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!

It's here!

We have been patiently waiting for the first copy of our home study since we had our home visit. The agency was quick, in my opinion, getting it to us only two weeks to the day after we were interviewed. Reading your life story in 13 pages is a bit weird but also kind of cool in a way too.

And there it was, page 12:
This agency approves and recommends J and C as prospective adoptive parents...

WOW! Now this is getting exciting!

Of course it came when J is out of town for the week but he should be able to review it for any corrections in the evening and then I'll send it back to the agency who will then send it to FTIA for review and it will then be sent back to us for final approval. We attend our workshop this weekend so it would be wonderful to leave there with several notarized copies in our hands.

Whew, glad that is over!

Our social worker was here last night to do our home tour and interviews. The interviews were easy, just questions about ourselves, each other and adoption. I was most apprehensive of how the kids' interview would go.

I think Jacob was secretly drinking kool-aid and eating candy bars downstairs prior to the questioning because he was bouncing off the walls hyper. Emily barely talked; she said because Jacob kept saying what she was thinking and then, Matthew. When asked what the new child might not like about our family he pipes up and says "well, she probably won't like Jacob punching her like he punches me in the face." WHAT?!!! What happened to all those briefings we gave them? Just kidding, we actually didn't brief them on what to say at all. Jacob did say he doesn't like Matthew in his room and that he has broke a trophy before so the social worker asked what if his new sister does that. Jacob's reply? "Well, I understand because she would be curious because she's never seen it before but Matthew has been here long enough that he shouldn't be curious anymore."

Hopefully she understands some normal sibling rivalry! Beyond that we have a few things left to do like outlet plugs and cabinet locks on the cleaner cabinet. We figured we would hold off to see if either of those things created issues after we bring her home. If she is particularly fascinated with outlets we will buying a few packages of outlet plugs.

We all celebrated having this step done by feasting on a piece of cake once the social worker left.
Our next step: We will have to wait a couple of weeks to get a draft of the home study. We will review it and our caseworker at FTIA will review it for an errors or needed additions and then once the review process is done we will be given our final draft. We will then send a copy of our final draft with the I-800A application (petition to adopt an international orphan) and supporting documents to USCIS. We will then wait for their approval which is currently taking around a month.

While that is going on I will be taking all of our documents to the MO secretary of state office to be certified and then shipped off to the Chinese consulate to be authenticated. Once we get our USCIS approval I will send it and our home study off to the secretary of state and consulate. That will complete our dossier and then we can send it to the agency who will translate it and send it to the CCAA.

Rescheduled

After all the cleaning and organizing I have done this week to prepare for our home study visit tonight, it was rescheduled this morning due to our social worker being ill. I do completely understand that getting sick is beyond our control but I am still disappointed. I think the biggest reason I'm disappointed is I was mentally prepared for tonight, as was everyone else in the family.

I now have a clean house that I have to try and keep clean with kids home for a long holiday weekend. I guess things could be much worse though!

Happy Easter!

On the calendar

The home visit is written on the calendar...in ink! Next Thursday at 6:30.

Part of me is nervous and part of me is very excited; it's taken awhile to get to this point and we have to get through it to get any further. What a great Easter present to have the visit done and behind us!

Originally we thought we could begin the matching process once we had an approved home study draft, which would be early next month. But, the CCAA has decided that most children with minor special needs can now only be matched with families whose dossiers are already in China (or LID- log-in date). For that reason we will now be waiting until our LID to be matched with a child. This will afford our family the opportunity to be matched with a child with more minor needs, as we have requested.

Language School

We have been researching different programs to start learning Mandarin and one day I found a program for the Nintendo DS! Now we can try and learn some basic Mandarin without spending $350 on Rosetta Stone and the kids have created a profile to learn some as well. I'm hoping we will all learn enough Mandarin to communicate with our new girl while she is making her transition to English.

On a side note; we wrote our caseworker about changing the special needs checklist of what we would accept. We originally asked to be matched with a girl, aged 2 to 6. We have now changed our age range to 4 to 6 years old.

Our home study agency has received our completed packet and is in the process of typing every thing into a nice "life story." We will be having our home visit in a week or so and then waiting a few weeks after that to have the completed copy in our hands. Once we have the final home study and approval, things should start moving quickly.

In the mail

Finally, the home study will be mailed! We had our first visit on February 2nd so all this paperwork took about 6 weeks. A lot of it was done in the first and last two weeks.

Here is what is included in the packet.

*Birth certificates for all family members
*Marriage certificate
*Income tax return

*W-2 forms
*Statement of income difference

*Medical insurance verification
*Photos- immediate family and home

*Driving directions

*Reading agreement (We must read 5 books each)

*Home Study application (14 pages)

*Autobiographies (J- 7 pages, mine- 8 pages)
*Criminal check waiver

*Confirmation of employment

*Reference forms (6)

*School reference form (3)

*Health physicals on all of us

*Preference form (identifying the special needs we would accept)
*Release of information

*Authorization form

*Identifying documentation

*Fee agreement

*Fee!

I forgot to add that some things went directly to our agency. That would include:

*Fingerprinting results
*Child abuse clearances from 5 states and 1 country

*Current state criminal record check

*Federal government criminal record check

Delay

We were scheduled to attend our training workshop this last Friday but due to low attendance (read-only us!) they had to cancel it. We were fairly bummed because J had gotten 2 days of leave, my mother-in-law took a day of vacation to keep the kids and we had reserved a hotel near the agency to stay. The next workshop is in April but we have already paid for our oldest son to have a sleep over with school so we will now have to wait until May. The delay is upsetting but I try to think that the timing isn't up to us; we are just along for the ride.

We had planned to participate in our neighborhood garage sale to raise money for our adoption but the May workshop is scheduled for the same day.

We received our last reference letter in the mail this weekend; Yippee! My wonderful, procrastinating husband is nearly finished with the autobiography questions and when he prints a final draft we can finally send in our entire packet!

Moving along

Since posting last we have sent out all of our child abuse clearance and police report clearance requests. Those go directly back to the agency so I'm hoping they have made it there. I've spent 4 solid days doing nothing but paperwork, figuring numbers, tracking down information, etc. to finish all the forms.
J, Emily and I have our physicals scheduled for this week and the boys' physicals are scheduled for next week.
We have received all of our reference letters except one and I am going to call today and gently poke him to send the last one along.
I have my autobiography nearly complete and my procrastinating husband hasn't started his. :)

Once we all get our physicals, get our last reference letter and finish the autobiography we can send in the completed packet and move onto the next step-- Our official home visit and tour! We will be traveling to the adoption agency's office next week for a 8 hour workshop so our goal is get everything completed and hand carry the packet to the workshop so we do not have to rely on the mail.

In the last couple of weeks we have also changed our mind on probably the biggest aspect of our adoption- we changed agencies. We hadn't formally applied to WACAP (we had submitted the pre-application) but did have the full application filled out with the check, addressed, stamped and sitting on the table. It sat for 3 weeks when I finally took it out and shredded it this weekend. For some reason I just had a hesitant feeling about WACAP and despite the wonderful recommendations I've received, something just didn't feel right. I went with my gut and decided to pursue information about other agencies. Several people recommended Families Through International Adoption (FTIA). They are smaller, more personable, have cheaper travel rates and are less expensive for children under 7. WACAP will subsidize adoptions for children aged 7 and over and this was our initial pull to WACAP; this made the adoption much more affordable. But if we decided on a 6 year old little girl we would be paying the full adoption rates and in that case, FTIA was more reasonable.
I have absolutely no doubt that WACAP is a wonderful agency; many people have had wonderful adoptions fulfilled with WACAP and been completely pleased. For us though, I did not feel WACAP was the right agency.

I've spoken with a few people from FTIA on the phone already and they have all be so helpful and eager to answer all of our questions. I have the application filled out, with a check in a stamped envelope and it is going in the mailbox today! We also sat down with the checklist this weekend to mark what special needs we would be willing to accept. We put down our desired child is a 2 to 6 year old girl. We could be a few short months away from seeing our new daughter's face! I thought last night that she is in China now, waiting for us and has no idea we are getting all of our ducks in a row to come pick her up. I can't wait to see the face of the daughter God has chosen for us!
www.ftia.org

Fingerprints

Jeramie and I went for our fingerprint appointments yesterday; check another box on the long checklist. It was all very official; we couldn't even be in the same room together. I politely told the man "he is my husband, he's seen my fingerprints before" and he responded with "having someone else here is distracting to the one getting their fingerprints done." HA! So maybe that is why I can't get a room clean when someone is in it- it is too distracting! So we each had to sit in the hall while the other one was in the office.

The visit

Every thing went very well with our initial visit with our social worker. We received our folder with loads of paperwork to sort through and went over the process. Turns out, the social worker lives right around the corner from us!

I think the funniest part of the entire night was the one with the most needs ended up the dog. He wanted off his bed, then he needed to go outside, then let back in, then wanted his water which was in the closet I closed, then he drug the water bowl out into the kitchen because it was all gone. Good grief, couldn't he take the same suggestions of quietly playing like the kids did?!

We jumped in with both feet once the kids went to bed. Books are on reserve at the library, reference forms have been mailed, fingerprinting appointments are made for tomorrow, child abuse clearances are mailed and I've started my autobiography. My goal is to have the packet mailed back to the agency by the end of the month.

Home Study

I called Adoptions & Beyond today to start our home study. They are a partner agency to WACAP and a few other agencies so they will do our home study here because those agencies are not in our state. They will be mailing a paperwork packet to the social worker who will then call us to set up our first appointment to go over the packet. We will work on gathering all documents for the paperwork packet, as well as medical physicals for all of us. Once that is complete we mail it back to the agency with our fee and they set up an appointment to come out to the house. A few weeks of typing and approvals and we should have a final copy about 6 weeks later.