Where are we in the process?

So the number one question we have been getting is how long will the process take. Our answer is one we are used to giving… “We have no idea”. It is very hard to compare this go around with our first adoption. One could think… last time we sent our I600-A (form starting the process to get approval from immigration services to bring a child into the county) on May 24th. This time we mailed the paperwork on March 24th. So can we expect a referral 2 months earlier than last time? No. There are too many variables. You never know when you are going to hit a roadblock in the process. Plus last time our papers were only in Russia for 7 days when we got Blake’s referral information. We have to expect that wait to be much longer this time.

On March 19th, we had our post placement report visit with our caseworker to get everything prepared for Blake’s one year post placement report. We then stuck around the office for a couple more hours and had our first visit for our updated home study. We have gotten a lot of paperwork done already: Pet records; well water testing; state fingerprints; FBI fingerprints; employment letters; tax return information; plus several other things. We have to have medical information on each of us that isn’t more than one year old so that means Brady, Madison, and I will probably have to make an appointment for that soon. Justin should be good at this point because of his CDL physical and Blake had a physical for preschool this year. So we have a couple of things to keep us busy and then we wait for paperwork to return from a number of different people.

There is a lot more to this process of course but the bottom line is what we grew accustomed to. We work frantically to get our paperwork done so that nothing is waiting on us. Then we wait and wait for others to process their paperwork. Then we repeat that process over and over again.
Also to answer another common question… We are open to a boy or girl 36 months or younger. We are not requesting one or the other. Brady doesn’t have preference. Madison says she wants to be the only girl some days then on other days she says she really wants a sister to play with and talk to and to annoy Brady with her. Blake just says he wants to be big big. He wants to be big like Brady. He just wants the brother/sister to be littler than him.

I have set some personal growth goals to accomplish during this process. One is to work on my control issues and my lack of patience. I have promised myself that I will not spend every minute I can getting on the internet trying to make sure there isn’t something we are missing in the process. I have promised myself that I will not just look for the end of this process and being united with our son or daughter. I will try my best to enjoy the journey along the way and not take each day for granted. Please feel free to remind me of these goals and hold me accountable to them later on when I need to refocus!