It's been quite a while since we've created a post, so I wanted to give you a brief update. Our application has been submitted to the adoption house in Colombia, and we were expecting it to be reviewed and approved within a couple of weeks. However, we have been waiting since late April and still have not received approval of our application.
Within the past few months, the government in Colombia has been taking a closer look at adoption policies. This has resulted in delays at the adoption houses in all stages of the adoption process as they comply with the government's requests. From what we know, this is the reason that our application has been delayed. We really don't know how much longer our application will be delayed, but we will make sure to post an update when we hear more!
In the meantime, we have been keeping ourselves busy with as many summer activities that we can fit in. We know this may be the last summer with just the two of us, so we are trying to fit in lots of biking, kayaking, and camping while it is still easy to pack up quickly and run out of the house! We also rented a cabin in the Smoky Mountains for our 10th anniversary and spent a week there.
Since I don't have a lot of exciting news to share in this post, I thought I would share some of the details of the process. Adoption is something we always knew we wanted to do, but how do you get from thinking about adoption to waiting for your application to be approved in an adoption house in Colombia? I can assure you that there are a lot of steps along the way. :) Here is a brief summary of what we have done so far. I will also try to give you an idea of what is still ahead of us.
1. Domestic adoption informational meeting: Summer 2010 - We attended our first informational meeting at Bethany Christian Services. We hadn't yet shared with anyone how serious we were about starting down the path to adoption. We still had so many questions and uncertainties about the process, the financing, and the realities of adoptive families. At this point, we hadn't even considered an international adoption because we really didn't know much about adopting internationally! We first attended an informational meeting about domestic adoptions but realized that we wanted to look into international adoptions before we made any decisions.
2. International adoption informational meeting: Fall 2010 - We attended our second informational meeting at Bethany and learned about adopting internationally. We were provided with a packet of information that outlined the countries that Bethany works with and the differences between the countries (cost, average wait times, ages of children, age requirements for parents, medical issues, etc.). It was overwhelming to think that all of these things needed to be considered! This was when we started to realize how little we knew about adopting and how much help we were going to need from our friends, family, Bethany, and other adoptive families. We had preliminarily made a decision to adopt from Colombia, but we need to gather a lot more information! We met one on one with Bethany to talk about the Colombia program, and we also got a lot of information from other adoptive families who shared their experience.
3. Preliminary application: Fall 2010 - We submitted our initial application to Bethany.
4. Sharing our news!! Fall 2010 - Once we knew we were ready to go down the path to adoption, we of course wanted to share our news! We were excited to let everyone know that we were ready to move ahead with this!
5. Formal application: April, 2011 - We waited a few months to submit our formal application because we knew that once this was approved, the next step would be the home study. As a tax accountant, I am very busy early in the year, and we wanted to make sure we had time available to coordinate our home study meetings. We thought that it would take a long time for our application to be approved, but within a week we heard that it was approved!
6. Home study begins: June, 2011 - Our first 'home study' meeting was actually at the Bethany office. We met our caseworker, Kim, and she just asked us some general questions about how we met and how we became interested in adoption. She gave us LOTS of homework!! We had to fill out a questionnaire that asked about how we were raised and the relationships we have with our parents, siblings, and friends. That was the easy part - it was at least mostly multiple choice. The hard part was the family information guide that we each needed to complete (think essay exam....LONG essay exam). We had to answer questions about what it was like growing up in our families, what activities we did as a family growing up, what strengths/weaknesses we think our parents had, how we decided to pursue adoption, our jobs, how we met, our own strengths/weaknesses as a spouse, our spouse's strengths/weaknesses as a spouse, what we consider the most important aspects of parenting, and much more. Needless to say, this was a very deep thinking exercise. It wasn't always easy to think of an answer for some of these questions, but it was a good opportunity to analyze our relationships and our expectations of being a parent. The remainder of our home study visits were at our house. The most memorable question that we were asked was about how we planned to discipline our children. Of course we have some ideas of how we plan to discipline, but we really are going to have to just figure this out as we go!
7. Online training: Summer 2011 - In order to be approved to adopt from a 'Hague' certified country (which Colombia is), we needed to complete 10 hours of online training.
8. Home study completed: November 2011- Our life has been condensed to 13 pages! We can now move forward with our paperwork for Colombia.
9. Psychological report: October, 2011 - I was expecting our psychological evaluation to be much more uncomfortable than it actually was. We met with our psychologist and he asked us a few questions, but really we just had a conversation with him. He is also an adoptive parent, so he was also able to share his experience with us. We had to take a very long multiple choice test too. It was like the standardized tests we took in elementary school (make sure to use a #2 pencil and stay within the bubble), but much more interesting. Some of the questions asked about what you would be interested in doing for a living (park ranger, florist, etc.) and others asked about moods. I really am not sure if there were 'right' answers for any of the questions, but we passed!
10. Dossier compilation: November, 2011 - March, 2012 - Who knew there could be so much paperwork required? We had a long list of things that we needed to compile and of course nothing is as easy as it seems. We had to obtain copies of our birth certificates/marriage certificate, FBI clearance, medical clearance, immigration approval, pictures of us and our home, and other various documents. Not only did we have to obtain all of this information, we also had to have it all certified! Some of it needed to be notarized, and some needed to be apostilled which is an additional certification that is done at the secretary of state.
11. Dossier sent to Colombia: March, 2012 - We handed over the paperwork that we worked so hard to put together! Bethany added a few documents and then it was sent to Colombia. The documents would needed to be translated to Spanish before they could be submitted to the adoption house.
12. Application is submitted to Los Pisingos - April, 2012 - Our dossier has been translated and is in the process of being reviewed at the adoption house.
I am going to have to post what is still ahead of us later as I am out of time!! I hope this has given you a little insight as to what the process involves. Feel free to ask questions - we are happy to share our experience!
