Paper, Paper, Paper!!!!

Before we started the adoption process, I knew there would be a lot of paper work... Little did I know how much paper work there would really be!!!

I remember closing on a house, both buying and selling, and thinking, "Man, this is a lot of paper! I'm glad all I have to do is sign my name 100 times; I pity the poor soul who has to pull all of the documents together." Well, that poor soul is now Dave and me...

Yesterday consisted of reviewing all of the documents we need for the home study and dossier and coming up with the game plan. Having a game plan made me feel a lot better until I realized not only do 99% of the documents have to be notarized, they also have to be CERTIFIED!!! I didn't even know what the heck a certified document was until today. To get a certified document, you first have to have it notarized, then once you have all the notarized documents you need for one state, you have to send it to the Secretary of State for the state in which is was notarized in and have them certified. This means once we get all of our various documents from banks, police station, employers, doctors etc, we have to put them in mail and send them off to get certified to the appropriate states which at the time will be CO, MI, and MN! No wonder they say getting your home study and dossier together can take 3 months... I'm still hoping we can pull it together in 4-6 weeks. :-) Okay, I warned you in my initial posts that some times I would just need to vent... well, today is the first day of that, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

On a fun and exciting note, Dave and I attend our first of 4 parenting classes on Saturday. It was fun to meet other couples going through the same process we are. I think there were about 13 other couples adopting from Ethiopia in the room with us! We also got to meet a sweet little girl who was adopted from Ethiopia about 7 months ago... So cute! To top it all off, we learned about traveling to Ethiopia, raising a child of a different race, and care for African skin and hair. Obviously some topics were lighter than others.

Moving on... Thanks so much to everyone for your e-mails and comments regarding our journey. I've only received one question so far...

Why Ethiopia?
I figured this would be one of the first questions. :-) I guess the question before that might be, why international versus domestic? Well, that decision came about after loving the idea of being able to bring the baby home as a newborn which often comes with domestic adoption, but not being able to stand the idea of a mother or father choosing to parent after choosing us as the adoptive parents. We also decided to adopt internationally after discussing and loving the idea of bringing a child of a different race and ethnicity into our family. For those wondering, we'll be a transracial family (I wasn't sure what the appropriate term was when we first started). This is something not to be taken lightly. In true Darcy and Dave style we already have 4 books on hand to begin to explore the issues that both we and our child/children will be faced with. Okay, I digress... We were drawn to Ethiopia because most parents adopting from Ethiopia have their children home within about 12 months of starting the process, the children average 8 months of age upon coming home, there are approximately 2 children to one nanny in the orphange, women are rarely exposed to alcohol and drugs during their pregnancy, and children are valued overall in the Ethiopian culture. So there you have it... the reasons we chose Ethiopia.