Adoption Preparation is a Full Time Job!

My self portrait today
(no seriously I can't take credit for this beautiful drawing I found)

Oiy...I think I forgot how much work goes into an adoption since our last adoption. Either that or the fact that we're flying through steps and paperwork so fast makes this time around seem crazier! I think, like a lot of my friends say about childbirth, you forget the pain that went along with the process once you have your child home. I'm so blessed I'm not working right now so I can focus fully on Laina's adoption paperwork. Not working over summer is the ONLY way we could possibly have as much done as we do! We took almost all of our dossier documents to get notarized today and the poor notary's ink was running out of her stamp by the end! Seriously! And each and every document has to be perfectly perfect! There is a checklist that goes along with each and every document, which is new since Zoya's adoption...made to help adoptive parents make less mistakes....which is great, but it's a lot of pressure!! We only have to redo one, possibly two, documents out of the bunch so that's not horrible (unless you ask Shawn bc one of those is his medical form which he has redone no less than a dozen times haha). Those of you who haven't adopted would think some of this stuff is crazy....how specific they are about the documents! The good news is it's a small price to pay to bring our girl home!

So where are we with the process?  Well we are waiting for the draft of our homestudy, which should be emailed to me by the end of today (hmmm it's already 7:44pm? maybe she works late?). Once we have that we can make sure no changes need to be made. When the final copy is ready (I'd hope by Friday) we wait for the social worker to mail us the 3 copies of the notarized homestudy, including a copy of the agency license and a copy of the social worker license (notarized, in blue ink, with an expiration date on the notary stamp no less than a year away). Once we have the homestudy we can send it off to USCIS along with our birth certificates and marriage certificate and a hefty $890 processing fee. We will also send the medical letter we had written by a doctor explaining the urgency of Laina's situation and need for surgery, hoping to expedite our approval. For Zoya's adoption, it took a month after we sent out our application to get a fingerprint date. After the fingerprint date it took another month to get our approval...so that really slowed our process down. This time we're praying for a two-week approval instead of two months! Once we get our USCIS approval (the I-171H form) that will be the last piece of our dossier (which is otherwise just about done). Then we can send our entire dossier off to Eastern Europe and wait for it to be submitted and then wait some more for a travel date. Are you still with me? Are you tired yet? :)

And I'd do it all over again....wait I AM doing it all over again :)