Yesterday was a big day in this first trimester of our pregnancy of the heart. Carl and I had our first "appointment." Unlike with our boys, the first OB check up for this little one took the form of a trip to the cop shop for fingerprinting!
Lincoln was being a bit uncooperative about a family picture, but really enjoyed seeing the machine scan our finger prints and then watch them print out. Sully? He was in total aww of all the police cars everywhere and kept saying "2 Cawww, 2 Cawwww!" (his quote from Cars 2).
We have been digging our way through paperwork this past week while we await our official approval of acceptance into Holt International's China Program and have been making pretty good progress.
Here's what we've done so far...
- had a signed copy of our service agreement notarized and sent off to Holt on Thursday, June 23rd.
- recruited four, non-related personal references in preparation for our home study
- tracked down information regarding every single address that both Carl and I have lived at since birth
- filled out financial information regarding all of our monthly income, past and present, monthly debts, assets, debt, retirement, etc.
- completed an 18 page questionnaire (it was that long before I filled it in with somewhat lengthy answers) all about me, my upbringing, my parents, being a parent myself, my health, religion, our community, our home, our marriage, our children, my feelings about adoption, and on and on and on. (Carl also has to fill one out from his perspective as well)
- filled out background check forms for South Dakota and Iowa, still waiting on Minnesota's form to come from the agency
- tracked down signed verification of employment for 2 out of 3 places we've worked in the last five years (its quite a deal to get that done at Carl's work so that may take a few more phone calls)
- as mentioned above, yesterday we had a whole bunch of fingerprints taken (3 sets for each of us) for our background checks at both the state and FBI levels
The next step is just to wait on our official acceptance (praying for no glitches there), finish up Carl's questionnaire, apply for passports, send off a bunch of signed papers and wait. If all goes well, we will be proceeding into the Home Study process with physicals, interviews and all that good stuff in a month or so.
Every signature, phone call and questionnaire is a step closer to our daughter. I hope to share as much about being "in process" to adopt so as to encourage those of you out there who have maybe had adoption on your heart but just didn't think you could do it. If we can do it, you can do it. We're just an ordinary family who has had a nagging on their hearts to step out and grow their family in a less-traditional way. More about all that to come...
Prayers and questions are ALWAYS welcome :)
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