Slowly But Surely

The adoption is moving along - not necessarily as fast as I'd like, but it's moving all the same. I last posted that we were waiting for our social worker to send us our home study draft. She ended up sending it to us that evening. We read it and got it back to her in about 30 minutes (no need to wait) and she sent it to our home study agency. They had to send it to our adoption agency for edits and suggestions. So many steps! Our home study agency was said they would get it back to us last Tuesday, but they didn't send it out until yesterday. They sent a copy to our adoption agency (who will eventually send it to South Korea) and one to us. They were also supposed to send a copy to USCIS (for our immigration approval). For USCIS we had to write letters and fill out some paperwork to change countries since we had originally applied for Kyrgyzstan. We sent that paperwork to the home study agency a few weeks ago so they could just send everything to USCIS when the home study was finalized. But yesterday, I got a call from them saying that we had forgotten to sign one of the forms. As a side note, these government forms are ridiculous. They are incredibly cryptic and it's amazing that we can even figure out how to complete them. Anyway, yes, it was our mistake. But the frustrating thing was that the reason I sent it all to them 3 weeks ago was so they could check over everything and if there was a problem we could fix it so everything was ready when the home study was finalized. Obviously they didn't look at it since the problem was caught right as they were going to send it out. So instead of sending the paperwork to USCIS they sent it to us to sign the form. The nice thing about our agency being in Austin was that they sent it yesterday and it got to us today. We signed it and I rushed to the post office and made it before closing. On another side note, the post office is one of my least favorite places to go with the kids. There are tons of "fun" things for them to play with (which they shouldn't play with) and we have to stand in line forever. It's not really a kid-friendly place. Anyway, that paperwork should get to USCIS tomorrow since the office is just a few miles from our house. I'm very curious how long we'll have to wait for approval. It could come pretty quick because they've had our paperwork for so long. Or, it could be 2 months if they are backlogged. It is the last piece in the puzzle. Our paperwork can't go to Korea until we have this approval.

The other thing we've been working on is our dossier paperwork. As I've mentioned before, Korea's dossier is much less difficult than other countries. We got the requirements from our adoption agency last Monday (the day before we left for Colorado). We found out that we had to repeat our physicals since we had originally done ours for China back in October. They have to be within six months. On Tuesday morning I called, thinking we wouldn't get an appointment for another week or two, but they had two appointments for that day! I was very excited to get that done so I wouldn't be worry about it while we were in Colorado. The Doctor was able to use our old blood work and TB tests which was nice. We also had to get letters for each of the boys stating that they were in good health and the vaccines were up-to-date. I was SO happy to get that done. We also had to send in our birth certificates and marriage license (which we had from October as well). Our first big agency payment was also due. Yikes. We also had to fill out a checklist of "special needs" we are willing to consider. We would like to adopt a child with a special need of some kind. Our list had a lot of "yes" marked. While it was the more mild/moderate or correctable needs, we hope it will make things move more quickly in the long run. Lastly, we had to we had to write a "Birth mother Letter" and make a small scrapbook of our family. Sometimes the orphanage knows who the birth mother is and will share the letter with her. It was strange and difficult to know what to say (understanding the parent's loss while reassuring her). For the scrapbook I had to choose 16 pictures of our family and for an 8 page book (2 pictures per page). It was supposed to show our family doing things together. We put in pictures of us having a picnic, at the park, celebrating birthdays, Christmas, at the beach, extended family, etc... I was happy with the way it turned out. The Korean authorities like to know about the families as well as possibly showing it to the birth parent(s). As soon as we got back from CO we finished all of that paperwork and sent it in to our adoption agency yesterday. Hopefully they will get it by the end of the week.

So, things are moving along. Still slowly, but this is definitely the farthest we've been in the process. As soon as we receive USCIS approval our agency will send all of our paperwork to Korea. Once that is done, we're praying that we'll receive a referral within 6 months although we're praying it will be sooner than that because we're open to quite a few special needs. Once we have a referral (assuming we accept it) it will be 2-3 months before we can travel. So we still have many more steps but it's nice to feel like we're headed in the right direction.

One last little story. Yesterday I had written our adoption agency social worker (we'll call her N) with some questions and to let her know that the home study agency would be sending her our home study. She said that she had been corresponding with our home study social worker (we'll call her E) and was expecting it. The problem was that when she referred to E she used a totally different name. I called our home study agency to see if anyone worked there by that name and there wasn't. So I started to get worried. Was N confusing us with another family? Did she know who we were when I wrote with questions or she received our paperwork from us? What if things at the adoption agency were all mixed up. With all of the things we've had go wrong I'm worried something else will happen. So I emailed N right away and clarified who we were (I do confuse them sometimes since my official name is Michele but I often sign my emails Renee) and asked if she was confusing us with someone else. She wrote back within minutes saying that she had just made a mistake and had written the wrong name and said that she had actually been talking with E. She said she definitely knew who we were and wasn't confusing us with someone else. But then about 10 minutes later she called. I was putting Micaiah down but she left a message saying that she was very sorry and reassuring us that she knew who we were and weren't confusing us. I thought it was very nice for her to do that. She emailed again and said she understood how anxiety provoking her stating the wrong name could be. I thought it was great for her to be so worried about us worrying. So far, we've been impressed with the agency and are looking forward to continuing to work with them.