Time Marches Slowly

I'm just waiting for Drew to get his paperwork from the health department so we can conclude the homestudy.

I'm mailing the I-600a application to USCIS (US Customs & Immigration Service). I think USCIS is now called, or at least is a part of, the Department of Homeland Security. This is basically the application to get the form we need to be able to bring a child back into this country after adopting it in Ukraine. The adoption will actually be finalized in UA in their court system.

We are doing all our paperwork in order to adopt two children. We actually prefer to adopt one child, but many people on the Yahoo message boards I read regularly end up adopting a sibling group unexpectedly. If this happened to us, and they met our age requirements, we would not say no to them.

The homestudy and waiting for this application to be processed, (we will be fingerprinted and our FBI records checks) is supposed to be the two items that take up most of the time to collect. While waiting for the USCIS application, I've been advised to work on collecting the remaining documents. We will then submit all our paperwork to a state-side helper to review for completeness and accuracy in detail. The paperwork then goes to UA to a translator/facilitator and finally submitted to the State Department of Adoption (SDA). The SDA has 20 days to review and approve (or decline) our dossier. We hope we will get an invitation to travel to UA shortly thereafter.