On August 21st, Michael and I made the decision officially to adopt a child. We chose Russia after doing extensive research. This we realized soon enough would be no small task, yet everything Michael and I have ever chosen to do has been an uphill, challenging road. "Nothing good comes easy"
We made this decision at our favorite spot in making very difficult decisions, Disneyland Resort.
This is going to be an extremely interesting path. With words I heard from another parent this is truly a Paper Pregnancy. Michael and I received the home study documents, about 30 pages or more to fill out and send out to the FBI, friends, and family members. We have done our fingerprinting, we are ordering our original copies of our important legal certificates and we are getting to know the UPS and FEDEX people very well.
Shortly there after, we received our first dossier papers. OH MY GOODNESS!!!! "Simply breathe" has been my motto following the large pile of documents to be filled out, notarized, and apostilled. "Simply breathe". After some serious funding and an amount of paper work to give us a temporary full time job beyond the our normal work, we have been busy organizing and preparing for three interviews next week with our social worker. I have been told by many this is a serious amount of time, commitment, and patience when it comes to getting through the beginning process. The mid part is the waiting for a referral and the last part is the first trip to meet our new child and the second trip for three weeks to stand before a Russian court judge, to bond with our child, and travel a bit of Russia to gain more knowledge of our child's culture.
At the moment we have been advised to create the children's room with furniture and the house must be completely child proofed along with an emergency ladder, fire extinguishers, carbon monoxide detectors, gates, and smoke alarms in every room. Whew!
"Simply breathe".
The children's room brought us to a higher level of reality and we were amazed that this might actually be happening. This didn't even include the 15 or so books my mother has sent me on parenting and cute one's for the child. Bottom line, our book shelf for the child is full.
We are still going through beginning mountains, (not bumps in the road), however hopefully after the 4th time sending in Michael's passport, it will be returned so we can further our paper work.
Off to organize paper work.
No comments:
Post a Comment