Archive for the ‘Adoption’ Category
It’s so good to be home.
And there were some lovely things (other than J and Ava) waiting for me when I arrived.
1. J installed a propane fireplace log set while I was away. We bought this on clearance about 4 years ago and it’s been sitting in our closet ever since. Due to J’s diligent efforts while I was away we had a fire tonight. It was so warm that it put me to sleep in about 4 seconds.
2. Ava’s readoption papers came letting us know that the judge signed the finalization papers on Monday. So now the Commomwealth says that she is well and truly ours and we can get a certificate of foreign birth issued listing J and I as her parents. This is a pretty big deal for all of us so we’re pretty stoked. Not to mention the glow of pride knowing that I succesfully managed all of the paperwork myself and saved us hundreds and hundreds of dollars by not hiring an attorney.
And now, goodnight y’all, ’cause I’m going to sleep. I can’t wait to curl up in my own bed (Tempurpedic ROCKS!) and sleep in later than 530AM for a change.
CCAI notified us today that our application to adopt has been accepted and we can now officially start assembling our dossier. I’ve been in contact with a homestudy agency and J’s homework this weekend is to update his autobiography so we can get the homestudy underway.
This process is going to be way harder this time due to the new USCIS regulations implemented in order to be Hague compliant. Our immigration approval took about 2 months last time (and that was with them messing up and filing our fingerprints incorrectly). We’ve been told to expect at least 4 months for processing this time and to plan for at least 6 months to completely assemble our dossier. We already know we’re going to run into challenges even before we get to the USCIS point, though. A new requirement is that we have to provide a child abuse registry check for every address/location either of us has lived in since the age of 18. Trust me when I tell you that between us we’ve lived in more than our share of states and countries – meaning that it is going to take forever to get all of this AND it’s not going to be easy.
I’m so dreading this part of the process.
On another note, J and I received our criminal records checks yesterday so I went by the courthouse today to drop those off with the judge for Ava’s readoption. It’s the only thing he asked for in his last letter so I’m hoping that what we’ve provided will be sufficient for the final order of adoption to be issued. I’m ready to be done with this, too.
So far we have exactly one item needed for the dossier and that would be J’s birth certificate. Zip, nada, nothing else. Oh wait – that’s a lie. I did have a physical today so we can use that, too. Progress measured in baby steps, right?
Time speeds up when you have kids, doesn’t it?
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 7 months since Ava joined our family – seems like she’s been with us forever and yet it also seems like it was only yesterday that we were in China.
This photo was taken by our friends on January 22nd, only minutes after finalizing Ava’s adoption. They shared the photo with us a few months after we returned home and it was such a (wonderful) surprise to see it as I had absolutely no recollection of any photos being taken. We were the first in our group to do the paperwork and interview so we didn’t have time to coordinate photo duties before we found ourselves in the midst of the official proceedings.
The gentleman in the photo with us was our facilitator, Eric. Awesome guy. Coincidentally, I found his email address while sorting through some paperwork today. He’d written it on the back of one of our airline tickets as we were leaving Wuhan and I thought I’d lost it so I’m pretty happy that it turned up again.
Apparently the judge has accepted our petition to adopt so we must have provided everything he needs. We received a copy of the order of reference in the mail today – this is the document that’s sent to Bethany ordering them to provide the court with a report summarizing our home study and post-placement visits. As I mentioned in an earlier post, they have 60 days to return this information to the court. I’m quite sure they will submit the required documents on the 59th day. I would expect no less.
The judge must have been in a good mood when he signed it yesterday. There was a paragraph in there that was unneeded so he just lined through it and initialed before signing instead of sending it back to me to correct and resubmit. Of course in re-reading it I also spotted a spelling error which totally mortifies me every time I think about it. I’m going to blame my stupidly obvious error on the never ending sinus infection that’s been clogging my head for the last 3 weeks and the resulting migraines which have convinced me that there is nothing in the world that feels as good as NOT having a headache. I’m on day 12 or so of headachey-ness so I caved and went to the doctor today for a mega antibiotic and a zillion refills of my migraine meds.
Headache or not, I stayed up late tonight to watch the Olympic opening ceremonies. Pretty impressive. I wish we could have been there. It’s a little surreal to imagine that we were there, literally, at the Bird’s Nest stadium only a few short months ago.
We filed the petition to readopt Ava at the county courthouse today. I think I have everything required and I made plenty of copies so I hope, hope, hope that we’ve provided everything the judge needs. However, the circuit court judge we have to work with is notoriously difficult to deal with in terms of parents filing their own readoption paperwork so I doubt the process will move either swiftly or easily.
We did it ourselves to save money AND because, frankly, I didn’t do 2 years of paralegal coursework and training to pay an attorney lots of cash to have his paralegal draw up the exact same documents that I did. From my inquiries, the average cost of hiring an attorney to handle a simple readoption is around $650. It cost me $39 today for the filing fee.
The clerk of court is not allowed to offer any legal advice, of course, but she was nice and understood that I was very worried about getting everything right. She was kind enough to tell me as I was leaving that, at first glance, all of my paperwork looked to be in order and we should be fine.
The next order of business is that the judge will sign the order of reference that I provided, asking Bethany to summarize the post placement visits and verify that they’ve seen Ava 3 times in the last 6 months. Bethany has 60 days to comply and return this information to the court. I’ve already emailed the local office director twice about this and plan to email her weekly until she lets me know that the report has been prepared and mailed. I’ve also asked her for copies of our post placement reports and a copy of the documents provided to the court – we’ll see if I get those. She didn’t seem open to it at all but I’m persistent and I’m holding a grudge against them for all the crap they’ve put us through so I’m not letting this one go.
The courthouse is right near one of our local beaches so we stopped by to let Ava play in the water a bit. She wasn’t loving it so we only stayed a little while before heading home.
I have found a stellar use for temper tantrums though. We had to have the petition to adopt notarized today and Ava was clearly unhappy about having to wait in the bank for the notary to stop talking to her friends and get on with it. Once Ava started fussing (more like screeching at the top of her lungs) I made absolutely no effort to stop her (she was fine – just mad that I wouldn’t let her take everything out of my purse). It’s amazing how quickly they move to get you out of there when there’s a very vocal and unhappy baby in the cavernous, concrete foyer of the building. Talk about echoes – it was reverberating from every corner of the building. I know they were glad to see us go and we were equally glad to have them hurry up and get us out of there. Good job, baby!!