How appropriate that we officially start Paperchasing on Dover race weekend?

We received our phone call approval from Child and Home Study Associates on Thursday, May 31. They are mailing a packet of information and forms to us. They have also given us our first assigned meeting date – June 22 for an all-day educational seminar. There will be three additional meetings with the home study agency, as required by China.

Also on Friday, we received email confirmation that CCAI had received the first agency fee that we sent on Tuesday.  We downloaded the Adoption Dossier Guide from their website and started reading. And the panicking begins. The paperwork is intense. Copies of birth certificates, marriage certificate (from the Bahamas, mind you), employment verification letters, financial statement, adoption petition, physical exams, and police clearance reports to name a few. These papers all need to be current within 6 months, notarized, certified by the respective state agencies, and authenticated by the Chinese Consulate. After some discussion, we’re highly considering the Full Dossier Compilation Service from CCAI.

This weekend, we plan on requesting our birth certificates via VitalChek. We need to investigate how to get a certified copy of our marriage certificate from the Bahamas. We’ll also start formatting a few of the letters, such as the adoption petition and financial statement, but ultimately need to wait for additional information before completing them. It seems that there will be a lot of hurry up and wait.

Over the past week, Ben and I have been busy composing our autobiographies. This is a requirement for the home study agency’s application: summarize your life in 3 pages, and please include a family photo. We finished our homework assignment over Memorial Day weekend. With application now completed and in the mail, we await word from Child and Home Study Associates regarding approval.

We also have sent the first agency fee to CCAI. Big chunk. There are two fees: first fee is due after application approval, second fee is due when our dossier is ready to be sent to China. After they receive and process the first fee, we will receive additional information on completing the dossier. Yes, this is only just the beginning.

After sending off our application to CCAI and waiting and waiting…  we eventually began to worry. This past weekend, the silence reached critical mass. We began to wonder, how long should it take for approval, did they receive our package, did they even cash our check? The question in the back of our heads – will Ben’s Tourette Syndrome (TS) be a factor? After all, China is getting more and more particular about adoptive parents. So, off to the internet to see how long others had waited for approval from CCAI. I found that most folks were approved in 5-7 days. This did NOT make us feel any better. As of last night, it had been 13 days waiting – not that we were counting. The next day: Monday AM – called the agency – no answer – left a message. Monday PM – Ben called the agency – someone answered. They had our papers all along, and – guess what? – we had just been approved. We also learned that we were not the first family with TS that they had come across; in fact, several others had successfully adopted from China with CCAI.  As promised, an email with additional paperwork was waiting in my Inbox when I arrived home.  Next step is to pick a Home Study agency – which leaves not much choice in Delaware. We’re looking at Child and Home Study Associates. More on that later.

Today the application to CCAI was sent. We chose to work with them since they are the most experienced with Chinese adoptions. Also, we did verify that we can bring additional family members with us to China when the time comes. Not all agencies will allow that from what I understand. I also spent a little time with the theming of this site.

We have started filling out the paperwork to adopt a child from China. When Karen is 29 1/2 (in April), we will be able to hand it in. We are going to document the process, so we started this blog. Theming to follow.