Paperwork Part Deux

Remember the summer of 2012? I sure do. It is emblazoned into my memory as the two month period during which we filled out more forms and practiced our signatures more times than I could possibly count. We went to doctors to make sure we are healthy enough. We are! We went to police stations to make sure we are not criminals. We're not! We went to banks to prove that we can afford to have a child. We can! We wrote to our health and life insurance companies to get proof of our policies. We have them! We asked our friends to be references for us. They agreed! We had our social worker come to our house to make sure it is a safe place for a child to live. It is! We went to the local immigration office to be cleared by the Department of Homeland Security. We passed!

Well…….

It's time for round two!

Our home study is about to expire, and so we are having to do some updating in order to keep things current. The update is not nearly as involved as the original home study. Wahoo! So here is what we have to do:

-Update medicals
-Update financial information
-Update criminal background check
-Update Child Abuse and Neglect clearance
-New home visit

All of these updates will be written up by our wonderful social worker and then the whole home study update will be sent to United States Citizen and Immigration Service. Once USCIS receives our updates, they will extend our immigration clearance, which is what gives us permission to bring our little birds into the country. MUY IMPORTANTE!

While parts of this are frustrating, it does feel really GOOD to be DOING something. For the last 16 months, our adoption has been entirely out of our hands. We (as you know) have just been waiting. So there is definitely something nice about working to bring our babies home.

One quick (and rather exciting) thing. It looks like we are MOVING!

Eeeeeeeek!

We are not moving far. Just to the other side of Birmingham. I am mentioning this now just in case there are any other waiting adoptive moms who are blog stalking our timeline (no shame; I do it ALL THE TIME) and wondering if a new home visit is required for their home study update. I am not sure if it is always required, but we lucked out with the timing and will be able to do our new house update at the same time as our annual update. SO, if you are approaching your home study update and are worrying about another home visit, check with your social worker to be safe, because I am not sure if it is always a requirement.

More on the business of moving once everything is final. Yay!

Love,
Baylor