Russian Word of the Day

  • present = padarak

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Why the Rush?

So looking at the timeline we've created, some of you might wonder... what's the hurry? Well, besides the obvious reason that we want to get our child home as soon as possible, there is another. That reason has everything to do with notarization and our friends at the Kazakhstani Embassy in New York. Here's the lowdown. We've got to get our dossier (paperwork) to the Kazakhstani Embassy before any one of the documents in the package is more than 6 months old. This doesn't sound too hard, until you start to understand all the hoops that have to be jumped through. For example, one of the documents in our dossier is a form called an 1-171H, which we receive from the USCIS ( the united states department of citizenship and immigration services). We can't get this document until we have a completed I-600A from the same agency. Currently the wait time to have your I-600A processed is running right around three months, BUT the USCIS can't even start processing our I-600A until we have a completed, approved homestudy report submitted to them. However, we can't finish our homestudy until we have documents like medical evaluations and income verifications completed, each of which is notarized. So, since we have started getting documents notarized, we are now in a mad rush to try to get our homestudy done, so that we can get our I-600A done, so that we can get our 1-171H done, so that we can have our dossier translated into Russian and submitted to the Kazakhstani Embassy before the notarization we just got expires and needs to be redone! Whew. And now you know.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Why Adopt?

Many of you will be surprised to know that Tim and I have talked about adopting since we started dating in college. To us, this isn't a "second best" option. It's different - but just as beautiful, natural, and exciting as having a baby biologically. We didn't expect to adopt so soon, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized that the timing was right and that we should seize this amazing opportunity before it passed us by... that is, before we chickened out. Yeah, adopting is scary, but so is childbirth! Loving anyone is a risky proposition. I guess it just comes down to the fact that adopting feels so much more natural to us than going "high tech" with fertility procedures. In fact, I can honestly say that we feel grateful for the struggles of the past because it has led us to this amazing journey to find our next child, a child who's arrival we are anticipating with the same joy that brought Calvin into our lives.