Godspeed Home Study July 8, 2008

Our home study is done.  Yes, we got a copy of it last week and read the entire document cover to cover and it was a winner.  No mistakes, not even little ones.  We had been warned by other adoptive parents to read through the home study with a fine tooth comb because social workers were known for making glaring mistakes.  One woman even told of how her social worker didn’t even get the husband’s name correct in the home study.  Ours was great though.

From here, our home study must embark on a journey of sorts.  It will be signed by our social worker and the director of the Korea program at Lifelink.  From there, it is sent to DCFS in Illinois where it waits for approval from a state level and a letter of approval with some sort of official seal / stamp.  We were told that approval takes somewhere between 2 – 4 weeks, but from the boards it sounds like it is taking people 6 – 8 weeks  to get approval from DCFS.

Once the state of Illinois gives us the green light, we send our home study on to the United States Citizenship and Immigration office and they send it to the US Department of Homeland Security.  Homeland Security will then review it and send us each individual appointments to get fingerprinted (yes again) and pass (yet another) FBI clearance.  Once we are deemed to be upstanding citizens, we will get our coveted I-171H form.

Oh how I long for the day when I can twirl around my living room holding my I-171H form close to my heart.

Once the I-171H form finds its way home to us, we truly just wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and for the phone to ring with news of our referral.  Then a whole new round of paperwork fun begins.

Home Study – Visit 5 – The LAST One! June 13, 2008

We’re back!  Sorry I have let the blog go for so long, but really life was just not that exciting so you didn’t miss out on too much.  Well, life was not that exciting until this week that is.  This week, Tom had his final and is now finished with school for the next three months, my school was let out for summer on Thursday and we had our LAST home study meeting this morning!  

We had our home study visit this morning and Tom took the rest of the day off so we could have a family day together.  The home study visit was so much easier than I had imagined it would be.  I had this vision that the entire house had to be spotless, including every closet and under every bed.  I spent the last week cleaning and organizing the house.  I hired a maid service to come in yesterday and touch everything up. Our social worker was so relaxed though, she didn’t open our closets or crouch down to inspect under the beds.  I must say though that I am glad I was so obsessive in preparing though because it is really nice to have such a clean house.  

It feels so good to be done with our home study meetings.  At this point, our social worker will write up the home study and send it to DCFS to get approval.  That will take 5-6 weeks to get done.  Once the home study is approved, we will be sending it on the USCIS (US Immigration office) to get approval at a federal level.  I’ll go through that more later though, we need to get through DCFS first.  

Our family day was so nice.  After our social worker left the house, we walked to the Children’s Fair that our city holds every year on the last day of school.  We had a great time together.  Wilson got cotton candy, rode on a few rides and played some games.  Of course the favorite “game” was the Candy Castle – this is a cut-out of a gingerbread house that the kids walk through and find a big kiddie pool filled with candy at the end.  They get to take a dixie cup and fill it with as much candy as they can.  We tried this last year and Wilson didn’t really understand what he was supposed to do, but this year he is a Candy Castle pro.  I’m confident he could be a team captain.  

The Children’s Fair continues through tomorrow so I am sure we will be back there for another giant stick of cotton candy and maybe even a snowcone.  Don’t you just love summer?

 

 

Meetings and Checklists May 24, 2008

Wednesday was a big day in our adoption world. We had our fourth home study meeting at our agency. This was a meeting that both Tom and I had to attend together. We discussed our marriage and our views on parenting. The next meeting will be in mid-June at our house and that meeting will complete our home study meetings. After that, we just have to rely on government agencies to help us move things forward.

On Wednesday, we also had a meeting with a doctor from the International Adoption Clinic (IAC) at The University of Chicago. The doctor helped us go over the medical checklist that our agency asked us to fill out. To anyone pursuing an international adoption (IA), I could not recommend talking with an pediatrcian who specializes in IA more. He went over every diagnosis on the list and told us exactly what ramifications the diagnosis could have on quality of life, cognitive development, physical development and emotional development. We feel so much more confident in filling out the checklist now that we have spoken to an IA professional. If we had not spoken to him, we would have been relying on Google (which I did try before making our appointment) for our medical information and we would have been very misled in many of the cases.

Sniff Sniff Sniff & Home Study Update May 16, 2008

Allergy season is back with a vengence. I never had outdoor allergies as a child, but for the last few years I am a miserable mess from the first bud to the first snowfall. I knew I was tempting fate by not starting my allergy medication the second I saw the color green appear and I am paying for it now. I have spent the last day and a half in a haze with an incredibly stuff nose and watery eyes. I finally started my 2 medications back up last night and I am praying that when I wake up tomorrow I will be able to breathe through my nose.

On the Adoption Front:

After 24 days, our agency updated their tracking list and I was excited to see another pink referral come through in April. That made 2 pink referrals in 2 weeks! That should make up for the 65 days of no pink referrals.

We have our next home study meeting at our agency’s office on Wednesday. It will be the final meeting that we have to drive to Bensenville for (until we get our referral, that is). We also meet with the pediatrician from the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Chicago next Wednesday. We will be going over the medical checklist we have to fill out for Eastern Social Welfare Society (the adoption agency we will be going through in South Korea). The checklist has a list of diagnosis and a place to check yes or no for each diagnosis. Since I got my medical degree via Google, we thought it would be best to consult an actual doctor so we could make an educated decision as to what we can comfortably handle.

Adoption Education April 11, 2008

Last weekend, Tom and I attended our required adoption education class. There were about 30 couples there at various places in the adoption process (most at the beginning of the process). We listened to a psychologist discuss attachment and a pediatrician (and adoptive parent to 4 daughters from China – 2 of them special needs children) tell us about the medical issues that international adoptees face and questions we should ask when we receive our referral. We heard a short presentation from the Early Intervention specialists in our state. There was a required component for the new Hague Treaty given by the social workers at the agency. The best part of the entire day though was the panel of adoptive parents who had recently brought their children home. It was so wonderful to see the families together. The children were adorable and made me want to adopt one from each of the represented countries! There was a family there who had adopted a little boy from South Korea a few years ago and had just brought home their daughter from Korea 4 weeks prior. She was the happiest baby – waving at everyone, smiling from ear to ear, simply adorable.

We also got the chance to meet with several other couples who were adopting from South Korea. A group of us went out to lunch together and exchanged phone numbers / email addresses. It was so interesting to listen to everyone’s reasons for choosing adoption and choosing Korea. I am hoping to get to know some of the couples better.  It is going to be an invaluable resource for us to be able to have relationships with other families who will have children adopted from Korea.