December 31st, 2009

This year is at an end. We have done a lot of paperwork, but much more is to come...things will be getting much more interesting. We are now working on the medical forms that need to be done. We need to be tested for every STD known to man, and our doctor has to certify that we have no "heavy, chronic diseases". Here is the original blog post from Rani on this date:

After some difficulties with lost mail, everything for our Home Study is finally in, and we are just waiting for our social worker to come back from holiday to get it all spruced up and sent to us.

We have all of our dossier ducks figured out and in a line. It’s amazing how much easier this all seems after you have spent about 3 hours figuring it out and organizing it all.

Requests are in to the doctor for the newest medical forms - I’m afraid I confused the poor woman at the front desk with all of the things that have to be mentioned in it, she’s going to have the doctor look at it and call me back. Fingerprints have been taken by our local PD and we sent them off to the FBI, so we’re just waiting on the reply to add to the dossier.

All in all, not a bad way to end the year. We’ve accomplished a lot - taking the leap, making it through the Home Study, and getting a grip and a head start on the dossier. 2010 will involve a bit more paperwork , and after that we’ll have to see where the new year takes us!

Happy New Year!

честита нова година!

November 4th, 2009

We continue to gather paperwork. Adoption is kind of like a race...a race where you have to get certain paperwork completed by a certain date. The amount of paperwork is mind boggling. The amount of duplicate paperwork is even more so. And remember from one of the earlier posts, this is the FAST TRACK simplified Hague adoption...here is Rani's original post from this date:

So far this doesn’t apply in the literal ‘fly half way around the world’ sense - but hopefully it will soon!

For now, I post this because I have found myself once again online reading through things I otherwise never would have thought of doing. For this adoption paperwork process, we each have to get fingerprinted three seperate times. Today’s search was for how to request an FBI background check on…yourself! It isn’t that hard, actually. You just have to get yourself fingerprinted, and then send in your fingerprints to the FBI and ask them to check, see if you have a criminal record on file with them. It seems like it should be harder, but it’s not. I’ve added a link to their webpage, complete with instructions, as well as PDFs of the request letter to them and even a fingerprint card, in case your local police department doesn’t have the cards any more (many have gone to electronic, rather than ink and paper, fingerprints).

October 27th, 2009

Still working on paperwork (slowly) and our home study is in full swing. They have already visited our house and interviewed us, now we continue to gather the information that they want so that they can actually write up the home study document. We also started looking at the USCIS (United Stated Citizenship and Immigration) paperwork for the adoption...this is known as forms I-800 and I-800A. Here is the original blog post done by Rani on this date:

Sent off the last of the paperwork to the homestudy agency today! Now, on to the dossier….whoo hoo!

What does that mean, you wonder? Well, it means that we get to start doing a lot of the same things over again, but different. More proof of employment, financials, fingerprints (taken at a different place…that would be too easy), medical stuff, etc., but all just a little different forms for different people.

Oh, and the all important I-800 form. Believe it or not, this may be the most user friendly government form out there.

October 9th, 2009

Well, things are slowing down for us. This is on purpose and due to money. The faster we fill out our dossier, then the sooner the next payment is due and things are a little tight after the work we had done on our basement to shore up the walls. We are still working on things, but Spring will be the best for us as that is when we get our tax return and bonuses at work. Here is the original blog post from Rani on this date:

Still here, still alive, just waiting on the paperwork to go from point A to B, so that we can then start on the paperwork that goes from point C back to point B.

I have been filling the time by doing the Hague adoption training (which I need to remind Mike to do, too). Got that all done, just have to send it off.

In the meantime, here’s a fun link to some information on Bulgarian naming traditions. I had to read it slowly, and think about it a lot in some parts, but I think I followed it all…

http://www.orgsites.com/wa/facab/_pgg5.php3

That’s all for now…happy Autumn!

July 5th, 2009

We decided to add some links to the left. If you use Google Chrome (I highly recommend it) it will actually translate pages for you from Bulgarian or other languages to English. Here is the original blog post from Rani on this date:

It has occured to me that I have the ability to add links on here!

I have added the Bulgarian MOJ site, where they post the results/outcomes of the adoption council’s meetings. Once you have your dossier registered, you get a number, and from there you can watch to see if you are one of the lucky ones whose file was reviewed. The information is only available in Bulgarian, so you need to keep a translator handy in another window (Google’s is my preferred one for this) and do a lot of copy and pasting.

Lastly, I added the state department’s webpage for inter-country adoption. The link I added allows you to learn about each country, as well as find out any state department alerts.

June 30th, 2009

More paperwork (are you sensing a theme yet?). Anyway, we are working on filling out paperwork and getting other paperwork in order. Here is Rani's original blog post on this date:

So, we got the preliminary paperwork sent off to our adoption agency, and got the OK to go ahead with our homestudy agency! Basically, that means that we can now fill out the paperwork to send to the homestudy agency, so that they can help us fill out even more paperwork….how exciting!

Yeah, I’m feeling a bit sarcastic today, what can I say? I’ve passed the paperwork over to Mike, I’m letting him proof read the application (and fill in all the hard stuff that I got tired of figuring out on my own - don’t tell him that, though). We are both begining to master the art of filling in little boxes of information.

Aside from the sarcastic mood, I think we’re doing pretty well still on this. Yeah, it’s a lot of paperwork, and frankly my biggest concerns at this point are having enough paper to print on and keeping all the forms straight, but that’s alright. I can do organization with the best of them. The funny little nerves in the stomach and the “we’re really going to do this? are we sure? have we examined it from all possible sides? are we forgetting anything?” worries are gone now. In their place, we have new worries: “Did I remember to put all the right forms in the envelope? Do I know what the right forms are? What am I sending to whom, where am I sending it to them, and when am I supposed to send it?”

And then there’s the funny little fact that these forms all ask some things that are so standard you’re tired of writing them (name, address, etc.) and at the same time ask things that you never thought there’d be a quiz on later in life, like your past residences and dates you lived there going back 10 years. I’m considering never moving again, for fear that there will be a quiz on it and later.

After this, if I never have to write my address in a little box, it will be too soon….

June 7th, 2009

We have finished the adoption agency contract, here is the original blog post by myself for this date:

Took off early from work on Friday and Rani and I went downtown to the Franklin County Courthouse. I was expecting like 400 people in line or something terrible, but there was no line at the “Divorce Records” window. The clerk located my divorce papers effortlessly, and soon we had three certified copies. Grand total, 15 minutes and $5.10.

We also finished filling out the contract with our chosen adoption agency, and sent off the first (aaaakkkk) payment. We mailed the contract on Friday, and should have our caseworker assigned soon!

Still waiting to hear back from the budget strapped State of Ohio Jobs and Family Services about our home study agencies. Hopefully we will know something late this week or next.

On a lighter note, I was just watching the World Cup qualifier between Bulgaria and Ireland, and found myself secretly rooting for our new favorite country, Bulgaria

June 1st, 2009

More paperwork is coming in for our dossier/agency contracts. Still working on that contract with the adoption agency and still waiting on our research about the home study agency. Here is another original blog post by my wife, Rani:

Ah, the power of positive thought comes through for me again! I received my birth certs in the mail today - whoo hoo! Also hooray for thinking of going through the county office instead of the State office of vital records.

I have my passport renewal/update all put together and ready to go. Not that my passport is expired or anything. It’s just in the wrong name. Ladies, make a note: change your name on your passport within the first year of having said new name - it’s free. If, however, you do like I did and completely forget that you have the wrong name on your passport until a week before you’re slated to leave the country…well…let’s just say that timing was in my favor on this one, after all. I managed to get in and out of Canada before the passport regulation kicked in June 1st. However, given my current plans to travel to Bulgaria in the next year or two (hopefully!), I am sending it in for the update now.

Hmm…what else? At this point we are just waiting on the state to forward us the information on the different homestudy agencies that we are trying to choose between. Basically, we just asked them to verify that their licenses were current, and also asked for any information regarding complaints or compliance issues with each. Unfortunately, the state is cutting budgets left and right, and so what is normally an overworked agency is now taking even longer on these things. Not their fault, and in the greater scheme of things, an extra week or two isn’t too bad, I suppose.

May 25th, 2009

We are still working on the contract with our adoption agency, and still looking over the documents from the home study agency that our adoption agency recommended. Here is another original post from this date by Rani:

Mike’s birth certs arrived in Saturday’s mail - again, that was fast! I got the request for my certs notarized Friday and sent off Saturday, so we’ll see how long that takes. I’m guessing it won’t be a matter of days, however, more like weeks, but again, I’ll hope for the best.

We’re still working on the homestudy agency choosing and also filling out all the contract stuff so we can get that sent off. Alas, this has been a busy week, with our trip to Niagara, a friend coming in from out of town the same day that we got back, and preparing for the major basement work that starts tomorrow. Still, it’s been a good week, and I am glad we had the opportunity to do everything that we did this week.

I’m hoping we can carve out some time this afternoon to get the contract finished up so that it can go back to the agency tomorrow.

May 22nd, 2009

We continued to acquire paperwork that we would need for our home study and dossier. Here is the original blog post by my wife Rani on this date:

We arrived back from our trip to Niagara Falls to find our first documents had arrived in the mail - that was fast! We ordered our wedding abstract from the county on Tuesday, and by Thursday our three copies had arrived. I imagine that will be one of the easiest things in this whole process, but if everything else wants to go as well, I’ll not complain.

Today’s task is going to be finishing filling out the contract with the adoption agency, getting our referrences all OK, and hopefully getting my birth certificate request notarized so that I can send it off. After that, I think the only thing left to do is make a final decision for the homestudy agency. I’m still waiting to hear back from the state office that licenses them here in Ohio. I wanted to check up on their licensure, and also make certain that the ones I’m considering have no current complaints or non-compliance issues before we make our final decision. Alas, this state office doesn’t seem to be as fast as the marriage license office…

May 17th, 2009

Home Study time! The heart of your dossier is a home study done by an accredited social worker in your state. Our adoption agency recommended one near Canton, Ohio (about 2 hours away). This will be important later (LOL). We contacted them and got a packet of stuff to fill out. Information about us, our finances, our house, etc. We needed a lot of documents, which we started to acquire. Here is the post about some of this from our original blog as written by my wife, Rani.

We’re just at the beginning still, taking our first few baby steps along what is sure to be a long journey filled with yet more paper work, emails, waiting, googling things like “apostille”, and other things I’m certain I know nothing about yet.

And really, outside of international adoption, has anyone ever heard of the word “apostille”? Even my spellcheck has never heard of it.

Today’s stroke of what may be good luck is that I found the information to order my birth certificate from the county I was born in, as compared to having to order it from the state office. Why is this a stroke of good luck? Well, the county is currently quoting a 1-2 week turn around time on such requests, whereas the state is quoting 14 weeks! Of course, the very real possibility exists that the county website is just out of date, and they are really running further behind than 2 weeks, but I am ever the optimist….we’ll see how it goes!

Meanwhile, all Mike has to do is send in a form and some money, and the state office for his state of birth will just happily send him the requested certified copies. I, on the other hand, have to have my request notarized before I can send it. I’m not certain how I feel about that. On the one hand, I’m mildly annoyed at having to track down the family notary, but on the other hand, the ID Theft Caseworker part of me is appalled that it is so easy to get the official certified copy from Mike’s state. Oh, well…such is life.

May 15th, 2009

We now set about to find our adoption agency. Neither my wife nor myself are really religious, so we quickly removed a couple of agencies from the short list. As I mentioned before, not a lot of adoptions were happening in Bulgaria at the time, so the short list was really really short. So short that only one agency remained. Well, looks like that's the one! We contacted them and they were very responsive and sent us over a packet of information about the Bulgaria program. The night we received it we made the decision to go forward with the adoption. Our journey had truly begun. We began to look at the contract and see what all it entails. Now we needed to start work on our dossier.

April 30th, 2009

As we continued our research on Internation adoption, we also started looking for an adoption agency. Unless you are Madonna, you need to use a Hague Certified country along with a country certified adoption agency here in the USA. So our search was two-fold. Find a country that met our requirements, and find an agency that did the same. Country was easy. India won't let you adopt unless you are of Indian descent. Scratch that off the list. Other countries didn't allow you to have a prior divorce, or you had to be married for at least 5 years, or when the adoption time came you had to stay in country for 45 days or more. So we just went down the list of countries and kept removing them from the list. As the list got shorter and shorter, only one country kept coming up...Bulgaria. It was relatively cheap (as compared to say, China), we met all the requirements, and it was starting to look really good. A couple of internet horror stories about the orphanages in former Soviet Block countries notwithstanding, it looked like we had found our country. The only drawback that we could find was the program itself. It was recently closed as Bulgaria worked toward gaining acceptance to the EU, and had just opened up, so basically it was a untested program. No one from the US had done an adoption there in years, so we had no idea what to expect...

April 20th, 2009

With domestic adoption out of the running, we turned our hearts towards the International community. The internet provided us with hours and hours of pages, information, videos, you name it. We started off by learning about the various countries and cultures that were available, and also by learning about Hague Convention countries. Hague Convention countries are a group of countries that have similar rules and requirements in regards to adoptions. They have to follow certain rules, etc, to protect both the prospective parents and the children. We very early on decided that we had to have a Hague country.

April 15th, 2009

By this time, adoption ideas were coming fast and furious. Domestic? International? We started looking into each. We were put off by the fact that most domestic adoptions are done through foster care placement. This is great for the kids, but not so much for parents who just want to adopt and be done with it. It would require that we become foster parents and then wait for an adoptable child to come along. Foster parents are given first choice in the state of Ohio, so the only children that come up for adoption by non foster parents are older children, usually with a lengthy list of problems and issues. We decided that we didn't want to become foster parents (a most noble thing, but not for us) and we didn't want an older child with a lot of baggage.

April 4th, 2009

Ah, springtime, but still no signs of life for us. By this time we have resorted to fertility pills and mapping out the best times for ovulation. Nothing. Zip. Nada. We started to become frustrated with our situation, and the next step was in vitro fertilization. It was around this time that we also began to look at other options. I was always aware of adoption as an option, and started to explore the various scenarios. Rani began looking into the IVF procedure, and decided two things, she didn't want to be poked and prodded, and that the procedure has a very low success rate and is very expensive (and not covered by our insurance). We began to talk about adoption as a viable option to start our family.