Just a short post this week. No news on the adoption front. Still waiting on US and India’s approval to adopt, but this is all within the normal waiting period.
In the meantime, Happy Halloween! We had a blast trick-or-treating this year with Princess Jasmine (from the live action, yo!) 😉💕
As a person prepares to adopt, there are many, many, many warnings given to them about all the waiting: waiting because things take time, waiting because there are unexpected delays, waiting because we don’t even know why we are waiting right now. Lots and lots of waiting.
Sam and I had been married for nearly 10 years before we met Amara. For us, it was long enough. We had so many cherished years as a couple and we were ready for a third little family member. Still.. being independent, child-free, and dual-income left us with such a unique season of freedom. So even though the wait was hard, we cherished every single moment that the two of us had together.
Adopting our second child is an incredibly different experience of waiting. It is hard to describe how different it feels. What I can express is that some things are more painful while others are less, some things fill us with more fear while other fears are completely gone, and with three hearts longing for this fourth little family member, the sadness of waiting rotates between all of us.
What stays the same is our principle on waiting. It has been long enough. We are ready to be a family of four. But this season of waiting is a unique season – our last season of being a family of three. So while the wait is hard, we will cherish every moment the three of us have together.
Wishing you all a happy, cherished Monday!
Stephanie, for the family
We had a lot to celebrate this week with Diwali approaching and confirmation that we are officially registered with India requesting permission to adopt! 🥳
There is very little for us to do at this stage of the adoption process. Paperwork gathering is on hold until approval is received from both the US and India. This is our first big waiting point in the process. However, with winter holidays approaching we know life will be plenty busy. In fact we already celebrated our first big holiday of the season!
Amara had so much fun helping us decorate with diyas and rangoli. We ate delicious food and got to light one sparkler before the rain sent us inside. 😁 We will have to save the rest of our fireworks for another day.
Happy Diwali!
Happy Monday! Due to some technical difficulties at our agency, we are still waiting with held breath to hear that our application with India is complete. Still, as we wait, I started to look back on how things went in 2020 vs. today. I can’t wait to see how things go with our US application in the coming weeks as well as our application to India. 💕
When we received notifications from the US side of this process that we were ready to go for fingerprinting, I e-mailed our agency and asked if this is going fast because it felt so fast! Turns out, we are pretty much on schedule for the average timelines on the US side. But you know what? It’s really cool when normal feels fast. It’s less cool when fast feels slow, but that is what reflecting is for, right?
Adoption 2020
Started Process: 1/8/2020
Applied for approvals: 8/31/2020
Overall – Start to Applications: 9 months
US Approval: 16 week wait (4 weeks longer than average)
India’s Approval: 2 week wait (10 weeks shorter than average)
Adoption 2025
Started Process: 8/4/2025
Applied with US: 9/12/2025
Applied with India: 10/?/2025
Overall – Start to Applications: 2 months!
So how can I not be amazed looking back like this? It took us almost 9 months in 2020 to apply with both countries for approval. We were able to accomplish that in just over 2 months this time (assuming we will be applied with India this week of course 😁).
We could not have done this without help from so many people. Our home study, medical appointments, personal evaluations, travel to my birth state, friends in Sam’s birth state.. I can’t express my gratitude enough for everyone rushing these steps with us!
💕 I can’t wait to tell my daughter each of your names and how each of you helped her come home faster that we could have done on our own. Thank you!💕
So what comes next? We are required to have approval from both India and the US before we are eligible to be matched with our daughter. Approval timelines can be unpredictable for so many reasons. Our hope continues to be that approval will come from both countries by the end of the year, but as with everything, we know that the wait can take longer. In the meantime, we will have more paperwork to gather, grants to apply for, and a house to prepare for a new little one!
Amara and Dad being silly in the kitchen.
Happy Tuesday everyone. I’m behind schedule for an update, but am here with very happy news!
Last Tuesday we thought we were futilely checking for updates on Sam’s birth certificate only to be shocked with a tracking number. The birth certificate arrived on Wednesday (yes I did push refresh on that tracking status many, many times!). Thanks to incredibly generous friends in Sam’s birth state, we were able to have the birth certificate certified Friday morning!! With a photo of the certification, we officially have everything we need to register for approval to adopt from India. 😁
Registration doesn’t happen overnight, it is a process. So now that everything is in our agency’s hands we patiently wait for news that we are registered. In the meantime, our US process is moving forward. We have an appointment for fingerprinting next week and after that, more waiting!
We are relieved that Sam’s birth certificate “delay” was hardly a delay at all and our hearts are filled with so much gratitude for friends willing to take time out of their busy day and schedule to help us avoid a longer wait for the certification. Our hearts are absolutely filled up thanks to the help and support so many people have given us to make it this far in the adoption process at such a fast pace.
Stay tuned for news that we are officially registered with India!
Hello from a very cool kid from a very fun school event:
Well, it had to happen eventually, didn’t it? 😉
We were notified last Monday that the department handling Sam’s birth certificate was working on orders from 8/13 (our request was submitted on 9/10 yikes!). We were in denial and checked our mail box every day (ok, multiple times a day) in hopes that the update was wrong, but sure enough we called on Thursday and confirmed that the department had made it up to orders submitted on 8/25, but they really were that far behind.
As with my birth certificate, the only way to expedite the process is to travel to the county where Sam was born in order to obtain the birth certificate. However, unlike my birth certificate, Sam’s birth county does not print the very specific type of birth certificate that we can have certified by the state in compliance with international adoption standards. So what do we do? We wait.
We did get an update from the US side of things that our application for approval from the US government was received. Additionally, our adoption agency confirmed that all of the other documents we gathered are approved and ready to be submitted to India as soon as Sam’s birth certificate arrives! No errors in our other paperwork is very happy news.
Hopefully the office working on birth certificates will continue to make amazing progress. I mean, in 4 days they made it through 13 days of orders. That seems pretty impressive to me? Regardless, we look forward to sharing good news when it arrives!
Stephanie, for the family 💕
Dressing up for a formal family photo to include in our application to India
This past week has been some kind of a rollercoaster, I think. After finding out we can request approval to adopt from India, we began furiously gathering documents only to discover one major roadblock: my birth certificate. As it turns out, mine would take a super long time to arrive. As in months. Imagine my shock. We obtained a complete home study in 5 weeks, but it would take us 8 or more to get my birth certificate? Sam’s we could at least expedite, but mine couldn’t arrive until the end of November at the earliest. The idea of keeping our kiddo waiting 8 weeks longer becase of a birth certificate delay was a deeply unpleasant feeling.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to feel the stress of that delay for long, because I have some amazing and generous parents!
The only way to expedite this step is to go and request my birth certificate in person and my parents made that possible by turning it into a Father-Daughter Adventure! Sam and my mom held down the fort at home while Dad and I headed off, using our paperwork journey as an excuse to visit family we haven’t seen in too long and enjoyed sights and memories from childhood.
In three days we managed to obtain a seal on all of our paperwork, with the only outstanding document left being Sam’s birth certificate. In fact, at this very moment, all of our documents are in our family coordinator’s hands ready to go to India the second Sam’s birth certificate arrives!
After checking the mail constantly, we did get a notification that there is a delay in shipping Sam’s birth certificate. It may take an extra week to get here, but we are hopeful that there will be good news on his birth certificate soon. Even still, a short delay on Sam’s birth certificate will be far faster than waiting until late this year for mine to arrive! So we continue to be filled with so much gratitude as our list of people helping us rush on ahead grows. 💕
Adventure: Day 1 – Still can’t believe I am on my way to pick-up a birth certificate with my Dad!
Adventure: Day 2 – A very old, very beautiful building housing my birth certificate!
Adventure: Nature time! Because it isn’t an adventure for Stephanie until she finds some water
Whew. The first major effort for adopting our little girl is complete. The Home Study was officially finalized on Monday the 8th (yes, a whole 5 hours after I posted last week!). I can’t help looking at these timelines again and again. We have had such incredible people supporting us and helping us reach this point. I cannot believe we were able to complete our Home Study in 5 weeks and I cannot stop feeling a bit overwhelmed with gratitude to everyone who helped this happen.
Adoption 2020 – Application to Approved Home Study: 8 Months
Adoption 2025 – Application to Approved Home Study: 5 Weeks
With our finalized Home Study we were able to submit our first request for approval to adopt to the US Government. This normally takes 6-12 weeks and we were able to mail out our application on Friday.
I also learned that we can submit our first request for approval to adopt to India simultaneously. While I was not fully prepared for that, I had been eagerly gathering and preparing documents for that step, because that’s what I do 😁. So we are well on our way to gathering these documents as well.
One down, one to go! And then we wait.
Stephanie for the family
Enjoying our first walk of the “it isn’t 80 degrees before noon” season down here
It is complicated comparing this adoption process and timeline with our first adoption.
In late 2019 I woke up from my second endometrial removal surgery, still in the “coming out of anesthesia” room, and I knew three things:
1. This surgery actually worked
2. I would finally get to live without pain
3. It was time to start the adoption process to grow our family
On January 8th 2020, Sam and I pre-applied to begin the adoption process and were accepted into the program on January 14th.
A lot of 2020 is a blur in my mind. But I crisply remember the feelings I carried as we went through lockdowns, spoke with friends, family, and coworkers around the world, and poured ourselves into accomplishing the paperwork for adopting Amara. In the midst of everything 2020 brought the world, we had a beautiful lamp, our future daughter, to bright us hope and determination.
In spite of our speed and hard work as we worked on our first round of adoption paperwork, it wasn’t until 8 months later – August 2020 – that our Home Study was actually finalized. And guys, honestly, we weren’t lazy by any means. It just is a lot of work.
So here we are again and I am confident we have second child syndrome. Which is great by the way. We know what we are doing, what is needed, how to find the right people and complete the right appointments, and we aren’t constantly second guessing “did I do that right?” because we have been here before. And that’s just us because I won’t stop being thankful to the people who have rushed through their reporting process to deliver documents that should take 4-6 weeks and put them in our hands in days instead. These people are my heros.
Ok, ready to really compare now?
Adoption 2020 – Application to Home Study Draft: 6 Months
Adoption 2025 – Application to Home Study Draft: 3 Weeks
Adoption 2020 – Application to Approved Home Study: 8 Months
Adoption 2025 – Application to Approved Home Study: Stay tuned, fam, we are getting close!
With lots of love and gratitude,
Stephanie for the family
Throwback to 2020 Sam and Stephanie.
Happy Labor Day!
Amara is thrilled to have an extra day out of school and we are so happy for a bonus weekend day to spend together. We want to be intentional to soak up the enjoyment of these moments even though we are anticipating and excited for the future of being a family of four.
Last week we picked-up the last document required for our Home Study to be written and the initial Home Study draft is complete! I wish I could show you the pages of writting that go into the last report we needed as well as the Home Study itself. Because when I say how grateful I am for how fast people are working on behalf of our family, I feel it falls so short of expressing the amount of time these professionals have put into finishing this work in such a short amount of time. We are so, so thankful!
Now that the Home Study report is drafted, it takes a bit more time to be finalized and notarized, but it won’t be long before we can send off these documents for our first round of US approval to adopt! That will launch our next round of paperwork gathering too. So for today we are all taking a breath, being in the moment together, and resting before the next round of work arrives.
We wish you all a lovely holiday with your friends and family!
Stephanie, for the family 💕
Another Baby Todd 