Amazingly, I don't feel worried. We know that God led us to pursue this adoption in His right timing, and we are confident that He will unite us with our daughter in His perfect timing, too. Whether there are delays or not is outside of our realm of influence, so there isn't much point in getting worked up about it.
It has been about 3 weeks since we first started the grand paper chase, and we are almost DONE getting everything together from our end! We are collecting the documents and forms for our home study and our dossier in parallel, since a lot of them are the same. 3-6 months to get everything? PSCHAH!
-We got Ben's and Katie's birth certificates in the mail
-We got our marriage certificate in the mail
-Katie had her adoption physical, which included the nurse taking about 5 gallons of blood. Well not quite. But there were a lot of tests. I have it on good authority now that I neither have TB, Hep B, Hep C, HIV, or any other communicable diseases. I also weigh 4lbs less than I did before getting pregnant with Sean. Oops. Time to up my caloric intake even more. That's what I get for nursing a 20lb baby every 3 hours.
-Ben has his physical next week
-the proof of health insurance letter and the employment letter Ben's HR wrote has been approved, in spite of their weird vague wording (heaven forbid they make any statement about future employment or income)
-We made color copies of our passports - did you know that Kinkos won't do it because it's not technically legal? We had to scan them at a friend's house and then print them, since this is a requirement for the dossier.
-A wonderful and generous woman at our church notarized all our documents and forms for free!
-Our proof of life insurance is ordered and on its way here.
-We had our first home study meeting with our Social Worker. It went well.
Now we just need to wait for the reference forms and recommendation letters. Once the home study is complete, we take the paper chase to the next level: sending in our I-600A to the USCIS to apply for our I-171H which gives us permission to adopt an orphan from abroad.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but there IS apparently a good use for by somewhat obsessive attention to detail. The huge list of documents needed for the home study and the dossier looked overwhelming at first, but going at it methodically, one step at a time, really made it quite easy. I would be happy to help other families build their dossier, since it seems this is something I am good at.
We also brought home a stack of books from the library. Some are recommended readings from our social worker, some are travel guides to Ethiopia, some are some random other books about Ethiopia, Adoption, Transracial adoption, and Bonding with an adopted child. I will try to give reviews on the ones that are worth reading.
I have also enjoyed reading a bunch of adoption blogs. Seeing those sweet faces of sons and daughters united with their families makes me all the more eager to meet and bring home our little girl.
~Right now we are in the "hurry up" phase... very soon we will find ourselves in the "WAIT, wait, wait" phase. While we are wait wait waiting, some very BIG things will be happening in the lives of our daughter and her birth family. I am praying for guidance, and comfort for them. It is hard to pray for something of which I know the end-point. Whatever will happen, results in us bringing our daughter home. I don't want this "whatever" to be painful, terrible, traumatizing. God knows what he is doing, and HE will hold his hand over our little girl and her family.
No comments:
Post a Comment