Thursday, August 28, 2008

Democratic Conv.

I just had to add a note about how excited I am after seeing the convention. It gives me great hope!
I can't wait to see Obama take office.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

YEAH 171h received

I just checked the mail and there it was- a letter from USCIS (immigration). I was so nervous to open it, but all is well. We received approval to bring home up to 2 children.
STILL PLANNING FOR ONE!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Ranting: Unfair Maternity leave and Disney

This is one of those time where I am really glad I am self employed (every once it a while it pays off). I have been reading other blogs and parents concerns about not being able to take time off of work for maternity/paternity leave.

Why can adoptive families not have the same rights as a bio family. Many of us travel across the world to bring our children home. Are people supposed to return to the U.S., drop their kid off in daycare, and head right back to work? Why can they not be allowed a few weeks to bond with their child? This is so upsetting. All mothers (and fathers too) should have this right. Some people have actually been told they are not allowed to take unpaid leave to get their children. Disgusting! www.equalityforadoptedchildren.org/

Just a note: Disney finally comes out with a African American princess. The best they could come up with is a 1920's African American girl named Maddy. Oh yeah: she is in New Orleans and practices VooDoo. No stereotyping there! I believe they are going back to the drawing board and trying to get this right (after lots of complaints).

Monday, August 18, 2008

links

I have added a few links. Please scroll to the bottom of the page to view them.

Random Updates

We have been fingerprinted for the I600A. It didn't take long at all.

We are waiting on two documents for our dossier and then we will be almost finished. Next we need to go to the Secretary of State to get some documents certified.

Monday, August 11, 2008

I600A

USCIS has received our documents. We go Saturday morning to get fingerprinted! That moved quicker than I expected. We should have our 171H in about 6 weeks(hopefully).

Monday, August 4, 2008

I600A Form

Tomorrow we send in our I600A form. (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition) In simple terms this is USCIS (immigration) saying it is ok for us to bring home an orphan.

There is no reason this should not go through, but I am slightly terrified! So please cross your fingers, say a prayer, whatever it is that you do and hope that this goes through with no problems. Relying on a government agency to take care of anything these days worries me. We expect it to take 1-3 months to receive our 171H (approval form).

FYI: We had to have our homestudy changed a little. There is a question on the I600A that is very important to an adoptive parent: Do you plan to adopt more than one child? If so, how many?

This seems simple, right. Wrong. If we say one child then that is it. We can not adopt another child on this first journey. So if we arrive in Africa and find out our child has a brother or sister up for adoption we can not bring them home. If we say yes then we have the right to bring home a sibling. We put yes and listed 2. At this point we are planning for one child. But the last thing I want to is leave Africa feeling like we have left one of our children there.
Lilypie Waiting to Adopt tickers