Still waiting

I have heard to never pray for patience, so I don't. But, I'm beginning to think I may come to the end of my patience soon.

We still don't have our home study. Our home visit was one month ago today so we should have several final, notarized copies of our home study in our hands. We don't. The home study is caught up in review between our home study agency, our international agency and us. It's like playing the telephone game on email.

Not as time critical but our documents that went to DC on 4/21 are still there. They did leave the state department and journeyed successfully to the Chinese embassy but they are still there. The longer they are gone the more I think they might be getting lost.

The majority of our dossier is at the Chicago consulate. That was 11 documents so it might take a bit longer. Once we get those back we will only need two more documents to complete the dossier; our home study and the I-800A approval from immigration.

I think getting our dossier complete by the end of June is probably not going to happen.

Workshop complete

We traveled several hours this weekend to attend the 7 hour international workshop required to complete our home study. It was long but informative and mostly, we are just glad it is behind us. We can now get our final home study and hopefully that will arrive this week.

While the kids were in school Friday morning, J and I drove downtown to a satellite office for the secretary of state to get our documents certified before sending them off to the Chicago consulate to be authenticated. When dropping off the documents we realized we didn't have the 1 1/2 hours to wait so we would need to come back and pick them up this week. As the office attendant took the papers and paper clipped them together I had physical anxiety symptoms, which is rare for me. I felt my stomach flip-flop and my heart race as if I was on a high, very long bridge; one thing I despise. I am so worried one of those documents might fall from the paper clip and get lost. My inner being was screaming "You have no idea how long that has taken or just HOW important each of those papers are!" When leaving the office I told J that I felt as though I had just dropped my baby off with an unknown babysitter and he told me "well, you sort of did." Yes, I guess I did. I hope they have taken care of her this weekend and didn't lose her blanket or teddy bear our financial statement or medical forms.

Our GA paperwork made it home safely from the Houston consulate last Thursday but the US Secretary of State is taking their time with our TN paperwork and has not sent it onto the Chinese Embassy yet. I'm sure there are very critical national situations that might take precedence but I need our paperwork!

Getting dizzy

Gosh, I feel like my head is spinning. Who knew picking an agency would be so hard! We've added more to our list, I've scoured message boards and asked for opinions and we're still not any closer to a decision. I think if we were to follow through with a standard healthy child adoption we would have an easier time choosing because there are a couple that come highly recommended. The fact that we are considering a special needs child is what makes the decision much more complicated. We want to make sure we go with an agency that will give us the best service in a special needs adoption. So many with so many differences!

Still waiting on J.'s birth certificates to show up. After we get those we will be holding off on anymore documents. Everything has to be notarized within 6 months of the Chinese consulate receiving it. I really don't want to hand over any unnecessary money to re-do documents because they "expired." Once we choose an agency, move and figure out just exactly we will fund this journey we can start document collecting again.