For us, the beginning of the process (told in the last post) was falling head-over-heels in love with two perfectly adorable boys. We chose them, applied to the agency, and became officially matched with Edward and Percy. Edward and Percy (their agency assigned names) then got re-named (though as of now, unofficially) with names we chose, Daniel and Matthew. For their middle names we will be using their Chinese names.
After that, we had to gather some paperwork and rush it off to China to get our pre-approvals (PAs). That basically means China was giving us permission to adopt these children if and when we completed all the other steps required.
After this we gathered paperwork like crazy for our homestudy. Birth and marriage certificates, background checks and police clearances, character references and medical forms (which required doctor's appointments for everyone and blood work for all our legal adults), etc. etc. etc. We have had one of the four required homestudy visits. The next one is happening downstairs now (interviews with my kids).
In the meantime, we have gathered some of the documents needed to go in our dossier (the packet of documents going to China) together and rushed them off to be state certified in Tallahassee and then on to the Chinese Consulate in Houston, Texas where they will be authenticated by China.
The dossier is not complete, though, until the homestudy is complete and...
we become USCIS fingerprinted and approved. This means the United States is giving us permission to bring Daniel and Matthew home. Which can't happen until our homestudy is complete. This background check can take a long time, 6-8 weeks.
After the USCIS approval and the homestudy are authenticated in the Houston Consulate (and added to the other documents we already sent), our dossier is complete and is sent to China.
We then wait for travel approval (TA). How long we'll wait is in the hands of Providence and the Chinese Government (and sometimes it seems much more like the latter than the former).
When we get travel approval, we can, well...travel. We will travel to China and get our TAKs (totally awesome kids)!
Right now we're having our home studied (a fascinating science, I'm sure) and then we will wait for our USCIS background checks.
You should now fully comprehend the sentence: Got USCIS approval! Waiting for TA so we can fly to China and get our TAKs!
Yes, it's a lot of work, but I have my faithful "secondary" (secretary) Joshua, who camps out with pillows and blankets by the printer and makes copies of documents into the wee hours of the night. Not to mention, how could we give it up when we have these faces calling us to China? (Daniel is in the top video and Matthew the bottom).
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