We are so close, it almost doesn’t seem real… After a few hectic weeks of home visits, medical exams, multiple labwork re-do’s, and fingerprinting appointments, we’ve completed nearly all of the necessary steps to compile our Dossier.
Our Homestudy went well - after a weekend of frantic cleaning, our visits were very laid-back and not what I expected at all, but heavier on education than on grilling us about our lives/habits/short-comings/etc. I don’t know why this is the image I had in my head of what a Homestudy would be like, but it was a pleasant experience and our Social Worker, Vicki, was fantastic. She brought Alex a giant packet of activities and information about Chinese culture and provided us with a thick folder of articles related to international adoption, attachment, and parenting.
The Department of Homeland Security needs our completed Homestudy to process our paperwork and issue us a visa to bring our daughter back into the country. Once they have that, it will take about a month and a half for our I-171h to arrive. That is the final piece of our dossier puzzle.
Despite the dire predictions that it may take up to a year for us to get our Department of Homeland Security fingerprinting appointments, we received our date just over a month after applying. This would have been fantastic news, except that David was scheduled to be in Charleston, SC that weekend for work. After a lot of discussion and a desperate search of alternatives, David decided to fly home a day early. The actual appointment took less than ten minutes. Kind of a let down, but one we can live with!
Now nearly everything is out of our hands. Our final steps are pulling together some candid photos of our family. David and I must be in each shot and they want shots of us in our home and with family and friends. It sounds easy, but I feel a bit overwhelmed - after all a picture is worth a thousand words. We also need to have 3 passport photos taken.
Once we get our I-171h and our Dossier makes it through critical review at CCAI, it will go through translation, and finally it will wing its way to China to be logged in and hold our place in what is now a very long line.
The wait is somewhere between two and three years. Hopefully we’ll see the wait level off, and begin to recede. While we obviously want to meet our Daughter as soon as possible, we’re also thankful we have some time to prepare and educate ourselves. There are rumors circulating that the CCAA has made comments to the effect that they’re working hard to get the wait back to around a year. Let’s hope this come to pass!
