Another Step Completed, One to Go!

It’s been a rather eventful week. Suffice it to say that things are moving along much quicker on our second adoption as compared to our first. On Wednesday I got an email from a Dillon representative informing us that we could go ahead and begin gathering our final Dossier documents. This is a huge step, as this and the I-800A Pre-approval are the final elements which need to be accomplished to allow Dillon to begin looking for a potential match for us on the Waiting Child list.

What are the documents that go in our Dossier? A Letter of Application to the People’s Republic of China. A copy of our Home Study. A Copy of the Birth Certificate for both parents. A copy of our Marriage License. A Certificate of General Physical Examination for both parents. A Letter of Employment for both parents. A Certificate of Financial Status form. A Police or Sheriff Letter for both parents. A Certification form with a copy of the original USCIS approval (pre-approval) notice attached. Copies of the Photo/Signature Page of the Passport for both parents. Each of these documents must be Certified and/or Notarized, and are time-sensitive (must be dated within the last 4 months or so). Since we had already been working on some of these items, we had virtually everything done by Friday with the exception of my Letter of Employment which, for some unknown reason, takes 3+ days to travel from Tulsa to Owasso via interoffice mail (Argh!). Nevertheless, one way or the other we will have this Letter of Employment by Monday (tomorrow) and Angie will be turning it in to Dillon International tomorrow. Once Dillon receives these documents, they then process them to get translated copies made as well as getting them Certified by the Secretary of State of Oklahoma. At any rate, as of tomorrow, this big step of submitting our final Dossier documents will be completed.

We are hoping that our final Home Study document is completed this week. If so, we will then send it in with our I-800A (Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country) application. Once that goes in the mail, we wait a week or two to get a response from CIS (Immigration) informing us of our fingerprint date and time in Oklahoma City, usually a month or so in the future. A week or two after that we will officially receive our Pre-approval to adopt a child. In a nutshell, as of tomorrow when we turn in our dossier documents, the CIS step just outlined is the final piece of the puzzle…..at least until accepting the referral of a child. Once that happens, the paperwork chase begins anew!

On a lighter note…..as you can see below, Cameron played paintball for the first time yesterday and had a blast. The family of a boy in Cammo’s class owns a large paintball facility in Collinsville, OK, and celebrated their son’s birthday there. A good time was had by all.

Cameron is really starting to ask a lot of questions about the second adoption and seems much more accepting and, dare I say, excited about it now. It has taken a lot of reassurance on our part to convince him that he neither needs to feel threatened about his place in the family, nor will he be expected to assume responsibilities toward his sibling that are more appropriately shouldered by the parents. It has taken quite a while to get to this point, but he’s been a trooper about talking and working through his feelings related to this second adoption.