Paperwork chase

Next the paperwork chase began. How many forms can you fill out in x time and still remain sane?

Of course one of the first things to come together was a quick snapshot of financial status, do you have two nickels to rub together to raise this child? Our agency person who had 20 plus years in the business looked at what we presented and said I can tell you that you have a 95% chance of approval, so I guess we got an A on that.

At the time we did our adoption we had some dates told to us when certain things would happen depending of course on paperwork we did or that others did. We didn't know the fancy acronyms used now to associate with certain dates for we were driven by start, do and finish.

In about 6 weeks my wife had put together an impressive stack of papers by the time we met our home study person. The home study person said that in 20 years only one other couple had put together so much paperwork in so short a time.

Our I-600 had been filed and we had our date to be fingerprinted by Immigration. We got a rough draft on May 1st and went off to be fingerprinted. At about the same time new rules were announced by China for future adoptions but since we already had our pre-approval (PA) we were using the old rules for our adoption.

I think often of the parallels between adoption and buying a house. One fills out many, many forms; throws money in every direction as told to do for some important reason; and waits. One of the big differences is you know more about a house one will occupy than you will about the child that you wish to live with in that house.

As it seems with most paperwork more than likely one will miss a blank or not understand the crossing of Ts and dotting of Is that are needed to pass muster with those who take the forms and search for those missed items so they can have the glee in saying this isn't filled out right. Thus such happened as we needed to get pen in hand signed copies to show we had in fact been born! So after another round of paper and dollars our dossier trundled off to China and the wait box began.