Our journey to our daughter, Maleeya:
- August 12, 2010: Submitted our application
- November 6: Started our home study
- December 4: Completed home study
- December 21: Officially on the waiting list {although we didn't find out until a few weeks later}
- December 23: Submitted our I-600A paperwork
- December 25: Baby Jie-En is born
- February 2, 2011: Got the phone call about our sweet baby girl! Our dreams had {finally} come true!
- February 4: Fingerprinted for USCIS
- February 16: Officially started the "paper chase" - submitted our POA docs (we received them just a few days after being matched but due to Chinese New Year, we weren't able to start our paperwork process until on or after the 15th)
- March 9: Received our translated paperwork from Taiwan and our I-600A approval notice
- March 10: Trip to Topeka to get everything notarized then to KC to the TECO office
- March 15: Mailed all of our paperwork back to Taiwan
- March 18: Ted applied for our court date
- April 13: Maleeya's court date {we were told everything went well}
And so we began our LONG wait....in between we found out Maleeya's birth mom was in juvenile detention, which meant bringing in a social worker. During this time they not only had a new judge, but they also changed the way they processed cases in order to reduce the amount of children trafficked...unfortunately for us, this just meant several weeks of not hearing anything.
- July 22: Got our LONG awaited travel call!!! {just shy of 15 wks from the court date}
- August 1: Left for Taiwan to bring our baby girl home!
- August 8: Arrived back home as a family of 3! :)
