Saturday, September 24, 2005
Faster Than We Expected!
Can you believe it? After a summer of collecting documents, getting fingerprinted, notarizing papers, begging friends and family to write nice letters about us, begging more family members to help us get documents authenticated AND having our home and personal lives "studied," we are ALMOST done our adoption papers. The funny thing is that someone decided to come along BEFORE we finished everything! We are proud to present Baby Dominic. Funny things happen when you least expect them. Frank and I were so excited to finally be almost done with our dossier. The dossier is a huge collection of documents that gets sent to the country you are adopting from. This dossier included about 20 documents that needed to be stamped and sealed by the Secretary of State in Harrisburg and by the Guatemalan Consulate in NYC. We had just gotten our dossier off to NYC to be authenticated and we were waiting for it to come home so we could ship it could be off to Guatemala.
The last big document we need is our approval from Homeland Security/Immigration. Our adoption facilitator called the Homeland Security Office last Thursday (9/15) to see how long it would take to get back to us. After she called immigration to check on our status, one of her lawyer contacts from Guatemalan contacted her and told her she had a very cute baby boy waiting.
Our adoption facilitator got in touch with me right away. Now, for those of you who don't know too much about international adoption (which is probably most of you!) some groups in Guatemala are in the middle of trying to pass a law in their Congress to change their adoption procedures. This news is not so great for us. Right now, things are "on hold" as far as the news laws go in their government, but the threat of this law passing is not good for the adoption process. People in the middle of adopting from Guatemala are moving fast so they don't get stuck in a potentially messy situation.
Considering everything that is going on in Guatemala, our adoption facilitator and the Guatemalan attorney worked together to get the ball rolling. Even though we are not officially done our paperwork, we have accepted this referral and we are scrambling to make sure that everything gets to Guatemala ASAP.
Please remember that until we actually bring this baby home, things could change. For one, his birth mom could change her mind. If that happens, we'll wait for the next referral. Hopefully, we won't need to do that. We are still waiting for our immigration approval to officially be done all the paperwork. After that, we are looking at 4 to 6 months before we can travel and bring Dominic home.
This little guy was born on September 5, 2005, at 8:30 a.m. He weighed 8 lbs. and he is a little more than 19 inches long. All of his stats are "normal" baby-wise, and he appears to be in buenas salud (good health). Doesn't he look cute and fat? I wish I could hug him and kiss those chubby cheeks!
It will be a LONG 4 to 6 months for us. We'll use this blog to keep everyone posted. Right now, things are looking good. I am sure we will have both good and bad days in the next few months. Please keep us in your prayers and hope that this little guy can come home to us!
The last big document we need is our approval from Homeland Security/Immigration. Our adoption facilitator called the Homeland Security Office last Thursday (9/15) to see how long it would take to get back to us. After she called immigration to check on our status, one of her lawyer contacts from Guatemalan contacted her and told her she had a very cute baby boy waiting.
Our adoption facilitator got in touch with me right away. Now, for those of you who don't know too much about international adoption (which is probably most of you!) some groups in Guatemala are in the middle of trying to pass a law in their Congress to change their adoption procedures. This news is not so great for us. Right now, things are "on hold" as far as the news laws go in their government, but the threat of this law passing is not good for the adoption process. People in the middle of adopting from Guatemala are moving fast so they don't get stuck in a potentially messy situation.
Considering everything that is going on in Guatemala, our adoption facilitator and the Guatemalan attorney worked together to get the ball rolling. Even though we are not officially done our paperwork, we have accepted this referral and we are scrambling to make sure that everything gets to Guatemala ASAP.
Please remember that until we actually bring this baby home, things could change. For one, his birth mom could change her mind. If that happens, we'll wait for the next referral. Hopefully, we won't need to do that. We are still waiting for our immigration approval to officially be done all the paperwork. After that, we are looking at 4 to 6 months before we can travel and bring Dominic home.
This little guy was born on September 5, 2005, at 8:30 a.m. He weighed 8 lbs. and he is a little more than 19 inches long. All of his stats are "normal" baby-wise, and he appears to be in buenas salud (good health). Doesn't he look cute and fat? I wish I could hug him and kiss those chubby cheeks!
It will be a LONG 4 to 6 months for us. We'll use this blog to keep everyone posted. Right now, things are looking good. I am sure we will have both good and bad days in the next few months. Please keep us in your prayers and hope that this little guy can come home to us!
