Finally...another post

Wow!  Life got busy!  Well, it's always busy, but it got really busy. 

I was busy, busy, busy with working hard to get as much of my adoption paperwork to CHSFS before quarter-end started at work because I knew then I wouldn't get to do anything for several weeks.  Well I did, I got everything in that I needed to so that they could start looking things over in order to do the actual homestudy.  They then sent me a packet back with some additional paperwork and an updated fee schedule.  I almost fell over backward when I saw it.  They wanted $8,300 (or was it $8,400) for just the homestudy!  I called them real quick and they apologized profusely and said that it should just be $5,900!  Well, that wasn't much better.  I was expecting what their website quoted - $1,400. Well, I had to make the agonizing decision to lose weeks of work and withdraw my application (knowing also that I would lose my $500 application fee). They did refund me half of that.  But I just couldn't justify working with them when I could save well over $2,000 working with another agency.

So I started from the beginning again.  Being the researcher I am I researched as many homestudy agencies as I could as quickly as I could and finally decided on International Adoption Services (IAS) as the agency to do my homestudy.  I sent in my application to them.  Just to be clear, these applications are not just a 'send me your name and address' application.  They are pages and pages of information.  They want to know everything about you to find out if they think that they can work with you or not.  Well, they accepted me and sent me a packet of paperwork.  By this time it was quarter-end at work so that packet had to sit for over a week, while I put in over 90 hours that week at work.  That was hard to think of that packet sitting and not getting filled out.  Finally, I made it through my hard week at work

This past week I was busy reading the book "Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew," by Sherrie Eldridge and doing homework questions for a class I attended at IAS tonight.  When I got that done I finally got to start the paperwork again.  Yay!  Friday and over the weekend, I got through much of  the preliminary paperwork that they've sent me so far.  Tomorrow I will go and have 2 (of 3) of my sets of fingerprints done.  I still have to make a doctor appointment for myself so my doctor can send IAS information on my health. 

As I said, I attended a class at IAS tonight for preparation and training.  This is to prepare a parent for the different types of things to expect in an adoption, such as challenges after placement, medical issues, grief and loss, attachment and bonding, etc.  Well, I am a researcher and I have two internationally adopted children and I truly have done hundreds and hundreds of hours of reading and research on all of this stuff.  Not to mention I have lived it.  Well, she was very impressed with how well I am prepared and told me before the end that I should be teaching the class.  She was not being sarcastic, either. 

In between all of this Nina, at CHI has sent me several files of adorable children that are available for adoption in Bulgaria.  I am falling in love with each child she sends, but just getting the feeling that each one is not the one.  Mei is, of course, looking at the children too.  And when she heard that we would not be adopting from China was very concerned.  She is very conscious of how she looks, and feels like she looks 'different.'  She said that we have to adopt from China or they won't have a flat nose like me and Bee.  She wants the child to 'not feel different from her and her sister' :) We were just looking at a file for a little girl from Bulgaria and she kept saying she is cute, but her skin is white!  We were trying to explain to her that the child would look like us, and she said that no they have to look like her and Bee or they will feel different.  It has been hard explaining to her that we can't adopt from China, because China right now is not open for us to adopt from.  Of course she doesn't understand that.

Well, to end this for today. 

This morning I got an email that announced that as of March 15, 2011 ...

***China is opening up once again for singles!*** 

This is only certain special needs children, but they are opening up again.  I right away emailed CHI to ask if it is a viable option for me to switch to the China program.  We will see what happens.