2nd Support Group. 03/04/04

We took off for Lexington again tonight for our 2nd group. It's funny the people that you run into. A girl that Michael had went to school with was there with their new baby. Such a small world. You just never know. It was good to talk to them and hear about their experience with domestic adoption.

There are usually different people there. Still a lot of the same faces but lots of new ones to. Everyone is so nice and it's really great to be able to share in the joy and pain. Tonight 2 different couples were there that had just been through a failed match during the last month since we had met. There were lots of tears as the birthmom had changed her mind after the baby was born. I just don't know how I could have dealt with something like that. It has to be devastating.

On a happier note, our crib has been ordered from JCPenny and should be in on the 10th. I'm really excited about it. It's our first nursery purchase. It's a convertable crib, so it will last him forever. I can't wait. We still haven't decided on decor yet. We've got plenty of time for that.

FMLA drama. 02/26/04

Well, let me tell ya. Today was the day from you know where. I never would have imagined that my employer could be so hard to deal with. The entire time that I've worked in the Lab we have been able to make up our time if we were out. This is what I'd been doing all along. I'd have to leave to chase down papers, I would take a lunch or I'd stay over. Well, apparantly someone's been abusing the fact that we have that option and the employee's down on the floor are complaining. So we get an email from our boss in the Lab that no more flex time. I broke down in tears and went into his office and asked if that meant I was just going to have to take points whenever I had to leave for the adoption process. Looks like it. At this rate I won't have a job by the time we get all of this done.

Luckily my Daddy was there for me to cry on his shoulder and we started looking for a solution. I had already been told my HR and Michael's HR that we would not be eligible for FMLA until after the adoption was final. WTF?? I had approached HR again before I ran crying to Dad to see if there was anything that could be done. Nope. We got on the FMLA site and printed out the rules of FMLA. Turns out that it covers anything up to and including the adoption that relates to the process. I mean I had been told by 2 different people that that wasn't the case. They never even offered to look up "policy". It was just going to be because they said so. Dad and I drug out the BIG yellow highlighter and made the important information very noticiable. If you know what I mean and I marched my butt straight to HR and laid it on her desk and asked her what she thought about that. I thought she was going to swallow her tounge. Needless to say FMLA papers were signed and all was right with the world again. For now anyway.

Fingerprints!!!!!!!! 02/20/04

Wow, that was fast. We got our appointment letter last week to have our fingerprints done today. Michael and I took off for the Gene Snyder Building in Downtown Louisville for our appointment. We got there early and let me tell you the place was packed and we had to wait forever, but what do you do but suck it up and wait. This is one step that we can't "skip". We met lots of adoptive parents while we were waiting. One couple had been in the process so long that their fingerprints had expired and they were having to have them redone. Apparantly they are only good for 1 year. Yikes!!!!!!!! What if it takes us longer than a year???

Turns out a big part of the wait was the fingerprinting machine was broken. Go figure. Once they got it fixed things started moving. We were there almost 2 hours before it was finally our turn. It wasn't what we had expected. I thought just the cop shows on T.V. LOL Black ink and white 10 card. Nope not at all. It was some sort of scanner that they rolled your fingers around on. No ink just some corn huskers lotion. This just all gets more interesting everyday.

After our fingerprint appointment was done, we went and ate lunch at Pizza Hut. Our favorite. :o) Then it was off to Walgreens to have our pics taken for our passports. It only takes a couple of minutes to get them and then we took off for the post office to drop off our passport applications.

The Homestudy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 02/09/04

Whooohoooo!!!!!!!!!!! Today I am taking off work to pickup the homestudy and drop it off at INS. I am so excited I can't hardly stand it. Once they get the homestudy, we can get fingerprinted and then the wait for the sought after I-171H. Which is the approval to bring an orphan into the U.S.

I dropped the homestudy off early this morning and they said they would be mailing us an appointment for our fingerprints. Things are starting to move along much faster than I had thought.

I'm going to start working at Mom's office on Fridays to make some extra money and keep myself occupied since I'm not chasing down papers everywhere. I've gotten all of our papers for the regions typed up and ready to go, our physicals are in order, criminal background checks are in, police clearance is in, abuse check is in, homestudy is ready to go, employment verification letters are done, our social workers license, agency license, post placement agreement, our deed, am I forgetting something??? We have to send off to get our passports which takes about 6 weeks to get them back and the I-171H and we have everything. We've still got about 2 months to get those 2 things together and send off the completed dossier.

Our first support group!! 02/05/04

Well, tonight we took off for Lexington for our first support group. It was really very nice to meet other adoptive couples. We were the only couple adopting internationally so everyone was very curious about our process. It was good to talk to a group of people that understand what you are going through. As hard as friends/family try, until you've actually been through this you can't even imagine.

The amount of hoops that we are having to jump through to have our dream come true is unreal. What comes so easy to the majority has proven to be the impossible for us. This is turning out to be quite the learning process. Some days are better than others I just hope it doesn't take a terribly long time for us to be united with our baby. We are in the process now of what adoptive parents lovingly call "paper pregnant"

I am actually looking forward to our next support group as this was our first interaction with other adoptive couples. We may actually go to more than the required 3.

Still pecking away at "the list"

Wow, there is just so much to do. It's unreal. Still waiting on the homestudy to be O.K'd so that I can turn it in to INS and get our appointment to be fingerprinted. It's such a good thing that I'm off on Friday's. I get so much done. This Friday I have to make a run into Louisville to pick up an employment verification form for Michael. We got the spindles put up on the deck on over the weekend. Thanks so much to Mom, Dad, Ed and Charlotte for pitching in and helping us get this done in the middle of the winter. You guys are the best. Now the fun part will be staining all of those things this summer. Wonder if I can invite everyone over to help with that little task? :o)

Aside from starting on the nursery we are just in a holding pattern for paperwork right now. We haven't decided on what we are going to decorate with yet. We are going to wait for awhile before we get that far in.

First Draft of the Homestudy 1/20/04

WOW. I got an email from Jan today and guess what was attatched to it??!! The draft of our homestudy. Good grief she's quick. She was only here two days ago. I'm forwarding it on to AAi for them to approve or make any changes. Karel at Adoptions of Kentucky also has to give it the O.K. She should have it by tomorrow.

We had already mailed in our application for INS approval all it's waiting for is the homestudy. Once they recieve the homestudy we will have an appointment set up to go and have our fingerprints done. All in all the whole process to get the much sought after I-171H could take up to six weeks after they recieve the homestudy. Hopefully I will have everything else done and will just have to wait on that little piece of paper.

Now we just have to have the O.K. on the homestudy from AAi and Karel and we will get the "hard copy" to have notorized and appostilled. Oh, yeah. All papers that go to Russia have to be notorized, have the notory verified through the county clerks office and then taken to the secretary of state's office to have the appostille put on them. If I have to go to any county but Henry for a notary verification it's going to cost me $5.00 per notary certificate and I have a lot of papers that are going to need notorizing I'm just hoping that we can keep the out of county ones to a minimum. It's also $5.00 a document for the appostille and with having to have 2 originals and a 3rd one just becasue, I'm looking at dropping a large chunk in Frankfort. I'll be taking around 75 documents to have appostilled when I make that trip. WHEW!! This may break the bank. :o)

THE HOMESTUDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1/18/04

O.K. We've been up since like 6:00 am running around making sure that everything is in it's place. Jan should be here any minute. We are so nervous. What if she has a white glove or something and we've forgotten to dust some corner that we've forgotten about??!! I've got to calm down, it will be fine. What if the dogs go nuts on her and she says that we can't have them around a child?? What if what if what if?? I don't know if I'm going to make it through this. Micahel is so calm I could just choke him.


12:00pm Whewwwww!!! It's over and I think that I almost had a stroke for nothing. :o) Jan was so nice and she wasn't there to pick. She wants us to have a child in our home. It was NOTHING like we had built it up to be. No white glove, no torturing. We had a nice chat for about an hour and a half and then she just walked through the house. Barely even looked at it I may add. Evidently we passed with flying colors and she told us she'd have a draft of the homestudy early in the week for me to send to AAi. WOW. That's really fast.

The only thing that she did tell us that we needed was spindles on the deck rails so that our child could not fall off. I guess we now have a wintertime project. We have to send pics of our house and us to Russia with the dossier so I guess we will have to get it done before we take the pics. Just another thing to add to the todo list.

So much to do so little time. 1/17/04

Today is my cousin Belinda's baby shower at 2:00pm. We are almost done with all the cleaning and straightening for the homestudy so the shower will be a nice break from all the stress of preparing for tomorrow.

Even though we are in the process of adopting a child it's still hard to go to baby showers. I am so happy for my cousin but it's just different. I don't really know how to explain it. I don't have any friends that have adopted so I don't really have anyone to share this with that will understand what this is like and I can't share experiences about being pregnant because I haven't been.

It's like I feel like I'll never be able to fit in with friends that have bio children. I don't want to feel left out. I want to be treated like everyone else. I mean after all I'm going to be a Mommy too just not the conventional way.

The Call to Jan 1/14/04

ACCCKKKK!! Our homestudy is this weekend. The 18th at 9:00am. Good Grief I never knew it would be that fast. We've been straightening and emptying the room that will be our nursery for several weeks now but I didn't expect things to move this fast. We've got so much to do and so little time. It's a good thing we're off on Fridays so that we can get the last minute stuff done.

The Orentation 1/13/04

Tonight we travelled to downtown Louisville to our orientation with Adoptions of Kentucky. We were the only couple there that is adopting internationally. It was interesting but absolutely none of it pertained to us and what we will be going through. It was all about being matched with a birthmom and what happens after the baby is born with terminating parental rights, the possibility of bmom changing her mind.

This is the whole reason why we decided to adopt internationally. It has been enough of an emotional roller coaster trying to have a baby on our own without adding the stress of a baby being taken away after he/she has been in your home. With International adoption you are matched with a baby in an orphanage. Not a newborn of course, but you choose the age, and with Russia the babies have to be at least 6 months old before they can be referred. We have requested a boy/girl under 12 months. You have to give the agency your "specifications" on a child you are willing to accept. We are not going to be picky. We wouldn't have any control over hair color or eye color if we were pregnant so we are going to leave it in God's hands.

I've veered off track. More on all that later. We met a lot of nice people tonight. We are going to be seeing a lot of them in the near future due to the fact that we now have to attend support groups for the next 3 months. Our social work is going to be Jan Overstreet and I will have to contact her tomorrow to set up a homestudy appointment. We have to attend at least 1 support group per month for the next 3 months. They are going to be in Lexington. Great, more travelling and missing work. Oh, well. We knew it was part of it and with us living in such a rural community it was a given that traveling between downtown Louisville, Frankfort and Lexington was going to be happening a lot.

We got a lot of interesting information tonight. Pamphlets on child development, immunizations, child care, etc.... They also recommended that we take an infant CPR class before our children come home. That will be something that we will definetly look into.

Well, tomorrow I'll call Jan and set up the homestudy appointment. Gosh, I've got a lot of cleaning to do.

Kimberly's Dr. visit. 1/9/04

Today I went to the Dr. to have my physical. No big deal at all. They told me we have to have our TB test read on the 12th and then they will sign off on our physicals and that part of the paperwork will be done. WHOOHOOO a checkmark on my list.

1/12/06 We had our tests read today and yippeee they came back fine. I've got physicals done, check check, and now I'm on to the next thing on my list. Tomorrow night is our orientation with Adoptions of Kentucky. We are very anxious to see what that is going to consist of.

Michael's Dr. visit. 1/6/04

Today Michael had to go to the Dr. to have a physical. No big deal really. Just draw some blood, run some tests, give the Doc some forms to fill out. I have mine on Friday the 9th.

We had to decide on a pediatrician to give our referals information to when we recieve it. We should get a picture and medical information when the time comes and they told us we should have a Dr. that can review the information for us. We decided on Dr. Paige and I just have to get his information and medical credentials to put in the dossier to send to Russia to prove that we will take our child to the Dr.

I've been plugging away at the dossier. I'm filling out papers to get our background checks and stuff that I'm going to have to be waiting on to come back to me. I figure I'll start with the easy stuff first.

Information for Adoptions of Kentucky 1/5/04

We turned in the paperwork for Adoptions of Kentucky today to get a skeleton ready for our homestudy. Before we can schedule the homestudy we have to go to orientation which they have set up for 1/13/04. It's in Louisville at their office. We are going to be going with lots of other couples that are adopting domestically and maybe some that are adopting international. We'll just have to see when we get there.

Today in the mail was the dossier packet from AAI. Oh my gosh!!!! I'm in shock with everything that we have to do. We have to have criminal background checks, abuse checks, Dr. visits, get passports, INS approval to bring a child into the US, we have to fill out an application describing the child we want to adopt, give POA to lawyers in Russia to act on our behalf, fill out applications for each region that AAI works with in Russia. I don't see how we'll ever get this all done......................

The Homestudy Agency 12/22/03

Today we contacted our homestudy agency, Adoptions of Kentucky. We had contacted them over a year ago about a domestic adoption but decided against that at that time. They are now doing international homestudies so we decided to go with them since we had already met with them once before and they seemed really nice. They told us that we had to comply with all of Kentucky requirements as well as Russia requirements. This means that anything that they require for domestic adoptive parents they were going to require from us. First off would be filling out all of the background on Michael and myself. This amounted to 35 pages each of any and every kind of question that you can imagine from how you were raised, discipline methods, school......you name it and they ask it. Next we have to go to an orientation which they will set up for us once we turn in all of the background papers.

And the fun begins.......................

12/24/06 It's Christmas Eve and tonight at dinner we are going to tell our family of our plans to adopt a child. Mom and Dad already know and Ed and Charlotte already know. The excited Grandparents to be.

I was a nervous wreck. Don't ask me why, I have know idea. Everyone knew of our desire to have a child and knew of the struggles we'd had over the last several years. Every year on Christmas Eve my aunts, uncles, cousins and Grandparents get together and have dinner and exchange gifts. I just couldn't decide when was the right time to "cut in" with our exciting news. I kept looking at Mom like "now?"

Finally with my heart pounding in my chest and Michael sitting beside me we broke the news. Everyone was quite shocked to say the least. Excited and full of question but surprsed. My Granny was really curious about how everything worked and we answered everyones questions as best we could but we are still very very new to this and are just learning ourselves. We told them that we would keep them posted on our progress but that more than likely it would be about a year before we would be matched with our child. They wished us well and were very supportive of our decision.

The Journey Begins 12/19/03

Today was the day that we signed with AAI. Our International adoption agency. We have decided to go with the Russia program. After searching and recieving information on several different agencies and talking to many references we have decided that they seem perfect for us. They will be sending out our dossier packet and contracts today.

We just found out yesterday that our adoption loan was approved. We were so excited and scared all at the same time. After 4 years of trying to have a child we have decided that this is the path God has chosen for us. This is really going to happen. We are going to start our family.

Starting up.

Hi everyone. Mom has been after me forever to document our adoption journey. So here goes. It will probably take awhile so please be patient.