Progress and Hope

It's been quite a week. Last Friday the social worker came to our house to do the safety audit - which basically consists of her walking around and making sure we have smoke detectors and a plan for escaping the house. I imagine the safety audit would be much more involved if we were adopting an infant.

I was feeling a bit impatient so I pushed a little on when the home study would be complete. She told us that all documents were back so we just had to wait on her to finish writing everything. So we leaned a little harder to get things done. And guess what! We should have the final notarized copy of the home study tomorrow!!

What this means is that we can file the I800A with the government - the application to determine suitability to adopt a child from a convention country. The convention is the Hague Convention which is an agreement on how adoptions are handled between Convention Countries. This was enacted fairly recently.

The bad news is that I've been reading on the Yahoo Groups that it has been taking over 100 days for the Gov't to approve I800A's. They say that if you are adopting a waiting child that it sometimes goes faster. I figured I'll send a big life-sized picture of Johan with the application. That should do it. If not, I've already dug up the phone numbers of our Senator who I plan to call if things move like molasses.

Speaking of the Yahoo Groups - I've found some good communities on there. One is called Adopt Colombia - for people who have adopted previously or are in the process. It's a good place to get questions answered. As I said before I was getting impatient last week. Our adoption agency wouldn't give us our next list of items 'to do'. I'm not sure exactly why. I know there is still a mound of paperwork we have to collect for our dossier - so why not start collecting?? Anyway, I posted my frustration on the Yahoo Group and they all told me to remember the agency may be the experts but we're the customers and there is no reason we shouldn't be pushing and advocating for our child. Especially when he is waiting!

So I'm pushing! And collecting documents and getting things apostilled and organized. Hopefully it doesn't come back to bite me where I have to do things over again - but at least I feel like we're making progress.

The other good news of the week is that we received a short note from Johan yesterday. He sent it via email from Martha - his social worker - that traveled with the Kidsave kids this summer and stayed with us for 10 days. It was great hearing from him! He said he received the birthday package we sent him and that he's doing well at school. He had the privilege of raising the flag at school due to his good grades and good behavior.

A week of good progress which gives me some hope. Speaking of hope - I found this quote that I liked and thought I would share:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all
-Emily Dickinson

Have a great day,
Carrie