Oh great light of love

I spoke with CHI this week and there is another family who submitted at the beginning of March to the ICBF. We submitted at the end. Neither of us have been approved yet from the ICBF. They are hopeful our approval will happen soon and will let us know as soon as it does. Sometimes our approval will come with a referral...sometimes it will be two separate things...CRAZY thought we could be parents approx 45 days from approval and referral or longer. Upon referral you get 30 days to review it, have a MD look at the medical records...etc... Once accepted you have to get VISAs and your travel date...depending on what is going on at the Embassy it could be quick or another 30 days until we travel. Thanks everyone for continuing to follow and support us on this journey!! Cannot wait to meet our babes someday!! Amaral family vacation this week and next! Excited to relax and enjoy spending time with my hubby and everyone else!! Our first cruise so I am a bit nervous :) per Shaggy's recommendation I have my sea bands and the ginger candies ready to go...and some wine! :) Need to find some outfits that will compliment my life vest accessory. XOXO C and M

Colombia is on the move again...

As some of you may have heard from us, we had a bit of a concern when individuals on a Yahoo Group I belong to stated that Colombia was not giving any more children for international adoption after the lineage investigations concluded at the ICBF. Great news is that we heard from our agency that there were 3 referrals given in August at the conclusion of the investigations, and there are 5 dossiers that have been sent out to region to be matched with a child and 4 families waiting to travel to complete their adoption. This is fantastic!! We have not heard about our approval from the ICBF yet, as some of you may recall, they initially told us 3-5 months, probably earlier for us since we are young, childless, and have pretty open desires for our children. August 30th would be 5 months from our dossier being sent in March. I am holding off on asking as I do not want to be the crazy person that keeps asking if there is any news, we committed to waiting until we get back from the cruise to ask what our status is. Maybe we will be lucky enough to get it while we are at sea, who knows! :)

John Kerry and the fight for less broken hearts in Adoption

Some of you may have heard about HAGUE accredited agencies and countries vs. non-HAGUE. The difference is ethics, corruption and transparency. Adoption sometimes can be a difficult journey with the amount of money one invests in the process, there are governments that take advantage of the emotional highs and lows one faces and the money one sacrifices to create their family. Laws like HAGUE and the one that John Kerry and some other Senators are working with help families to get the child they are promised instead of traveling to country and finding the same child was taken by another family or said child never existed. In these countries there is no one to contact to let them know the lies this experience was based on as the government is the obstacle. These families then return home childless and having spent all the money associated with the adoption process. Hopefully with these types of laws in place, it will reduce the wait time one has to wait to get their referall and eliminate the length of time children are without these families. Legislative Update: Universal Accreditation Introduced Two identical bills were recently introduced, one in the House, one in the Senate, to amend the Intercountry Adoption Act, expanding the requirement for accreditation for all US adoption agencies offering intercountry adoption services. Both versions have been introduced and are now in Committee. The full text of the amendments can be found here (they are identical): House version: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr6027/text Senate version: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s3331/text The following is the press release from the Senate: June 22, 1012 WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) and Ranking Member Richard Lugar (R-IN) along with Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and James Inhofe (R-OK) introduced legislation to elevate and standardize adoption services across the globe to safeguard against corruption and fraudulent adoptions. After years of conflicting, country-by-country standards for Adoption Service Providers (ASPs), the Intercountry Adoption Universal Accreditation Act of 2012 will for the first time universalize the accreditation process for all ASPs. The legislation would elevate standards, requiring all ASPs to comply with current, stronger requirements upheld for ASPs working with Hague countries. The new accreditation standard would help safeguard against corruption and fraud in the adoption process. “The safety of children across the globe should be our number one concern in the adoption process and this commonsense reform will help us get them placed into safe and loving homes. Piecemeal, conflicting adoption standards have made far too many cracks and chasms in the system that left room for corruption, deception, and often outright fraudulent adoptions. I’m grateful to our Ranking Member Dick Lugar and Senators Landrieu and Inhofe for partnering with me in this effort to elevate and put in place universal adoption standards that make kids the priority,” said U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “The United States adopts more children from overseas than any other nation. Many of these children have serious medical conditions, often requiring significant and costly medical attention, yet, regardless, Americans open their hearts and homes to them. This legislation establishes uniform standards that would provide American families with certainty that they are working with an accredited American adoption service provider, regardless of the country they are adopting from. I am pleased to be joined by Senators Mary Landrieu and Jim Inhofe, two of the Senate’s leaders in this field, as well the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry,” said U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Ranking Member of the Foreign Relations Committee. “Mandatory accreditation will ensure that the adoption process between the U.S. and other countries is lawful and safe for an adopted child and respectful of the families involved. Additionally, I hope that this bill will prompt the U.S. Department of State to consider financially supporting the accrediting entities to relieve part of the financial burden on smaller agencies and to ensure a robust accreditation process,” said U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA). “Standardizing the accreditation process for international adoptions will provide additional protections for both the child and the adopting family. The patchwork of adoption standards that currently exist have resulted in a situation that is not optimal for protecting the international children being offered for adoption. It has also resulted in fraud and corruption that has devastated loving American families who are willing to make many sacrifices to adopt internationally. This legislation is the right approach to fix the problems that currently exist,” said U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), co-chair of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption. The Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (IAA) specified that accreditation or approval is required in order to provide adoption services in cases subject to the Hague Convention with limited exceptions. The IAA defines the parameters of accreditation for the organizations providing services to prospective adoptive parents and charges the Department of State with responsibility of the accreditation process. The Kerry-Lugar bill would apply the accreditation requirement universally to all ASPs – those operating in both Hague and non-Hague countries. http://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/chair/release/kerry-lugar-bill-would-help-prevent-corrupt-fraudulent-adoptions-abroad

Blogger Hiatus

My apologies for not having posted in some time...there is not much to report. As you remember, we submitted our dossier for translation and approval from the ICBF on 3/23/12 which should have arrived in country on 3/30/2012... In the mean time, a Colombian native wrote an article about the ICBF being a child trafficking ring and a big thanks to the lovely Secret Service agents who decided to enjoy themselves in some extracurricular activities... Needless to say no bueno for those trying to adopt from there... For those that do not know, the ICBF is similar to DCYF in that it is a government agency that determines if the parents are not suitable or if the children are legally abandoned. In response to this article the ICBF is reviewing all cases to ensure the children are definitely abandoned and that there is no next of kin who wants to parent them. We are not sure how long this is going to take... Our social worker informed us that our translation to approval should be 3-5 months, she was hoping for the sooner but with these challenges arising it seems that we may be waiting until the end of August. Once this happens then we go onto the wait list for a sibling pair newborn to 7. We are still hoping for our December wish but we will see what happens! Matthew and I are focusing on controlling what we can and leave the rest up to those we have trusted to bring these babies to us! On another note, through one of our adoption conferences we heard of a language book and CD created by an adoptive mom. Check it out, there are multiple languages and you can buy it on Amazon. "Simple Spanish for Adoptive Families" by Amy Kendall...we want our children to retain their native language and yes they will learn English as well but what a great way to relate to them and make them feel accepted then by learning some key phrases yourself. This might by part of the Yankee swap this year, of course with a bottle of wine! :) Cheers!

Our dossier is traveling to Colombia!!

We received an email from our placement agency yesterday that I wanted to share with you all:

"CONGRATS!!! Your dossier was sent this week to Colombia!!!
 
So, your dossier takes a week to get there, then it takes at least a month to get translated, sometimes longer, depending on the amount of work that the translator has. The translator is officially approved by ICBF. Then your dossier is automatically handed into ICBF and we await approval of your dossier. It takes 3-5 months for approval. Hopefully yours will go more quickly (3 months) as you are asking for older siblings, but again, we have no control over this. We don’t hear anything until the approval process is done and they let us know you are approved and on what date, OR they contact us, asking for more information on your case."
 
Moving along in the adoption world!!!!! So once all this happens they send our packet or dossier as it is technically called into Region, this could be anywhere in the country where they have a sibling pair age newborn to 7. Once that is done we would then receive our referral. Short time frame is 3-4 months, long time frame year to year and a half. Since we are both young and without any other children we should get preferential but who knows! :)

Dossier submission

WE GOT OUR APPROVAL FOR USCIS TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hooray!!!! This means we are approved through the US government to adopt internationally! We should be able to submit our dossier to Colombia for translation by the end of next week! We ARE SO PUMPED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you everyone who has helped us with all the paperwork (I counted the other day while I was making copies and it came to 97 pages) whether you were notarizing, apostilling, or putting recommendations together!!! You have no idea how much your part in this means to us!

There may be reasons for others not to adopt but in most cases the size of your heart is not one of them.

It has been a crazy 30 days for us in regards to the adoption. We placed some things in others hands, those that we trusted and the deadlines were not met. For those of you that are considering adoption, make sure you have timelines in all your contracts. We failed to do this for our Home Study and did not receive it until December 22, 2011 when we completed it in August. Additionally while we were away our social worker sent in our packet to HAGUE/USCIS - (Petition to adopt to the US government) and she left out our check.

On 12/29 I opened our mailbox to find a rejection letter from USCIS informing that no check was enclosed. I did not read the document, I only saw that it said rejected. My heart sank, I called our social worker frantically leaving her a message that we were rejected and to call me asap. I called Matthew and asked him to call her as well. She called me right back and I asked what happened to the check. She was adamant that it is was enclosed in the packet she had sent in. I asked her where the folder was that Liz sent to her on our behalf while we were away, it was not enclosed in the envelope that was sent back therefore I was assuming she retained it. She looked around her office and found it, low and behold the check was still in it. I literally wanted to freak out, I just informed her in a calm voice that I would pick it up tomorrow on my way to an interview and that things happen. I called my poor husband and started crying, everyone knows me and knows that I have a controlling personality, in this process we have had some things we can control and there are other great things that we cannot. This process has demonstrated to me that I need to trust people yet set my own boundaries that I am comfortable with, not be totally hands off. I placed in my head that I can count on these folks because we are paying them for a service, unfortunately that has not worked out in this case. The other characteristic that all of you know about me is that I sometimes cannot let things go when people disappoint me. I feel that I try my hardest to uphold my end of the bargain with others, I have high expectations, and when someone fails me it is really hard for me to connect with them again and it is hard for me to trust in them again. In this situation I had to realize that people make mistakes, some unintentional and others intentional, I need to identify the intent and determine if the relationship is worth saving. In this case we have to work with Leah again, she has to do our placement visits once the babes get here. She is a good person and she has done AMAZING things for so many families, I have seen this first hand at the adoption picnics. I have to look past some of her character traits that I dislike and see inside her intentions are to make us a family. This process for Matthew and I has really caused us to look at ourselves and determine what obstacles we face and create ways to overcome them.

Onto the good news:

On January 11, 2012 we received notification that our "Petition to Adopt" has been processed!!!!! Hooray!!!!! We sent all of our dossier pieces (over 87 pages of documents and over 32 pages of photographs) to Children's Hope International on January 9, 2012. Nichole, our case worker, called me on Friday the 13th and asked for five things: Pictures of our children's school and local playgrounds; redone medical statement as the notary did not sign the document correctly; a new passport photo of Matthew; employment verifications for both of us from our CPA and our 1040 form from 2010. She is currently translating all our documents and once she gets these she will send them to Colombia. Timeline is probably first week of February, Happy 30th birthday to me!

So I guess I turn this question back to you, my loyal readers, what things in your life are holding you back? What/How can you change because you know it will add more value to your life?

We only have one life, are you really living it? One of my favorite quotes from my dear Carrie Bradshaw is "Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you, you love, well, that's just fabulous."