Keeping my head on straight

This process is seriously so wild! We wait and wait and WAIT... and then frantically hurry hurry HURRY... and then wait again! This has been a crazy week as we've been talking back and forth with our home study agency and our placing agency by email and phone, stay up late making corrections and then even up to the last minute we were making changes/additions in order to get it approved.

We have a few little things to get done now that our home study is approved (I won't bore you with our list - what I'm about to explain I'm sure is boring enough!), but the main thing is that Friday, once we get the notarized copies we can send out our I-800a (the form from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services - our "Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country"). The process of getting our I-800a approved can easily take four months. We have to have it back in three months and three weeks - by October 16th to be exact - in order to ensure that our medical paperwork doesn't expire. If it does, we will need to get it redone, which means arranging a notary to be at our doctor's office again, getting them county certified at the county courthouse again, sending them off to the state again, and then off again (through the courier which costs $90 plus $20 per document) to the consulate. All of which just equals delays, which no one adopting is a big fan of!

So the bottom line is - please pray that we get our approval before October 16th! :)

It's so hard to explain a process that I only understand myself one step at a time. There are times when it can feel overwhelming because there are SO many details and everything must be done very precisely and is it's all time sensitive. That's why I've been SO thankful to finally find a (private) online community that we can connect with - where everyone in the group is adopting from China and are at the same stage as us. They get it... and they are like a group of informed adoption cheerleaders. We all have one goal and that's getting kids into families, no matter what we have to go through (but it certainly helps to go through it together)!