Monday, June 27, 2005

Quiet before the storm (of paperwork gathering)

We are in our second to last waiting period, sort of. We are still waiting for our 171-H, which is our approval from the US govt. to bring an adopted child into the US. We are hoping to get that this week. Courtney had her second physical and has now been tested for just about every communicable disease known to man (negative on all, of course!). Everything looks normal and healthy. :)

Mark has started playing vintage base ball, which is base ball played with the rules from the 1860's (and yes, it is "base ball", not "baseball"). You would think that with all of the sports he plays, he would want to have little boys, but he is hoping for girls. Courtney, on the other hand, would love to have some rambunctious boys running through the house. Of course, we will be happy with whatever gender our children are, and we grow more excited daily at the prospect of meeting them and bringing them home. Although it seems like the process takes a long time, we are all too aware that in a few short months we will be returning home from Ukraine. No, we don't have a travel date yet, but we are still anticipating traveling in December. Spending Christmas and New Year's in Ukraine would be a wonderful experience, and spending it together as a new family would be even better!

I mentioned that we are in our second-to-last waiting period. From here on out, we will have a flurry of activity as soon as we get out 171-H. We will be gathering paperwork and putting our dossier together to send to Ukraine. Once there, it will be translated and submitted to the NAC. After (hopefully) a short wait, we will be registered with the NAC and will then have the last waiting period, in which we are waiting to travel!

2 comments:

Courtney said...

We could sort of request a gender. There isn't an agency involved in our adoption, only the National Adoption Center of Ukraine, which is the government entity that handles adoptions, orphanages, etc. for Ukraine. When we go to the NAC, we could request to only see pictures of one gender, but that really limits your chances of finding a child (i.e., it's much harder to find a 2yo girl with blond hair/blue eyes than it is to find a child between the ages of 0-4yo--basic statistics). The less specific you are with your request, the better your chances are of finding a child who might not fit what you thought you wanted, but is actually perfect for your family. :) So we're leaving our options open to see who God has planned for our family!

Courtney said...

Sorry, I didn't answer the base ball question. It is strict 1860's rules--a catch is good after one bounce, no gloves, have to check in with the scorekeeper after a run to request it to count, etc. You can check out their team website at www.perfectos.org.