We started talking about adopting again last Spring and finally decided it was time when August rolled around. We had our home study updated and by Thanksgiving had completed our dossier for China. Yes, China. If you have not already heard the story and are wondering what you are doing in the Vietnam section, the short version is that I, Lisa, started to have misgivings about rumors of pending changes in the China program.

Here is the timeline of the events that followed and led us to our Georgia. Given my long-windedness, I won’t be offended if you skim or just skip to the end (plus, I’ll never know, right?!)...

August 23rd, 2006:
We had our first home study visit and I began the reams of paperwork that would become our dossier to send to China.

November 28th, 2006:
Our dossier was almost complete. The final step (following collecting all of the documents – birth certificates, marriage certificate, doctors’ letters, local police clearance letters, employer letters, financial statement and letter of intent to adopt – having them notarized, authenticated by the county and authenticated by the state). The last remaining step was to have all of the documents authenticated by the Chinese consulate in NYC, so off they went.

November 29th, 2006:
I couldn’t shake the feeling that adopting through the China program was going to take a very long time and be very stressful. I had been reading about changes China was planning to make to their international adoption program and that there would be an announcement about the changes sometime in December. Meanwhile, I had discovered that the wait time for a referral (we were told 12-14 months when we started the process in August) had already grown to over 15 months; the wait was projected to reach 2 ˝ years by the time they got to matching babies to the families applying to the program in late 2006.

December 4th, 2006:
I called our always-helpful social worker, Sharon, to discuss my concerns about the China program. Among a few of the possibilities we discussed was adopting a baby from Vietnam. Sharon told us that one of her colleagues, Renee, was working with an agency, World Child, which had infants waiting to be matched with families. Infants! I couldn’t believe my ears. Being me, I wasted no time in calling Renee who confirmed that there were babies waiting for families in both the north and south of Vietnam. That night, Jason and I talked over our options and decided that it felt much more right to adopt a baby who already needed a family than to wait a year and a half or more to adopt a baby who may not have even been born yet (as the case would be with China).

December 5th, 2006:
I called Renee and let her know that we wanted to adopt from Vietnam. Crazy, but true. She made my head spin with the long list of tasks to be accomplished as quickly as possible so that we could turn our China dossier into a Vietnam dossier.

December 6th, 2006:
I sent in an application to our new agency, World Child. Later that day, Renee called me to say that World Child wanted her to give us a referral that day! Renee told us about our lovely little girl and spent the last few moments of her work day sending us multiple pictures of her.

December 7th - 11th, 2006:
These few days are a blur. I barely slept or ate and was most thankful for my flexible job that gave me time off to do all I had to do. On the 11th I sent all of our documents to Albany to be authenticated by New York State.

December 15th, 2006:
NYS State Department sent our documents to Renee.

December 18th, 2006:
Renee sent our dossier to the Vietnamese consulate in California.

December 22nd, 2006:
The consulate completed our papers and sent them to the World Child office in California.

December 23rd, 2006:
Our dossier arrived at World Child.

December 27th, 2006:
Our dossier was on its way to Vietnam! The wait to travel had begun...

April 2nd, 2007:
Today we received a call from our agency telling us to get our visas to arrive in Vietnam no later than April 18th. They think our Giving and Receiving Ceremony will be on the 19th or 20th! They hope to know more towards the end of the week.

April 3rd, 2007:
I mailed our visas, took Sammy to a playgroup, and returned home to a message from our agency that they had an update for us. When I called back they told me that we have our ceremony date – April 18th! Woohoo! We are going to Vietnam to get our baby girl!!! Now all we need are plane tickets, which we should have tomorrow. Yippee!!!

April 4th, 2007:
Still working on those plane tickets but a wonderful travel agent (Lori, at Azumano Travel... if anyone else needs assistance with planning a trip) is on the case...

April 5th, 2007:
We have our flights reserved! A huge relief!

April 6th, 2007:
Our visas came back today – I cannot believe how fast that was! Our airline tickets also arrived. Well, one ticket for Georgia, which has to be paper for some reason, and the flight info for Mom and me. Can’t complain how things are coming together so far. Now if only we could finish the nursery...