Homestudy visit scheduled

Almost a month has passed since we filled out the application to adopt Fu, KangChao. I've been busily completing documents, including the financial statement, the medical forms, the letter of intent to adopt, the nurture plan and our autobiographical histories. The autobiographical history takes the longest to write, in my opinion. Last week, David and I had to go to Rochester to have our finger-prints taken. For the life of me I can't figure out why we have to have our fingerprints done yet again. Both of us have had our fingerprints done at least a dozen times. When a criminal leaves prints at a crime, the police look-up a database of prints and find a match. I can't figure out why they can't just re-run our security check using the prints they have on file. However, my role is to follow the directions for the home-study, and new prints were required. We also have to take courses to prepare us for the adoption. These courses were not necessary the first time we adopted because we had taken the Department of Social Services MAPP class (30 hours) within a year of the home-study. We also have to participate in a webinar on Jan 18th, and then our first home-study visit is scheduled for Jan 23rd. If the social worker is really fast with her report, and she can get three more visits in within a month (last time it took 2 months to complete), then we can have our home-study into the US government's hands by the end of Feb. The US department of immigration needs our home-study, along with our I800A application, before we submit any documents to China. Adoption is a long and tedious process, but it should be faster this time because we have most of the documents we need already. It took me months last time to even gather our birth certificates, marriage certificate etc. etc. Even our medical reports took longer because we had to get tested for HIV and TB; with China reusing our dossier, we don't need to have those tests redone. Hooray for progress!

Dec 15th, 2010. The beginning!

It's not really December 15th, 2010. In fact, it's Jan 12th, 2011. But I decided that I should start writing about our adoption of Fu, KangChao. Yep, we're at it again. Around Thanksgiving Nov. 2010, I started looking at waiting children on WACAP site. Now that we have three teens, we're finding that Ben is often left out. The big boys go play basketball, go for bike rides, ski and play pool, and Ben is always left behind with Mom. He so, so, so wants to be with the big boys. He will gladly give up a cartoon movie to watch Star Wars, if only it means the big kids will stay and watch with him. He started telling me he wanted a little brother, and I started once again looking online. I sent family finders an email saying that in the next few years we might like to adopt again. Could they please send us videos of boys between the ages of 4-6 years old. A few days later, we received a Cd with three videos on it. It just so happened that John and Ben were hanging around when I watched them. They had me replay the videos a few times (and they were each over 15 min long!) and John declared that he thought we should adopt Fu, Kang Chao. Wow! I did NOT expect that response. John wasn't overly nice to Ben when we adopted them both, and if anything, I thought that John would be dead against the idea of another adoption. But I couldn't have been more wrong. We watched the video of Kang Chao at least three more times that evening, and John translated everything Kang Chao said, word for word. John thought he was smart and cute, and he would be a good brother. So..I sent the photo to David the next day by email with a note to think about it. This was probably in late November or maybe early December. December 13th, David finally watched the video and said yes, let's move forward with another adoption. We found out that we can reuse our dossier, since it's been less than a year since our adoptions, and that absolutely clinched the deal. It'll eliminate some of the paperwork and make things easier for us overall. We also decided that don't want to wait two more years because that will put Ben in 3rd grade, 10 years old, and to adopt a child near Ben's age means we need to adopt a child at least 8 years old. The older the child is upon adoption, the more difficult it is for him to catch-up in school etc. If we adopt a child now, he will be 6 when he gets home, which is the same age that Ben was when he came to the US! So, December 15th, which is the title of this blog, is when we submitted the first application to WACAP to adopt again. Hooray!! And what's really funny, considering all the trouble we had the last time, David has already named him Logan. We now often refer to when Logan comes home, and what we will do for Logan. Ben outgrows clothes and brings them to me so that I can put them away for Logan. What a difference a day makes!