Adoption update

The last piece of paperwork finally arrived! For an international adoption, we are required to get child abuse clearances from every state we've lived in as an adult; for me, that includes Arizona, which quoted me 8-10 weeks (to get them to check a box saying that no, there are no records of me abusing children there).

It came today, a month earlier than expected! We also had our home visit today, so now our social worker will be able to actually write up our home study and submit it to the Illinois authorities (who, she warned us, may take up to 2 months to approve it). Our dossier paperwork has already been sent to our Haiti placing agency.

In big-picture terms, this means that we don't have a darn thing more we can do for this adoption now except try to save up some money and wait. This also means that we're probably on schedule for getting our dossier to Haiti on or around Scott's 35th birthday (mid-June), which is the earliest they will accept us anyway. We are tentatively expecting to get a referral for our child(ren) sometime this summer, and then hopefully bring them home sometime next summer. Still a long road ahead!