FINALLY!!!

At 8:55 a.m., Friday, March 19th we received the final word we can travel to Seoul to pick-up Carter!!!



On Monday (3/15) we received his SEO # from the NVC, on Tuesday (3/16) his visa was cabled to the US Embassy in Seoul. We have held our breath all week waiting to get this call so we can move one step closer to closing this chapter of our lives and begin the next.



We, I should say Paige, experience some unbelievable luck this week. There was a meeting in her office on Wednesday with the Regional Director of a partner airline they use to provide air freight services. After the meeting they were all talking and Paige showed them Carter's pictures and the Director told his Assistant, "Give her your card. When she receives her call, take care of her." Whatever they can do for us will be greatly appreciated, we're not expecting much but every little bit helps. Even if its just confirmed seats since this is a last minute flight we will be so grateful.



So, Paige is working with the airline as I type to get our flights, once she has that I will work with my Starwood Points to get us a hotel. With any luck we'll be flying tomorrow afternoon.



We will be updating our Facebook pages from Korea as well as this blog so you will be able keep tabs on us and for many of you get your first look at Carter since we will finally be able to post pictures. Stay tuned........

Travel Call!! Well Yes & No....

What are the lyrics to Carly Simon's song? "Anticipation........Is keepin' me waitin'............'"

As I mentioned in a previous post, we received our I-600A approval on February 22nd and we have been calling the National Visa Center in Dover, New Hampshire twice daily for the past two weeks and nothing had been logged in. On Tuesday of this week Paige sent an e-mail to CIS asking them to please follow-up and see if our information had been sent, on Thursday she received an e-mail saying that our paperwork was being sent that day, overnight via UPS to NVC and they provided a tracking number. Did it really sit for over 2 weeks in Fairfax, VA before an e-mail from Paige moved it along? At the same time Paige was speaking with our case worker at FCA in Connecticut who told her she usually receives travel letters on Thursday & Friday so at the earliest we would hear about our travel approval would be next week. OK, we've waited this long what's another week? "Anticipation......"

This morning we both tracked the UPS movement of our paperwork between Virginia and New Hampshire, at 8:16 it was scanned out of the depot in Manchester, NH for delivery. I went about my usual morning ritual, I visited the sales floor to see what new merchandise came in and then to hit E-bar to get a cup of tea. By the time I got back to my desk my Iphone (I left it on my desk) was beeping with text messages and e-mails, the red message light was lit-up on my office phone and when I logged back onto my computer there were several e-mails from Paige with the subject line "CALL ME!!"

Once I got Paige on the phone she said our case worker at FCA called to say she had received our travel letter from Korea and all they are waiting for is the approval from NVC, we are cleared for travel and Carter is ready to be picked-up!!

At 10:15 this morning our information arrived at NVC in New Hampshire, Paige waited until mid-afternoon to call them to see if we have been logged in, I'm hearing Cary Simon again......"Anticipation......" no dice, not yet!! The Center is open until midnight, we will try again tonight, for every helpful and accommodating person you get at NVC there some who are not so much, we are told that NVC approves Visas within 72 hours of being received so hopefully no later than Tuesday since its now the weekend which means we could be traveling this time next week!!

Now comes the crazy time!! We have to finish getting everything ready this weekend. The electrician is coming tomorrow to install a ceiling fixture in Carter's room, I need to hang the letters spelling his name over is crib and attach the changing pad to the dresser. The mattress needs to be lowered since the delivery men set it up at the highest setting and I am sure there are plenty of thing Paige wants/has to do too. Not to mention getting the house in order for either my parents or my brother, between then someone is coming down to house/dog sit while we are in Korea plus they will be here when we get home to meet their new grandson/nephew depending on who comes to stay. The poor dogs, their lives are about to change forever.......

Update from Korea

This afternoon at lunch time Paige called me at the office to say we had received an update from FCA. We have been hoping for one for about the past month since we have had no word on Carter's progress since the referral back in December.

We now know that any of the 12 month clothing we have for him will not fit, he weighs 11 kg or 24.25 pounds so we'll need to exchange a few things. He sleeps thru the night (Yeah!!), one surprising thing said he goes down at 10:00 p.m.!! Did I say he sleeps thru the night?..... He has a ton more hair in these pictures than he had in the first set of pictures. They are little blurry since they are in a PDF format, we will be receiving the originals tomorrow via FedEx.

There was a list of all of his developmental milestones, he is right on track and even a little ahead of the curve. There are so many milestones sent to us I wont list them all out here.

Basically we are waiting for Carter's Visa to logged at the National Visa Center, Paige is just about stalking the Visa Center everyday checking to see if the step has finally been completed. This is basically the last step here in the US, the final steps are all completed in Korea. Our hope is to travel sometime this month.

That's the update for today, hopefully our next post will be announcing our travel call. - John

One More Step Closer to Carter

Hello Everyone. It has been a busy, busy month; Why is it that so much always happens during the shortest month of the year? As I mentioned in my previous post; at the end of January I had a second hip surgery, so far everything has progressed very well. As the calendar changed to February we experienced back-to-back snow storms resulting in 50 inches of snow!! I felt really bad for Paige that I was not able to help her shovel all of that snow but we are very fortunate to have really great neighbors who helped clear it all away.

Over the Valentine's/President's Day weekend we went to Connecticut for Paige's Baby Shower. It was a crazy quick trip; we drove up on Friday afternoon and came back on Sunday. Paige's Mom surprised her with her Aunt Leslie from Florida and she had a great time visiting with her close friends and our families. Everyone was quite generous; our car was packed to the "hilt"; we had to leave a bunch of stuff at her parent's because it wouldn't all fit in our car. The plan was for Bainie to come to the Virginia Shower this weekend and she could bring the rest of the gifts to us ; now the Northeast is getting clobbered by a snow storm so she is not going to make it.

I have spent the past two weeks traveling on business; last week was a planning meeting in Scottsdale with our largest supplier on 2010 initiatives; the weather was amazing, sunny and 80 everyday. Thank goodness we had some downtime by the pool. While I was out there I was able to go check-in on my grandmother who is in a nursing home in Glendale. She has suffered from Alzheimer's for many years and it has been 3 years since I saw her last. I expected that she would not know me; I was surprised at how talkative she was and how happy she appeared to be. I truly expected her to to be non-responsive so to see her happy and talkative allowed me to leave her feeling better than I did when I walked in to see her.

This week was pretty much the opposite to the previous week; meetings in Seattle, not much sun there...... but the end of this trip has taken us one more step closer to Carter.

Today we received in the mail our approval letter for our I-600 from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. For those of you who have not gone thru this process; the I-600 gives us the approval to bring in a foreign orphan as an immediate family member. This is an major step closer to bring Carter home! What this means is we will more-than-likely receive our travel call in the next 2 weeks!! So now it looks like we are in the "home stretch".

On another note; the furniture is in and it will be delivered next week. Carter's room is ready and just waiting for that furniture so we can put the finishing touches on it and have it ready for his arrival home. - John

So here we are almost 2 months into the wait for our precious baby boy to come home and it is absolute torture. The holiday’s were great to keep our minds off of the waiting. Christmas was wonderful, it was just John and I in the morning, our last Christmas without our son, then our friend Jenny and her 2 children, Ryan and Ally came over later for dinner. It was a nice relaxing day. John then was very busy with the Nordstrom Half Yearly Sale and I cleaned house getting ready for his parents and our nephews. We had a great visit with them and got to enjoy some sight seeing with them. John has already mentioned this in a previous post.

We did get busy with starting a registry, something I have been dying to do for years now. It was so much fun putting the list of items together for our new little guy. From bedding to blankets, I think we got it covered. We ordered furniture and hope that it comes in before he arrives.;if not we have a pack and play he can sleep in until it does arrive. But he might end up sleeping with us for a little while. It will all really depend on his sleeping situation now. We have read many times that in the Korean culture the babies often sleep in bed with the parents. If this is the case it will be just fine, I wont want to let him far out of my sight anyway. We cleaned out one of the spare rooms the weekend before John’s surgery (more on that later) and the bedding swatches seem to match great so we don’t even have to paint if we don’t want to. Though we are thinking about painting one wall an accent color.

I have 2 showers planned by friends and family, one in CT and one here in VA. I’m very excited to get together with everyone to celebrate the newest addition to the Wild/Ross family.

We have finally decided on a name too, Carter Baine. Carter because we like it and Baine because it was my Papa’s name and my mother’s name is Bainie. It means a lot for us to be able to keep it going in the family.

So John had another surgery last week, they had to take the screws out and replace them with a different device. All went well and now he is home resting. We decided its best to have the surgery before Carter comes home as it would be too difficult to care for 2 guys at one time. Carter needs and will be the center of attention from the moment we get him.

We did find out this week that the Social Services in the State of VA finally has our paperwork. Since we are pre-approved already to have a child placed in our home hopefully all they will have to do is look at our application and put a stamp of approval on it and send it over to CIS. Once CIS has VA’s approval it can take as little as 5-6 business days for them to give us the approval as well. Once we receive the CIS approval they will wire the information to the National Visa center where our sons name will get logged in and back out of the system. When that happens the approval gets sent over to the Embassy in Seoul and our son will go have his Visa interview. I’m not quite sure what they are going to ask him, but hopefully he will babble that his is ready to come to his forever home with us. Once all is stamped approved and Carter is interviewed we will then get the travel call. From what I have read lately the travel call comes approximately 2 weeks after we receive the CIS approval. So please pray that the State of VA and CIS approve our paperwork quickly and it doesn’t sit on someone’s desk for too long collecting dust.

And so we continue to wait, but it will all be worth it in the end. I guess you could consider this my ‘labor’ and I hear once you have your baby in your arms you forget about how much pain you were in while waiting for them to arrive.

I can’t wait to hold him in my arms! - Paige

Lot's Going On

Hello Everyone. I have some free time for an entry since I am sitting in a hospital room in Baltimore waiting to be discharged. For those of you who have been following us you know my broken hip saga. The final outcome was that the screws began to "back-out" of the bone so the break separated; the specialist I was referred to in Baltimore removed those screws yesterday (all 3 of them, the picture to the left are the actual screws) and replaced them with something called a "Dynamic Hip Screw"(pictured above). So far the pain I was experiencing from the break appears to be gone and that the pain I am feeling is from the actual incision and the muscle the doctor manipulated.

We decided that we would get this done now since the months of February and March are going to be very busy for us; Valentine's Weekend will be Paige's Connecticut Shower hosted by both of our mother's, it is being held at the golf club in Bloomfield which is where we had our wedding pictures taken. Since we started a major chapter in our lives together here we feel it is very fitting to be having the shower there, opening the next chapter of our lives together. Next I have business trips to Scottsdale the week of the 16th and Seattle the week of the 22nd and then Paige's Virginia Shower is being held at River Creek Country Club in Leesburg on the 27th of February hosted by our friends Deb, Michelle, Steph, Jessica & Vickie.

Our I-600 approval and the paper work with the state of Virgina will lead to our travel call which could feasibly come at any time during late February. With all of that as a possibility we feel we are seriously behind the 8-Ball in getting Carter's room ready. Oh ya; did I mention we landed on "Carter Baine"? Yeah!! He has a name!!

Here are some thing we have already done in preparation of our son's arrival to his "Forever Home":

• Three weeks ago we registered at "Babies R Us" Paige really enjoyed this and has really enjoyed monitoring the registry on-line to see what has been purchased. Can you image her as a kid at Christmas peeking under the tree or in the back of closets?


• We did order the furniture 2 weeks ago; delivery in 6-8 weeks, hopefully it arrives before he does!! (picture above, we picked a dark walnut finish not the light finish in the picture)


• This past weekend I did breakdown one of the guestrooms to turn into Carter's room.


• We sent off a package of gifts for Carter & his Foster Family. We wrote them a short note thanking them for taking our son into their loving home until we are able to be together, Dan who works with Paige at Panalpina is from Korea was gracious enough to translated the note for us. We also sent Yankee Candles & a couple Washington Redskin T-Shirts and a small photo album with pictures of us, our home and family members.


• Paige ordered swatches from the company that make the bedding we registered for; the good news is that the current color of the room (lt. blue) matches!! Limited painting!! We think we are going to change only one wall to an accent color.

So I guess we got a little more accomplished than I thought. It's just being up against a deadline that makes me think there is more to do than there really; throw a surgery and few trips/events in between and my pulse picks up a little bit more.

Counting down the days until Carter comes home........ John

Names

Paige purchased one of those 100,000 name books a few weeks ago; between the book and Internet searches we think we have narrowed the names down to 2. I keep going back to Carter and the other name is Tyler or Ty for short. Regardless of which name we choose his middle will be Baine which was Paige's grandfathers name and the name he used to name Paige's mother, Bainie.

One of the other names we seriously considered was Jack but if we decide to adopt again and receive a girl I really want to name her Jaclyn after my mom's sister who past away a few years ago at a young age and really meant the world to me. I just couldn't see having Jack & Jackie - to cutsie.

Let us know what you think of Carter Baine or Tyler Baine; we're having a hard time deciding.

John