Hello from Snowy Southwest Iowa! We've just had our first real snowfall of the winter, and hopefully it's not an indicator of things to come. Near blizzard conditions in mid-November are unusual and a radical change from the 70 degree temps we had last week.
Well, so far it's been an interesting experience! We are now at 3 1/2 months in our journey to find and adopt our daughter from China. We've had a couple of snags, but so far they've been fairly easy to overcome.
Even before we applied to an adoption agency, we began collecting documents we knew we would need such as birth and marriage certificates and the like. At that point we discovered that after almost ten years of marriage, we were not officially married! The minister did not file the certificate following the ceremony. We also learned this has happened to several other couples as well, the same person has filed documents late or not at all. We were able to get a new certificate, and have it witnessed and filed; we now have a "delayed" certificate of marriage issued by the state of Iowa.
We've collected nearly all the documents we need and they are off getting all the official stamps and seals from the various state offices and the Chinese consulates. Most recently we were fingerprinted at the Immigration office in Des Moines, and are awaiting their decision on our foreign orphan petition.
Our adoption journey got rolling after struggling with infertility treatments and hoping for a miracle for nearly our entire marriage. We had reached the point where a decision had to be made, and we opted for adoption. It had been on our minds as an alternative for several years, and after some research and soul searching, we decided on China. The adoption experiences of others with China convinced us we had made the right decision and we began to evaluate agencies. We selected Great Wall China Adoption and sent off an application and the first wait began. WE GOT ACCEPTED! What great news, we applied for a girl infant, and now only a stack of paperwork and the dreaded waiting time stood between us and our daughter.
We had read many adoption journals on the web and were not too sure about those who picked a name before even applying. After we finished the home study and the social worker told us it was ok to start accumulating baby things, the name thing kept coming up and after a lot of ideas bounced around, we decided on Miaya. At least we've got the first name, we're still working on the rest.
So, we're well on our way to "Finding Miaya".
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