On the weekend we booked our flights to CHINA! We fly out of Toronto to Beijing on February 24th and back home with our son on March 10th. We didn't have a lot of choices to make regarding flights etc. as most of those decisions were already made for us. One thing we had to decide was whether or not we wanted to buy a seat for our son for the flight home. Since he will be under the age of two he is not required to have his own seat, but since the flight will be approximately 13 hours (less than what we originally thought, hooray) we were advised by the adoption agency that we may want to purchase him a seat. The cost to buy him a seat on our flight back from China was more expensive than one of our adult round trip tickets. So we weren't exactly sure what to do. Would he need to be in our arms for the entire flight? Could our daughter and son share a seat for part of the flight (knowing that our daughter would likely want to be in our lap at some point as well). We looked into booking a flight back to London from Toronto as it has always been recommended to fly as close to home as possible, since your newly adopted child will have never rode in a car seat before. Our compromise was going to be if we could get a flight back to London that we would forget the extra seat from Beijing to Toronto and use the money to pay for the London flight. Unfortunately there are no flights into London on March 10th that would work, so the decision was made for us. As much as it pained us to pay the extra money for a seat on a flight that may not be used we decided we should just bite the bullet and book it. Perhaps the extra seat could provide more room for one of us to sleep and stretch out? Or provide a dumping place for all of the items we will need to keep two children occupied on an overseas flight? I guess we will just have to wait and see.
As a side note all other flights and accommodations while we are in China will be booked by our adoption agency. We should receive a full itinerary of our trip in the coming weeks as everything gets finalized.
Now we need to figure out how we are going to get to and from the airport. Will we drive ourselves and leave a vehicle in Toronto while we are in China so that when we return we can just hop in and go? Will family meet us at the airport to greet us and share some of the drive home? The biggest problem is that we don't know how any of us will be feeling at that point in our journey. Will we be too exhausted to drive? Will the kids sleep on the way home, or will they be wide awake and cranky? How will our son react to being strapped a car seat? We are still working on our return home plan as you can see. The only thing we do know is that once we land in Toronto all we are going to want to do is get HOME to start our lives as a family of four and sleep in our own beds.
While I was writing this blog post we received updated photos of Zhen Feng along with his most recent measurements. It was an unexpected surprise on a Monday and it completely made our day. He is still looking healthy and happy which makes our hearts smile. I haven't stopped looking at the new photos since we received them. I cannot wait until February 24th!
Monday, December 19, 2016
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Care Package...and other news.
As promised here is a picture of the care package we sent to our son in China. With the help of the amazing sewing skills of my Mother-in-law we were able to make a felt book that would be able to be rolled up and crammed into the tiny box we were permitted to send.
Our hope is that the package makes it to him, and that his caregivers read him the book so that our faces become a little more familiar to him.
Our 2-4 month wait for the Letter Seeking Confirmation (LSC) ended up taking only 2 weeks to arrive! We were shocked when we received the call from Children's Bridge. When the original LSC arrived at our home we had to sign it and send it back to the agency A.S.A.P. There are two "original" copies of the LSC, one was ours to sign, the other one is for the Provincial Government to sign. Then the two originals are sent back to the China Centre for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) in China. To summarize the LSC, it is a document that requires us to make a decision about adopting our son. Basically we check a box that says "we accept the adoptee mentioned above" and we sign our names.
Now that the LSC has been signed our agency sent us tentative travel dates (while I was writing this blog post our travel dates were actually confirmed) for our trip to China. Our travel dates are February 24 to March 10, 2017. This is so much sooner than we anticipated! We are very happy and excited that all of our waiting will be over in the next couple of months. There is a mountain of paperwork to be done before then and I will continue to keep the blog updated with information as we move through the process.
In the meantime we need to start reading the 14 page document that Children's Bridge sent us called "China Waiting Child Program Travel Guide and Packing List" - cue my anxiety now! Packing for an 18 hour flight with our 3 1/2 year old and then a return flight with our son should be interesting. I am looking forward to every aspect of the journey that lies ahead of us, except those plane rides!
We did find out that two other families will be travelling to China at the same time as us. Although our children are in different provinces we will be doing a majority of our travel with them. One of the families has already adopted a little girl from China and she is approximately the same age as our daughter. We feel very fortunate to have an experienced family with us during our time in China. Hopefully our daughters will be able to become fast friends during the trip and possibly entertain each other on some of the more boring portions of travel (like the plane ride I mentioned earlier).
Our hope is that the package makes it to him, and that his caregivers read him the book so that our faces become a little more familiar to him.
Our 2-4 month wait for the Letter Seeking Confirmation (LSC) ended up taking only 2 weeks to arrive! We were shocked when we received the call from Children's Bridge. When the original LSC arrived at our home we had to sign it and send it back to the agency A.S.A.P. There are two "original" copies of the LSC, one was ours to sign, the other one is for the Provincial Government to sign. Then the two originals are sent back to the China Centre for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) in China. To summarize the LSC, it is a document that requires us to make a decision about adopting our son. Basically we check a box that says "we accept the adoptee mentioned above" and we sign our names.
Now that the LSC has been signed our agency sent us tentative travel dates (while I was writing this blog post our travel dates were actually confirmed) for our trip to China. Our travel dates are February 24 to March 10, 2017. This is so much sooner than we anticipated! We are very happy and excited that all of our waiting will be over in the next couple of months. There is a mountain of paperwork to be done before then and I will continue to keep the blog updated with information as we move through the process.
In the meantime we need to start reading the 14 page document that Children's Bridge sent us called "China Waiting Child Program Travel Guide and Packing List" - cue my anxiety now! Packing for an 18 hour flight with our 3 1/2 year old and then a return flight with our son should be interesting. I am looking forward to every aspect of the journey that lies ahead of us, except those plane rides!
We did find out that two other families will be travelling to China at the same time as us. Although our children are in different provinces we will be doing a majority of our travel with them. One of the families has already adopted a little girl from China and she is approximately the same age as our daughter. We feel very fortunate to have an experienced family with us during our time in China. Hopefully our daughters will be able to become fast friends during the trip and possibly entertain each other on some of the more boring portions of travel (like the plane ride I mentioned earlier).
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