In the Trenches

We officially committed to "Charlie" back in January though we had been watching his profile since the fall. We were waiting for some personal/professional chaos to die down before we committed. Originally we had planned to commit to another child (a good friend of "Charlie's") as well but another family beat us to the punch. Not wanting to miss out on "Charlie", too, we emailed Reece's Rainbow about how to formally commit but were told that he was spoken for as well! We were heartbroken to think that we had lost both children. We put ourselves on a waiting list just in case. A week or so later we got an email saying "Charlie's" prospective family had been unable to commit at this time and he was ours!

We are now officially deep in the trenches of paperwork. There are stacks and piles and tons of paperwork. Each packet of paperwork comes with its own stack of instructions on how to properly fill it out. We all had to get medical exams and our doctor had to not only sign and notarize our health forms, she had to give us a copy of her license. As a veterinarian, I know first hand that asking for a copy of a medical professional's license is a big deal. But we made appointments with our family practitioner and showed up with a giant stack of paperwork for her to fill out. As I'm going over all the instructions with the nurse (this has to be in blue ink, no cross-outs or smudges, have the notary stamp this one here...) her eyes are getting wider and wider and the look on her face became more and more one of "uh huh...you are out of your mind...". So with a terrified smile I handed her the stack of forms so the doctor could review them prior to our exams and she walked out. Hubby and I sat in the room, waiting for the doctor, both of us thinking, this is never gonna happen, and our doctor walked in. She looked down at the chart, looked up at us and said, "oh, you're adopting. We adopted our first child from South America years ago. I know all about the paperwork!" I wanted to jump up and just hug her. She was so understanding about filling out the paperwork not once, not twice, but three separate times before we finally got it approved by our facilitator. If anyone ever needs the name of a good, compassionate and understanding family practitioner in our area, I know a good one!

We sent off our first packet of apostilled documents to be carried to Ukraine, had our home study on Sunday and are just about finished with the second packet. We have a number of fundraisers coming up and our adoption grant continues to grow. We have been met with so much support, love and prayer during this whole process...I cannot thank everyone enough for all that they have done so far. And we are just getting started. "Charlie" has so many people who already love him; I can't wait for him to get home and meet them.

Stay tuned...