We're Expecting! (Sort of.)

I mentioned a couple months ago that Hubz and I were considering international adoption to grow our family.  At that time, we had met with one agency and were meeting with another soon.  We met with the 2nd agency and loved them.   Deciding who to bring along this journey as your navigators, your advisors, the captain of your ship so to speak, is not a decision that we took lightly.  We spent a good bit of time researching the agency, speaking with them about their processes and personnel, attending a conference they sponsored, etc.  We feel like we did our due diligence and earlier last month we submitted our 1st payment and signed contract.  We are so thankful to finally be starting on this journey and, even though we expect bumps in the road, we know who the real captain of our ship is and we have faith that His hands will guide us through.

Now begins the fun part for us - paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork!  There is a saying that when you're adoptiong you're 'paper pregnant' and now we understand where that comes from. 

Here is a quick breakdown of the process for us:

1. Sign contract, submit 1st payment to agency.
2. Complete home study which consists of in-office interview, home visit, family history, personal references, financial/budget assessment, physicals, state/local background checks, CPS background check, veterinary checks, characteristics of child we would like to adopt, etc.
3. Compile information for dossier - this is the package that is delivered to the country's government agency to allow them to learn about us and hopefully approve us to adopt from their country.  This step includes further fingerprinting and more paperwork.
4. The next step (once the country agrees that we're acceptable to parent one of their children) is to wait for the country to match us with a child.  There are way too many waiting children that may be somewhat older and at risk of aging out of the orphanage or have special needs (ranging from mild, i.e. allergies, birthmarks to more severe, i.e., down syndrome).  We are hoping there will be a child on the special needs/waiting list that speaks to our hearts and fits into our family.
5. After being matched with a child we will travel to meet the child and complete additional paperwork to begin the actual process of bringing them home.

We are just beginning to fill out paperwork for our home study and we need to submit our fingerprints for an FBI criminal background check.  That check is for our dossier which is compiled after the home study, but it could take 6 weeks or better to process so we were advised to submit it now.

Here is our to-do list for this week:

• Submit fingerprints and forms to FBI (we were fingerprinted last week at the local police station).
• Sign and submit forms for CPS (Child Protective Services) check to agency.
• Get passport photos taken.
• Ask friends/co-workers to write letters of reference for us.  We need 3 from non-relatives.
• Complete financial/budget assessment paperwork and family history forms so agency can schedule our home visit.  (We had our in-office interview last week.)

I think that's enough for 1 week!  Up next, scheduling appointments for our physicals, getting fingerprinted for state background checks and contacting local police departments for local background checks. 

We'll keep you updated on our journey and our progress down this long road.  And, I didn't mention this before and you might be wondering where are we adopting from.  Confidentiality is so important in this process and we've been warned about not offering too much information so for now, I'll only say that it's an Eastern European country.