Papers, papers, papers

We got our dossier guide on Friday.  Whew!  I can't even imagine how many trees are being killed in this process...


Here's our current to-do list.


This week:


For homestudy
-Return a notarized release form so they can run our criminal clearances
-Each of us needs to get fingerprinted
-Each of us needs to schedule physicals with our Drs
-Change my name at Social Security (I got the DMV part done, but need to try to catch SS when they open, usually the wait is too long and it doesn't work with my work schedule)

For Dossier
-Order notarized letters from our banks and investment accounts (this is supposed to be a giant pain in the you know what...I sent the initial inquiries today so we'll see how it goes)
-Order the transcript of Ababa's 2007 tax return from the IRS b/c we can't seem to find it
-Order extra original certified copies of our marriage certificate

Still left:
-Order Ababa's passport (can't do this until his birth certificate arrives) and a new passport for me with my married name
-Give our references the guidelines for reference letters
-Have our in-person homestudy visit
-get notarized employment letters
-get notarized physician statements (yep...we have to bring a notary to our Dr's appointments!)
-Type and notarize some misc. documents for the dossier and homestudy (adoption petition, etc)

Right now we're just moving forward one step at a time.  Our goal is to have the dossier and homestudy wrapped up before Christmas--ideally Thanksgiving! (The biggest potential hold-ups are the criminal and child abuse clearances, the bank letters, and NYS approval of our home study.)  Once our dossier is complete and approved then we will officially be on the waitlist and the official waiting countdown can begin.

Once our homestudy is approved then we can get biometrically finger printed and submit a form called the I-600A to USCIS (US Customs and Immigration Services).  This form is the "Application for Advance Processing of an Orphan".  Once the US government determines that they approve our adoption an Ethiopian child then we get the I-171H.  This is the form we have to have in order to be able to accept the referral of a child. Processing time is quite variable and can take anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months!

The whole long homestudy and dossier process exists just so you can get this form.  Kind of anti-climactic, right:-) I think we'll be grinning from ear to ear the day this form shows up in our mailbox!

Prayer and other things...

An awesome lady in our church hosts a women's prayer group the first Friday of every month.  Tonight was a great and much needed night of prayer, and our adoption process got lots and lots of prayer:-)  I had a crazy thought tonight though...Odds are really good that our child/children are already born.  If we don't get matched with a sibling group (in which case there is huge variability), our child is probably a little boy between 0-18 months right now. We prayed for this child, for his mother, for their whole family, and for whatever circumstances would lead to him being put up for adoption.

Adoption is a wonderful miracle; but it also stems from a horrible tragedy.  In order for us to experience the amazing joy of meeting our child and having the privilege of parenting him, his birth mother and extended family have to experience truly untenable circumstances.  

We believe in adoption and that it is a joyous and amazing thing to commit to unconditionally loving a child and to become a family; however, that joy has a dark side.  There is a horrible, painful, jagged scar on the other side that effects many people.  It may fade somewhat with time, but it is always there.  So, tonight we prayed for that.  For healing, for peace, for protection... for my child's mother, for her life, for her circumstances, for her extended family.  I don't know what to pray exactly, but I know that God knows them, he knows their life, He loves them, and he hears my prayer.

At some point down the road we'll probably need to start fundraising to provide the necessary funds to complete our adoption and we hope you'll consider helping to support us at that time.  In the meantime, if you feel called to give, here is one of my favorite organizations.  Just the seemingly simple act of having access to clean water can transform lives.  Watch the video and take a minute to think about what exactly clean water can provide.  

$20 can give one person clean water for 20 years

$5000 can provide clean water for an entire village of 250 people for 20 years

It's really happening!

Today we got confirmation from our agency that they received all our documents and are processing them. Also, the homestudy agency is starting our child abuse and criminal clearances (these typically take the longest of all the components of the homestudy so it's important to start them first) so...we're on track to meet our goal of getting all our paperwork done, approved, and sent to Ethiopia before Christmas (but we're only one step into this journey, so a lot can change!)

Hopefully, we'll get the dossier preparation guide by the end of the week and we can start to tackle that giant heap of paperwork.  In the meantime, we're hoping the co-op will approve the release of our escrow tomorrow so that we can pay the next round of checks:-)

We're off and running!

Today I made a big trip to the post office:-) Yep, I mailed the two items someone recently purchased from me on ebay...

Just kidding (well, I did that too) but the really exciting news is...

We mailed our long application, autobiographies, and policy forms with the non-refundable "big check" as well as our homestudy agreement with the child abuse and criminal checks. I think it was about 80 pages of documents in total.  You can't quite tell from the photo, but the express mail envelope could barely close and the right-hand corner kept popping up:-)

Yep, I was the loon taking pictures of her envelopes at the post office in mid-town Manhattan:-)  (excuse the extra priority labels, a girl has to keep somethings--like her address-- a mystery right?)

The paper pile gets bigger:-)

We've now doubled the size of signed papers on our dining room table:-)  We chose a homestudy agency, so we completed all of that initial paperwork tonight and I now have a GIANT stack of papers to take to the post office tomorrow!

• 1 stack for our placement agency-with a check for $2150 for the first half of our agency fee
• 1 stack for our home study agency-I think we send this $1850 check later, but I'll call in the morning to confirm
• 1 stack for our co-op board-with a $50 check for the mandatory credit check (I'm actually going to need to have this delivered tomorrow-depending on how my work day unfolds I'll either hand deliver it myself or pay for a messenger service)

We had a clothing swap at our church today and I may or may not have brought home 2 shopping bags of adorable clothes-mostly gender neutral-for ages 12-36 months....they were cute, pretty much new (some still had the original tags on), and free.  I figure it doesn't get better than that:-)

Thanks so much to everyone who wished us Happy Anniversary. We can't believe it's been a year!!! We missed our tour of Kykuit due to INSANE traffic (it took almost 3 hours to get there, including a cab hitting a pedestrian which blocked traffic for quite a while) but we had a wonderful time exploring Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown by car and on foot.  Then we had dinner at Castle on the Hudson. The cheese course was delish!

We accidentally wandered into the Westchester Art Festival and we bought our first piece of art!  Ababa and I both loved this artist's work so we thought it was a great way to commemorate our first anniversary and purchased a piece.  We're going to hang it in the front hall for now, but in the future we'd love to have a tryptic to hang over our living room sofa.

Here's the link to the artist--the birch series is AMAZING:
Steve Ward

Our painting is from this series (but the colors in ours are darker, it's smaller and square, and has more aggressive movement:-).  It is framed in a simple birch floating frame and really looks fantastic!

First set of notarized papers!

There's a big stack of papers sitting on our dining room table!  They're official and ready to go on in the mail on Monday!!! It's our policy documents which will officially start this process in motion:-)

They are signed, sealed, notarized and ready to go!  Yay!!!  We'll be dropping them in the mail on Monday along with our financial documents for the co-op board to officially release our escrow so we can pay the first set of fees.

Our first wedding anniversary is officially tomorrow (though we celebrated today by spending the afternoon in Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow and going to the Castle on the Hudson for dinner).  Ababa is THRILLED that LSU managed to win at the last minute today (and I am thrilled that he's thrilled:-) All in all, it's been a great day:-)

We should get the guidelines for the dossier sometime next week (once our agency processes our policy documents) and I'll be back with all the gory details for the step-by-step of the dossier process. In the meantime, we are starting the documents for our home study, all 56 pages of them!  They don't call this The Paper Chase for nothing!

Why adopt now?

I was talking to one of my brothers today and he asked me why we chose now to start the adoption process, we have demanding jobs, are in school at night, and are still relatively young (at least for New Yorkers:-)

I have wanted to adopt for as long as I can remember.  Ababa has been considering it, but in the year since we got married he's really started seriously contemplating adoption.  We decided for sure that we would really like to have a children join our family through both birth and adoption.  We thought given biology, finances, space, etc. that we would wait to adopt until later on.

A few things prompted us to start the process now...

1. We both feel ready/called/and very eager to become parents now
2. Our hearts and minds have become more and more open to and aware of the tremendous need for adoption
3. We haven't gotten pregnant (and even if we become pregnant during this process there is flexibility to complete our adoption if we've been matched to a child)
4. There is a tax credit that expires in 2012 which will help us afford the legal and other fees associated with adoption (the 2011 tax credit is $13,701 and the 2012 credit is slated to be $5000--obviously we're hoping to complete our adoption in 2011:-)
5. Although our schedules are currently busy, we do have the flexibility to scale back for a while when a child/children joins our family, this will be much more difficult when Ababa goes to medical school in a few years

So, after much prayer and considering we are stepping forward in faith, joyfully waiting to see where God leads us and how he grows our family!