Our home study came in the mail today! USCIS has cashed our check!
It is so exciting to be accomplishing each step that I am not sure if the waiting once our dossier is done will be as easy. At least I feel that right now we are in control of how fast things are moving along. Once we turn in our dossier, it is out of our hands.....literally.
Our homestudy is in the mail.
We are getting fingerprinted for our police clearance this Thursday.
Things are moving right along.
We got the rough draft of our home study last night and after a couple of minor changes, I am excited to say that I think it is done! Our agency looked it over too, and was able to suggest some changes to the part of the home study that discussed us adopting from a disruption to make it more understandable when translated into Russian.
I did mail off for immigration, but after reading on Frua, I am a bit concerned. I mailed off one personal check for the immigration fee and fingerprints instead of two separate money orders like suggested by some of the families on Frua.
Oh well, I can't change things now....I can just pray that the officer accepts what I have mailed.
Well, I am a little disappointed that I haven't seen our home study rough draft yet, though I am told it is coming. Maybe this week. I do know however that our home study agency is working on getting us a copy of their license and a letter that states that their license is non-expiring. For those of you that do not know, this is a document that is needed for a Ukraine dossier and probably most dossiers when you adopt internationally.
I am toying around with the idea of sending in our I-600A without our home study. Since some of you said that you got to get your fingerprints done before hand, I wonder if this would be true for California? When we adopted from Russia, we had to wait until we had our home study, but at this point, doing something feels better than doing nothing, even if it doesn't get us any further along.
I've heard it through the grapevine that a rough draft of our home study has been written. I hope to see it later this week.
Also, does anyone know if there is a time counter that counts up instead of down? I would like to see how many days from when we started this process until we bring our son home. I wonder if it will be shorter or longer than a 9 month pregnancy. Our last three adoptions took 8 months, 10 months, and 5 1/2 months.
Oh, and a big thank you to all of you who left comments on John's post. :)
Our social worker visit couldn't have gone better last night. :)
It is so silly how I tend to get a little nervous the day of these visits, when we are old pros at the home study process. Between adopting three times before and having four post-placement visits, they shouldn't phase me anymore. But still, I found myself doing a little bit of extra cleaning. You guys know what I am talking about.
It got real when the part came when she asked us what kind of child or children we wanted to adopt. You know questions like, "Are you hoping to adopt a boy or a girl?" "What age range would you consider?" "Have you thought about birth order?" "What disabilities if any are you willing to consider?" "What made you decide on that?"
The visit ended with her looking at the room we are preparing for this child. We have already done little things to make this child feel welcome into our home. Sveta wanted to make sure that the blanket we got for his crib would be nice and cozy. William wanted to make sure that the bed was fixed properly. The girls have dug up baby toys that I had given them to play with when they played babies. Jonny helped me to pick out the comforter. All of the kids have helped me to move furniture.
Sure we still have a long way to go, but little by little, it is coming along great. I might get brave and paint a little mural of dinosaurs on the wall like I did for the boys' room upstairs.
Each day, we are one step closer.
On a final note, I wanted to thank my Aunt Tanya. Right before the visit last night, she called to ask about when we thought we would travel. She was considering coming up to help with the kids while we are gone. She doesn't know, but she brought tears to my eyes because she helped in answering a huge prayer request I've had --- That we find childcare for when we are gone.
I went shopping at Costco the other day and bought two more things. They were very cute and only six or seven dollars each. I promise to stop buying clothes for awhile, at least until we submit our dossier.
BTW, if our homestudy visit is tomorrow, how long do you think it will take until we get the finished product so I could submit our I-600? How long was yours?
We are almost done with our home study paperwork. Just the medicals are left, and we are getting them done in the morning. I've written a check for the remaining balance of our home study fees and the social worker is scheduled to come out Monday evening. Everything is going very quickly this time, and I anticipate having our home study finished by the end of November. Much quicker than last time around.
Today I happened to run into someone from church that I knew would be great to ask about a crib. Turns out she had one in the garage that she was more than happy to give me. I was very thankful because now we can have it set up for when the social worker comes to visit.
I wanted to mention that I have another blog about our family's smiles and trials, so please come check it out. It's link is under my other blogs.
