For those of you who don't know about the adoption process, I'll sum it up in one word....LONG! There are multiple documents (birth certificates, marriage license, medical forms, financial forms, employment and insurance forms, etc. that all need to be notarized, certified and authenticated by the Chinese Consulate. Besides that, there is also the home study process in which your entire life (and home) is an open book for your social worker. Actually, the paperwork is all very easy, it's just the waiting while the government agencies do their thing that is the hard part.
We submitted our application to A Helping Hand Adoption Agency on August 8th. It's been a month since we applied and we already have most of our documents completed and we have our final home study visit this Saturday. We still need to apply for passports (yes, I'm actually getting on a plane to China) and once our home study is completed, it needs to be finalized through the courts.
If all goes well, we are hoping to be DTC (meaning our Dossier sent to China) by January 1st. After we are DTC, then our dossier is translated into Chinese and we are LID (logged into the database). At that point, it's about a 7 month wait until we receive our referral, then about 8 weeks or so until we make the long journey to get baby Lauren. It's going to be a long road ahead, but we have an amazing reward waiting for us in China!
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Hey from one Leo named Donna to another, congratulations! We were DTC 8/24/05. I will bookmark your site and follow along if you don't mind.
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