I'm hopeful that I can be mailing a huge packet to our Family Adoption Consultants (our home study agency) sometime in the next few days and that they will finally allow us to schedule our home visits with our social worker. We will be having three altogether.
So far, we have:
1. Had physicals and had lab work done by our doctor and forms completed for both our home study paperwork and our China Dossier. Our Dossier paperwork will need to be notarized at some point before we send in our Dossier (which is still months away).
2. Gotten reference letters from 3 friends and 2 family members to verify that we are capable of undertaking the care of an adopted child (we will need to two more letters from a co-worker, neighbor, or pastor for our China Dossier).
3. Requested letters from our employers to document our positions, salaries, and performance. We will also need notarized copies of these letters for our China Dossier.
4. Gotten our fingerprints taken (and we'll have to this another time down the road).
5. Printed our credit reports and our credit scores.
6. Read 150 pages of adoption education articles (12 hours of adoption education training to go once we officially start our home study).
7. Made copies of birth certificates, marriage license, drivers licenses, social security cards, and tax forms. We will eventually have to get new, certified, notarized copies of our birth certificates and marriage license for our Dossier
8. Completed 2 different financial statement forms with every detail of our net worth and monthly expenses. More of this to come for China, as well...
9. Had the pediatrician complete forms on the health of the girls.
10. Submitted a request to Maryn's orthopaedic doctor to provide a summary of her treatment for hip dysplasia.
11. We each have written an autobiography by responding to about a billion questions about our growing up years, marriage, parenting experience, thoughts on parenting an adopted child and information about our community. Mine is 12 pages long - single spaced and took forever!
12. We each have completed a checklist of the topics we feel we need to discuss with the social worker during the home study in order to prepare us for situations we may experience raising an adopted child.
13. We have read and signed off on many, many pages of information about the adoption process, etc.
Of course, as was expected, we have run into some snags along the way! : )
1. I was informed on Monday that there is ANOTHER form that the pediatrician needs to fill out even though the other form has been mailed to the agency since early June. After taking that form in this week to be completed, I found out today that our pediatrician is out of the office until July 17 and that, even though the forms are complete, they can't be signed until then.
2. My doctor's office's severe difficulty with being able to perform the requested (and highlighted in bright pink highlighter) lab work and complete forms completely (among other things) had me doing the "stay calm" deep breathing that can normally only be brought upon by Maryn or Brynlee during the umpteenth tantrum of the day. On a positive note, the doctor did NOT sign the form without a notary present which is something I had nightmares of happening and I do now have all of the necessary information completed! I am just grateful that I was a healthy person trying to get this information and that I was not actually trying to be diagnosed with an illness or get information about my health. And, I have reached the final straw of motivation to switch doctor's offices for real this time!!
3. As of right now, I have no employer reference turned in and have had no contact from my employer regarding my request for this - which was sent the second week of June - despite that I know that the person I have been contacting has been into work many days since then and has received emails, voicemail, and snail mail regarding it. I guess I'll be making a surprise visit to work one day soon.
4. Jeremy got a new job for next school year - it's a huge blessing and we are very excited because he will no longer be traveling an hour to work each day. This has caused a few slowdowns, as well, though, with the adoption process. We need to document our insurance coverage for our home study. Our insurance will be with his old employer until the end of August. Then, we will be on private insurance for 3 months because his new job doesn't provide it the first 3 months. Then, in December, it will change again. So, filling out these forms is a little confusing. Also, the new job means that the home study cannot be finalized until his new job starts August 19 or it will require us submitting multiple other forms and paying multiple other fees.
5. Our computer hard-drive crashed during this process. I think it is self-explanatory how this might cause some issues! We are working on getting the information restored (hopefully!) and are thankful that I have a work laptop we can use as a back-up in the meantime.
6. Using another computer, all of Jeremy's work on his autobiography was lost (despite the fact that the file name shows up on the computer, it is unable to be opened). So, he had to start over from scratch when he was halfway finished.
7. Our agency uses a website called My Adoption Portal System to manage all of this paperwork. Well, MAPS was shut down over the weekend and when I went to log on to it on Monday, I got an error message telling me: "There is no program assigned to you currently, please contact your agency". And, apparently when they pull up my file, nothing that has been submitted shows up. All of the forms have reset themselves. I am still waiting for them to get back to me about whether this can be fixed without me going in to each form again and completing the required tasks and re-signing . Insert the "stay calm" deep breathing here!!!
Well, at least there are only 7 items on the list of setbacks and there are 12 things we have completed. We are also ahead of the game with many things already ready for the Dossier and our I-800A (another document we have to submit, this time to the US government), as well. I am hopeful that the agency will allow us to schedule our home visits based on the things we do have completed so that we can get some "next steps" done while we wait for some of the straggling paperwork to come in.
If you have managed to read through this entire list of un-interesting tasks, you should be rewarded. Let me do so by sharing with you a video of a song I heard on my mara-only drive this afternoon (as opposed to the "Ten in the Bed and the Little One Said, 'Roll Over' on Repeat which is my typical car-ride accompaniment).
I heard the song, One Drop by Plum for the first time today and found it to be so inspirational to me about this whole adoption process. I have no idea how new or old this song is, which I realize is very sad. As I said, I prefer "Roll Over" to screaming "MOMMMMMYYYYY" and so we usually go that route. Anyway....
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