Here is a picture of our dossier to refer to as you read.


Alright, people. I have decided to instruct you on the intricacies of international adoption. Mostly so you know why it's taking so-freaking-long for us to get a referral. Here's the shortened dummies timeline. This is going to sound like I did it all by myself and I most certainly did not, BUT David was set on adoption long long long before I was ready so I am writing this from my perspective.

1. I decide that adoption is the way to go and we are not doing anymore stupid fertility treatments that involve me sticking myself with needles, invasive ultrasounds and being at the doctor's office by 7 (yes, SEVEN) in the morning for bloodwork.
2. I search on on the internet for Christian adoption agencies as I feel they would be less likely to rip us off. I find several and request packets from them.
3. After watching several tear-jerking DVD's of families receiving their Chinese daughters and looking through stacks and stacks of paperwork and payment lists, we decide on AWAA. We send them some money and an on-line application.
4. We are approved and they send us another huge envelope of paper and we start wading through the paperchase. We also go to an AWAA seminar at a local church where I do not pay attention to the speakers at all because I'm so distracted by the cute little Chinese girls who are there with their parents.
5. We request copies of our birth certificates, marriage certificate and something else. I can't remember what right now. We waste a lot of time doing nothing and ignoring the pile of paperwork on the bed in the guest room.
6. I go to a week long seminar in the mountains about "Diversity in Children's Literature." Way fun. I also decide that we need to get started on our homestudy and contact the homestudy agency. They send me a 40 page application which I begin to work on while I'm in the mountains. Some of it is easy to fill out, some of it is not. They wanted to know EVERYTHING. I mean, everything. Let me give you an example: our childhoods, who our friends were, our family situations, what our wedding day was like, where we went on our honeymoon, family traditions, why we have those traditions, blahblahblah.
7. Again, we waste some more time and FINALLY get the application filled out and sent in. We are assigned a social worker and we meet with her for the first time in February. Keep in mind that we contacted AWAA in September, I think. So lots of time wasting was going on. Our social worker had a broken foot so we got to go to her house twice and she only came to our place once. Which was kind of nice because we only had to clean up for real that one time. The homestudy was not a big deal. It was just very time consuming and kind of exhausting.
8. Oh yeah, we had to be fingerprinted at Immigration also so we could get our I-171H which is the number 1 document you have to have to adopt. It gives you federal clearance to adopt a foreign born orphan. After you get fingerprinted, you wait an eternal amount of time to get a piece of paper saying you're approved. You'd think it would at least have gold on it or something.
9. We also had to get background checks done from the town where we live. We had to each have physicals and blood work done ( like I hadn't had like 8 gallons of blood taken in the past year or so). That took forever because the physical forms had to be notarized and the notary was only at the doctor's office once a week or something.
10. We had to get DIFFERENT police reports done which also took forever because the police department in our town had apparently never done anything like this and we had to have them redone 4 times, I think, once because the wording on the notary section was not correct.
11. After all that, I had to request a different copy of my birth certificate because it wasn't signed in ink and it couldn't have a stamped signature. We also had to have notarized proof of employment, a letter to the Chinese government (also notarized) and a notarized financial statement. Okay, so we have all our paperwork done now. Notarized and ready to go, right? NOPE!
12. Next, everything gets sent BACK to the state in which it originated to be certified by the Secretary of State that the person who notarized it is a true notary. Then we get it back and we're done. Nope, again.
13. Then it goes to Washington, DC where the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, (who did not actually sign our paperwork) authenticates it saying that the Secretary of State is actually the Secretary of State. THEN, it goes to the Chinese Consulate and I don't know what that paperwork says because it's all in Chinese. But it was a pile of paperwork when we got done.
14. We had to have some picture pages of us, house, family, etc. Our lovely school pictures are on the front. Mine's bigger. Of course. We also had to make photocopies of the photo pages in our passports and mine is extremely attractive, let me tell you. David sort of looks like a terrorist in his. We made a bunch of copies of everything and finally sent it to AWAA.
15. Our dossier went to China on JUNE 10, 2005. When it gets there, it has to be translated and logged in at the China Center of Adoption Affairs. Our dossier was logged in on JUNE 23, 2005. That's the day we started counting down to Maggie.
This month will make it 9 months since we sent in our dossier. When our dossier got logged in, it essentially got put in a pile until it's our turn. Dossiers are matched in the order in which they are received. They are matched by groups when it's their turn. There are 16 families in our group (218) with America World. There is no set formula for how many groups get matched at a time. Sometimes it's 5, sometimes it's 2. You just never know. There are 4 groups ahead of us right now. And we're waiting waiting waiting. Referrals came in this week through May 25 but AWAA didn't have any log in dates for that time period so they didn't get any referrals. So, be patient with us. It's not time yet. It's driving me crazy and I am so sick of waiting I could about scream. But there's nothing I can do to hurry it up so for now, I'll enjoy taking naps, going to the grocery store alone and staying up really late on the internet. But when it's our turn, I'll give all of that up in a second. And I can't wait.