Mei Mei

Mei Mei? Who's, what's Mei Mei? It's little sister in Chinese.
In September 2005 we began our official journey towards expanding our family. We have chosen to adopt from China and are almost done with the bulk of our paperwork. Once our paperwork is done and officially "logged-in" then we are still looking at a 8-12 month wait for a referral. We have requested a healthy girl aged 12-18 months old, so in all likelihood she has already been born! She is out there somewhere in China waiting for us.

The final piece of the paperwork puzzle (or the long pole in the tent, as Michael calls it) is a document called I-171H. It is approval from the US Government for us bring an orphan into the US. It should be here any day now, then I have to make a copy of it, get the copy notarized, go to Columbus to have the secretary of state of Ohio put an official seal on it, then send it to the Chinese Consulate in NY to have it "authenticated" (basically put their fancy seal on it too :-). Whew! Sound like a lot? Well I've already done it for 12 other documents so it's under control.

Once the whole pile of paper is done it goes to our agency, Holt International in Oregon, for review. They can take up to two weeks to review our dossier before sending it to China where it will be logged in and reviewed by people at the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs. 8-12 months later, our dossier will hit the matching room where a child's file will be matched up with ours. Once we accept our referral we should be traveling to China 6-8 weeks later to be united with our daughter!

Thanks for joining us on this journey!
Check back often for updates.