I haven't posted an update here in a while, mostly because we're in another one of those long waiting periods. At our last meeting, about a month ago, we handed in our massive folder of paperwork. Among those papers were the background checks we needed to send in to every state in which we have lived. How that works is we fill out a piece of paper answering about a million questions. We send that paper to some huge office in that state. Officials at that huge office run a background check to make sure our records are clear. They then sign another piece of paper saying we're good and send it back to the adoption agency. Once all of the background checks are sent back to the agency, the next step would be to schedule our homestudy. That was supposed to take place at the end of last month. Then we'd have one more meeting to record our family video and then we'd officially be "on the books." (That means our file is complete and is being given to birth moms to read.)
Surely it is obvious that things haven't exactly gone according to plan. Perhaps because of the snow, or perhaps just due to governmental bureaucracy, our background checks from New Jersey haven't been returned to the agency yet. The checks from all the other states in which we have lived have come back, but we are still waiting on New Jersey, as are all of the other adoptive parents in our group. We can't have our homestudy until the paperwork is complete, and until that check comes back our paperwork is considered incomplete.
About a week ago I called the adoption agency just to check in about all of this and our social worker told me that it is likely that our final date will be pushed back a bit. I figured this meant it would be pushed back by a week or two, which is frustrating, but not really that big of a deal.
Today I got a letter in the mail informing us that our final date has been pushed back until the end of March! So this is obviously disappointing. From the start of this process I've had the month of February in my mind as the month when we are officially done, when we can sit back and just wait for the phone to ring. Of course I am aware that we could likely be waiting for a long time, but at least our part would have been complete. I am really having to shift gears to now think of March as the final date. It's the middle of February now and to think that we have another month and a half left of the application process is discouraging. Until I got that letter today I really thought we only had a couple of weeks left. But there it is and there's nothing we can do to speed the process up.
So now we wait for the New Jersey paperwork to come back. (Stupid New Jersey!) Then we'll have our homestudy. Then we'll record our video at the end of March and THEN we'll sit back and wait.
[Insert disparaging joke about the Garden State here.]
