Holidays and waiting

We just put my in-laws on a plane yesterday. They stayed with us for almost a week for THanksgiving. Always an interesting experience. And now that things are quiet again, we continue to wait. We have done all we can at this point and are at the mercy of others. We are waiting for those who have agreed to write us references to get them mailed in to the social worker. We are waiting for the states to mail our official criminal background checks in. Judith (our social worker) has already written most of the homestudy at this point and has to hold off on finishing it until she receives the above mentioned paperwork. If all goes well the homestudy will be finalized by the end of the year and we can submit our I600A to the US government for approval to bring an orphan into the country. That usually takes a month or two. Once that is in hand, we can officially send all of our documents to China and wait for a referral. People who had every submitted to China in April on 2005 are receiving their referrals now. Which means if we can get ours in by Feb or March, there is a good chance we may have her home for xmas 2006. Then again with bird flu, earthquakes and politics, who knows....

Final homestudy meeting today!

We had our last homestudy interview today. Yay.
Now all we need is to get our references all in and wait for all the criminal background check forms to arrive. Once all that is together, the homestudy should be finished in another week or so.
Once that is complete, we can send in the INS paperwork and wait some more :)
And we have one more visit to the notary coming up to get forms signed off that we don't own guns and other such fun things.
At least it is progress....
The in-laws are coming tomorrow for turkey day so i will be busy cooking and entertaining. That should distract me for a few days anyhow :)

finished our holiday cards today...

aren't they cute? This is Pedro and Megan, our lovely, but mischievous dogs.
Nothing to do with the baby, but I could not resist posting the photo :)

and yet more paperwork....

We got the forms for the last of the criminal background checks yesterday. So hopefully Bill will get that done and in the mail today. You have to get a criminal background check for every state you have lived in for the past 10 years. Meaning I got to do NH and MA, and Bill did NH, MA and Indiana. They all have different forms, different rules and of course all want their own fees as well.
We need to get all of that paper work back from each state before they can complete our homestudy.
It is also time to start gathering our references from those who have agreed to write them. I need to call everyone so they have the address to mail it to and hopefully they can get them out before the holidays when everyone gets really busy.
We faxed our bios over to the social worker today as well, so that part is done.
I also mailed the guardian letter to my brother to sign. Normally no big deal, except that he is in the peace corps in Albania and the mail isn't that reliable....SO it will likely be a month before we get that back from him (assuming it isn't lost and we have to send it again) and then we can forward it to my sister-in-law in CO to sign it as well.
They don't call it the Paper Chase for nothing...

Things are moving along rapidly, but it's never fast enough. Especially knowing that once we get all the paperwork officially mailed to China, it will be 6-12 months before we get our referral.....

Adoption application mailed!

So I finished the financial forms last night and we are putting the adoption application in the mail today. So far we have spent $4000 and we have not gotten into any of the government fees. Yipes. But it will all be worth it in the end when we meet our baby.
The other thing I am mailing today is a letter to my brother. He is in the peace corps in Albania. We need to appoint guardians as a part of the adoption process, and both need to sign the same form. So we will send it to him first, so if it gets lost a few times it's ok.
Now all there is to do is wait for the last homestudy visit on Tuesday morning.

Progress on the paper chase...

Today I wrote my autobiography for the social worker. It's kinda intimidating to put your life story (and a brief version at that) on paper for someone else to read. It ended up being 4 pages long, and kind of meandering through different aspects of my childhood and adult life. Hopefully it gives her an idea of who I am and where I am going in addition to where I've been.
I also got the MA state criminal background check forms notarized and mailed today.
The other thing I got accomplished was to sit with an investment broker and sort out some of my retirement funds. I had stock certificates sitting around from old jobs, as well as multple retirement accounts at different places. I have the forms now to get them all rolled into one account so I can actually see what I have. Hopefully the stock is worth something so we can use the cash for the agency fees that we need to mail this week.
Now my last task of the night-finish the adoption agency application and get that mailed.

First homestudy meeting

We had out first meeting with our social worker this morning for our homestudy. She is very nice and laid back. She took a tour of our house and then we sat and talked for almost 2 hours. She wanted to know about our neighborhood, our plans for daycare, our philosophy on discipline, how we met and how are marriage is... Our next meeting is 11/22 to go over our faimly history and financial stuff. In the meantime, we have to get her our autobiographies and all of our financial info together. We also are planning on submitting the adoption agency application this weekend as well, so we have some work to do :)

random musings

Ii told a few people at work today (including my boss) that we are in the process of adopting. I had clued them in very little up to this point on our TTC journey so they were a bit surprised to find that I had been dealing with infertility so long. The whole thing came up when we were looking through a catalog with lots of really nice jewelry in it. There was this great necklace that had 2 charms on it. One charm was engraved with "mother and daughter" and the other with the chinese characters for mother and daughter. I mentioned that I really wanted to buy that, and ended up explaining why.... The reactions were all so supportive and positive. A little surprised, but definitely all good vibes. Now I just have to order my necklace :) (although I will wait until after all the adoption fees are paid since things are going to be tight for a couple of months.)
Tomorrow brings the first home study visit, which has got me more excited than anything.
We also got more paperwork in the mail today that needs to be notarized. I get the feeling that my local bank is going to get to know me pretty well over the next couple of months of getting things signed and notarized. This weekend is the time we decided to finish the adoption agency's application. The only thing we really have left is to write out all of our financial info. Have to go look up life insurance policies, how much equity is in our house, what our retirement funds are at, etc.
I imagine that after all this is submitted and we are faced with many months of waiting and nothing to do, I'll miss the whole paper chase aspect of the adoption process. So I guess I should just enjoy it as it comes. Heck, soon we will be so busy with the baby, we'll have forgotton all about the amount of work it took to bring her home.

The homestudy begins...

I just got off the phone with our social worker Judith. I dropped off our homestudy application first thing this morning on my way to work. She seems really nice and has 3 adopted children of her own (2 domestic, 1 international) and has been doing homestudies for 18 years. So not only has she seen it all, but she has been on both sides of the process as well. She's coming by Friday at 8AM (in 36 hours....) I am actually looking forward to meeting her, despite the fact that my house is still a disaster and I won't be able to get it done before she gets here. I mentioned that fact to her, and she just laughed and said she is skeptical when a house is actually really clean.... Good thing, because with 6 cats and 2 dogs, there is no such thing is really clean.
So tomorrow will be frantic running around trying to make it at least presentable.
We also got our adoption agency application in the mail today and I started filling that one out. We get to gather all of our financial records this weekend and actually figure out our net worth. That should be interesting. With the house, student loans and cars, it'll be scary to see how much debt we are in. At least we don't carry any credit card debt.....

and I even did my yoga today, what more can I ask of myself? :)

Preparations and paperwork

I spent the morning cleaning and organizing the house in preparation for our home study. We just moved into this house at the end of May and while we are mostly unpacked, there are all the little things. There are boxes still lying around attracting large amounts of dust and cat hair. There are those things that you can't part with but don't really know where to put. How did we acquire so much stuff????
My goal for the week is to find homes for all of our things and to get rid of things we don't have any use for. Easier said than done since I'm a total packrat.
I also started to look for a scrapbook cover for our adoption life book. I'll put some of these entries in there, as well as photos and momentos from the entire adoption process.

Today is also the day to get some paperwork notarized so I can get the homestudy application officially in the mail.
It's a perfect New England fall day, so I am going to get myself outside for some fresh air and exercise.

......

I had a nice relaxing afternoon with a facial and shiatsu massage. I also managed to get my errands run (mostly). I did manage to find a scrapbook I liked for our adoption lifebook, so I will start on that soon as well.

I have decided to get back to practicing yoga daily. My back needs it and it is so good for relaxation. I just finished 1 hour of practice and I just feel so much better. Now if I can just convince myself tomorrow that 1 hour of yoga is much better for me than 1 more hour of television.....

Tomorrow I officially submit the homestudy application. I am going to drop it by the social worker's office in the morning because it is just as easy as taking it to the post office.

an end and a beginning

Our journey to our first child began almost exactly 2 years ago in November 2003. We had just decided to stop birth control and see what happened. I was concerned of getting pregnant too soon because I was training to run the Boston Marathon in April 2004 and did not want to miss the race. Silly me. The race came and went. In April we started making a concerted effort to BD during my fertile time.
In July I got a positive pg test, only to get my period a few days later. This is something the medical community calls a chemical pregnancy, although why they don't just call it the miscarriage it is I'll never understand. We were devastated, but hopeful that we would conceive again soon. November 2004, and the same thing happened. Positive test, bleeding several days later. I went to see a specialist to find out what was going on. We both underwent testing and they found nothing wrong. In April 2005 I went for more invasive testing to ensure that my uterus was normal and my fallopian tubes were clear, and all was deemed good. Still nothing....
I did 6 months of acupuncture and herbs since Western medicine didn't have an answer. While I felt relaxed, still no pregnancy.
In May I graduated from veterinary school and got a real job. Friends told me, "now that you are done with school and less stressed, you'll get pregnant for sure." In September of 2005, we saw a reproductive endocrinologist at one of the fancy fertility centers. He was very hopeful that we would be able to successfully have a biological child, but not without the help of drugs. So I went through daily bloodwork, ultrasounds, and injections as well as IUI to increase our chances. The side effects were aweful and the emotional aspect 10 x worse with the added expectation that it would definitely work this time...
On Sunday I got a positive pregnancy test and we were thrilled. I called the dr on Monday morning, but the nurse said I could not come in for blood work until Friday. It was a very rough week of waiting, but Friday finally came. When I got the call that my levels were not high enough for a viable pregnancy, I decided I had had it. No more treatments, no more drugs. I had gained 10 pounds this cycle due to stress, lack of time and energy to exercise and the bloating from the drugs.
I wanted my life back. I wanted to be able to have a drink now and then. And I wanted to be able to have sex with my husband when I wanted, not when the drs told us to.
So we stopped.
I told myself we were unable to have a biological child and mentally moved on to adoption.
I had been researching adoption for months. I had read lots of books and even found an agency I liked. Bill was so set on "having one of our own" that he just hadn't come to terms with the idea of adoption. After our treatment cycle failing, he finally agreed to go ahead with the adoption process. We had attended a meeting with the social worker over the summer and our state mandated preadoption seminar in October. I had all the paperwork on hand and ready to go.
We had also brought up the idea with our families a month or two ago now. They were a touch disappointed at the idea of us not having a biological child, but were supportive of our decision. They are starting to get excited about their first grandchild....
So today we are finishing the application to our home study agency. Tomorrow I will take it to the notary to get the signatures certified and we will mail it along with the first of many large checks. Who would have thought wanting to start a family was such an ordeal? I always thought I would just want a child and then just have one. But now I know there is a little girl waiting to be born in China that is our baby girl. And all we have to do is spend months filling out paperwork saying we are good enough to be her parents. And then wait, and wait and wait. And then we will get that phone call saying we can go get her. And that is how our family began....
I feel a sense of closure now, and a great feeling of excitement and hope as we begin this new journey.