171H!

It arrived in the mail today. We love mail from the Department of Homeland Security! This was the required form which basically says the USA gives us permission to bring a child from overseas into our family. We filed for it on 2/2 and today, 85 days later, we got approval.

Finally the paperchase is over!

We received the last document needed in the mail today. I was able to take everything to the post office tonite and send it to the Secretary of State in Wisconsin where they give their stamp of approval that all the notaries are authentic. We are guessing that will take about a week. Then all those papers go to the Guatemalan consulate in Chicago to get further certification. When all that is done, our dossier (or huge pack of paperwork) will be complete and sent to our agency and we will officially be on the waiting list.

In honor of this huge hurdle behind us. I bought a dress for Watermela.

Last week I bought a pink "Boo" bear like Evans.

Fingerprinted

Jim and I went downtown to get fingerprinted for our I171H this morning. That is THE form that basically gives us permission from the US to adopt a child from another country. They send you a letter and give out a date and time. Ours just happened to fall on my late grandmothers birthday. She was adopted.

Silly Ryan

Weve talked about the adoption with Ryan so he understands as much as possible right now. From time to time he will inform us how we should decorate her room or what kind of clothes she should wear. Most often he likes to tell us what we should name his baby sister. Usually they are names of girls he knows but tonight in the car he was coming up with some funny made up names. Lincy and Starry to name a couple.
But he was SO proud of himself when he made up this name for her and insisted we HAD to use it.
Watermela. Its a "watermelon from Guatemala". Hmm, a nickname may have been born thanks to Ry.

Fingerprint appointment

Paperwork is still moving along. We finally got our homestudy report back so that was the next huge hurdle we had to get through. Our social worker for the homestudy sent that in and we now have our next appointment.
In order to be able to adopt internationally we need a form called the I171H from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigraton Services office. We had sent in our initial application in February. Now Jim and I both must go downtown to the Milwaukee office and be fingerprinted. It can take up to 90 days to get their approval. They give you a time- ours is April 19th at 9am.
In the meantime we hope to finish our paperwork and send it to Madison for certification. Theres about 21 pieces of paper (with about 17 of them being notarized) that Wisconsin has to prove are "official". That process will take about a week. Then we have to send all those papers to the Guatemalan Embassy in Chicago for them to prove as "official" which can take up to 4 weeks.
As you can see, the paperwork seems to never end but the road is getting shorter. We are still on track to receive a referral born this summer.