Finishing up Homestudy

My brother Ryan tells me that when I have a blog that I need to update it daily. Well, I really don't have that much to say and I've looked at other blogs and some are updated daily and others are updated as events develop.

This last week John and I finally, after three weeks, got our physical exams done with all the labs including peeing in a cup. I mention this because John didn't realize that it's not as simple as peeing in a cup, it's a several step process. The lab even provides instructions, which he didn't read. Good thing his urinalysis came out normal. One other piece of paper was a real bear to procure, verification of John's job and salary. Firstly, just trying to get John to take the paper to work took days, then getting John to give it to the right person at work took days upon days. Finally, he just filled it out himself so all someone at the Post Office had to do was sign it. There was some discussion about whether it had to be sent to San Francisco, argghhh. Finally, last week someone at the Eureka office signed it, I was threatening to go in there myself.

I wanted to turn in the last of the paper work for our homestudy at Adoption Horizons but there wasn't anyone there Thursday or Friday so I will try again on Monday. Then our Social Worker, Becky, can finish the rough draft of our homestudy and send it to Bay Area Adoption Services, BAAS, to be proof read. They could take up to two weeks but they seem to do things more quickly than they state in their instructions. Once it gets the thumbs up from BAAS we can send it to the State Department to see if John and I are eligible to adopt internationally. This is the I-800A form. We will then be fingerprinted for the third time. From reading other blogs this process takes about 3 weeks. Hopefully, we can send our dossier to China, DTC, in February. China will then send a notice that they have received our DTC and we will get a log in date, LID. There are more milestones and forms to fill out. As we move through this process I will update the blog and explain what it means.

One of the questions I get asked a lot is what is the next step and I have answered that above. The next question is when will we be going to China? I have joined a couple of Yahoo groups and read blogs of other families going through various stages of this process and from what I can tell, this summer seems likely. John and I already have our passports and I've invited my mom and grandmother. My mom has an expired passport but she can't find it since she moved to Eureka from Davis. Grama has a passport but I think she is concerned about the cost.

In another post I will talk about our motivations to adopt and why internationally.