Still More Paperwork!

September 22, 2008

We thought we were done filling out paperwork once we brought Cristina home but we were wrong! Even though the adoption was finalized in Guatemala last December and she is OFFICIALLY ours, we still need to finalize the adoption here in the states. Nebraska law says that she has to be home for 6 months before we can apply for readoption/finalization. During those 6 months, we needed to have 2 post-placement visits done by our adoption agency. We had our first visit in February and the second one in August. (yes, I know that August is more that 6 months but we couldn't get together with our social worker any sooner). After our visit in August occurred, we had to wait for the post-placement summary to be written and sent to our attorney. It was supposed to take 2 weeks (according to our social worker) but it took 4 weeks, instead. In the meantime, we met with our attorney to sign the petition to readopt her, that will be presented to the judge. We thought that as soon as the post-placement summary and other pertinent paperwork and information got to our attorney, he could run down to the courthouse to file our case. But as we have found out, nothing is ever that easy in adoptions. Our attorney told us that our police clearance was expired and that he would have to get a written notice from the police saying that we were still clear. That was going to delay us possibly another 7-10 days! Fortunately, after talking to our attorney today, it didn't take that long or he didn't need the clearance in order to file our case and we now have our court date!!! It is Wednesday, November 12th. We'll be so thrilled to see that day come! Both sets of grandparents will be there to celebrate this glorious day!!
Now...you might think that that is the end of our paperwork. NOPE!!! We will have to wait about 4 weeks to get her American birth certificate, then we'll need to apply for her U.S. passport. We will also need to get her Certificate of Citizenship (she is not a U.S. citizen, yet--she is just a U.S. resident) and last, we hope, request to have all her documents sent to us from the INS. So by the time we finish all the paper pushing, it will probably be a year that we will have her home. But no matter how much stress, worry and paperwork we had to go through, we are so VERY thankful that we have our perfect little angel home and it was all worth it!!