Just so you know, I know I'm a chicken. That said, I haven't watched the special on Chinese adoption that was on MSNBC on Sunday night yet.
K. said, "It will make you cry. You should wait to watch it until you are in the mood for a good cry."
I said, "Did you cry?" (K. may cry more than some other men, but he's isn't what I would term a "crier", and I should know coming from a whole family of criers.)
"Oh yeah, I cried. You are going to cry buckets."
So I haven't watched it yet. I heard from several people that it was very good, and I have it safely on my TiVO for when I am ready to cry buckets. When will that be??
On another note, I am plowing through one of the adoption books for the home study. I say plowing because I am not really wanting to read this book. It's a good book and covers many of the adoption bases, but much of the content can be viewed negatively, and so "plowing".
There is a section on naming, and the author recommends that you keep the given name if at all possible, especially the older the child is. We will definitely be keeping the name, but may use it as a middle name if it's really hard to spell or unpronounceable or something. I am having some anxiety over this. I don't want to cause more disruption in my daughter's life than necessary, but I also don't want to commit right now to keeping the name. Hmmm... And then I am feeling stressed about it. Ok , so it's about a year from now that I will be making this decision. Really I shouldn't be worrying about it right now I guess. But then again the adoption has slowed WAY DOWN, and I don't have much to think about, so I'm obsessing about my daughter's name.
I guess I just keep plowing and find something else to worry about!
Last night we sat down and went through the list for the waiting children program. This involves looking at a list of medical conditions and trying to decide which are "acceptable" to you and which aren't. A painful process to be sure. You feel with each "No" that you check that you may be saying no to a wonderful child who would enrich your life, no matter what the medical issues. And with each "Yes" that you check? You wonder if you are changing your life irrevocably in a way that you can't really understand.
But we feel good about our decisions and believe that we made the right decisions for our family. I truly wonder about the likelihood of a daughter coming along in the next year who meets our criteria and isn't offered to another family and who we would end up adopting. But we are open to the possibilities and that's the right thing for us right now.
Otherwise, yesterday and today I am FRUSTRATED with the slowness of this process and the amount of time we still have to wait without actually having anything to do. Anything more interesting than showing up for our fingerprinting appointment with the INS which hasn't even been scheduled yet. Ah well, I suppose many of you know the feelings of impatience with a process that you want to be quick but are totally and completely unable to make quicker in any way. So take another deep breath, enjoy E. and his new bike, and wait. Wait with a smile on my face for that dear little daughter we have yet to meet.
Let's see here. We sent the first paperwork to the agency-formerly-known-as-the-INS on March 23 (my birthday for those of you who remember or care). We didn't just send it, we FedExed it, just to make ourselves feel better. So we've gotten two letters from the A-F-K-A-T-INS since then. Both times K.'s eyes gleamed and he said, "What's this?" with a happy, excited tone of voice. I knew better.
Anyway, the letter we got last week, the second letter, says,:
June 7, 2004
Subject: FORM I-600/I600A
5. Before consideration can be given a Home Study should be submitted to the USCIS office shown above.
6. A Home Study must be conducted by an State Licensed Agency, or an individual licensed to conducted Home Studies. If they are not licensed to provide Home Studies, you must contact a State Approved Agency.
Well, apart from the fact that someone at the USCIS (AKA "A-F-K-A-T-INS") doesn't really have very good grammar, you've got to be kidding! It took them 2 1/2 months to tell us that we don't have all of the paperwork in??? The social worker did say that they are taking approximately the full 10 weeks from receipt of your paperwork (AKA "Home Study") to the time when they send you the glorious little slip of paper that enables you to complete your dossier and get a DTC date. So I guess they are right on schedule.
How disappointing.
Well, we met with the social worker for our last visit for the home study yesterday. I am glad that's over. We chose an agency with offices fairly close to our house and it turns out that the home studies are handled from another office and that office is far, so I'm just glad that's done.
We have to wait 3-4 weeks for the final report, which seems like a long time. I guess everything just starts seeming like it is taking a long time, which it is. We figure we may get the I-600 (is that right?) from the government-agency-formerly-known-as-the-INS in September???? Well, I guess that's what we are hoping for, anyway.
But, you know what? Focus on the positive. We are almost done with the paperwork for sure. I've got everything to just send to the adoption agency which I will do so that when the home study is done we can just keep zooming forward as quickly as possible.
There is going to be a special on MSNBC on Sunday, June 20 at 8 pm on China's adoption program. I don't know much but it looks interesting and I'm going to TiVO it (don't get me started again on that). Review forthcoming...