We started our international adoption journey in July 2010. We signed on offcially with our agency, Great Wall China Adoption, on August 27th. We began with our Homestudy agency on August 30th. Our first home study visit was on September 8th. At this visit, we shared our desire to adopt from China and our motivation for doing so. It was a 3 1/2 hour long session where our social worker spent the majority of the time getting to know us and what our intentions were for the adoption. She also completed the home inspection at this visit in which she made sure our home was a safe place with plenty of room for an additional person.
Low and behold, on September 13th we received the file of an 11 month old little girl whom we had been watching on the waiting child list for 8 weeks. She had a cleft lip and palate with an additional medical concern. We reviewed her file with an international adoption physician and chose to lock her file. We were ready to lock the file on the 13th but were unable to get it locked until the 16th due to the CCAA's website going down. Ahhh, how stressful, but we made it... Happily!!!!
Our second home study visit occurred on September 17th. This was a 2 1/2 hour visit in which our social worker spent some time alone with each of us discussing our life history, our family and social status, and our goals for adoption and for the future. On September 24th, we had our final home visit. This was a nearly 4 hour visit in which we discussed with our social worker the special needs program and our ability to handle special needs. We also discussed post adoption services and International Adoption Education. We also reviewed other information related to the adoption.
On October 1st we received our Pre- Approval for our baby. This is the initial approval that the CCAA issues to agree to accept our Dossier for review for the specific child. The final approval will come later after our Dossier has been logged in.
On October 14th we reviewed the draft of our homestudy and on October 18th it was approved by Great Wall. Hooray!!!
Once the home study was approved, we sent it to USCIS for our fingerprinting appointment. We were fingerprinted on November 16th. We received our USCIS clearnace on December 10th!!! Now we were on our way to the last phase of the paper chase... Authentication of the documents.
On December 13th, I got the last of the documents county certified and then drove 3 hours to the Secretary of States office and got the Gold seal applied. Then I went to FedEX where I spent an additional 2 hours photocopying all of the documents with the gold seal page.
I then sent the documents tothe courrier, Cindy Marut, in Houston Texas. She took the documents to the Chinese Consulate on December 15th. She was awesome by the way and I received my beautiful, authenticated documents back from her on December 17th!!! Yay!
The documents were delivered to my agency on December 20th and were sent to China on December 23rd.
Now, here we are waiting on the last half of the waiting phase, but the most difficult I think...
We are waiting on our official log in date with the CCAA. Once that happens, we will be issued the official referral for our daughter. The hardest part of this is that we just have to sit and wait... and wait... and wait.... We expect the referral to come by the end of March but we are praying that it comes earlier... So for now we will just wait and we'll update as soon as we hear something.
