9 Days

It's a good thing we had to do a CPR certification course for this adoption because Marc just about needed mouth-to-mouth when booking our airline tickets. $5300. Ouch.

And the only thing hurting worse than my wallet right now is my left arm. Just got back from getting my shots:

1. Yellow Fever - Since we're planning to go to Awassa, a "danger zone".
2. Polio Booster - You don't really need to get this in the US since Polio is not an issue here anymore, but you do need it going into other affected areas since it has evolved a bit over the years.
3. Meningitis
4. HepB - In our past travels we've been told "Eh, unless you're planning on having sex with the locals or shooting up, you probably don't need it." What I've come to learn is that HepB is a very "hearty" virus that makes it easily transmittable. I think it's a good thing to have "in this day and age". (Did I just say that? I'm so old!)

I also got a perscription for Malaria meds which I don't think I'm going to fill. I really can't afford the extra $100, as all those shots cost a total of $425. We'll be sure to wear our bug spray instead. Did I mention I have to go back for the 2nd HepB shot next Friday and the 3rd one in 21 days? At least I will be imune for life. That kinda makes me feel like a superhero.

So...what to do:

• Go back to the travel clinic for more shots
• Get a haircut
• Get all of my work stuff arranged so that my fill-ins don't have to do a lot
• Pack
• Find / make gifts for the nannies
• Drop a boat load of stuff off at Goodwill
• Go grocery shopping
• Get the crib sold on Craigslist so that it's out of Macy's room It's been listed and have someone coming to look at it tomorrow.
• Make a list of doctor's numbers / locations for Grandma
• Get the kids on my health insurance
• Break out the Amharic cd & book - uh yeah, better late than never I guess

Court Date

We just got our court date.

March 4th.

MARCH.

Ugh.... We were told when we got our referral that it would be 8 - 10 weeks before we traveled, so we have been counting on going at the end of February. Now it looks more like the end of March. I mean, I know things change. I'm not upset about that. I'm just sad that our kids have to stay in an orphanage that much longer when they could be home all snuggled up with us.

Sigh.

It's been an interesting few weeks. We filled out more paperwork (it seriously never ends!), squeezed blood from a turnip, er, I mean, wrote a check for every cent left in our savings account, then pretty much got lost in the holidays.

Now we're starting to realize how much we need to do - carseats and clothing and bedrooms and daycare (down the road). I guess as long as they have food in their bellies and some warm hugs they'll be alright. Beds and room decorations will be figured out eventually. I suppose the extra month will give us time to do all these things and come up with the rest of the money we will need. Yes, it all works out in the end.



(costs: $9500 - country fee & agency fee)

Dossier to DC

If I'm understanding the bill I just received, it is for courier service to and from DC, then to Ethiopia. Hopefully that means it's actually been sent to DC. Hopefully that means it will be on its way to Ethiopia in the next two weeks. Hopefully...

Costs: $400

Have I mentioned....

....that these doctor's letters are the bane of my freaking existence? I went to pick them up - THE VERY LAST DOCUMENTS WAITING TO BE SEALED - from the Secretary of State. I thumbed through them and happened to notice that the seal for Marc's letter was attached to mine the seal for mine was attached to his. You've GOT to be kidding me. Ever get the feeling that someone out there is trying to give you a hint??

I go and show it to the lady at the front desk. She laughs and asks me "Well can you just go and get new copies of these?" "Just" as in "could you just run and climb Mount Everest real quick?" It has taken me SEVEN months and a combined 7 attempts to get these letters done correctly. The last time I went to my doctor's office the secretaries all glared at me - in an obvious kinda way, not a "you're probably just imagining it" way. And my doctor told me "I hope this is good enough because there's not much more I can do other than going to Ethiopia for you."

The look on my face my have blatantly said all that because she said she'd take care of it by carefully taking them apart and putting the staples back in the right spots. You see, if any documents are unstapled they look as if they've been tampered with. A few minutes later she hands them to me. They look like she ripped the staples out with her teeth. I really don't know that this is going to fly, but at this point I can't bear to go through getting new letters. I'm just going to try to pass it off and see what they say.

On another note (this is for you LoriM) I found out that our dossier DOES get mailed to the Iowa office now that we don't have a social worker in our office.

Have I mentioned that either? Evidently our Denver office was not doing enough international adoptions to warrant having a dedicated SW. So they had to let her go. Now the SW in Iowa is handling several states, CO included. On a ballsy (for me) whim I (very politely) told her my opinion: Many agencies out there will put couples on "the list" after their initial application. They're then able to complete home study, training and dossier while they're waiting for a referral. Kinda like serving concurrent sentences. On the other hand, our agency requires you to do home study, training and dossier before you get put on the list. While some people expect the whole process to take 6 months total, our agency is quoting about 2 years at this point. I'm sure that makes it hard for them to get new business.

On the other hand, I definitely appreciate that our agency abides by Hague and is uber-careful about everything.

Anyhoo.... Dossier is complete. Next steps:

• Dossier mailed to Iowa this afternoon
• They review and send to Michigan office
• They review and send to DC to be authenticated
• DC sends it back to Michigan
• Michigan sends it to Ethiopia

Costs:

$15 Secretary of State
$7500 Bethany

Houston - we have a seal!!!!!!!!!

Hip hip hooray for good friends! My friend T. in NY just text messaged me that she got Marc's birth certificate sealed today. Do you know how awesome this is!? Have I mentioned it was going to take two or more months if I had to mail it back and forth? Oh yes, I know I have and you're all tired of hearing about that by now. :) I'm seriously doing a little dance in my chair right now.

Costs:
notary sig verified - $3
seal - $10
having a friend to save you time and anger management therapy - priceless

What a day...

I felt like we were trapped in that Simpson's episode yesterday. The one where they keep going, "YAAAY!.... Boooo...... YAY!!!.... BOOOO... Yaaaaay!..... BOO!"

Marc is on Spring Break this week and I work from home on Fridays so I have the flexibility to get out and run a few errands here and there. We dropped Fletch off at school and make our first task to stop at Walgreens to get passport sized photos for our dossier. The printer getting jammed was the first irritation of the day, but the day got so much worse that the Walgreens story isn't even worth getting into. (Booo) We did leave with a bag of 75% off Easter chocolate (Yay!) which I've already eaten a lot of (Boo). Costs: $16 (not counting the chocolate of course)

Next we run up to the police station in the mall and find out it's not open yet (Boo) but I did get to use the mall bathroom (Yay - I think?). So we continue on to the main police station for our city and they're able to give us a police clearance letter, on their letterhead, signed and stamped (Yay) but it's not notarized and they don't have a notary there (Boo). Costs: $14

The bank is close by, so we stop in to get everything notarized. My favorite notary boy is there (Yay) and I'm sure he'll just go ahead and notarize the police clearance for us. But he doesn't (Boo) and he also can't notarize Power of Attorney forms (double Boo).

On we go downtown to my doctor's office to drop off my original hand-written letter and ask him to have it typed instead and change some wording on it. The receptionist says "Sure, I can type that up for him! (YAY!) But he's off on Friday's so he can't sign it until Monday or Tuesday." (Boo) At least it's delivered and off my plate now. Speaking of plates we decided on an early lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant that's just up the street from my doctor. (Yaaaaaaay!!)

While there, I call our social worker to tell her about the whole police clearance thing and how it's only for the city we live in, not for the whole state like the dossier instructions indicate it should be. And also that they don't have notaries there, but it is stamped with the police dept stamp. We're told it has to be whole state and notarized (boo) but that the main Denver police department is only a few minutes from where we were eating lunch so maybe they can help (yay). We get there, park, and there's already money in the parking meter (score!) but they confirm what our p.d. said - each city only does clearances for that city and not for the whole state. If we want whole state, we have to go to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. (Boo Boo BOO).

20 minutes later we get to CBI, explain what we're doing, fill out a form and they say it will take 3 - 5 days to get it back (yay? boo? I don't even know at this point). I hand the lady an example letter that came with our dossier paperwork of what we need the letter to say. She blows us off "We have our own letter we use." I try to explain that Ethiopia (our agency? who knows?) has very specific wording that they want and could I please just attach this to my request so they know what I want? "No, our letter is professional and includes much more information that this. We know what we're doing." (boo hoo hoo) We leave, downtrodden, exhausted... Costs: $30

Back at home I try to salvage what's left of the day and get some work done. I actually got some good news about one of my candidates and a potential offer for a contract (Yay!)

But then I also got word / found out that:

• The CBI clearance is not right and they use "negative language" and the dossier instructions state that it needs to be on police letterhead, so it's just wrong in multiple ways. I guess I really already knew this before, because we've already gotten a CBI clearance. But come on, we KNOW that they are the only ones who do a WHOLE STATE CLEARANCE so what else are we supposed to get!? (Can you see me pulling my hair out yet?) (BOO!!!)
• The Letter of Exemplification we got with Marc's long form birth certificate is not what we need. We also already had a feeling that was the case, but when you get this news on top of a bad day it just makes it worse. I called the county clerk of NY again just to make sure (I've learned to triple check things by now) that this was the proper next step, how much money I needed to send and, oh yeah, what's the turn-around time again? FOUR to SIX #$%& weeks. (Booo Hisss....throwing tomatoes)

Luckily for me, I have the sweetest friend in the world who is also adopting and happens to work in NYC, so I am mailing the birth cert and letter to her and she's going to get the authentication and seal for us. (yay yay yay yay yay yay YAY!!!) I can't even tell you what a load that is off my mind. Otherwise we could be waiting 3 more months for these document.

A few minutes later I got another good outstanding work-related call (YAY!) and decided to press my luck by checking the mail. In it I found................. drum roll please ......

.....

.....

...my sealed birth certificate. (Yaaaaaay) It's hard to know whether you're happy or sad or just exhausted after a day like this. Either way, this was the only appropriate thing to do:

Total costs: $60

The turkey is in the oven

Marc says that to be funny when something is "in the works". What's in the works, you might ask? Well our HOMESTUDY of course! :) :) :) We signed off on it today.

.

With the Easter holiday and the agency director being out of town, it's likely that it won't actually be sent outfor another week but, well, what's another week at this point, right?

.

From here it goes to AAI to be approved, then it gets sent in with our I-600 A and we wait for (another) fingerprinting appointment. Once that's done we wait for our I-171 H. That's the final okay from our government. When we have that, we send our Dossier to Ethiopia and wait some more. (See a recurring theme here?) As much paperwork and waiting as we still have left, this really is a big accomplishment.

.

Costs:

$160 AAI

$670 USCIS (processing)

$160 USCIS (fingerprints)

$3000 Bethany

.

(gulp...off to get a night job...)

You spin me right round baby right round

The NYC department of vital statistics has my head spinning right round this afternoon. Who knew that the hardest part of adopting would be getting a birth certificate!? Correction - *sealed* birth certificate....because I certainly have enough copies of our birth certificates by now. I'm going to be able to wall paper our living room with them soon.

After being transferred and being told to call different numbers EIGHT times, I finally got to a lady who could tell me how to get a sealed copy. They make it very easy for you (note the sarcasm there...). If you were born in New York, in one of the 5 boroughs, take note:

1st, you have to request a long form birth certificate with a letter of exemplification from the Department of Health. 212.788.4500.

2nd, you get that, then mail it allllll the way back to NY to the NY County Clerk where they will verify the signature on the letter. 646.386.5932.

3rd, you get that back, then mail it all the way back to NY again to the NY State Department of State, Certification Unit. 212.417.5747.

Well that was easy! (banging head against wall) Would it be quicker / easier / cheaper for me to fly there and courier the request around the city myself?

grumble grumble grumble....

Costs: $33.00

One step forward, two steps back

Do you have Paula Abdul stuck in your head now? :) Me too!

I am happy to say that we had our last home visit last night. Our SW came over to do the follow up on our home safety inspection and to meet Fletcher. HSI went well, no biggie there. Fletch was, well, Fletch. He wanted to show the SW all of his books. Then as she and I tried to leave his room to go chat, he pushed me out the door and told her "Get in here now!" Oy vey! It was cute because he wanted her all to himself to play, but my goodness, he sounded like a two year old tyrant. And we never say "get in here now" to him - where did that come from?!?! Oh well...I'm sure we're not the worst parents she's ever seen.

So she is finishing her home study write up this week, then we're waiting on medical letters and Fletcher's doctor's appt (this Friday) and we're DONE with the home study. We should be able to review it next week and get it in the mail.

Our minor setbacks were:

• As expected, my certified birth certificate was incorrect. We now have to send it back to FL to the Secretary of State to be sealed. Lucky for us, this is for the dossier and we do not need it for the home study to be complete.
• The notary stamp date on Marc's doctor's letter was different from the date on the letter, so we have to have that redone. His doctor is practically within walking distance from our house, so that shouldn't be a big deal to get redone.

Jackie's dr. letter is in the mail to us. Fletcher's dr. appt. is on Friday. My dr. forms are in the mail to us. We're cruisin'!

Costs: $20 for state seal

Don't mess with Texas!

Well I'm not from Texas, but if I was I probably would have yelled that at the bank today.

Of all things you don't want to do while in the adoption process, buying a house is probably at the top of the list. And we weren't really planning on buying a new house. We just happened to see one in a great location. For a great price. So we thought maybe we'd take a look. Which led to me yelling at the 12 year old kid at the bank because he was more interested in flirting with the teller and slacking off than helping me with a home loan. I *may* have told him I would go somewhere else if I was inconveniencing him. But come on, I get three letters a week from this bank telling me I'm a preferred customer and all the wonderful things they can do for me. Now I try to call in a favor and I get this. Anyway... I'm sure I'm not the first or last woman to yell at him. Call it training for marriage.

The nice thing about looking into home loans when you're adopting is that you actually have MORE paperwork than the bank could ever want. This is how the conversation went:

Bank lady: I'll need your 2007 W2's.

Me: Here, I have my W2's from 2007 as well as my state and federal tax returns. Would you like 2004, 2005 and 2006 as well?

BL: Um, no. How about paycheck stubs?

Me: Sure, and here are some notarized letters from our employers verifying length of employment and income. You know...in case that will help.

BL: Do you have any stocks, bonds, other assets?

Me: (clunking down a one inch stack of statements from stocks, 2 mutual fund accounts, 401k, 403b, 529b, 2 life insurance policies) Yes, I think I might have a few.

Well you get the picture. I wanted to say "Don't test me lady. I'm the QUEEN of paperwork!"

And while I was there (you know, since I had already scared all of the teenagers working there) I thought hmm....I might as well get the "financial statement" for my dossier. I won't even go into that story. But at least it's d-o-n-e!! And I seem to remember apologizing and promising to bake them cookies or something.

Last night Marc picked up his letter and forms from his doctor. My doctor called today so that I could read him the results of my TB test (self service - nice) and I appear to be fine, so he's mailing my forms for that. And my dear friend Pam delivered the sweetest letter of recommendation to me last night over girl talk, grilled cheese and fries. What could be better!?

Any news?

So we get the question "Any news yet?" a lot. Unfortunately it's going to be a loooooooooong long long time before we have any real news. Right now we are still in the paperwork phase. This will probably last through spring. We hope to have our dossier on its way to Ethiopia by the beginning of the summer. Once the paperwork gets to Ethiopia, then we start waiting. This could be 6 to 18 months, maybe more, we just don't know.

Until then, I will bore you with the very minute details and triumphs... :)

Marc's fingerprints came back yesterday! Whohoooo! Now we have both received CBI and are waiting on FBI. Our social worker says they usually run about two weeks behind CBI. This is excellent news because we expected to be waiting until the end of April to receive these.

For our Dossier (mountain #2 of paperwork) I have ordered our birth and marriage certificates, but have only about 10% confidence that the birth certificates are going to be correct. The lady laughed when I told her that they "must be certified and sealed with the Great Seal of the State" (I really need to get triumphant sounding music to play when I said "Great Seal of the State".). She said she didn't know what that meant, but she'd send me a certified copy with a seal on it. We shall see...

The costs are starting to pile up in little bits and pieces (especially if these are the wrong birth certificates).

Birth Certs for Kellie $36
Birth Certs for Marc $35.50
Marriage Certs $33
Marc's copay for dr. appt $25
Kellie's copay for dr. appt $25

Total: $154.50

Interview this afternoon

I have my first individual interview with our social worker this afternoon at 3pm. I'm anxious and nervous all at once. I think I have an idea of the topics that will be covered, but I don't know exactly how in-depth (invasive?) the questions will be. Wish me luck!

I'll also be delivering our first big check. $3000 - Yikes.

-----

Update: The interview went really well. It lasted about 2 hours, which flew by, and our social worker pretty much asked the types of questions that I expected. She was a little less pushy than I thought she'd be. Wait - Not that she's a pushy person, I just expected that she might have to be for this interview. Next interview is scheduled for Tues 1/22 at our house.

I decided to brave the snowy streets today in order to get the last of our paperwork in to Bethany. Well...the last of our application paperwork that is (evacuation plan, copies of birth certs, driver licenses, color photo, etc.).

I drove the Explorer and, naturally, the little thingamabob that squirts windshield wiper fluid was not working on the driver's side, nor was the driver's side wiper. If I could only figure out how to drive from the passenger's side like in that recurring dream I have where no one is driving the car. Anyhoo...halfway in I had to stop at a gas station and clean the windshield. I tried dripping water onto the thingamabob to clean it - no luck - I tried just hitting it a few times - imagine that, that didn't work either. Finally I thought pouring some of my hot coffee on it might do the trick - BINGO! We have a working thingamabob! Back on the road...

I stopped off at the office first to make copies of all of our paperwork and - oh and to actually work a little bit too - then on to Bethany to turn it all in.

I also registered for our Infant & Child CPR & First Aid Certification course. We'll be enjoying that course alllllllll day long on January 12th. It feels good to be making some progress - even if it is one teensy step at a time.

A few of our references have received their forms in the mail too so things are moving along.

I just started reading Melissa Fay Green's There is no me Without You which I've heard is a "must read". I'm only about 60 pages in, but it's breaking my heart already.

Costs - $130 CRP & 1st Aid course

Snow day part deux

We did get in for our finger prints yesterday. I was surprised to find that our local police department has an office in the mall. I thought the lady (known as "Grammy" in the police department) would talk our ears off. She was sweet as pie, but made a 5 minute process into an hour long chat fest. The roads were too bad to make the trek into the Bethany office, so I decided to wait until today. Naturally it is snowing again today, so hopefully I can get it taken care of tomorrow. I know that the background check is one of the longer parts of this process, so I want to get the finger prints in immediately.

Finger prints (2 cards each) $20 total

Dropped off the check to Bethany today and spoke with our social worker. She gave me a short list of additional things I need to get to her: photo copies of our birth certificates, marriage certificate, driver's licenses, and an evacuation plan in case of fire. We also need to get signed up for a CPR certification class.

Costs: $550