Where to start our story

The picture above was taken on May 10, 2006. I was assembling our dossier paperwork (originals + 2 sets of copies) to take to Fed-Ex to send to FTIA, our international agency. FTIA reviewed our dossier very quickly and sent it to China, specifically China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) on May 12, 2006. This date became our DTC (date to China). Our dossier was logged in @ CCAA on May 18, 2006. We had an LID! I remember appreciating that we have a copier at home. Copying and collating such personal information, not to mention important documents, at home was great. I also distinctly remember the relief I felt at Fed Ex knowing the paperchasing was over. Man 2 years + later I am still glad that paperchasing is over. I think I disliked this part of the process more than the average adoptive parent. So what have we been doing in the last 28 months since our LID? Well, for one thing we both have jobs, which fortunately we both like with the addtional bonux of basically no commute. Spouse works from home most days. I work part-time in our neighborhood & part-time job at the conservatory (1/2 mile from home). We have traveled, gone to many plays, extensively re-modeled 2 apartments, lots of Reds games, and attended many cool events at the Art Museum & Krohn. We have also extensively re-worked our garden and adopted the next door neighbors 10 year cat, Lucy. The neighbors newborn son had allergy issues and we were happy to help. Lucy has been a great addition to our home. So here is our timeline of how we got to our LID:

* August 05 we contracted with Lutheran Social Services to do our homestudy. LSS was responsible for assigning a social worker to interview us and write our homestudy. A homestudy is a detailed report about us ... our education, finances, jobs, health, adoption motivation, etc.) After our homestudy was completed our chosen international agency manages our adoption until our baby is home. Then after baby has been home for 6 months our LSS social worker will come to our home again to interview us and right a report for the CCAA. * August 05 we completed classes on parenting adopted children with LSS * October 05 we contracted with Families Through International Adoption to manage our international side of our adoption.

* Sept - November 05 Parenting classses and background paperwork for our social worker prior to our homestudy interviews. After we did all this we could schedule our interviews (one @ LSS office and one in our home).

* Sometime in the fall we got fingerprinted and criminal background checks. We have been fingerprinted 4 times so far and if we go past December 08, entirely possible, we will have to be fingerprinted again. It costs $80 each to get fingerprinted.

* Dec 05 - Jan 06 Completed interviews with our social worker. We both like our SW. She is very kind and easy going which made the interview process not bad at all. We had really bad snowstorms that December and had to re-schedule our in home interviews at least once.

* Jan 06 Our Completed Homestudy was sent to FTIA. This means our SW really worked fast. Our homestudy is 8 pages single spaced about us.

*Jan - May 06 Collected dossier documents. These included birth certificates, marriage certificate, letter/petition to CCAA to adopt, homestudy, health exams, financial statements, employment verification, criminal background check, etc. All of these documents have various notary, county, state and one secreatary of state seal. The last document we collected for our dossier was another copy of spouses birth certificate with all the required stamps and seals. The first one had expired.

I remember spouse and I were so happy to have an LID. I know we went out to dinner that night at one of our favorite restaurants in the neighborhood. We thought that in 6-8 months from then we would be traveling to China and becoming parents. Little did we know our wait woud be a bit longer.