Making Progress

Well it is now June and it seems like the paperwork is almost coming to an end....for now anyway.  We completed our home study in May, and now have all documents ready for our dossier except one.  Once the home study was completed, we could file our I-800A form with U.S. Immigration.  We will receive an appointment to get fingerprinted (again, yes) by one of their official offices sometime this summer.  I am really hoping for June but that is unlikely.  Once we do that, we have to wait 3-4 weeks for those to be processed.  We should then receive what is called an I-797, an approval from Immigration for us to adopt from overseas. 

Yesterday I took all of the notarized documents that we have at this point to the Secretary of State's office at the Capitol Building in Lincoln.  They each needed to be state certified, or state sealed.  It is the next level of authentication after the notary.  Amazingly I was in and out in 10 minutes!  Once we get the I-797 form here and notarized, I will go get that state certified and then everything will be ready for the last two authentications.  First it all goes to the U.S. Department of State in Virginia, and then to the Chinese Embassy.  We have to hire a courier to hand deliver them to those places for us, which was just one more thing I didn't realize and it kind of freaked me out.  I did talk to someone who did it and found out that it was a really fast service and they received their documents back in just a few weeks.  By my estimation, our dossier should be ready to be sent to China in August or early September. 

I have thanked God many times during this adoption process that I am an organized, detailed person.  I do NOT know how people do this otherwise!  It is so much to keep track of and almost impossible to understand it all.  I really think being pregnant for 9 months was way easier than this.  Big swollen ankles and all.  That was a physical challenge, and this is such a mental and emotional challenge.  I know that the day we meet our daughter it will all be worth it.  I sure wish it wasn't so far away.

The fun thing is that since our home study is done, we are eligible to be matched with a child at any time.  We thought that wouldn't happen until our dossier was logged in in China, and it may not.  But it's pretty exciting to think that we could get a call anytime. We actually did get a call from our social worker this week about a little 4 year old girl who had just come into the system and she was totally healthy.  Then we found out that our paperwork was not far enough along to be considered for her anyway.  It definitely gave us hope though!