Moving right along!

Things are moving right along on the dossier front! We had our first homestudy visit Sunday and we have the second one tonight and the final one will be a week from today! I am so shocked that they are getting it done so fast but I am not complaining. This time has not been as bad as the first adoption. It seemed to take so much longer to get everything together for the dossier. But some how or another I am pretty much DONE with our dossier for Warren! I have checked and rechecked to make sure everything is done because I feel like I am forgetting something, but I am not! We just have to finish up these visits and the social worker has to do our child abuse clearances and get our letters of recommendation back and then we send off for our I800.
Jaden was a real show off for our first homestudy visit. The SW asked if she was excited about her baby brother and she said no! because he will take her toys! Nice! Leave it to Jaden!
Unfortunatly we have no pictures of Warren to post and I hate to do post without pictures so I took pictures of our paperwork from Mississippi! They were awesome because I got it all back less than a week after I sent it! Lets hope Ohio can do it just as fast!

Being powerless sucks!

Since Jaden's adoption was a while ago I had forgotten the feeling of being powerless that comes with International adoption. I like to have control of my life but you can't do that with adoption. These past few weeks have been a big reminder to me that this is not in my control. I have done everything that I can to get this paperwork done! The birth certificates have been ordered, (we can't us the extra certificates we ordered for Jaden's adoption because they have to have been issued in the last 6 months!)the adoption petition has been written, the police clearance has been done, the Hague training has been done, etc. But we had to put a hold on the medicals and anything having to do with the homestudy has been at a stand still! Why you may ask? Well because I was having to wait for our homestudy agency to assign us a social worker! And of course due to all the holidays no one has been working! (but they sure cashed my check fast!) I asked if they could just send me the paperwork so I could get started with the medicals because of course our adoption agency and our homestudy agency has seperate forms that have to be done. I was told no because NOTHING can be done before I am assigned a social worker. It doesn't matter to them that there is a little boy in China who is spending more days away from his mom and dad.
I was not happy but what could I do? Nothing! Its not like I could switch homsestudy agencies because there are no others to switch too! I had resigned myself to not getting anymore done until next month! But low and behild I was WRONG!!!
I finally got a call today from my wonderful social worker ready to set up our first visit! I know I haven't met her yet but she seems nice and has small children. And a plus is she is not the same social worked my friend was assigned because she is giving them a hard time! So now our first visit is set for a week from this Sunday! She wanted to do this Sunday but we have plans and can't do it! So that means soon I can get to work on the other paperwork I have to do! There should only be two visits after the first one is done and I am hoping she can do them all in a month!
This time is so much different from Jaden. There is ALOT more paperwork for one thing! The other thing is we actually have a picture of our child and we know he is sitting there waiting for us! It does not make it easy at all! I just want to go over there and bring him home! This is finally a step in the right direction!

A little more paperwork done!

I am happy to say that we have done a little more of the paperwork needed to bring Warren home! The adoption petition is done along with my letter of non-employment. Today we went to our local police department to get our police clearance forms. They were happy to inform us that they couldn't do our forms because we lived outside the city. Whatever, they did it last time! So then we had to head to the county sheriff's department and try our luck there. Things were not looking so good there either! The lady was new and did not understand that she could not sign the form and then notarize her own signature! Seriously!!! Finally she signed it and had someone else notarize it! Yhea us!
We also finished our Hague training online through our agency. We had to finish this before our homestudy agency will even come out! So now we have our physicals and a few other things to do and of course wait for our wonderful homestudy agency!
I am also going nuts not having any information on Warren's orphanage! Jaden was from one of the biggest orphanages in China if not the biggest, so there were pictures galore! Of course she was not in any of the pictures because she was in a foster home but at least I had something! This time there is zilch on Warren's orphanage. I have been told they just started international adoptions last year. I have actually started a yahoo group for his orphanage and we have a total of 6 members! Jaden's yahoo group has 922 members! I really just want to see what the orphanage looks like! And of course I want to see pictures of our son. I think this is going to be a long hard wait!
I am also sad that I wont be with our China family! You know the family we made on Jaden's trip. There are 7 families who are pretty close and I just don't feel right not having them there! I have tried and tried to get them to adopt too but so far there is always a reluctant spouse! (no mentioning names Gary and Madeline!) How I will get through China without them I don't know! I know there will be other families and who knows they may be just as great as our first China family! But I doubt it, we all clicked so well. And I am sad that I wont get to see them this year because our reunion is in the summer and that might be travel to China time. So I think they should make the reunion in China this year! That sounds like a good idea to me!!!

Paperwork progress...

For Jaden's adoption I blogged about everything! If I mailed something to someone for the adoption it was blogged about. With Warren it is different. I think mainly it is because Jaden keeps me so busy and when I do have time to blog it is about her! I am determined to try to blog Warren's story. Jaden has these nice books that I have made out of her blog so I want him to have the same thing. Of course I am pretty sure that he will not need two books to cover his wait because Jaden's wait for referral was so long!
So where are we in this wonderful journey through adoption? Well the homestudy application was mailed over a week ago. And let me just say that that application was crazy long and every line had to be filled out or it would be returned to me. So we should have our social worker assigned to us very soon and we can get the fun stuff going. We get to have someone come into our home and dissect our every move. This time they will have Jaden to talk to and I can only imagine what she will tell them!
We have also sent in the first set of papers to our adoption agency. This of course called for a notary. Thank goodness one of Rusty's employees is a notary so that will save alot of running around! For Jaden's adoption I took a picture of both Rusty and I filling out the application. This time that did not happen because that was all done before we were sure that China was going to give us PA for our little man and I didn't want to jinx it! But I did take a picture of Jaden holding the application before we mailed it!
I did take a photo of myself and Rusty signing the financial agreement for the agency though!

First care package on it's way!

We had fun last week shopping for little boy things that we could send to Warren. I have to get in the mindset of a boy otherwise the poor kid will have all pink toys. I picked up three toys and they were all pink. When we were on the way to the checkout it dawned on me boys like blue! So back to the baby section we went to get some more manly baby toys! Jaden picked out a blue elephant with a blanket. She also picked one of his shirts because it had an alligator on it!
So our box contained clothes, blanket, stuffed animal, baby toys, snacks for the babies, cameras, snacks for the nannies and a photo book for Warren! We packed it all up and headed to the post office to fight the Christmas crowd! One man told Jaden she had a big box and she told him "it's not yours it for my baby brother in China!" She wasn't very nice about it either! So $52 later our box is on its way to Henan China to a little boy who has no clue how his life will change in the next year!



In adoption paperwork news We finally got our application from our Homestudy agency and it is in the mail back to them. Now that we have to follow the Hague rules we have to use a Hague homestudy agency and there are only two in Ohio! The application was crazy and if you left one space empty it would be mailed back to you! If it didn't pertain to you it had to have N/A in the space! And I have been told they will not start our homestudy until we have done 22 hours of online classes! It's nuts! Oh well, he is worth it!

Today Warren's first Christmas ornament came in the mail. His big sister has 4 just like it, her wait was a little longer then his will be!

Celebrating our referral!

This weekend we finally took the time to celebrate our referral and PA in the same way we did for Jaden's. We went to a local Chinese restaurant with the Roger's family! Over two years ago we did the same thing when we were celebrating Jaden and Sophie!

This year we were celebrating our son!

Baby brother has a name!

While I have gotten used to calling our little guy baby brother I knew he would need an actual name. Unfortunately for me, back in 2005 I made a deal with Rusty. I would name our daughters and he would name our sons. I did this thinking we would adopt again from China and at the time knowing China it would be a girl, so I never thought Rusty would be given the opportunity to name someone. But surprise surprise we have a son which requires Rusty to pull out the baby name book. Ever since we saw him I have been throwing out names like Jackson, Cameron, Wesley and Joshua, you know cute baby names! Rusty on the other hand has been thinking about what he is going to name his business when he gets older! (I am not kidding here) The deadline was quickly creeping up on him because he had till today before I did my Christmas cards. So he FINALLY came to a decision. Our son will be named.....Warren Anthony!And while I would like to say he named him that because my grandfather's middle name was Warren and his great grandfather's name was Anthony, I think it is actually because he wants my son to make as much money as Warren Buffet! I am going to tell myself and my dear son that he is named after his great grandfather and his great great grandfather. And when he gets older he can name his business WAP enterprises! Rusty is very happy with his choice and thinks it is a strong name. I think it is a nice name and I will get used to it. I can not make a nickname out of it so I will have to go with his Chinese nickname. We call Jaden JJ but WW just doesn't sound good to me, neither does WA WA.So now we are done with the name and I am done with Christmas cards. Now I have to get busy with adoption paperwork! Don't you all envy me?