Adoption Bullet List

Here are some things that you may not know are part of the international adoption process (I didn't).

*questioning notaries as to when their term expires.   The man at the bank today was offended that we asked him if he still had at least a year left on his term (license? whatever it's called.).  He assured me that he would renew again when it was time.  I assured him that we needed someone else to notarize our documents.  There are rules about these things!

*yelling to try to stop copy shop lady from taking out a staple when making copies of our documents.  We have strict orders to NOT REMOVE THE STAPLES when making copies.  She did.  Now I have to get another letter from my doctor.  Then I have to get that one notarized.  Oh, yeah, and I have to make sure that notary has at least a year left on his/her term, too. 

*signing 8 more documents in front of a notary public (with at least a year left on their term, in case you didn't catch that before), including power of attorney documents, financial statements, and papers vowing that those really are our passport photos.

*copying 23 pages of documents 5 times each.

*scanning 23 pages of documents to send to the agency to find out what all we need to redo before we go on to the next step.

The above steps were taken today.  Below you can see what we will do next.

*chat with our newly assigned country-specific social worker on Monday morning at 7:30am.  It will be interesting to hear her questions and thoughts.  We love our agency!

*wait agency approval of all those 23 pages of documents.  Redo anything that is not exactly right.  Rinse.  Repeat.  It sounds annoying, but we're happy to redo things at this stage to help things go smoothly later.

*send all the original documents to Austin, Texas, so the stamps of the notaries can be certified.  I haven't decided if we will hire someone to take them to the courthouse for us (yes, there are people who do just that!) or if we will do it the old-fashioned, patient way.

*cross our fingers that all those original documents get back to us safely and quickly.

*get fingerprinted.  Jon gets his done on June 6th.  I still have not received my appointment in the mail.

*forecast when the Department of Homeland Security will accept our fingerprints and homestudy and pre-approve us to bring an orphan into this country.  Cheer loudly when it arrives!

*hire an expediter to bring our huge dossier packet to our embassy in DC to get the certification of the notarization authenticated.  Clear as mud, right?  The notary verifies our signature.  The certifier verifies the notary.  The embassy verifies the certifier.  I really think there should be a Schoolhouse Rock song to explain!

*pay the same expediter to bring the dossier packet on to the embassy of our future child's country, where we hope they recommend us to their country.

Then, and only then, are we officially on the list for a child.   If it all goes smoothly (I do need my fingerprint appointment for that to happen!), we could be ready for a referral by July or August.  We still have no idea, though, how soon a referral will actually come or how soon we will travel after our referral.  We do know that we are closer than we have been and that each step brings us just a wee bit closer to our new little one.