Is our homestudy on it's way?

I spoke with our case manager from our placing agency on Friday. As soon as he receives our roughdraft of our homestudy we can make an appointment with them for our interview and collection of our dossier documents. Yeah!! I'm so excited to be completing the first leg (homestudy) and moving onto the dossier leg of the paper trail. I called the social worker that is incharge of finalizing all the homestudies with our homestudy agency to see if she would be able to fax or email that homestudy over on Friday or Monday but I couldn't get a hold of her. It was Friday after lunch so probably won't hear back till Monday. Hopefully, she got my message and went ahead and sent it since our social worker had already emailed it to her last Monday. I should have called on Wed, but I hate to be so pushy. Keep your fingers crossed she went ahead and sent it over.

Dr. Appt today and the I-600A update

I have my doctor appt today to get my forms filled out and my TB test taken. Luckily we received our packet of forms for our dossier in time to be able to bring their medical forms with us so we didn't have to make 2 trips to the doctor. My husband and both boys already have their forms completed and hubby has his TB test already read and signed off so it's just me holding up our final packet of info to send off to our Homestudy agency. We had our labs done a few weeks back so we have those already to send in too. I'm hoping on Monday I can put the packet in the mail just as soon as I go back to the doctor and have my TB test read. I'm kicking myself for not getting that TB done earlier this week so I could have been done today and had it in the mail...bummer!!

I'm also ready today to certify mail my I-600A application off to the local USCIS office. I called my homestudy agency just to double check that I had everything ready to mail off in that I-600A application yesterday and they said the USCIS also requires proof of insurance that your adopted daughter will be covered when she is adopted and also another govt form I-134 Affidavidate of Support not an adoption form that basically says we can financially provide for her. She said that only our local USCIS office is requiring that extra form...just figures!!! Has anyone else had to do this? I looked all over the immigration website and can't find anything that mentions either of these two requirements. She said I could go ahead and send it in just know to begin getting those forms so when they call for them I'm ready. Ugh...the form collecting just never ends..more trips to various offices more forms to gather.

The interviews

We have met with our social worker twice now. She is so friendly and bubbly that she has made us feel very comfortable sharing ourselves. So far it has been a relatively painless process. I'm not sure what kind of questions I was expecting...being interviewed about yourself sounded intimidating but it hasn't been anything too deep or hard to answer. Tomorrow we have our last meeting with our social worker..our home visit. Time to tidy up this evening.

I have already received some forms from our placing agency for our dossier so I have started collecting those documents and making appointments again. So far all the forms have been straightforward and not that different from the ones we used in the homestudy. I'm hoping to send off our I-600A form this week..I have all the documents ready and hopefully the homestudy will follow it next week. I just need to goto the bank and get a money order. We also have our doctor's appointments this week and we already went and got our labs done a few weeks go and I've received my lab results already...I've passed...yeah! Hopefully hubby has too. It was my first cholesterol panel I've had done..so I was a bit curious what it would say but it was normal...thank goodness. We are moving and groving along. Hubby goes back to the classroom this week so this was our last big push to get all the inperson interviews done. We just have one big last test...the MMPI psychological evaluation. Basically it's personality inventory given to see if you can cope with life's normal stresses. Never had one of those done either...should be very interesting. I'm still trying to find a psychologist close to home that performs this...sometimes companies require new employees to have this done so it shouldn't be too hard to find. I think the only 2 things holding us up from going forward on our dossier is getting our passports back and hearing back from immigration on the status of our I600A.

Things are looking good. I spent all last night looking at the russian photolisting put out by MOE at all the babies born in 2007 in the regions our placing agency works wondering if one of the children already born this year could be our future daughter. It was quite exciting and feels really real...I'm feeling closer to her than I have ever felt. My oldest has been talking about Emily a lot. How she will be smaller than him and Bubba. He can't wait to play with her and take care of her. Bubba says she can sit by him at the table. BW has talked about how we will go on an airplane to bring her home and that they will stay with their grandparents. Wow...the anticipation is making my heart thump so loudly. I'm just so thrilled!!

Homestudy Interviews Scheduled

We have scheduled our homestudy interviews. This is my hubby's last month of being off and our social worker was so generous with her schedule to allow us to squeeze our 4 interviews into what was left of this month. I'm so amazed and so appreciative of her working with us so quickly and on such a short time schedule. It would have been so hard for my hubby to try and take early days off in September when he has had the past 2 months off already. The 4 interviews we have scheduled include, a couple's interview, 2 individual interviews and a home visit with the family. Our social worker believes our homestudy should be completed and in our hands the first week of September. At this point the only thing holding us up is still completing our medical exams. As soon as we get back from vacation I will tackle the I-600A and send that in. I also need to see if the fee has gone up which I believe it did on July 30th. It's very exciting but interesting. It feels like you hurry, hurry, hurry up to complete and send in all of this paperwork, and then you wait, wait and wait and then it's your turn again to quickly try and gather more papers and send in something else just so you can wait in another line. I'm glad to participate though, that's for sure because I know that it means someday it will be our turn to travel and meet our baby girl and I just can't wait for that day!!

Small Steps

We have been so busy these past few weeks...but finally I was able to send off another packet of papers to our homestudy agency...our financial info...bank statements, w-2 and past years tax return, birth certificates x4, marriage license and our employment verifications letters. Our homestudy agency also contacted us and we have been assigned a social worker. Hopefully, we will hear from her later this week. Also, we chose a placing agency and sent off our application to them along with our family/home photos. Yeah!!! We are making small steps..but every step is one step closer to meeting our baby girl. Now, we have to work on getting passports, a psych test, medical evaluations, conduct our homestudy and send off our I-6ooA application.

Our first application has been handed over!!

We drove to SF this evening and hand delivered our application and some initial forms to the adoption agency that is going to do our homestudy. Whohoo!! We also got to meet in person the sw that I have been bugging this past month with all my questions. While there we attended a required education class and received our binder full of info. It was fun to meet other preadoptive parents there...it's amazing how many countries there are...it seems every couple had a different country they were adopting from..no one else is adopting from eastern europe or Russia like us. We did meet a very nice couple adopting from China who gave us some great tips for when our sw visits our house...we hope everything moves quickly for them.

We also heard back from those that are going to write a recommendation on our behalf..and they all said yes, they would do it. Yeah!! Thank you, thank you guys!! We so appreciate your help. Tomorrow we have our fingerprinting appts, hubby has already picked up his criminal clearance report and I have ordered all of our birth and marriage certificates. Next up.. to make a doctor's appt for all so we can get that paperwork cleared and to renew our passports as they expire next summer...bummer!!

Every step is one step closer...I'm just beaming!!!

First Steps

We signed up for our preadopting class. Yeah!! It's just a few days after our anniversary...7 years this year..wow!! What an exciting way to celebrate...an afternoon in the city (San Francisco) talking about international adoption. This week I hope to finish the packet of questions (hubby needs to sit down and work on his as well) and then we can submit our application to our local adoption agency.