Where We Are

We began the adoption process initially with the hopes of bringing home a baby girl from China. We chose our China agency in October of 2005 on the advice of family friends, who had brought their daughter home about 4 months prior (thanks Jen and Dominic!). We got all of the initial paperwork done (including going to court to get Chris’s birth date on our marriage license corrected) by March of 2006 and submitted our home study to USCIS. It took until June before we received our very important 171H, which is basically approval from US immigration to bring a child into the US as a new citizen. When we sent in our application, we were told the wait was 6 months, by the time we submitted our dossier, we thought the wait would be about 10 months to referral. As everyone involved with China adoptions knows, things have slowed considerably and we are likely to wait a total of about 3.5 years.

After watching the referrals slow to a crawl in 2007 (only 51 days of log-in-days were covered in the last nine months of 2007), we decided to research other options. We remain in line for our daughter from China, but our first child will be from Kazakhstan! The wait for China is horrible and our hearts break for the thousands of waiting families around the world each month that referrals come out for only a few LIDs. But it is hard not to think that God has allowed us this chance to give a little boy from Kazakhstan a home who we would not otherwise have known about. We are overwhelmed with excitement to get both of our children home!

So we chose an agency for Kazakhstan in October of 2007. We are very happy so far with all of our agencies, so please check out their web pages listed on the left if you are looking for agencies. Since our home study just had to be updated and we had experience paper chasing, getting the dossier together went much quicker than the first time. We sent our dossier to our agency on January 2, 2008. Unlike the clear-cut LID line of China, the Kaz process has lots of steps. The time to complete each step varies, which is why I am so grateful to everyone who has posted their timelines on their blogs. Currently, our dossier is at the Kazakh consulate in NY.