My husband surprised me the yesterday (especially given the near epic implosion that was earlier this week) by mentioning in an off-hand way that he thought passports were only good for 10 years.
I gave him a confused look and said, "So?"
He responded by telling me that he thought it would make things go much more smoothly if all our paperwork were up-to-date and current when we start putting it together for an adoption application.
This was kind of a shocker to me to say the least because I honestly listened to what he had to say the other night and thought he was putting the kibosh on the entire thing. Either I need to clean out my ears or he needs to be more clear. Maybe both things are in order.
He also saw the application packet from the Chinese-only adoption agency I had reuested information from and said, "Wow. You haven't even opened that yet? I never thought you'd wait for me to be home before you opened it." I had almost tossed it in the trash out of anger and frustration, but couldn't do it. A couple other packets DID bite the dust, though, so hopefully we will find we didn't need them anyhow.
I have a notebook in which I am going to write out all our questions regarding the adoption process so we can toss them out at a meeting with the regional director for the adoption agency I'm most attracted to using.
I like this particular agency because they only do Chinese adoption (and, honestly, I think that's the only place my husband is interested in for some reason) and they have a stand-alone office in Beijing. I like that there are people on the ground in the capital city to keep their ears open and be a resource while we endure what promises to be an excruciatingly long wait.
My husband and I are also talking about the possibility of putting ourselves on the Special Needs list rather than the Non-Special Needs list when we apply formally. A child with a birthmark (that may be lightened or removed completely) are considered special needs in China. A healthy child who reaches her 4th birthday is considered special need too. Because we aren't married to the idea of adopting an infant, the idea of an "older" child who may have a slight imperfection in the eyes of the Chinese government doesn't bother us...especially if the wait for that child is as much as half of that of a supposedly 'perfect' child.
I don't even have a problem with children with cleft palates and such because tending to that surgically is possible--my only concern would be something happening to her before we could get there or her surgery could occur. My husband, however, doesn't know enough about it to be comfortable in putting a check in that box on the form. I'm going to conduct some research, though, and see if I can fill in the information gaps so he can feel comfortable and make an informed decision one way or the other.
We also have to do a major overhaul on our house. Cleaning, decluttering, reorganizing. It's been needed for awhile, but this is as good a motivation as I've found. Once I'm able to land a job (waiting for licensure results is a pain!), we can even consider whether or not we wish to move. The real estate market is so ridiculous right now, but we've done lots of nice things to our place. We've lived here almost ten years. What it will likely come down to is whether we'll need the equity in the house to account for our "assets" for the application and whether we may need to use the equity in the house for part of the adoption fees. It would be nice to move to a four-bedroom home so everyone would have their own rooms off the bat, but I have some ideas that could make things work until that's possible.
Obviously, a trip to our accountant is in order. We need to figure out what our financial reality is in light of our adoption plans. From my limited information, it seems likely we can use where we are now to submit our paperwork and then, during our wait for the referral, we can look for another house and have this one on the market. If we are lucky enough to sell this place and move into a new home, we can pay for a new/revised home study based on that change in address. Because the move would be an upgrade, I would not think it would be a detriment to our process. It's a question that's going in the notebook, though!
Patience is not something I'm really great at, but motherhood has made me more so. I think I'll feel more settled once we've actually started the process. I'll feel great when everything is submitted to China and logged in such that there is a date assigned our dossier packet. The wait after that will be long, but with two children I know I'll be able to keep myself occupied. I'm pretty sure I'll feel better once we get this show on the road.