SHE'S OURS .......SHE'S OURS

1207 hrs today I got a call from the wife, who got a call from one of our representatives at the adoption agency. Our papers have passed the court system and we will be able to go get her either at the end of December or early January.

je

"Free" Calls

Of course as I am going home the other day I thought, "Hey, I have this Skype (http://www.skype.com/newtoskype/) account, jengineer is the handle."

So this is another option for communicating to those back home. High speed connections should be available at the large hotels. I have read that connection speeds are faster in other countries, I do not know about India. There are other VOIP's that you can use but I think Skype is known big time. Best part is that Skype is free if you are going to another Skype user. So my siblings will be able to talk to us but unfortunately the parental unit will not. One PU would be on computers but the other PU is averse to them so to keep peace they have a 15 yr or more Mac sitting under wraps.

Hey I should see how early this Mac is because the first ones are now worth $$ I bet this one does not qualify as one that was made in the garage.

je

Blog in the Bog

Sorry about letting this blog get bogged by only updating once a month. Nothing and I mean nothing happened during the month of October. As you know we passed NOC but are now waiting for our case to work its way through the court system. Nothing happens in October as there are 13 high festivals/holidays in October. So we continue to get ourselves prepped for our now 2 ½ year old. I have been looking at hotels, racks and B&B. One chain is The Ginger. It reminds me of dorm room living. Maybe a little bigger in square footage but not much. The rooms have a flat screen tv, a bed, a small counter to write on and a shower with toilet – no bathtub. Compared to other hotels this Spartan one is only about $60 a night where others are about $150 a night. Unfortunately this hotel chain is not in all the cities we will be visiting. The next “cheaper” place is the B&B. It is run by an engineer and Psychologist in Delhi. As a bonus it is possible to arrange evening meals in addition to breakfast.

Phone Home

So once we are in country how do we communicate with the folks back home or possibly some of our contacts in India? Obvious solution is to get a throw away phone while there. Doesn't help much if mom and dad want to call to see how things are going and to say hi to their new grandchild. So how about re-chipping your current cell? Well to do that you need to crack the cell to let it accept other company chips. Oh and you need to make sure your phone will work in the country you are going to something about GSM and broadcast frequencies. For the provider we will use in country you need a phone capable of GSM 900/ 1800/ 1900 or a GSM 850/ 900/ 1800/ 1900 Suffice it to say google will be your friend. If you decide to crack your phone, also known as unlock, on your own be careful because if you choose the wrong program you could turn it into a brick.

So AT&T doesn't like to use the word crack they call it subsidy password. When you take out your chip and put in someone else's it will ask for a password. Essentially it unlocks the phone so that it will recognize another network. The crack software does it by recoding the internal program of the phone and makes it universal to accept other chips. The password method keeps the same program that came with the phone. Since I am somewhat phone unsavy this is the method I took. Since we have been with the same provider for a year or so all it took was a 10 minute phone call. The password that the company gives you is specific to a single phone. Now to find a chip and plan for India

Finding a provider and plan is not too messy – google again. There are a few providers that I found and as usual the glom around high population locales. The one we are going to use will only work in Deli which is ok. http://www.roamsimple.com/products/Roam-Simple-India-SIM-Card.aspx use the Idea network. Initial outlay is $19 and calls are at 30 cents minute when you are done you return the chip. The calls are cheaper at http://www.cellularabroad.com/SIMcards.php which uses AirTel but the cost of the chip is over $80 – you keep the chip.

Schlep a PC?

Not sure yet one. All our documents have been scanned in and are available to print and are also on a flash drive. There are a bunch of monster laptops out there. Space and weight are killers whn\en it comes to laptops. MSI mobile has a 10 inch laptop called the wind. It has built in Wi-Fi b/g/n blue tooth and a camera too boot. Might be the ticket. Who uses pen and paper anymore? Could try a blackberry or cousin of the bb but that would mean another learning curve to tackle. See more at http://www.msimobile.com/nblist.aspx?screen=10.0

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humm this blog is looking like an advertisement. Oh well

Treats

Our suitcase is filling up with clothes for the children at the orphanage – gotta make sure we don't low the weight limitations. Did a Costco run to get toothpaste but the tooth brushes are too costly. The parental unit gave us a hook-up for a dental supply house that will be able to set us up with brushes for about 50 cents or less a piece. We still need to find a site for band aids and “neosporin”.

Lose your referral?

One of the adopting parents created a forum that is limited to those of us adopting from our agency. Today I saw an note that one of the parents lost their referral. Unfortunately they did not give any detail but it happened sometime after they accepted the referral. This could mean that they sent in their acceptance form, you get this after you say yes to a particular child. That means that it either got kicked back during the NOC, Court hearing, or something changed in their home study that adversely affected their status. Rather sobering news.

je

Boo – After your child comes to California

13OCT08 Update

No movement for the past month. We got news that India has over 13 national holidays during the month of October. The courts get back in session in November. Our passports are ready to go just need to send them in for the Visa. I have decided to wait until we get better confirmation of when we are going. Even after the courts give us the ok and they papers get translated there is still some paperwork here in the US that needs to be done. I think I mentioned it before but I forget. It is paperwork that says the state of Texas is sending a child to California and does California accept this child. If our agency had its HQ in California then we wouldn't have to go through this hoop.

Last month I took a look at what it would take to get our daughter legally adopted in California. Some states you can get your child and the next week roll into the courts and get them legally adopted. As it is we will be granted guardianship in India.

It is a 5 step process:

STEP 1

Fill out 4 forms

Adoption Request – Tells the judge about U and your child

Adoption Agreement – not applicable as our child is under the age of 12

Adoption Order – Judge signs it if he approves the adoption

Adoption Expenses – tells judge about your adoption expenses

STEP 2

The Social Worker writes a report – probably just an amendment to the one you already have.

STEP 3

Get Your Hearing

Bring the above forms and your child, a camera and your friends

STEP 4

If this is an open adoption then you need to fill out another form which asks for an open adoption. Not much use for us as our child was abandoned at the gates of the orphanage.

STEP 5

More forms to have on hand

Adoption of Indian Child

Parent of Indian Child Agrees to End Parental Rights.

You may think twice about the last one, as I am unsure if the web site is referring to Native Americans or from the subcontinent. They are referring to Native Americans so the 5^th step is not applicable either.

Looks to me like we can make our adoption as quickly as we fill out the papers and get a court date.

The cost of the adoption has been modified.

je

Beg-A-Thon

Bring Our Daughter Home

There are two ways that we can address our plea to our Family, Friends, Acquaintances and Benefactors who happen upon this plea. Some of you have seen JE' quip which is repeated below. Here is RN's version in JE's words.

Dear Brothers and Sister's. In case you didn't know it has long been on my heart to adopt. During our courtship we discussed adoption and I told my then friend that ever since I was eight (8) I had it placed hard on me that I would adopt a child and raise him or her as best I could. If he was not on-board then he would be kicked to the curb.

We are now 7 months into our paper pregnancy and try as we might we have been unsuccessful in finding grants for the adoption. Unlike health insurance where pregnancies, births and even abortions are covered by insurance here is no such program for adoption. Our first two children cost less than $3000, not including the monthly premiums. Adopting, we have found, will stretch you to your financial limits and beyond.

We are asking, pleading, for your financial support, to help us bring our daughter home home.

Brother Can You Spare A Dime Part 1

HELP!

They are holding my daughter hostage in India. The kidnappers have demanded a minimum of $13,000 for us to get her with a few caveats. The exchange is to take place in a small village on the east coast of India. We will have to make arrangements for airfare, hotels, taxi's, immigration payola, medical treatment etc. The demands are rather complicated. We need to get exit visa's and to do that we have to travel to the far Northern part of the country, Delhi. We have been told that if we meet the requirements in Delhi that we should be allowed to leave with our child. I tried to negotiate a simple fly-in, fly-out exchange but was told I had to do it their way or no way. We knew that getting her home would not be cheap but we are getting stretched thin. Unfortunately there is no type of insurance for this situation, Our only course of action is to ask for help in getting her back. Can you help?

Are you flush? If so we will gladly take a grant (cheeky eh?).

BCYSAD Part 2

Ever see those info-mercials about children in other countries needing your financial support for just a dollar a day? Well we are not needing a dollar a day. We easily need over $13,000. Make a real positive impact on a child's life. Help us bring our daughter home. Instead of getting a yearly report on her health and educational progress you can come by and actually visit, touch and be an active participant in making a change in our daughter's life. Brother, Can You Spare Dime?

je

Cost up to date

This is what this adoption has cost up to date. It also includes estimated cost and offsets we have received from family and friends.

je

Notification of NOC 28AUG08

Knock – NOC

For the past two weeks I have been looking at hotels for the trip. Generally there are two methods that the agency recommends for tripping in India. One is to land in Delhi and then take a trip to Agra. the other is go straight to the orphanage city. Everyone recommends spending at least one day on the ground before heading up in an airplane for another day.

Day 1 Land in Delhi 4 hour road trip to Agra.

Day 2 Visit the Taj aka one grand mausoleum.

Day 3 Local outing to the markets to get proper clothing

Day 4 4 hour road trip to Delhi and flight to the orphanage.

Day 5 Visit the locality. Built in 11th century AD, the Stone revetments were considered an engineering marvel of those times. They show us how advanced the technology and skills were even at that point of time. The revetments helped save the city form many floods. That is on JE's list. The artisans are noted for their silver filigree.

Day 6 Pick up our daughter

Day 7 Travel to Delhi

Day 8 US Embassy, Doctor visit to get child clearance

Day 9 US Embassy

Day 10 Sight seeing/rest

Day 10 Get out of dodge

Somewhere in all this RN wants to get a locally made rug. Our in-country guide runs $100 /day. One of the families, suffering from an embarrassment of riches, stayed at $600-800 a night hotels in Delhi and Agra. I think they had to skimp on the orphanage and could only manage something like $300 a night rooms.

Unfortunately our fund raising efforts will not afford us such luxury. I think I have found a nice bed and breakfast in Delhi. The husband is an engineer/businessman and the wife a psychologist. They run only $100/night. Agra is expensive expensive so it looks like about $200/night. Could not find anything cheaper. Our orphanage city a has a real bargain at $50 a night it includes a bed a night stand a loo and "shower area" and nothing else. It does come with a meal deal which is quite reasonable. We might go this route. Only concern is first night where we really need a bath tub to giver our daughter a good scrubbing down.

We recently received some more photos of her. According to our incountry source a group was running fast down a hall and did not manage a turn. She got a good scrape on her noggin. Typical 2 yr old. She has also grown about 7 inches from when we first saw her. Man we got to get her home soon.

Work has been sending JE to training camp once a month. recently they were filling out the schedule for 2009. I called our handler – you know the one that never contacts us unless we make first contact. I asked her if she could get a feel for when this trip is supposed to take place. Well lookey here, two days later (today) she tells us that we received our NOC. Just in case you forgot…

No Objection Certificate (NOC):

A Certificate issued by CARA permitting the child to be placed with a prospective adoptive parents for Inter-country adoption.

Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA):

An autonomous body functioning under Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment to act as a central authority in the matter of adoptions.

That means that they have approved us and our daughter to be placed. YEEEE HAAAAA!!!!! One hurdle down. We still have the courts to go through then translation and certification of the court records then more paper work here then the holidays and end of year festivities of both countries. So we were verbally told Jan or Feb but could be March or April for our travel.

The cost of the adoption has been modified. Look back for the spreadsheet. If you are flush with funds and want to help get her home, drop us a line. The next post will be a sanitized version of our virtual Evite that we sent out to close to 400 folks. JE called it his beg-a-thon.

je

Lagniappe and Shaking

No news on the adoption. Getting the silent treatment until our dossier is reviewed by CARA and we get NOC

SHAKE

Just in case you missed it the LA area had a small shaker yesterday. Not much damage but of course the "news" had to blow it way out of proportion. It was first thought to be a 5.8 but was later downgraded to a 5.4. From the quakes that I have been through unless it is 6.0 or greater they really don't do too much damage. as for figuring out scales…

Earthquake magnitude is a logarithmic measure of earthquake size. In simple terms, this means that at the same distance from the earthquake, the shaking will be 10 times as large during a magnitude 5 earthquake as during a magnitude 4 earthquake. The total amount of energy released by the earthquake, however, goes up by a factor of 32. Check out this for the latest quakes.

LAGNIAPPE

I didn't bring lunch yesterday so I walked to a Japanese place down the road. They have a great chicken teriyaki and veggie bowl, $5.36 out the door with extra ginger. A teenager was there counting out scrunched up dollars and spare change. What was wanted was $5.36 and what was on hand was exactly $5. I asked if she really wanted the bowl as I highly recommend it. A quick nod was what I got but she said she would get the bowl with no veggies. Can't have that, I said, get the bowl and here is the change you need. I then walked out. 20 steps down the sidewalk there was a commotion going on. One guy was acting like he had been stung by a bee. Literally jumped out of his seat and hopped 5 feet into the parking lot. I almost spilled my drink taking it in. I stopped and then noted the slight rolling motion. Ah earthquake, rolling not hard hitting, nothing big, keep it moving. Neophytes acting like they never experienced an earthquake before!

The wife was Jonesing for a pizza from Catalano's. It is a hole in the wall place in Long Beach. We have been going there for about 10 years or so. We have been in a habit of calling it Dave's (who is the owner) rather than by its proper name. This does sometimes get us into trouble when we don't have a menu at home and are looking for the phone number to call in an order. Case in point I told the wife to phone it in and I would pick it up on the way home. They have a very limited delivery range and they are definitely not in the neighbourhood. By the way they are not listed in the yellow pages under Dave. Maybe I should add them to the phone list…The past few times that we have been in Dave was either out on a run or had gone home for a break. When I got there he was there too. I said hello and that I would be right back as I had pics of the phamily. I showed him the eldest child the youngest child and said and this QT pie is waiting for us in India. He knew about the problems we had getting the first child going and knew that adoption was in our vocabulary. He was speechless when he saw our newest child. I feel as though I have robbed Dave as he said this pie was on the house.

Random act of kindness.

je

Road Blocks

Sleeping Constables (speed bumps for you yanks)

Ok so up until this point I have tried to keep emotion out of the blog and instead give you a sense of what hoops you will jump through to do an out of state and international adoption. This may seem disjointed as you do not have all the details of what has happened to date but my cup runneth over and this is vent time. I really like our Adoption Agency. We spent a lot of time back-grounding them, finding out where they live and even meeting a the chief big wig for a protracted breakfast meeting. Unfortunately our latest handler is just not as quick and on top of things as our other representatives.

Last month I got that yellow package from The Agency that had more forms and paperwork to gather for our trip. One of the key items is the Visa. As I stated before it is all done on-line. The only thing missing are passport photos. I sent a quick email to our handler to let them know that I was going to drop the application in the mail. Wow, I actually got a response. Don't mail it yet, it might expire before you go. Huh?? We are going in October right? – that is 3 months away and the visa is good for 6. Why are you saying we won't be going for more than 6 months from NOW? What is the hold up? According to the calculations we were on-track. Well did you see the e-mail about the timeline? Yep NOC/ Court Clearance/ICPC GO! According to what The Agency has told us, and you are a representative of said Agency, we should be getting the call to go sometime in October. Well, the NOC process hasn't started yet! WHAT?? You told us that as soon as we got the Dossier over to India that it would go tot eh NOC board. Yeah but… great here come the excuses… due to the needed updated material it was decided to not go to NOC blah, blah, blah, …we just gave it to CARA for NOC review Blah, blah, blah. All I get are excuses. You know Mr. Agency it would have been helpful if you had COMMINUCATED this to us earlier. Mr. Agency has not been forthcoming nor very helpful in keeping us in the loop. Did I mention that this is our 4^th handler? So I tried to pin them down on a new rough estimate based on their past experience of adoptions in India. Obviously when to start the clock got us hung up.

NOC clearance:

The non-objection clearance (NOC, I defined it before but who knows if you remember it) has been on the slow side. This clearance comes from CARA in Delhi for the child to be approved to be adopted by your family.

Start 01JUL08 complete 23SEP08 (assume 12 weeks could be more)

Court clearance:

After the NOC clearance the paperwork with attorneys head over to the Indian Courts. This takes anywhere from 6-9 weeks after NOC for court to clear.

Start 23SEP08 complete 25NOV08

The court papers are then translated from Hindi to English and sent to The Agency which is not in the state of California. Time: 2-3 weeks

start 25NOV08 complete 09DEC08

Crossing State Lines:

Oh no, you want to work with an agency that is not licensed in the state of California. You do know that inter-state bureaucracy just adds time? Now you have more papers that need to be filled, supposedly this is done without our involvement but do you think they will be on top of the game. Any chance of getting them prefilled? Based on past experience I doubt it. It is not that tough as all my docs for American Embassy in India are already prefilled and I passed them off to The Agency for review). I doubt The Agency will prefill the forms but will instead wait until they actually have the court papers in hand. Well that will add a day or two to the delay. Interstate trafficking involves an ICPC,

Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children:

An interstate compact, or agreement, that has been enacted into law by all 50 states in the United States, and the District of Columbia, which controls the lawful movement of children from one state to another for the purposes of adoption. Both the originating state, where the child is born, and the receiving state, where the adoptive parents live and where the adoption of the child will take place, must approve the child's movement in writing before the child can legally leave the originating state. This Compact regulates the interstate movement of both foster children and adoptive children.

Start 16DEC2008 complete 6JAN2009 (Estimated time frame)

Did you notice that they conveniently left out a week? Hey what are you guys going to be doing from the 9^th to the 16^th? Oh that's right Christmas shopping.

Once the IPC is completed and The Agency confirms that our daughter has a passport then we will be allowed to travel. It looks like I have to ask them to make sure that that gets started when the Indian court complete their business.

What Next?

I have been told that adopting is a test of patience. I think I am getting "D". You can read it in the tone of this posting. It could have been raised had our handler been a better communicator. It is not due to a lack on our part as when ever we have a question we send it up and usually get a response a 1 to 3 days later. But that is just the problem the only time we hear from our handler is when we initiate it. Based on no info we think everything was on schedule and on plan. Our previous handlers did not act this way and when they did not hear from us in a week, as we were getting our dossier together they would drop us a line to see what our progress was.

What next? – gotta pull out some of USCIS documentation. Some of it has expiration dates on it. Miss a date and you have to apply $700 or so more again. Depending on the form you may be able to get an extension. Fingerprints have a definitive drop dead date – no extension. Cha‑ching close to $200 for that. No way around that hit.

Is there a Silver Lining?

Nope. Maybe. Well she won't be here for Christmas so I don't have to buy her any Christmas gifts. She will miss all the crush of humanity and festivities that happen during that time. Then again India has some rather large festive holidays, not sure if our daughter gets to partake in any of them – I doubt it. In either case a whole bunch of strange relatives will not be trying to paw at her. And it gives us time to defend her against her relatives, one of which has taken to calling her "That girl from India". Yes this a very, very, close relative who knows that she already has a name and in fact was named before we even started the adoption process. SHIELDS UP! We remind them that that is our daughter they are talking about and she has a name to please use it. And finally, "Daddy's Little Tax Deduction", Google that one, will not be on this years taxes.

The wife says that airfares should be low because it will be after the holiday season. I hope the fares drop but I doubt they will.

Summary

• Visa – On hold until 4 months after we have received NOC
• USCIS Form I-600A once you submit this and all the paperwork the USCIS sends back form I-171H. Form I-171H is valid for 18 months from the date of completion of advanced processing (valid until Jun 2009). Form I-600 (sign it at the American Embassy with child in possession) must be accepted before June 2009.
• USCIS Finger Prints – expire November 9^th , CHA-CHING, would have been nice if The Agency told us up front to expect to pay for fingerprinting 2x.

je

Waiting Game

What can go worng? Well, spell check for one. What happened last month. Snafu with The Agency. Due to certain things being added into the Home Study which we were told would not be put in, they were put in we have had to modify the Home Study and create a couple of more documents for the notary and apostille process. We have been informed that these new/modified documents are now on their way to India.

In the mail we got a Yellow folder that has , yep, more forms to fill out. One is the USCIS form I-864. No reason that we could not have gotten this earlier, I did not know about it from my earlier wandering through the USCIS Adoption Web pages. This form is a How much $$ do you make in a year form. You will bump this up against the I-864P which changes each year and is the poverty line. You need to make 125% of poverty or have other proof of your net worth. If you do your taxes jointly then you will want to get a copy of form I-864A. You can prefill them but unless you want to get another notary don't sign them until you are told to do so, which will be at the embassy consulate in… India for us. Now the forms are a bit twisted because they ask for your "total income…as reported on my Federal tax return" . Huh? Form I-864 is for the Sponsor of which it is limited to a single entity, either the husband or the wife. Form I‑864A is for Household Member, in our case either the husband or wife that is not mentioned on the previous form. Yes I am trying to write this as confusingly as the forms are. If you can get through this paragraph then you can get through the forms. I-864A also asks for the total income as reported. Duh ain't that smart? If you file a joint tax return then there is only one total income that is reported. here is my solution:

1. prefill the I-864 & I-864a as much as possible but leave these odd sections alone until we need to sign.

2. prefill the forms in total, as much as possible, and see if I did it right when we get there. If not then pull out forms from 1.

3. If all else fails bring a total blank form with us.

Read the instructions a few times as you may need to bring notarised copies of pay stubs, tax forms, W2's.

Finally I have a full up version of Adobe Acrobat 5.0, yeah it is a few years old and the latest version of the free Adobe Reader. I-864 will open in both programs. In the reader you can even fill in the form and save it. Form I-864A will only open in the reader and you cannot save. Weird. So why do bring this up? I have been working on an application for grant $$ to fund this adoption. One of the 30 page applications is a pdf file that you download, print out and then fill in. I have bad scripting and the wife's hand is like a surgeon, steady but you can't read a thing she writes. I took a couple of hours to create form fields in the pdf so that, at my leisure, I could fill it in and have it legible. In the full up Adobe I can type in my answers and save them. In the reader version I can only type it then print it but am unable to save what was typed. How do I get this document set up so that another applicants can save the data using the reader, like form I-864?

Visa application – haven’t started it yet but we were told to do so. This is done on-line and once the 39 plus questions are answered it loads up the application for you to print out and send to the consulate in San Francisco.

WEWO (pronounced We –Woe) – there are a few parenting classes that we have to take. We have done 2 so far. One was offered through our agency and the other is/was a collaboration with another. The wife has talked a few times with our social worker who suggested a few books. She has just about finished with one and whooo weee is it a doozie. It is basically a treatise on what happens to children that are abused, neglected and tortured.

Well that is odd, my wooden chair at work just squirted out a ball bearing. Dang, when I bought the chair the wheels had been removed. I went to the equivalent of the Big Orange Box and got 4 new wheels. I purposely purchased wheels that were made in the USA. What did I get for my efforts – 6 months use. Back to our story…

WEWO is not as bad but it is similar. It prepares you for what you may encounter with your child. It arms you with a resource of if your child is behaving in a particular way it may be due to acts from the past. Some creepy things may have happened to your child before you get her/him. They may manifest themselves early on or maybe when hey reach teen-hood.

Speaking of the wee one. Some new friends of ours just picked up their child form the orphanage that our child is in. They took a few pics of our child as she was opening up a book that we sent along with a picture book of us, her new phamily and home. She is a bit malnourished as she is almost as high as our 2 ½ year old but weighs as much as our 7 month old. I think she is undergoing a growth spurt her head is out of proportion to her body.

je