gifts. Mailed yesterday. We sent her a backpack with a couple of Disney stuffed animals, hair barrettes, bracelets, and rings, a play sleeping beauty cell phone, a cute sucker shaped like a Daisy. I also put some fruit snacks to share with some of her friends at the orphanage. We put together a photo album with pictures of all of us, our house, some of the things we do, and put subtitles in both english and simple chinese. I made a coloring book for her by typing out the story of our adoption trip. For instance, page one talks about how Tim, Matthew and I will be coming to China on a big airplane. I pasted a picture of an airliner and pasted the dialogue in both english and simple chinese. Each page had a space where I had Myleigh draw a picture of what that page is about, so on that page she drew an airplane with our faces peeking out of the windows. I then laminated the page, and bound them all together as a book. I sent washable markers and an eraser for her to use to color, erase, and color again. I asked, in a note, for the staff at the orphanage to read her the story and let her color the pages. We are hoping this will help Holly to understand at least to some degree what is going to happen when she leaves the orphanage. Maybe she will have less stress, since there won't be so many unknowns, and as each page is fulfilled, she will recognize it, and know what is coming next. Like checking off a calendar.

We will send her another package, unless things move quickly, with a few things, but, this is basically the big package. I have been gathering some things to take with us to China, toys, some clothing items, etc, but, most of what we will get her we will wait until we have her in China and take her shopping for, to make sure we get the right sizes. It will also be a way of passing some of the down time we will have while waiting for her passport before going to Guangzhou.