Where are We at Now?

Now that I've given you the background that led up to our news, you are probably wondering how far into this adoption we are.

After we narrowed down the country and chose the agency, we began the pre-application process and were quickly accepted. We then started the actual application with our agency and were officially accepted into their program.

Last week we received our orientation packet, and our agency walked us through it on a conference call. The packet included our contract and all other documents we had to sign for our agency.

We are now awaiting our homestudy notebook and our dossier packet. Both should arrive next week, I expect. I am eager to get started on these because it will give me some "work" to do. I already feel like I'm just waiting, and we haven't even entered the "waiting" stage.

A homestudy is conducted by a social worker who visits our home and interviews us, together and individually. Our notebook will include some questions for us to complete and some documents that we will need to gather.

The dossier, also known as the "paper chase", is a collection of official documents that we put together for our agency to send to China. It will include our birth certificates, marriage certificate, fingerprinting, background checks, and I don't know what else yet.

That should keep me busy for a bit.

We will work on both the homestudy and dossier at the same time. We were told to expect the two to be completed in 2-4 months. I'm hoping two, but preparing for four because there will be some waiting on government agencies that I cannot predict or control.

Once those are both completed, our agency will send our packet to China. That's when the waiting begins.