Stuck

I think we are stuck. I think this homestudy report will never be complete.

If I have to answer the question "how are things with the adoption going?" with the response "fine, still waiting for our homestudy report to be finalized" I think I will spontaneously burst into tears right in front of the innocent unsuspecting questioner. It doesn't matter if that person is a friend, co-worker, boss, family member, whatever...that person is going to get more than they bargained for.

That being said, I am hoping that the fact that I am admitting frustration will somehow align the stars so that things will move along. It is akin to this: when you lose your keys, and you finally give up and go get new ones made, then you find your old ones. I can hear a voice in my head saying "ok already! I understand this is a tedious and frustrating process, I've learned enough from this part of the process, lesson learned, OK, let's move on now!" So, I completely expect to have an email later today saying it is all done and that we can send it to immigration now. (See crossing fingers picture below).

I would love to place blame somewhere, but I am afraid it is inherent in the process and in the country we chose. We didn't pick China, Guatemala, or Russia and there aren't thousands of adoptions from Poland every year. There are 67. Yes, 67 children were adopted from Poland into the U.S. last year. That reason alone probably explains why our homestudy report isn't an easy form that has been done billions of times before. Right now, I would love to blame our homestudy agency for not moving things along faster. But they could point to us taking 2 months to get our doctor visits and reports completed, or to our agency for not giving explicit instructions from the start. So we are all to blame, or there is simply no "blame" at all.

So, we feel stuck, but we somehow have faith that things will move along. They have to. Other families have gotten through this and adopted from Poland, so we know it is possible. If nothing else, our agencies won't get paid until things move along! We at least have faith that we are working with businesses that are motivated by completing services and receiving payment (among other more human motivations, I am sure).

Final Review of Homestudy

Yesterday, our agency sent us the draft of our homestudy report so that we could review it and suggest changes where necessary. The report is a solid 16 pages single spaced with 20 documents attached. We went through it last night, made a few changes and sent it back for finalization. They couldn't possibly want anything further from us, we have nothing left to give!

The report looks good. It makes us look like perfect, moral, financially stable, healthy, clean people who will be better parents than anyone in the universe. Now...a couple of those propositions are admittedly true, but not all of them! But I suppose a Polish court would rather hear that than hear "they will probably be OK parents, but I am sure they have no idea what they are doing."

One of my personal favorate parts of the report has to do with Ryan's family. Bascially, we had written a paragraph on each of his parents and his brother and sister. Well, they have added the following language: "[family member] is supportive regarding the adoption and accepts being a [grandfather/gradmother/aunt/uncle] to children not born to Ryan's wife." Funny. I can't imagine it being anything different.

So, now the report is back in our Agency's hands. Hopefully we will have the signed and finalized copies soon.

Crossing Fingers!

Crossing fingers! We just got word that our homestudy report is complete (again), and that it is off to our agency for approval. I think it should be good to go because it was modeled after a sample that was recently sent to the person writing the report. Hopefully we will have approval in-hand in the next couple of days!

To make a (slightly) long story short...we spent quite a bit of time in the past week or two gathering info. We had to put together some descriptions of each family member; compile a multitude of documents (proof of life insurance, health insurance, employment letters, mortgage deed, car insurance, birth certificates, credit card statements, retirement account info, etc.)and; answer a few questions. Much of it was already compiled before, so it wasn't difficult, just a wee bit time consuming.

We are getting closer! I'll report back soon.