Jumping back on the bandwagon

Adopting AGAIN?

Are we crazy? Are we trying to get our own TV show? Or have we somehow failed to notice the 6-month-old in the next bedroom?

No, no, and definitely no. But there's a short version and a long meandering version here. Let's start with the short, simple one today:

Last week, we submitted our pre-application to adopt again, this time from Haiti! The international process will probably take close to 18 months, so that's why we're starting so early (and in case you're wondering, I cannot imagine having an additional child right now...but we are pretty confident we do want another, and we would like for Juliet to have someone within 2 years of her age, hence...this plan).

We’re hoping to adopt siblings – if things go smoothly (which they won't, since nothing is totally predictable in adoption) we’re guessing we would be bringing them home in summer 2013, so when Miles is 6 1/2 , Eleanor is 5, and Juliet is 2, we’d be bringing home a 3-4 year old and a 1-year-old, or something roughly like that. That’s the ideal anyway, but we’ll just see how it goes; kids don't come made-to-order to fit OUR needs, so we want to be open to as many variables as possible, including the age of the children. The one thing we will probably not flex on is the maximum age; Miles is adamant that he does NOT want an older sibling, and I've read enough about adopting out of birth order that I believe displacing him as the oldest would be pretty traumatic and cause a lot of sibling resentment. So that limits us to kids under age 6 (in 2013, that is).

For those of you curious about adoption, here's a few facts:

Unlike many countries, because of the poverty and recent disasters in Haiti, there are more children in need than families waiting to adopt them, which is pretty heart-wrenching. In terms of a time frame, our home study will probably take 3-4 months. The home study is the process where you submit a whole bunch of paperwork - financial data, medical histories, criminal background checks, etc. - to a US adoption agency, get interviewed by them, and then finally they do actually check your home (mostly to make sure you do have a bedroom for the child you want to adopt, you don't leave guns or household poisons lying around, you do actually have heat and running water, etc.) Then they write a home study, which is the document that certifies you have been approved by a licensed agency to adopt. It's a whole lot of paperwork and time to net you four pages of paper.

After that, we send our dossier (lots MORE paperwork, including annoying stuff like certified notarized stamped original birth certificates for everyone in the family) to Haiti. This will probably happen in mid-June, when Scott turns 35 and we are finally old enough to qualify; Haiti has some pretty stringent rules about who they accept as adoptive parents, though it's apparently quite possible to get a waiver for some of them, since otherwise almost no one would be allowed to adopt from there).

And then we will probably get our child referrals pretty quickly, probably within a month or two (a referral is when you get assigned a child, sent photos and medical/social information, and you have to accept the referral and commit to that child or else turn it down and ask for a different one). And then it’s about a 12 month wait (estimated) to go through all the court process, paperwork, immigration, etc. until you actually bring your child(ren) home. One nice thing about Haiti is that it’s so close, we can fly there to visit “our” kids once we have a referral. They have a guest house where you can live with your adopted children and get to know each other, etc; that’s pretty cool.

So that's the short version. If you'd like to know more about adoption in general or about our journey in particular, I always LOVE to talk about my favorite subject!