Paperwork, pin pricks and psychologists

A new entry, but not a whole lot of new information at this time! The past few weeks have been a blur of making phone calls, researching and answering tough questions. Here's an update about where we are at:

We are currently working with two agencies; our home study agency is out of Nashville, and our placement agency is in California.  The first big step in adoption is the home study. We have been compiling paperwork including information about insurance, health history, references, finances, autobiographies, perspectives on parenting and much more. We will be submitting this large packet shortly, which will be followed by several interviews with our social worker. Once we get approved for the home study, we will begin working more with our other agency to prepare our dossier for Colombia.

We have quickly learned that Colombia is very thorough in their adoptions! Some of the many things we will be doing in preparation includes many medical tests done, several fingerprints (state and FBI) and a lengthy (our initial visit will be 900 questions!) evaluation by a psychologist... and since all of that expires after 6 months, we get to do it all again before we travel.

As of now, it is looking like the time frame before we travel could be as long as 4 years. This week has been a challenging one for me personally as I wrap my head around waiting four years to become a mom. We keep trying to remind ourselves that once we meet our child, it will all make sense. The amount of work and wait will be entirely worth it because it will have brought us to that particular child at that moment.

With patience,

Lindsey

Here we go!

Welcome and thanks for taking the time to visit our blog. We're new to the blog-world, so we may stumble our way through this a bit. Check out our 'about' page to learn a little bit about us.

We've created this blog to have a place to update information and share stories throughout the adoption process. That's right, we're adopting! Having grown up with a sister who is adopted, it has always been a dream of mine to adopt. As Nate and I became involved in adoption-supportive communities, we decided it was something we would do...someday. After being married for four years and feeling fairly confident in our ability to parent, the dream of adoption began to grow stronger in our hearts until we decided to take a leap. We researched, read books, talked to adoptive families, and looked into different agencies. We now know that was just the very beginning!

Where we are at right now is in the middle of what I guess they call the 'paperwork pregnancy' (minus the pickles and ice cream cravings). We are writing our entire life stories, laying out every aspect of our finances, being checked for mental and physical wellness, FBI fingerprinted, attending parenting classes and being asked some very tough questions. But really, it shouldn't be any other way... parenting is not an easy lifestyle change and even more complicated when building a family through international adoption. Our hope is that in a few years (or four, or five, or six...) from now we will be welcoming home our child from Colombia, God willing.

As we progress in this potentially very long process, we will keep everyone updated through this blog. Thanks for reading the first page to our story, we're hoping it has a wonderful ending.