The Boring Part of Adoption

The Paperwork:
All adoptions start with the dreaded paperwork.  If you have been through this process then you understand the horror and pain that comes with this step.  If you haven't, then let me explain.  It is like doing your taxes times 20.  The paperwork asks you every question about your entire life.  We had to fill out paperwork about our financial status, our discipline style, how we were raised, etc.  We had to get physicals for every person in the house to make sure we were all healthy.  On top of that, the majority of this paperwork has to be notarized.  Easy, right???  Not so much.  We had at least 3 of our notarized papers rejected because the notary stamp was wrong in some way.  There was a letter missing on one stamp, another had a number missing, another notary wasn't registered with the state, and so on.  All of the little things that I never imagined would be a problem were what we got hung up on.  At one point, I got a raise so we had to get new notarized paperwork saying that I was making more money now.  We had to put together a dossier, a collection of paperwork, to send to Ethiopia to represent us in court.  This had to be perfect.  We chose to send it to a professional to go over with a fine tooth comb.  It was well worth the extra money for her to look over it.  All of the paperwork took us about 3 or 4 months to complete.  During this time we also had to have a home study done.  Our first home study took about 3 hours.  A case worker came into our home and asked us a ton of questions.  We had to show her our home and what room our baby would be sleeping in.  She took pictures of the inside and outside of our home.  She even interviewed Collette to make sure she was okay with having another baby in our home.
When we finally got all of that done, we submitted it to our agency. On July 1st, 2009 we were put on the official waiting list for a baby from Ethiopia!

The Waitlist:
 The waitlist is different for every country and every adoption.  Being put on the list is like standing in line at an amusement park for the best ride.  You know it will be worth it in the end but the waiting is so boring and tedious.  The average wait time for us was 8-9 months for Ethiopia.  Now, the waitlist is 2-3 years.  It really depends on the age of the child that you are waiting on and what the adoption laws are for that country at that time.  Adoption laws tend to change pretty frequently.  We were so excited to finally be on "the list".  Then the quiet time of adoption starts.  You just wait...