Checked off the list

Jay's Spring Break was this past week, and we had the chance to get lots of adoption related items checked off our list.

1) Health Physicals and Blood Tests. The numerous forms that the doctor needed to fill out for foster care licensing and for our dossier are now signed and notarized.

2) Psychological Evaluation. Jay and I are pleased to announce that we're both in fine mental health, and most importantly its in writing, signed, and notarized.

3) Local Background Checks: We now have documented by the local police station that we have no criminal records. Unfortunately, this paperwork still needs to be notarized. The police station's secretary has less than a year left on her notarization stamp, and for the dossier, a notary has to have at least a year left on their stamp. (We have no idea why). So we're waiting a few weeks until she gets her new stamp.

4) Fingerprinting: Once taken digitally for Foster Care, once taken with ink for the FBI by our local police station, and once taken for INS on this really high tech looking machine. Funny story: the INS only has a few sites throughout the U.S. in which to get fingerprinted. The closest site to our house is in Hammond, Indiana. So we drove the 2+ hours north to Hammond and found the site in an abandoned strip mall located behind an abandoned K-Mart. Not exactly the place we'd expected government offices to be located! We found it humorous so decided to take some pictures:

We're almost done with the paperwork on our end. That's a nice feeling! We're approaching a waiting period while papers get processed here and there.

The Paper Pregnancy

We met with our Social Worker, Diane, last night and found out some more details. We also learned why adoption is often nicknamed a 'paper pregnancy.' The amount of paper shuffling that will go on over the next few months is ridiculous! For example, we have to get certified copies of our birth certificates (makes sense). Then we have to send those to Springfield, where they will staple a piece of paper to the top stating that it is definitely a certified copy. Next it goes to Chicago to be translated into French by the 'official' translators. From there is goes to the Haitian Consulate where it will be further authenticated, before we send it to Haiti. And if at any point anyone removes a staple from it, its considered invalid and we have to start all over.

We also have realized that a large amount of the fees for an adoption are spent simply because government agencies don't communicate with one another very well. For example, the 3 different sets of fingerprints we have to have taken at 3 different locations (one place that is 3 hours away from us), because you know, our fingerprints may change each time :-P Or how when we return from Haiti, the Department of Immigration will already have issued a certificate of citizenship. However, the Social Security Office doesn't recognize their fellow government dept's certificate, and thus we'll have to go through the courts and ~$1000 to get a different certificate stating that the child is indeed a US citizen. Lots of hoops to jump through! Honestly, we all were giggling a bit at some of the steps that have to take place!

Diane is amazing and we're really excited to get to work with her. She seems like she's going to try to make the entire paperwork process as smooth as she can for us. Time line wise we're hoping to have all of our paperwork (Dossier) sent off to Haiti by the end of the summer. Once the Dossier is in Haiti we should receive a child referral very quickly. Once we accept a referral we then play the waiting game with the courts in Haiti.

I'm excited to get started on all of this paperwork in front of me. Organizing and filling out forms are actually some of my favorite type of tasks so that's a definite positive! I'll add more details in a later post.