Home Visit take II

Our home visit was great! Best part about it, every room, and closet in my whole house was so clean!! It was the best! The social worker was so nice, and totally put us at ease. She actually got permission, very reluctantly, to only have to meet with us twice. Awesome! So we spent the better part of the day together, and it counted for 3 visits. She was great. The girls got to come home for lunch and interview with her. I got to listen from the other room to their interview. They're so funny. They were so nervous and just really wanted to give the perfect answers. They told her that they were pretty sure they knew about 2 people that aren't caucasian. 2?? Some of their best friends in the world are Asian, and there are 7 of them alone!! I totally had to laugh. Ya, there might not be loads of diversity in our cute little city, but there are for sure more than 2! I'm glad it's over, I won't be so nervous for the next one, and the next 10 that we have post-placement. So, I have a small stack of paperwork and what-not that I have to write, fill-out, send away, what have you, and I'm thinking that we'll be ready to start notarizing this stuff by the end of October. I'm hoping to be right on target to be finished with everything by Thanksgiving! I would love to have everything to our agency by then. I hope I hope I hope!!

Home Visit

We finally set a date for our first of 4 home visits. We have finished all of the paperwork for this part! We still have to do 12 hours of parent training to do, and I have to photocopy a ton of documents. We are trying to figure out our fingerprinting and back ground check stuff. There are two different kinds of back ground check, a Federal one, and Adam Walsh screening which is super complicated. I'm pretty sure China is going to want the really complicated one. As soon as we're approved with our home study, China requires another background check, a Federal one, the same one we just did 2 weeks previous and paid $100 for, we get to do again, and pay another $100! Awesome. So, as soon as we do our home visits, (which I'm hoping to be finished by the end of the month), we start our last round of paper work! The paper work isn't that big of a deal, just a lot of forms, but then we have to send everything to get notarized at the city, county, state, federal levels, then notarized by the Chinese embassy. That takes a while. In the news letter that our agency puts out every month they said that last month the average travel time was only 4-6 months from the time the Dossier is logged into China. We could have our girls by next summer!!! I can't wait. We are all so excited.

Still going...

We've started a whole new round of paperwork that I truly can't believe. It's for our home study. There is a 26 page document of straight questions that we have to fill out each - as our autobiography! I'm at least 10 hours into mine, and I'm keeping my answers to 2 and 3 sentences max. I'm close to half way through. Gary hasn't started his yet. I've ordered everything that needs to get ordered, and made my photo copies, now I need to finish up a couple of more things, and send everything off to get verified by the county, then the state, then the US, then one more that I don't really get, then to the Chinese Embassy in Washington. When that's all done, we'll be on our 4th and last round of paperwork before it all gets translated and sent to China. My stomach hurts sometimes I'm so anxious to get my girls. I feel them so strongly pulling me, pushing me. It's the strangest thing I've ever felt. I feel so much love for these little kids that I have no idea anything about, but I know they're mine, and I have to get to them. This lady has an amazing story and an amazing blog. I followed her story from just before she went to the Ukraine to get Mia. I knew, while reading her blog that I needed to get more serious about adopting. It was always there in my mind, we talked about it, I researched different countries, and all sorts of programs in the US, but nothing seemed right. This post of hers struck something in me, that has never gone away - I have more kids somewhere, I need to find them. It's an annoyingly looooong process, and I understand why it needs to be. I still wish it could go so much faster though.