Friday, June 09, 2006

One milestone reached

We finally sent in our I-600-A and our State security check forms. Woohoo! $625 to make sure we aren't axe murderers! Yay!

All I'm sayin' is that we didn't have to do this before our multiple fertility procedures. They should. With all the hormones I was on, I probably would have completely trashed the fertility clinic if I had heard all the negative pregnancy test results in the office. Instead, I was tempted to crash my car. They should definitely do criminal background checks on fertility patients.

We also sent in a batch of paperwork to our agency, which has all been approved. Whew.

What haven't we sent in?

Physical forms: This deserves a blog post of its own, but I don't feel like retelling the whole sordid story. All I'm going to say is once we *finally* have those completed forms in our hands (which we started chasing back in MARCH), we will immediately switch doctors, and also notify a local medical referral agency that this doctor is a complete and total idiot. I can't wait. Of course, this is also holding up our home study.

Guardianship form: Quite frankly, this is a tough one. None of our immediate family qualifies, and I really feel like it's a burden to ask our good friends to sign this. Technically, this form is not legally binding and we can designate someone else as a guardian in our wills, but this still seems like a lot to ask from someone. And they already wrote us a referral letter. Plus the wife in this couple is due, like, any minute. I think we'll wait a couple more weeks.

Pictures: Aack. We really do not have too many good pictures of the two of us, let alone of us and our family. We took some pictures at The Picture People in March and ended up with one good pose, and may have finally taken some nice shots last week when we were all dressed up before a wedding. I also had 90% of my family over at our house last week for a get-together/birthday party, and in the pictures we took of the family sitting around the table, only one niece is sticking her tongue out, so they're not *too* bad. I think we just need a couple more shots of the two of us, then I have to um, clean, and then take pictures of the house. So the end may be in sight. Oh, and we still need passport pictures. Just remembered.

Autobiographies: Darn. I forgot about this. I was sincerely hoping that we wouldn't have to write these, as this should have been covered in our homestudy (we used a local social worker/adoption agency, as our adoption agency is not from our state). They told us we had to write one anyways.

Financial Statement: I really don't want to send it in with the number of say, zero, in the savings column. My boss owes me: a) a bonus for a large project I've been handling the past 18 months and b) a raise. He has promised to come thru with these in 4 weeks. He's handling a large project right now that will have significant ramifications, and which I am helping with, so I understand why he can't sit down and evaluate my work right now. In a way, it's a compliment. I've been with my company nearly 10 years and work closely with him, and hold a senior position within the company. But it also means that I don't get automatic pay raises. They come more sporadically, but they're usually pretty significant. So we could be pretty flush in a month, or at least in a slightly better financial situation. The day that money hits our bank account is the day our financial statement hits the mailbox. But it's one thing that I can't cross off our list.

And that's it! It doesn't sound so bad now.

But the local Department of Homeland Security is running on a three month processing time for I-600-A's. I guess while we patiently wait for that precious I-171-H, we will learn to be patient for that every elusive referral...for which I am preparing myself to wait up to 24 months. Two freakin' years.

Hope I can handle that.

06/11/06 Edited to add:

You're probably wondering why it took us over a month to send in our I-600-A since I promised a potential travel-mate that I would send it in . That would be because we a) lost my husband's birth certificate, and, b) NY State's "expedited" option screwed up and took a few weeks to send us a new one, even though it should have arrived within a week. We may have needed the new one anyways, since the version we did have at one point was not a complete birth certificate.

2 comments:

Johnny said...

If you've got a valid US passport (which you'll need anyway), it serves in a pinch for a birth certificate. Just proof of the date, etc.

Ann said...

when you write it all out doesn't it seem like an impossibly long list..like I wish everyone had to do this to be parents. It would eliminate half the human race