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!!

Passports renewed

Well, we took the kids and we all went and got our passport photos taken. What a funny ordeal. Hubby and I took our photos first so the kids could see how quick and easy it was and then it was to be their turn. Boy Wonder still wasn't sure and so I stood next to him but right out of view of the camera...he wouldn't smile and so his mugshot looks a lot like the children's pictures you see on the russian orphanage photolisting. Bubba would not even go near the backdrop to take a photo. The photographer suggested hubby put him on his shoulders and then duck down so his head wasn't in the shot...what comedy...poor hubby on the ground trying to avoid getting any bodyparts into Bubba's passport photo and trying to straighten Bubba up at the same time as he just wanted to lay his head down on top of daddy's head. Bubba's photo took more than all of ours combined and both kids photos look like the saddest and unhappiest children you had ever seen. Oh well...they only have their passports for 5 years.

Then off to the passport office to submit our paperwork. If your child is under 16 years of age both parents have to be present to sign off on getting the child's passport. I guess they want to be certain that one parent is not abducting the child from the country. There were only 5 people in the waiting room when we got there yet oddly enough the number I pulled put us at 15 people ahead of us...hmmmm. There were many school desks to sit at so the boys had a blast playing students, drawing pictures and eventually cleaning every desk with a pen wrapped up with a huge fake sunflower on the end of it they were using as a duster. They definately made the wait time go by so much faster...it's amazing how imaginative little kids can be.

Yeah..check off passport renewals...if all goes well our passports should be back to us sometime in November.

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!!!

So why adoption?

I've been asked this before. Why adopt when we have two biological children? I have always been drawn to children and spent a great portion of my life volunteering in some capacity with children and eventually children in the dependency court. Before we started our own family I was a CASA (court appointed special advocate) and had worked with my advocate siblings for 3 years. The youngest was just 6 months old when I first met her and during those 3 years the children were eventually placed in a foster adopt family. It was my first experience with adoption and witnessing this couple who wanted and loved these children so much...would do anything to be able to adopt them even though they had no biological ties...it was an incrediable experience and that left an unforgetable imprint on my heart.

I always imagined I would have 3 children and after having two boys I knew I would like to have a daughter so very much. The idea of adopting our daughter seemed and felt right. I never felt the need for her to be biologically mine. In my heart I always felt she would come to us through adoption and even though it is still scary to me it is also so exciting and I can't wait for the adventure of it all to begin and to finally hold her and meet her. I have been given so many gifts so many blessings in my life. The idea that I could give a child the blessing of a family, to be loved, to have a good life...it felt so good to me to be able to share in my blessings, my life with a child.

Adoption was something that took hubby a little longer to think over. He never questioned that he couldn't love and parent a child that wasn't biologically tied to him. He was more worried about how our adopted child would feel being the only adopted child in our family and when she was old enough to comprehend the emotions behind being adopted would she feel sad, would she feel abandoned by her birth parents and could we love her enough, could she feel our love enough to not have that knowledge break her spirit. It made me cry to even imagine such a situation. And I know in my heart it will all be okay...that no matter what our daughter's story holds that she will know that she is loved by both her families. And so I believe it is with faith and trust that we take this leap and know that this journey will change us all.

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.