As I type, our completed home study is on the FedEx truck to be delivered to USCIS (United States Citizenship & Immigration Services). It was supposed to be there by 10:30am, but there was a weird delivery exception ("Recipient location security delay. Delivery will be reattempted."). I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I am not thrilled about it - I want that paperwork there NOW! They have been in receipt of our I-600A (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition), birth & marriage certificates and associated fees since 06/12/2007. Now that they are receiving our completed home study, they will be contacting us to come in for a fingerprinting appointment. We were already fingerprinted for the Virginia State Police clearances, but USCIS does their own fingerprinting. Once we are fingerprinted and those prints are cleared, we just sit and wait for them to review and approve our application and home study and issue an I-171H (Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition). That document is the last piece of paperwork we will need to complete our dossier and send it to China! While we are waiting for the approval form, I will be gathering the remaining documents needed and going through the authentication process for them so that we will be ready to go with our dossier when we receive the form.
We know from friends and from reading other adoptive families' blogs this part of the wait can be frustratingly long! I have introduced my snail tracker to see how long it takes. Of course, you will have to add 75 days to the snail tracker to see how long the whole USCIS process takes from application to approval. In fairness to them, they can't process the application until they receive the home study, so I didn't use 06/12 as my start date.
In other news, our agency has given us the okay to send ZuGuo a care package! I am assembling a few items and will take pictures of what I put in the package before I ship it. I already have put together a baby-friendly (chew and drool proof) photo album with pictures of Adam, Ben and I so that she can get used to the sight of our faces. She has probably never seen a man with a beard, and we don't want her to be terrified of her ba ba (Daddy) when she meets him! The pictures are labeled with the Chinese characters for family, ba ba, ma ma and ge ge (older brother). I am putting in a couple of small toys and a blanket and very small fabric teddy bear, which I will wash with our detergent and fabric softener so that she can get used to the smell of her new family. I am also tucking small pieces of a dryer sheet inside each page of the photo album so that it will also be scented like us. When I pack our bags for China, everything will be laundered in that way and I will throw a few dryer sheets into our luggage so that hopefully we will smell familiar to ZuGuo when we finally get to hold her! That covers sight and smell. I think for the next care package, we may go to Build a Bear and create a bear with a squeeze button with a recording of our voices - that covers sound. I haven't figured out a way to package up our touch or taste, so I guess she will just have to wait for that until she can touch and chew on us in person! :0) Shipping to China is quite expensive, so we want to squeeze in as much as we can into a small box. In our first package, I think we will put in small gifts for the Director and "Aunties", and a case of cleft nurser bottles for ZuGuo and any other kids that need them. The bottles are manufactured in the US and difficult for them to get China. We aren't sure if she is still getting a bottle or not and what solid foods, if any, she is eating. We should get an update on this and her measurements at some point before we travel.
Speaking of measurments, our little girl is apparently quite petite - at least by US standards. I was thinking about including some clothing in our care package, and was trying to figure out which size to buy. I have monthly measurements for her up to 6 months of age and I charted these on the US government infant growth charts. For length, she was below the 3rd percentile curve until her 6th month, when she jumped up to between the 5th & 10th percentile. For weight, she has pretty well followed the 5th percentile curve, until she jumped to just above the 10th percentile in month six - I guess she had a little growth spurt! For comparison, Ben was typically in the 75th percentile for height and the 95th percentile for weight when he was a baby and toddler (he is off the top of the charts now for height for a 13 year old boy). Another way to look at ZuGuo's information is that at six months of age, she was roughly the same size as a three month old child that falls in the 50th percentile. At three months of age, she was the same size as a one month old in the 50th percentile. This is nothing to be concerned about - she is definitely growing and following a nice curve - just not one on the US charts! Chinese children are smaller in general, but especially those raised in an institutional setting. I could not find 'official' Chinese growth charts, but from the Chinese charts I found, she appears to be small, even by China's standards (25th percentile for weight and 10th percentile for height). I will definitely have to take this into account for clothing sizes. We will look forward to updated measurements!
Here is a slide show that includes the 8 pages of the baby photo book going to China. Enjoy!
