This is often referred to as the morning sickness of adoption. While it usually doesn't make you physically ill, the tediousness and length of it do sap your energy and your enthusiasm, so you begin to wonder why you got yourself into this in the first place. But, you just have to remind yourself that you are doing this for a baby.
We sort of began this last September, when we began to have our homestudy done. A homestudy, as we quickly learned, is basically a long letter, written by a licensed social worker, saying you are fit to be parents. What qualifies you to parents, one may wonder? Well, we have smoke detectors, our house isn't moldy, and we keep our cleaning supplies on a top shelf for starters. But, beyond that social workers do actually sit down and talk with you about who you are, how you'll parent, and why you want children. They also request reference letters and police clearance. I was a little bitter at having to 'apply' to be parents when so many just slip into the role accidentally, but it is making us have an intentionality about preparing to be parents that is quite good. Anyway, our social worker approved us in the end and after three tries, we finally got the homestudy notarized correctly.
Now we're collecting documents for our dossier, which is a rather large, very official packet of papers that gets mailed to Ethiopia. This is made up of our homestudy, birth certificates, reference letters, police letters, doctor letters, employment letters, and on and on. Each document goes through quite a 'special' process to reassure everyone that we're legit. Just a plain old signature could easily be forged, so everyone has to notarize the document they write. But, then again, the notary could be forged, so then the state department needs to certify the notary's signature. But wait, how do we know the state's certification is real? Have no fear, our government has a state department that authenticates the state's certification. And, just in case our country's seal is forged, the Ethiopian Embassy checks it and places another certification on it. So, all this to say that Annie Hogue's signature on our reference letter is real and the things in it are true. Whew.
So far our favorite moment of the paperchase was when we each got a letter from the United States Department of Homeland Security, summoning us to appear in Indianapolis to be fingerprinted by the FBI. Now, we know we're not terrorists, and not even illegal immigrants, but still, it's a bit intimidating to be summoned by your country.
Hopefully by early March everything will be done and in an envelope to our agency.
