Timeline for Special Need Adoptions

So lots of you have been asking me about the timeline for Liam's adoption and it is a bit different process than we went through with Scarlett so I thought I'd map it out. Also I through in all the acronyms. These are totally used a bunch in the international adoption community. Just remember CCAI (Chinese Children Adoption International) is our agency in Colorado. CCAA is the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs.

1. Send our LOI (letter of intent) to our agency. This is the letter that says we want to adopt Liam. (this step is complete!)
2. Get our physicals (Scheduled for Feb 1st and Feb 8th)
3. Our agency (CCAI) translates our LOI and physical forms and sends them to China.
4. China (CCAA) sends us a PA (pre-approval) for Liam. This takes approximately 2 weeks. Then we can send care packages to him.
5. Work on dossier and have homestudy (Scheduled for Feb 19th)
6. Send in paperwork to USCIS to get our I-800 (authorization to adopt a foriegn born child). This can take a while sometimes 6-8 weeks.
7. Take our I-800 to Salem to get it authenticated.
8. Send our I-800 to San Fran to the Chinese consulate and wait for it to come back.
9. Copy our dossier and then send it off to our agency
10. CCAI translates and send dossier off to China
11. CCAA sends CCAI our LID (log in date)
12. We start counting... 4 to 6 months
13. CCAA sends our LOA (letter of acceptance). This is the official letter we sign saying we want Liam
14. CCAI returns our LOA and then we wait 2-6 weeks to receive our TA (travel approval) this is the offical document that invites us to China to get pick up Liam.
15. CCAI requests our CA (consulate appointment). They have to wait until we have our TA before they can do this. Once they have a confirmed consulate appointment, then and only then can we book our travel.
16. Go to Beijing (most likely) then on to Zhengzhou to pick up Liam.

Wow that is quite a list huh? When we adopted Scarlett we had all of paperwork done before we got our referral so basically we just had to wait and wait and wait and then wait some more, then quickly move through stesps 13-16. So I'll keep you posted on where we are at in this process. Right now we are just working on paperwork and getting our dossier done. The sooner we can complete that the sooner we can get Liam.