April '05  

April 1st: We have begun the process for our next child. We sent out the calls to ask our friends and Liz to be references again. I am almost done with our side of the paperwork. I have to make a few tweaks to our bio, make copies, and send it out. The Korea program has slowed down a bit, so it might take a little longer than last time. The program has also changed. You used to be able to select the gender if you had a child already, but you can't anymore. We're still going to stick with Korea, though. We think it will be better for Jacob to have a sibling if his heritage. So our journey continues....

April 7th: Our application packet was received today. I would imagine we will get an appointment for our home study pretty soon. We will have the same social worker as we had with Jacob. That's good because she already knows us. It won't shorten any of the steps, but at least she'll already be familiar with us.

April 20th: We paid our first bill of the process. It's great to know the ball is officially rolling!

April 27th: Almost all our references and medical reports have been received by the agency.

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May '05  

May 13: We had our home study today. With Jacob, the home study process was a series of 4 meetings. The last meeting was at our house for them to take a walk thru of where the baby would live. Since this is our second adoption, we only had to do the last meeting. It was the same as with Jacob. Basically it's a bunch of questions to determine if you and your home should qualify as a foster home. We also gave her our well test results and our updated pet vaccination info. The Korea program has slowed down a lot, but Joselyn said that in the last couple months there have only been a handful of couples going thru the Korean program in her office. I'm guessing that since the program isn't as fast, people have moved onto a new program. That could be good for us because the reduced demand should help the program catch up.

May 16: All our references have been sent in. So, now our application should be complete for processing. Hopefully we don't have to wait too long for the home study to be written. We can't get fingerprinted until its ready to be mailed into the home office.

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July '05  

July 8: We finished our I600A application and sent it in. It should take about 2 months for this to be processed and get our appointment for fingerprints. It was easy to fill out because basically I just copied everything from the form we did for Jake.

September '05  

September 6: We finally got our fingerprints taken. It was a about a week later than expected, but it was good to get it done. It's better to be doing something for the process rather than just waiting for others.

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October '05  

October 5: We received Ken's I600A approval. We were surprised that we didn't receive mine at the same time, but we'll give it a few days before we panic.

Oct 15: Ken called Jocelyn about my missing approval. Yah, how quickly we forget. Anyway, that approval from last week was actually for the both of us. When the agency received their copy of the approval, we received an official application date of October 6th. Based on the current waiting periods, it looks like it will be another March/April baby. That means that Reggie2 will be almost exactly 2 years apart from Jacob. So now the true waiting begins.

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March '06  

March 10: It seems like with Reggie2 that we have been ignoring updates, but there really hasn't been as much to update this time. We don't have to set up the room because he will be sharing Jacob's room. The paperwork went pretty fast because I just copied everything from the prior application. So, it's been a pretty smooth ride. Also, the wait for the Korea program is longer this time, so we have been kind of just hanging back. Last time the program was moving really fast, so I was keeping up with the arrivals more often.

We didn't plan on the referral until this summer, so we didn't plan on making our first call to find out our number on the wait list until then. On a whim Ken called at the beginning of February to check things out. Surprise! We were #13 on the list. Hmm, well that certainly bumped up the whole process. I called again this week to see where we are now and we are 5th. I thought we would be further up, but when we were 13th, we were most likely 13th on the list of "no preference".

Our agency doesn't allow you to choose gender anymore, but there are some "girl specific" people who were "grandfathered" in. So whenever a girl is born, they will get that child and the boy will go to those people who don't have a preference. That was how it worked the first time. For some reason, people don't seem to request boys. Anyway, we are 5th on the list behind the "girl" requests. The good news is that regardless of what is born - boy or girl - we move up on the list. I would guess that we should get our referral before the end of the month. The wait for arrival is still 3 - 6 months. Jacob arrived 3 months after his referral. So we expect our bundle of joy to be a boy and for him to arrive some time this summer. Although there is really now way to know for sure.

That's all the new for now, but hopefully I'm better about keeping things up to date. Oh yah, we don't have a "Name the Kid" thing going on, but if you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave us a note in our guestbook.

March 23: We got our referral phone call on the 22nd and met with our social worker to get all the info on the 23rd. He is a little peanut! He was born Feb. 18th and weighed in at 4.8 lbs/17inches long in Cheongju, Chungbuk. His given name (by the social workers) is Chang-wu Im, which means "bright friend". We still don't have a name picked out for the little guy yet, but it's way too cool to see his sweet photos. Now we have to fill out all the paperwork to indicate that we accept the child. Once they receive that paperwork, the next wait begins. The average time it is taking right now for arrivals is 3 - 5 months, so it should be some time this summer. Woo-hoo!

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May '06  

May 2: I spoke with WHFC about getting a well-baby report.

The babies go to the doctor each month, and the waiting families get a summary report of what's going on. With Jacob, we got our first report a month after the referral. It's been 6 weeks, so I gave them a call to find out if ours was on the way.

This baby is a going to be a different experience for us than Jacob because he wasn't born in Seoul. That means he was born in a clinic that isn't the agency hospital. It also means that he was placed with a temporary foster family. I guess babies born outside of Seoul get transferred to a Seoul family a few weeks after they are born. Once they are re-settled they get into the routine of their well-baby exams in the agency's clinic. This all takes time, and of course, more paperwork for the agency. So, it seems like it means a bit of a delay for our first medical report on the little guy. Eileen (WHFC) is going to look into our case and see if she can get some info faxed to her. Hopefully she can do this.

I'm bummed that the poor little guy had to be moved out of one place and into another. I know he was only with his birth mom a couple days, but that would be one transition. Then after he's gotten used to his new place, they pull him again. Poor little guy. I'm sure he won't remember any of that, but hopefully he's settled into his long-term foster home by now and waiting it out like us.

May 6: We received our first well-baby report. It was from April 19, so he was 2 months old. He's doubled his weight, but at 2 months he's about the length and a little heavier than Jacob was when he was born. So, he's still small, but since Jacob was big, he's probably average. The report states he is in the less than 10th percentile, but I'm not so sure I believe that stuff because their percentiles for Jacob didn't seem accurate to what he was when he arrived, but who knows.

Age	Height	Weight
birth	4.8 lbs	17 in
2 mos	9.9	20.7 in

May 23: Jocelyn called about medical issues. The report indicated he sometimes has eye tracking problems. We gave the info to our pediatrician, and let Jocelyn know that he needed the info from the ophthalmologist because the info was too general/vague. He also said that a baby either has poor eye tracking or doesn't, so it is odd that it would be sometimes. We also called our eye doctor, and he said that at this age it's hard to tell, and it would be better to test when he is 5-6 months old. We are supposed to get more info by the end of the week.

May 26: Jocelyn received same report again rather than new info. contact is now out until 5/31

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June '06  

June 2: Jocelyn still hasn't heard anything. She was told that when they get info, we'll get info

June 6: I received an email from our WHFC contact at the main office in Waltham. She assured me that Holt is very good about faxing medical information when requested, and that she reminded the coordinator at Holt twice about faxing the ophthalmologist consult results when they become available. Holt was closed today for Memorial day in Korea hopefully we'll get the info soon.

June 7: His appt with the ophthalmologist is July 20th. Jocelyn is going to find out if the Visa paper work goes on hold until after the appointment, or if it continues along. I think the delay is because they want him to be a little older when they do the tests. At least it seems to coincide with what our eye doctor suggested.

June 8: Eileen emailed Jocelyn and told her that the visa and immigration paperwork should continue without regard to the doctor appt. Eileen was also surprised how late the doctor appointment was.

June 26: Jocelyn received the 4-month well-baby report. He still has eye tracking issues (now both eyes are considered poor) and there is a note about a neurological consult. I have a call into Jocelyn and Betsy to find out how we go about withdrawing and how long that takes. We are also trying to find out when his appt is with the neurologist is or if he already had it. Jocelyn left a message with Betsy to suggest that they tell Holt that we are thinking of withdrawing since the info we have so far is bad. The idea is to try to nudge Holt into getting earlier neurologist and ophthalmologist appointments since those results could make the problem a non-issue.

Dr. Ram's office (Jake's pediatrician) called, but they really feel we should wait until the neuro exam. They recommend not making any decision until those results are available because it could be so many things. She also confirmed it takes a really long time for specialist appts here, too.

June 27: Jocelyn called to check in. She had a conversation with Betsy and passed along some info. She felt that we should hang in there for two reasons. The first so that we could have piece of mind and know we made a decision with more info. The other is that we would be showing Holt "good faith" in that we were committed to this child. That "good faith" would help us if we ended up going with another referral. We and our agency feel we are already showing good faith, so we really aren't worried about Holt feeling differently.

June 28: Betsy called to reiterate what Jocelyn told me yesterday. She was unable to send the letter to Holt yesterday, but will today. When she gets the information she will call me directly. She also gave me the steps for withdrawing:

1. Letter from doctor specifying why. This should be as specific as possible.
2. A family letter. This isn't policy, but it would be helpful to make us seem less like a file and more real
3. Both letters would be sent to Holt
4. Because we have the I600 approval, we need to send a letter to Immigration to dissolve the application. This would include a copy of the doctor's letter. It's possible that with this dissolution, we might not have to pay the fee for the next application since this one was dissolved.

As a note, it might be better to get the letter form Dr. Lisa Alberts from Children's in Boston because Holt is familiar with her. She is the doctor that the agency uses, so she is also familiar with Korean babies, and this whole process.

June 30: Betsy called again. He already had his neurology consult on June 19th, so we are currently waiting for those results. She told us not to get our hopes up too much for resolution, though. It's possible the results may just be that they recommend an MRI or a CT Scan, so there still may not be any answers. On the bright side, we got a new photo. It's great to get an updated photo even if he is in pink! She wasn't sure if she should send it given the situation, but another photo isn't going to make the decision any harder. I can't imagine anything making it harder unless they just can't come to a conclusion for what, if anything, is wrong.

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July '06  

July 3: Betsy sent us an email from Mitchell's doctor today. Mitchell had actually already had his neurological consult by the time we had gotten all the news. It takes a while for correspondence due to the 14 hour difference and the time for translation. Anyway, his MRI, etc all came back good. He is even tracking with his eyes. His foster mother has also noted that he is beginning to follow her around the room with is eyes. The doctor would like to see how he is at his 5 month check up which should be next week, and he still has his ophthalmology appointment on the 20th. So hopefully we'll get some more good news in a couple weeks. I asked Betsy about when she thought his paperwork would be done. Of course I know she had no idea, but what the heck, right? Anyway, I found out that we won't get THE call as long as we are going back and forth with these types of medical questions. They want to make sure that we are definitely going to accept him before they let us know he's ready to go. So for all we know, he's already approved, although unless she is a wicked good poker player, I would say he isn't. I would guess that he would be probably be here by mid August. She also said that wouldn't surprise her. So, here's hoping Mitchell does well at next week's appointment's. I know that if he is already to go, it only takes a couple days to do the final stuff, so if he's waiting on us, it's definitely close now!

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August '06  

Aug 11: OK, so we got Mitchell's 5 month check up last week and it was all good. His physical development is right on track. So, we let the agency know we are all set and want to accept him. So we figured that was the last hurdle. Well, guess again. I got a call on Monday that the US Embassy had a problem with our marriage certificate. Apparently I neglected to check off the box that I had a prior marriage. (Hard to imagine forgetting that, but whatever.) Anyway, despite them having the prior marriage certificate and the divorce decree, they are confused. They want the correct marriage certificate ASAP. Well, that is the legal doc we have, so off we go chasing our tails to make it right. I called the town hall who told me to call the state office who told me to call the town hall. Today I finally spoke to someone who is going to set it all straight. I told her the saga, and how cool is this, she is going to correct it today. No wait. That is very cool of her to make it a rush job for us. So, I'm off to the town hall.....

Aug 21: We went away for the weekend and came back to a lot of phone calls. Our social worker had called my work, Ken's work, my father's house, my cell phone. She left emails for me at my work, Ken's work, and at our home. She was a little panicked. We knew THE call would be coming soon, but since we were only going to be gone for part of the day on Monday, we didn't bother to let Jocelyn know or to leave our cell phone on. In any case, she finally spoke to someone at my work and they told her I was on vacation. That made her really worry because she thought we were gone for the week. Well, all this craziness went on until about noon when we called her back. So, we had expected at least a week's notice, but not the case. Mitchell was arriving in two days. Lots to do to get ready!

Aug 28: Well, Mitchell is home! His plane landed around 8:15 on the 23rd and all went well. He is a little peanut, but just too sweet to look at! I'm hoping to get his web album up like I did for Jacob soon, so check back for lots of photos of him!

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