waiting and waiting

We're all done with our home study and just waiting for our agent to send it to us..... it's been maybe 2 weeks now... I don't want to bug her too much, though... ugh! It's hard to wait! We're not even officially waiting yet! We have a lot of our dossier docs ready to go... COME ON! ugh....

this round of paperwork is DONE

As of today, 09-04-08, we are done with this whole round of paperwork. Yesterday, we went to Milwaukee to get fingerprinted for the orphan visa. Tomorrow, I will send off the last bit of paperwork for this stage and then we will wait for our home study to be approved, then we will wait to hear from CHSFS as to what the next step is (sending the dossier to Ethiopia, I think). So, maybe within this month, we will be PAPER PREGNANT....

Our Final Home Study visit was 08-21-08.

This time, our adoption agent came to our house! Needless to say, we made sure everything was clean and that all our smoke detectors were working and that all the outlets had safety plugs in them, etc… Our house was really already baby-proofed, but we just had to make sure! I remember our agent telling us that she likes unflavored, black coffee and unsweetened iced tea, so I made my favorite coffee (Organic, fair trade Lovebuzz) and I made fresh brewed iced tea and Steve went to the store and bought herbed cherve, some other kind of fancy cheese, and fancy crackers and iced ginger cookies. It might have been a little over the top, but we wanted to be good hosts.

Julie came over and we gave her a tour of the house. She made us feel very comfortable and she complimented us on how we decorated and the colors we chose for our walls. Then wee sat down and got to business.

We talked about the essay questions we had to answer for CHSFS regarding our cultural backgrounds and traditions we practice and how we will incorporate our new daughter’s culture into our lives.

We discussed how to deal with racism that our whole family will face. Steve thought we should take the “turn the other cheek” approach. I disagreed with this. Honestly, I think we will teach our children to deal with mean or ignorant comments by coming up with a calm, smart comment to say back to them, which points out the offender’s ignorance. I don’t know if this is the right approach or not. Julie reassured us that we will learn together how to deal with issues like this. We have zero experience dealing with racist comments now because we have never had to face them. We will grow and learn together as a family.

All we have left to do for this round of paperwork are our autobiographies, statement of net worth and medical exams.

Our Third Home Study visit was 08-06-2008.

During this home study session, we discussed some of the more official paperwork that we need to complete, especially the application for an orphan visa, the I600A. Our adoption agent had us fill out a sample form so that we would not get it returned to us for being completed incorrectly. We also went over other paperwork we need to complete for the home study, including the statement of net worth and the autobiographies.

I know we talked about other important things, but I just can’t remember what those things were! That’s what happens when I put off updating my blog for a month!

On another note, we had a big birthday party for our daughter Maia on Saturday! She is 2 years old. The party was a lot of fun for everyone.