Our Home Study finally got approved by Adoption Services!! So Friday I went and picked it up and arranged to go to our lawyers office to get it notarized. I sat in the lawyers office for three hours while they made seven copies of several documents and then signed and put their seal on every single page (the assistant said it was almost 500 pages of signing and sealing). I'm sure they love me there. Now some might be thinking "three hours at the lawyers office? Why didn't you leave and come back Monday morning to pick it up?", but all the adoptive moms out there are thinking "I totally get that!". See, as adoptive moms our paperwork represents our children, and we don't just want to leave it with anyone! I've actually laid awake at night thinking "I should go get our adoption file and keep it by the bed just in case there's a house fire in the middle of the night". Sounds crazy, right? It's no more crazy than after we had our first newborn. The first few nights after we put him in his crib in his own room I actually slept with the baby monitor on my my pillow until Kevin convinced me that no matter how close I had it to my ear I would never hear him STOP breathing. So this mothering journey, whether with my biological kids, foster babes, or adopted children is just one big long lesson in letting go of control and releasing it to my very capable Heavenly Father - at least for this mom it is.
So the next step for us now is to get the remainder of our paperwork copied 7 times, putting the whole thing together, with the French translations attached, and sending it to Ottawa for Authentication. Some friends of ours just finished this step and said their stuff was in Ottawa for about 7 weeks. So hopefully, if I can get this stuff out of here by the beginning of December, we should get it back and sent to Haiti by the end of January?? Here's hoping!
Some other exciting news is that God's Littlest Angels (our orphanage), posted on their blog that they just completed their first post-earthquake adoption (keep in mind there were no adoptions happening for several months after the earthquake). Typically in Haiti, after you get your proposal (aka. referral, match), it takes 9-12 months before you can travel to pick them up. However this adoption only took 8 months between proposal and travel! We have heard that the adoption process in Haiti has sped up some in the last few months, but this confirms it! When you are waiting for your little ones to come home every month, week and day counts! We are so thankful for this news.
Some have been asking about our domestic adoption (adopting our foster daughter). I haven't posted anything about that because nothing has really happened yet and we are just waiting for the adoption worker to contact us to begin the process. But the other reason is, with fostering there are a lot of confidentiality issues and I'm not sure yet what I can and cannot post, so I'm playing it safe and not posting anything, as of yet. Thanks for asking, though. In the meantime we are just enjoying having her in our family and watching her grow and develop beautifully!
Great news! :)
ReplyDelete