Adoption Update!
February 21, 2021 - the last 7-8 weeks have been extremely busy with getting as much of our home study and dossier (aka HUGE paperwork file for international adoption) as quickly as possible!!
When we wrote our letter of intent to adopt to the children’s home country in September, we then had a deadline of 8 months to complete our home study and dossier, and for it to reach the home country in Spanish translation. Our goal is to have the home study completed by the first week of March so we can apply for USCIS (United State Citizenship and Immigration Service) approval—our home study has to go into this government document. This government department is responsible for determining eligibility of parents to adopt and the children to be immigrated. This general takes about 2 months to come back, but we’re praying for less! Then both of the home study report, copies of our passports, and USCIS approval will go into the dossier. Then, everyone can review it and it can be translated into Spanish ASAP. We are praying it will all be in the country by the 8 months deadline!
We are 50% finished with our eAdopt home study file and about half way with our dossier, too!! This is what we have completed so far:
-Application
-Orientation Training with our agency
-Written a Letter of Intent to the country stating that we want to adopt both kids, along with a PDF of photos of our family and home
-read required article readings on adoption-
-sent off and have received new copies of all of our birth certificates and our marriage license and they are notarized and apostilled
-All 3 Passports have been mailed off and are currently in the processing phase
-All 3 of us have had medical examination clearance appointments and all passed
-2 interviews with parents who adopted from international countries and interview reports submitted
-Personality Analysis online assessment for William and Ansley
-Background checks and fingerprints
-Autobiographies of William and Ansley
-Questionnaires and other miscellaneous forms
-Completed 2 Hague Parent Training courses (3 more to go!)
-Additional 2 hour training with our social worker
-We’re all learning Spanish, too! This Spring semester, Koen and I have a private homeschool tutor who is from South America!
We still have a couple more meetings to go, including our home study visit, which has been rescheduled twice because of the ice and snow we got this week in Tennessee. Hopefully that will happen in the first week of March now! We also have 3 more Hague courses to finish, finish all 3 resource books plus book reports, additional country of origin readings, and a little bit more paperwork. Plus, praying our passports get back before the end of March!!
Our plan to cover the needed funds of this adoption is a mixture of our personal funds for the upfront costs, fundraising for the dossier in this middle phase, and apply for and hopefully receive several grants once our home study is completed. Many grants require a home study report before application can be submitted, and sometimes it can take a month or two to receive these funds. So, we are still fundraising in this middle phase to cover the cost of the USCIS approval and dossier. In total, the adoption will cost approximately $58,000 including travel expenses for all 5 of us. We have personally invested around $7,000 into the adoption so far to cover the up front cost of the application and orientation fees, expedited passports and medical evaluations for all of us, Hague training courses, resources, upfront beginning home study fees, and other miscellaneous costs. We have also raised a total of $5,438 to go towards the dossier. We are deeply grateful for those who have donated and sponsored our 2 fundraisers so far!! Once the dossier is completed and submitted, we will have to pay $10,000. The USCIS approval is around $900. We will have a few more fundraisers in March to finish covering these two costs! We also have a tax-deductible donation link here:
https://adopttogether.org/families/?fundraiser=2-countries-1-family-a-new-adventure
A few of our friends have asked us about adoption as they’re considering it. Maybe as you’re reading this, you’re also considering it. And even for those who haven’t considered it but would like to know good resources about the topic, here are 6 that we have found very helpful so far!
The top 3 books in the photo are for our home study and dossier book reports.
The Whole-Brain Child: This book has been on my “to-read list” for a few years now. I’m super excited that our social worker approved it as one of our book reports! Thank you Carol Fennell Unrine for letting us borrow this and recommending it! This book is great to understand children’s behaviors and 12 strategies to help them with nurturing and developing.
The Connected Child: So while this is geared towards parents of foster and adopted kids, honestly William and I both believe every parent and educator needs to read this book!! I know I could have greatly benefited from reading it when I taught first grade as I taught many kids who were from dysfunctional families, troubled or a hard emotional background, or with special behavioral or emotional needs. The strategy tools and techniques that this book shares to help these types of kids is a HUGE perspective change and teaches you how to connect and bond and develop trust with the child. We will talk more about this book in-depth in another post soon! Just note: if you have a child with emotional or behavioral needs or you are a family member or close friend with this type of child, or you’re an educator, we highly recommend getting this book and reading it!!
Are Those Your Kids?: This book was on our list to choose from our agency’s book report list. It’s a great one to read about many different families who have adopted internationally and how they answer this question. We will share more on this topic later also because it’s one that gets asked a lot nonchalantly but it can be very hurtful to ask this question in front of adopted kids from another country.
The last 3 books are just very good resources for adoption in general about financing, questions to ask, and emotional support.
You Can Adopt Without Debt: Thanks to our sweet cousins Richard and Glyn McKay for sending us this good resource! (Side note: please pray for them too as they’re in the process of adopting a domestic newborn baby!!) This book has been so helpful!! Yes, adoption, especially international and for more than one child, can be very costly. But there are MANY grants out there—many of them require a completed home study first, but once that is finished then there are many to apply for and receive! This is our plan after our home study is completed! There are also a few grants that will give 0% interest loans as well! It also gives you fundraising ideas, including things to sell or make to bridge the gap.
Before You Adopt: This was a good resource recommended to us by Richard and Glyn also and had MANY questions for you to go through and discuss and pray over if you’re considering adoption. It talks about the many avenues to adopt—expectations, general questions, becoming a multicultural family, foster care, private domestic adoption, international adoption, embryo adoption, and finding the right agency. Note: if you’re seriously considering adoption and would like to know what agency we are using that does all of these types of adoptions, send me a text and I’d be happy to share that privately. Our adoption agency and home study agency have both been very kind, professional, and organized!
Calm, Cool, and Connected-An Essential Oil Guide for Foster/Adoptive Families: We love using Young Living essential oils for everyday life, but we started using them for emotional support after our miscarriage almost 8 years ago! They have truly been life-changing and we’re humbled and deeply grateful we have these wellness tools for our kids to help them process and release emotions, especially during the times of transition and grief waves. So, I was super excited to see a Young Living oils momma, Amy Hancock, who after 4 years decided to share specific oily routines for morning and bedtime, and fun positive sensory recipes she used successfully with her kids. She even references The Connected Child book also and I thought that was really awesome!
All of these books are available on Amazon or most retail bookstores, and some might be gently used at Thiftbooks.com
Please continue to pray for our journey—thank you! ️
