We're DTC!!!

Ok, I know, what's DTC? DTC stands for dossier(which is all of our accumulated official paperwork) to China. We are now officially through paperchasing and now termed a "waiting family". We started the homestudy and paperwork in January so needless to say it's good to have that part behind us.
We are now waiting for China to log in our dossier and send us travel approval. This could come in 2-3 months. Once we get that, it's almost go time! Travel arrangements have to be made and we're put with a group. Will tell more as our journey unfolds!

Suffering from ship lag!

We returned from our 7 day carribbean cruise Sunday. It was nice to get away for awhile, but now it's back to reality. Sorry if there isn't much to tell how the adoption is going. Hoping to hear soon that are paperwork is processed and on its way to China. Will keep you posted when that happens! Mei Mei turned 22 months on the 28th. I hate the thought of her spending her 2nd birthday in the orphanage. We'll make up for it when she comes home , I'm sure!

It's All in the Name

Thought I would take a minute and explain the name change from Samantha to Meigan. We were originally set on calling the baby Samantha. It was a name that Scott had wanted for Jennifer, and since this would be the Conley's last grandchild, our next little girl would share her name with her grandpa Sam. In the meantime, we nicknamed the baby Mei Mei, (pronounced May May). It means "little sister" in Chinese. I also had joined aYahoo group for parents of adopted children with cleft lip/palate. Some questions would come up about naming their child since cleft children have speech issues with certain letters. "S" was a sound that could be hard to pronounce in her name. The "m" sound was an easier one. This got me thinking. We call her Mei Mei anyway, how could we incorporate Mei Mei into an American name, too? Having a Logan already it wasn't long before I came up with the name Meigan. Part chinese,(Mei itself means beautiful), part American. I asked Scott what he thought and we agreed she would be named Meigan Samantha.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday :)

My first post!

What a wonderful feeling to see Meigan's name as a website! It has been a long 5 months since we started our journey, but we are now beginning to see that this baby will soon be ours! I found Mei Mei, as we all call her, on our agency's website after just curiously checking their special needs listings. No pictures, just age, sex, and medical problem. There was one listing of a baby girl, 18 months, cleft lip (repaired) and cleft palate unrepaired. We were set on adopting a healthy baby, why was this one listing weighing so heavily on my heart? I decided to call Stephanie , the agency social worker, to find out more about this child. I have very little medical knowledge about cleft lip/palate, but I was willing to read her medical report and see her picture. When I saw those empty eyes staring back at me, my heart ached. The hard part was going to be convincing Scott and our families that her condition was something we could handle.
Fast forward 2 months.... After a lot of research, speaking with doctors and medical personel and lots and lots of prayer, we are excitedly waiting to bring Pan Dong Guo home hopefully in Sept. or Oct. !!
Yesterday, we received our "Holy Grail of Immigration", I-171H, after waiting 3 long months!
We received our Pre-Approval from China just a week before! Right now, our dossier is being processed, noterized, authenticated, and certified. This takes about 3-4 weeks and then 7-10 days to expedite it to China. Then we are DTC!!! (Dossier to China). They will then give us a log in date (LID) and travel approval could come 1-3 months later. Feels so good not being obsessed with the mail at least for the time being!