Adoption Process - Week 6 9/17/2004
This week was a totally hectic week for both Steve and I at work, so I guess it was a blessing that we didn’t have a whole lot happening on the adoption front. We did have a scheduled appointment on Thursday for our USCIS (formerly INS) fingerprinting, which I managed to keep, but Steve already had a dentist appointment scheduled for the same day, so he’ll be going next week (most likely). It was actually kind of cool. Our first round of fingerprints were done in week one for the state level criminal clearance and they used the traditional fingerprint cards that make a mess. The USCIS uses a biometric system (costing us $70/each) but it was really cool. They scan the fingerprints digitally and they can redo each one as many times as is necessary to make sure they get a really clear print. No mess, no fuss. I also appreciated the efficiency of their operation. I was in and out in less than a half hour.
I spent some time earlier in the week researching some of the possible medical conditions that children coming out of Eastern European orphanages might be dealing with. All in all, I feel a little less scared now that I’m more familiar with some of them. I still need to read up, though, as some of them I’d never even heard of (or had heard of them but didn’t know what they involved.)
Tomorrow we are spending 7 hours at an Adoptive Parenting Seminar being sponsored by our AZ-based adoption agency. Hopefully that will give us additional knowledge to better prepare us for the process and for L.T.
I should mention that my parents came back through and passed along congratulations and enthusiastic support from a large contingent of our extended family. We are so blessed to be surrounded by so many people (even if they are not physically near us) who care about us and rejoice with us over our impending parenthood. Thanks to everyone who sent their joy and support to us!
We received an acknowledgement letter from our County Court office informing us that they received our Application for Certification to Adopt and we have now been assigned an AC number. It was a pretty boring letter, but I guess it is an important part of the paperwork process for our Homestudy. Rather, the entire point of a Homestudy is to get a Certification of Adoption from the Judge, and the Homestudy is the “report card” that leads to the desired “diploma”.
Steve is out in the garage now working on the dresser we’re going to refinish for L.T.’s room. I’ll go remind him to take some “before” pictures now, so you can all appreciate what it took to get to the end result.
More soon…
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