The Zen of Adoption

Many of you know that I work for a children’s publishing company called Barefoot Books. I wanted to share a nice mention that was made in Barefoot’s newsletter regarding our adoption:

“And our US Stallholder Field Manager, Eileen Doll, has recently learned that her application to adopt a little girl from China has been accepted. We’ve all been talking about adoption as our new picture book, Motherbridge of Love a breathtakingly illustrated and touching poem celebrating the special bond between an adoptive child and their mothers, is coming out this September! We’re busy planning lots of exciting ways to get the word out about this wonderful project including an exciting new e-card. Read more about Motherbridge of Love, and its origins on our website.”

You can visit A Barefoot Life for the whole story!

It is so nice when your personal and professional life are connected in some way!

Barefoot’s newsletter also highlights one of our newest artists from Russia and invites you to take advantage of Barefoot Books huge Summer Sale which is running until the end of July. You can even pre-order our highly-anticipated international adoption title, Motherbridge of Love, that I am personally very excited about.

Well, we’ve completed our homestudy - It wasn’t exactly what I expected. Much more centered on training and education, much less focused on the actual studying of our home or us!

I think I kind of pictured it as being more of a behavioral interview - where our every word was going to be analyzed and the deepest darkest corners of our past where going to be probed.  Rather, it was more like an information dump… she had a lot to tell us, took a brief walk through the house, (which I spent all weekend, rather obsessively cleaning… even under my couches!?!  She didn’t even check there. What the heck!)

I will say our social worker Vicki was lovely and she brought a wonderful packet of information for Alex which contained activities and information about Chinese culture. He was thrilled and it will be a great way to talk with him about China!

Anyway, I’m glad that it was easy, and that we are getting close to the end of the process. We really only have three things left. We pick up our medical reports tomorrow and then our fingerprints are on Saturday and we need to have a whole slew of pictures taken.  Beyond that we wait for the homestudy to come back and make any necessary changes and then once we receive the I-171H our dossier will be ready to go! No telling how long it will be, estimates are ranging from 6 - 8 weeks from the time we have the finger prints taken, but it’s nice to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So we’re nearly there… Our medical exams were Monday and we’re preparing for our Homestudy next week. We received our biometrics appointment with the Department of Homeland Security and it is set for Saturday, July 28th. Then wait to receive our I-171H (our daughter’s visa) back after the fingerprints are processed is about a month and a half… It is at that time that we’ll be ready to put it all together and send our translated dossier to China.

We’re definitely looking froward to getting logged in. The wait is still increasing, and we’ll be lucky to travel in 2009, however, anything could happen and the wait time could speed up between now and then.

Barefoot Books Presents: Whole World

Click to view an animated version of
Barefoot’s new title: Whole World!

What kind of world will our children grow up in? Join Barefoot Books and Live Earth on 7/7/07 to celebrate the ways you can make a difference!

Check out the sights and sounds of Barefoot Book’s new title “Whole World” and click on the links to discover ways to help your family make changes that will have a positive impact on our planet!

click the image to play!