MIKE VIEWS THE BLOG

Mike viewed the blog for the first time. I realize that there wasn't really much to see yet but I couldn't wait to figure out how to download photos before showing it to him. He definitely looked surprised and actually told me, "This is awesome, what a great idea!" Well now that I'm full of myself, and I figured out how to download photos, I figure I'd bring everyone up to speed. Why a blog? Life happens! It is just a really neat way to let family and friends in on whats new.

How's the adoption process going? Its going, but not as fast as we would like. What is the process like? Picture yourself as the minute hand on the face of a clock that is just not moving! And the wait has just started.

Right now we are in what is called the paperchase. The paperchase entails gathering documents from birth certificates, physical exams, financial statements, to petitioning the US Immigration office (USCIS) for permission to adopt internationally. While the gathering of paper takes place we are having a homestudy prepared. The homestudy basically helps prepare our home and ourselves for parenthood. The homestudy consists of four (4) visits with a social worker. We have had our first homestudy visit(10/18/05) and are waiting the call to schedule the next. Because we live in New York, we also need to be cleared by NY State. That takes about 4 weeks. We are hopefully one to two weeks away from approval.

If you are not confused yet you will be soon. I call it adoption chaos! Yes chaos! After we are approved by NY State, have an approved homestudy, we still have to submit our homestudy to US Immigrations and then guess what we do next? We wait.......Wait for what? A fingerprint appointment. Once we are fingerprinted , it takes anywhere up to two (2) months to receive approval from USCIS.

Are we done yet? Wish! Next all of the paperwork, homestudy, and Immigration approval must be sent to the Chinese Consulate in NY for document authentication. Are we done yet ? NO!!!!!!!But we will be close. Once we receive everything back from the Chinese Consulate we will send it to our agency for translation and then its off to China which is called Dossier to China (DTC)where it will be Logged in (LID) at the Chinese Children Adoption Affairs office and receive a date.

Thats when the real wait begins.

It takes about six (6) to eight (8) months to receive a referral. The referral consists of information given to you on your child for the first time. About two (2) months later you travel to China for gotcha day!! The stay in China lasts about two (2) weeks and then we travel back to the US as a family:)

Where are we in all of this? At the beginning, but that is the beauty of this blog. We have a whole journey to share and experience together.

Kim