Surprise?

Kevin and I knew it wouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone that we were adopting again, so we decided to see how far in the process we could get before we shared our news. After spending the last ten months sneaking around, we are thrilled to tell you that David's little brother Max is waiting for us in southern China. We aren't allowed to post any photos or identifying information until we have received our official approval from China to adopt him, so stay tuned for that. For now I can tell you that he is almost 10 months old and adorable.
Many thanks to the Derdozos, the Mazhars, godfather Steve, Mike and Donna who helped with the necessary paperwork and kept it quiet.
So, even though I know this will likely only interest my mother, here is the run down of what we've been doing behind your backs:

The Paper Chase. This is the part of the adoption process designed for those of us with OCD. It takes months to gather all the necessary paperwork for 1) the homestudy 2) the I-800A application that is required for the US government to approve us for international adoption and 3) the dossier which is our huge stack of paperwork that goes to Beijing for the Chinese officials to review. Not only do we have to gather proof that we were born and are married, US citizens, healthy, not criminals according to the FBI and every state we've ever lived in, employed, have life insurance, health insurance, retirement savings, a house, cars, etc., etc., etc., but most of these documents have to be notarized then certified by the Secretary of State in the appropriate state then authenticated by corresponding Chinese consulate. Good good times. Highlights of our paperchase included but were not limited to:

• July 1, 2009 -- Our official start date. We ordered up some birth and marriage certificates and called our social worker to get the ball rolling.
• July 14 -- True to form, Snoopy adds an extra level of difficulty to the paper chase by eating the aforementioned birth and marriage certificates.
• July 30 -- Our first (of four) visit with Jacque, our social worker for David's adoption. We got off to a fantastic start. In the dogs' great excitement to see Jacque, Pete escaped but fortunately was coralled by a neighbor. David screamed the entire visit, and we found out Jacque was leaving our agency. So far so good.
• September 10 -- The last of our homestudy paperwork (or so we thought) arrives at our agency. Stephanie (the new Jacque) emails to let us know she has no idea what to do next. Fantastic.
• The next couple of months are filled with confusion and a seemingly endless string of paperwork and forms that Stephanie discovers she needs that no one mentioned before.
• November 25 -- Finally, after a lot of me banging my head against a wall and 3 rounds of editing, we have a completed homestudy, approved by our adoption agency and off to DCFS for their approval.
• December 22 -- We receive official approval from DCFS which means we can finally send our I-800A application in to USCIS (US Citizen and Immigration Services).
• January 27, 2010 -- Our third and final (we hope) set of fingerprints. These are for our USCIS approval.
• February 1 -- We celebrate David's 3rd birthday and the arrival of our I-797C, our official response to our I-800A. It is our approval to adopt a child from China from USCIS and the last piece of paper we need to send our dossier to Beijing.

DTC (dossier to China) -- March 5, 2010. The official end of our paperchase. After one last round of notarizing, certifying and authenticating documents (and making about a million photocopies of all of them), our dossier finally left for Beijing.
LID (log in date) -- March 12. The day our dossier is officially registered by the CCAA. We didn't actually find out our LID until March 25. From then on we were eligible for a referral any time a new waiting child list was issued (about once a month).
Referral -- April 24. One Saturday, while Kevin and Dave were taking a break from various home improvement projects to watch the Blackhawks thrilling overtime win in game 5 of their series with the Nashville Predators, we got the call from our adoption agency. We accepted the referral on the spot. That night we told David that he has a little brother. We showed him Max's picture, and he said, "We get that one?" and kissed the computer screen.
LOI (Letter of Intent) -- April 27. Our letter officially requesting permission to adopt Max was submitted to China.
PA (Preliminary Approval) -- May 6. This step is pretty much meaningless. It indicates that they have our paperwork and will process it, but the real approval will come in 2-3 months with any luck.
There are several more steps between now and Gotcha Day, even more than last time due to the Hague, an international adoption treaty designed to protect children from abduction, child trafficking and other badness. I will bore you with these steps in a future post for anyone who wants to play along at home. They all involve initials that make little to no sense and waiting on government officials here or in China to do something. We hope to travel in 6-8 months, but it could be a little less or a lot more depending on how quickly or slowly everything is processed. Whatever the time table, we can't wait to follow that red thread again!

Disney album is done

Here it is...

Disney May 2010

Gotcha Week at Disney World

We celebrated David's Gotcha Day all week long at Disney World. There are way too many pictures for a post, so I'll put a few highlights here and work on a Picasa album with the rest. Keep an eye out for Pandy the panda who came to the parks with us every day.

We arrived last Saturday late afternoon. We stayed at the All Star Sports resort. It was an excellent choice. David loved the over the top sports decor and was particularly fond of the statues of Huey, Duey and Louie playing baseball.

Saturday evening, we met up with a family who lives in the area and is in the process of adopting a little boy through China's waiting child program. They have three kids, and David had so much fun running around like a nut with their girls. Good luck to Katie, Josh and their family as they prepare to bring their di di home!

Enjoying dinner with Gracie. Annie and David took turns letting Donald eat their heads.

Sunday the three of us went to the Magic Kingdom in the morning. David loved Small World (which we ended up riding eight times over the course of our trip) and the trolley tracks down Main Street (which we spent a painfully long time walking on). Nahnee and 'Ramma arrived in the afternoon, and we all went to Epcot where we enjoyed some a really good Mexican dinner.

David "driving" the Small World boat, following the trolley tracks and cruising on a boat at Epcot with Nahnee

Monday we went to the Animal Kingdom first thing. The safari ride there is one of my favorite things, and the one we went on that morning was amazing. We saw so many animals, including a mama and baby white rhino running full speed right past our truck and three cheetahs who were very interested in what the rhinos were up to. We went back to the Magic Kingdom that afternoon. On this trip, David fell in love with the Swiss Family Robinson tree house.

On Safari with 'Ramma, completely enamored with the tree house water collection system, the 3 of us at the Magic Kingdom

Tuesday was Hollywood Studios. The Toy Store ride there was probably the consensus favorite of the entire group. You go from screen to screen playing virtual carnival games (ring toss, throwing darts at balloons, etc.). That night David used his powers of persuasion to get some merchandise from the Lego store at Downtown Disney, and we made our obligatory pilgrimage to Chick-fil-A.

Toy Story ride and Sci-Fi drive in lunch at Hollywood studios

Wednesday was May 5--Gotcha Day! We celebrated two years as a family of three. At the Animal Kingdom, we started off checking out the Asian jungle trek and then went to the glorified playground that is Dinoland USA. We went back to Epcot in the evening, watched the Chinese acrobats and had a really delicious dinner at the Nine Dragons restaurant there. We also went to the movie at the China pavilion and let David pick out a Gotcha Day gift. The winner was a little panda. I'm not sure if Pandy is jealous or what because he spent the rest of the night involved in paw to paw combat with the new little panda bear. David capped off the evening by drenching himself in some fountains and asking if he could come back to Epcot wearing his bathing suit.

The 3 of us in the China pavilion at Epcot. Billions of dollars in entertainment surrounding him, and the water was the most fun.

So Thursday we went back to the Magic Kindgom in the morning and then to Epcot with David is his swimwear in the afternoon. The three of us made a loop of the world showcase for dinner sampling such deliciousness as nachos, brats and gelato. Sadly, Canada no longer serves beaver tails.

David was very pleased to acquire a sword from the toy store in Germany. Back at the fountains in his bathing suit, completely oblivious to the large fireworks display.

Friday was our last day at the parks. We wanted to get David back on the Toy Story ride, so we started at Hollywood Studios. We made a mad dash for the ride, which is relatively new and insanely popular. Kevin grabbed fast passes before we hopped in the regular line. We went on the ride, went back to a Disney Playhouse show that he had really enjoyed earlier in the week and then back on the ride with our fast passes. We hopped a boat to the Boardwalk area where Kevin and I stayed for our honeymoon, had lunch, raced through Epcot to get to the monorail (exclusively for the purpose of riding the monorail), took the monorail to the Magic Kindgom and then bussed it back to the hotel for nap time which was followed immediately by one more trip to the Magic Kingdom where we rode rides until they kicked us out. We were literally the last people to go on the Winnie-the-Pooh ride last night.

Sucking on a lemon at lunch, Tomorrowland Speedway and waiting for the carousel with Kevin

This morning before we left we took one last dip in the pool and bid Huey, Duey and Louie adieu.

It was a super fun vacation. Thanks to Nahnee and 'Ramma for coming with and providing a 4:1 adult to child ratio that was still barely enough. I've left a million little stories and several dozen really cute pictures out. I'll try to include as much as I can in the album, so stay tuned if you're interested...

Home Improvement

Last Saturday, Uncle Dave was kind enough to come over to assist with some home improvement projects. And by assist, I obviously mean do the overwhelming majority of the work in exchange for a burrito. The main task at hand was to replace some of the sagging boards in our front steps. David loves tools and was very happy to spend the morning helping Kevin and Uncle Dave.

Completely unrelated to this is the fact that David thinks the word "forgot" is acutally "I-forgot." He says things like "Why did Daddy I-forgot this?" or "I I-forgot where I was going." So cute.

Nonrestorative weekend

It's never a good sign when you're looking forward to Monday. I started my day off on Friday with a mandatory 7:30am meeting. I came home in time to take David to his 3 year old check up. Nothing so relaxing as wrestling your screaming child to the exam table for a blood draw and shot. Later that afternoon, he did a face plant onto the sidewalk and got some nice road rash by his eye. Then when I attempted to go to dinner with my friends, he called me sniffling and crying because he wanted me to come home and put him to bed. Nothing too tragic, but still we all could have had a better Friday.

Yesterday I worked a very busy day at the office while Kevin and David went to Oz park, hung out with Steve and went to the Cubs game. David was so exhausted by his day that he took a 4 hour nap. He was such a pill when he woke up that it took half an hour to convince him to put on his shoes so that we could go to Oberweis for ice cream for dinner. He kept covering his face with his blanket and telling us to go away like a teenager.

David at the park (middle picture is with Dorothy and Toto for Grandpa), stuffing his face at Steve's place

Today I helped Kevin's mom and aunts throw a shower for Dave's fiancee, so Kevin and David were on their own again. Before we went our separate ways, David was extremely helpful in making some guacamole for the shower. He mashed those avacados like no avacados have been mashed before. Then he and Kevin went to the Museum of Science and Industry. I am told that their new exhibit on storms is fantastic.

Lots o' pictures

I'm hoping the numerous pictures in this post will make up for the unbearable 11 days since the last one.

We had a lovely Easter. The Easter Bunny hid a dozen plastic eggs and David's Easter basket. We went to the wiggle worship service at our church where David served (and spilled) the wine. We got home in time for a very cute egg hunt on our block. Our neighbors set it up, and there were chocolate filled eggs everywhere. There must have been 20 in our yard alone. The kids had a blast and were very cute hunting eggs in their Easter finest.

David hunting eggs in our basement. He is pleased at having found the last egg in his drum in the second picture and has a mouth full of chocolate.

David (with Olivia in the middle picture) hunting eggs. Fiona enjoying the fruits of her labor.

David also got to hang out with Steve last week. They went to a Bulls game together. Every time we talk about going to a sporting event, David asks if Steve is going, so we were happy to be able to tell him yes this time.

On Wednesday morning, David got a very special surprise from Nicor. A large backhoe digging up our front yard to put in new gas lines. Our yard is an absolute mess, but in David's mind it was all worth it for the 30 minutes of hard core digging he got to witness firsthand.

We spent this past weekend in Galena with Adam and Laura. So far this spring has been unusually spring-like in the Midwest, and we had beautiful weather for our trip. David played golf in the yard and helped Kevin fill the bird feeders. He went on a couple of short hikes and took a shine to several large sticks along the way. It turns out they are great for poking things. David played crochet and foosball, dismembered Jackie boy and helped clean up the hot tub room with some super thorough mopping.

David has an unconventional approach to golf--note putting with the driver and the unusual swing in the middle picture.

Hiking

Playing crochet, spreading dirty water around the once clean floor, defeating Adam in foosball.

Go Duke!

I have been informed that I am not updating the blog frequently enough, so here you go...

We have finally entered the world of 5 years ago and have a laptop and wireless internet. I also have an ipod and smart phone now, so like I said. 5 years ago.

We had a lovely evening in Chinatown last night. Yummy food and then some shopping. David found several things he wanted, including a walking stick, but refused the beautiful outfit we tried to sell him on.

Today we dyed eggs (only one was subsequently eaten by Pete). Kevin and David also participated in a Maas family tradition. Dumping the egg dye in the toilet one color at a time and marveling at all the lovely shades. Fantastic.

For the rest of the evening it's obviously all about the Final Four around here. GO DUKE!!! Oh, and happy Easter, everyone!