LOA after 56 days

Adoption Timeline for Zeke 
(Waiting child from an agency specific list)

Submit LOI (Letter of Intent) to China that identifies a child you'd like to adopt.  (Submitted LOI December 20)

Wait 1-4 weeks for Pre Approval/PA (Received January 3)

Complete homestudy and start assembling dossier (3-4 months)

*Complete homestudy (started mid December, homestudy completed by homestudy agency March 1)

*Send in I800a paperwork (can't apply for the I800a until you have your completed homestudy, application received by USCIS March 8)

*Be fingerprinted  (Received original fingerprint date of April 17, walked in to Omaha USCIS office to be fingerprinted April 5)

*Receive I800a approval  (Received verbal approval April 12, will hopefully have it in hand at the beginning of next week)

*Authenticate documents at the secretary of state's office  (All are done)
*Send documents to the US Department of State and then the Chinese Consulate  (Have to have the I800a approval authenticated by the secretary of state before we can send our documents)

Send dossier to China on May 11 (DTC)  

Wait for LID (log in date) which is China acknowledging that your dossier has been received (LID of May 23)

Wait for LOA (Letter of Approval) which is China formally approving you as parents for your child-July 18

File I800, I864 (US immigration paperwork)

Wait for I800 approval (3 weeks)

Have I800 approval cabled to US Consulate in China (2 weeks)

Wait for Article 5 (2-3 weeks)

Wait for travel approval (TA), 2-4 weeks

Time frame to homecoming...definitely easier to predict than Haiti.  But there is still some wiggle room in all of this.  Our agency says 5 1/2 months.  Also when I first made my list, 52 days for LOA was being touted in several places as the average wait.  It seems like now the average is a bit longer more in the 60-90 day range.  I've been thinking December at the latest just to try to cushion the wait so I'm hopefully traveling sooner than expected.  5 1/2 months would put us at traveling the beginning of November.  A 60 day LOA wait would be right on track with that.  I would really like to avoid traveling around the holidays simply because the airfare is crazy high.  (And flying to China is already expensive.)