Here's The Story So Far...

Many of you already know this "story" in depth, the story of Dave and Lisa and Zhan Wen Jing. Here she is.

We wanted to become parents for a long time. But it wasn't happening the way we had expected it to.

After several years, we started talking about adoption. We went to a seminar in February 2004. We really liked what we heard about international adoption. We felt very quickly that this was the way we would become parents.

A social worker is hired to do the Homestudy. This is a crucial part of being approved by the state to adopt and later is part of the tons of paperwork that is sent to China. But also, the social worker counsels clients on what becoming parents, and more importantly, becoming adoptive parents of a child of a different race really means. We had a couple's session, individual sessions and a home visit. Lets just say that for the home visit, our first two "children" stayed outside! In addition to the visits we had to do tons of paperwork, physical exams, financial statements, letters from family & friends, etc.

After we finished our homestudy, we put in an application with Children's Home Society and Family Services in Minnesota. We had attended one of their seminars and like their no-nonsense approach to adoption. This began the next round of paperwork: The Dossier. This made the homestudy paperwork seem like kindergarten. In addition to this we applied for the Holy Grail of adoption: The I171H. Until you get this back from the government, nothing can happen.

We finished our dossier in November and were fingerprinted. We waited and waited for the I171H, because the sooner it came, the sooner we would parents. A few days before New Years we were leaving a family reunion. My mom said-"Be sure to call me when you get your form". I said, "Mom, I think we just need to accept that is going to take a lot longer than we thought it would. There's nothing we can do about it." Well guess what was waiting in the mailbox when we got home that night! It felt like finally getting a positive pregnancy test result. It was awesome.

After all this our agency does more stamping and stuff to all the dossier paperwork, then it heads to China. Our paperwork was logged in 1-31-05. Your LID (log in date) is the very important in China adoption. Everything revolves around that. We were told to expect a 6-8 months wait for our referral.

We spent the months in between waiting and then waiting some more. We kept really busy. I shopped and read books on adoption. Dave remodeled the kitchen and added a room to the basement. Even still, there were moments when we just felt horrible-like "please hurry up and tell us something!!!".

We went to a travel seminar in June, up to St. Paul MN, with our agency to learn about the trip. Of course, since I had been online researching everything for about a year at this point, they didn't tell me much I didn't know. We did get to meet our group (and future travel companions) who immediately recognized us as the Kentucky people in a room full of northerners. The other highlight of the trip: The Mall of America.

At the end of July we heard rumors that referrals were coming in (China sends all of a month's referrals at one time). We hoped we might be included but missed the cut-off (LID) by 3 days. We were pretty upset. Okay, I was. Dave handled it very well. Everybody kept saying it was because our baby wasn't ready yet and that's why we had to wait longer. I know that now...but then I didn't believe it.

We were on vacation in Michigan at my mom's family's house (it is my favorite place in the world) at the end of August. We were told by our agency not expect referrals till after Labor Day. We were very calm, because what else was there to do at this point? I was at the library in Greenville on 9-1-05 checking email for work. A friend here in Louisville had emailed me that she had just gotten her referral (her LID was close to ours). I still didn't think we would get ours till after Labor Day because that's what our agency said. I even went shopping for a couple hours-I figured that I had been waiting for this for 13 months (since we started the process) that there was no need to rush to the phone.

I got back to the house and around 4 o'clock the phone rang. My sister and I looked at each and I went into answer the phone. It was our social worker, she said "I'm calling to tell you about your daughter." It was one of the best moments of my life. Leah went to get Dave and they stood staring at me while she gave me the rest of the information. Her name was Zhan Wen Jing. She lived in Guangdong province. Her birthday was 12-8-04. When I hung up the phone all I could eek out to Dave was, "It's a girl" and cried.

We waited for my mom and stepdad to get back from the store. They took longer than we thought. We were told to check our email because a scanned photo of Zhan Wen Jing was being sent to us. We got to the Greenville library around 5:30 but I wasn't worried because they closed at 8:00 that night. But no, because of the holiday weekend they closed early (small town life must be nice!). We went into a total panic. Our two choices-drive the hour to Grand Rapids and find a Kinko's or something to get on line. Or go door-to-door and beg someone to let us use their computer! This probably wasn't a good choice.

We found a technical college and begged someone to let us use one of their computers. I even used the word "desperate". We finally got online and saw our baby's face for the first time.

We had decided if we received a referral of a girl that her name would be Emmy. We both love music and Emmy Lou Harris is one of our favorites. We had been trying to pick out a boy's name the whole year (we had requested a child of either gender) but ironically could never agree on one (even though Dave came up with lots of "good" ones like Nipsy and Soupy). We wanted to keep one of her Chinese names as her middle name. We found out that Zhan is the family name in China-so every child in the orphanage has that name. Wen means cultural & artistic. Jing means mountain view. We loved the meaning of Wen and the sound of Emmy Wen.

After we got home the next big thing was to receive our referral packet of information, more pictures and medical information. It was due to arrive on 9-7-05 from DHL. To make a long story short, DHL delivered it to a bank. I wouldn't have even known if I hadn't checked online and saw that a "receptionist" had signed for the package. I called DHL and let them know we had no receptionist in spite of what our dogs feel their jobs are. After several more phone calls and some significant crying on the phone-they promptly (2 hours later) got us our package.

There were two more pictures of Emmy and her medical information. We had a pediatrician look over the information. She called and said that everything looked good (the information was a few months old when we received it). She said that Emmy is small for her age but that is very common. We immediately signed the acceptance papers and off they went to China.

We are presently awaiting our Travel Approval which is the next big kahuna of adoption. It is the formal acceptance of our acceptance and lets us go to China and bring Emmy home. We have applied for our Visas and have a list a mile long of things to do before we leave. We hope to travel in early November.