So I legit had to look at the blog page right now to see that it is in fact true that the most recent post I wrote was LAST week, not this week. Ha. I guess the week went by in quite a blur.
At this point we have gathered 99% of our dossier (dossier = paperwork package for India). All of the documents that we are responsible to collect have been notarized and approved by our agency. Now we wait. Once a package of documents arrive from India, we will notarize those and take a package of documents up to the state capital to receive an apostille (basically a state official notarization of notarized documents).
We are not officially back to “waiting” however. It is garage sale season and spring cleaning season – a great time to hunt for second hand treasures. We are now having fun searching for age appropriate toys for our little one and any other house things that will help us be ready to welcome our little girl. It is a very fun step of the process!
Until next week, please enjoy a picture of Amara fulfilling her lifelong dream of feeding and petting goats (so many cute babies were out there too!)
As our paperwork begins it’s journey with US Immigration, we have been keeping busy. Another (large) collection of paperwork needs to be prepared for it’s journey to court in India and we appreciate having tasks to accomplish.
Reaching this point in our adoption with Amara was such a gift and relief. Looking back at that time, it is almost hard to remember how agonizing the wait was – I’m so thankful that we are able to forget some of our felt pain. When you look at the timeline below, you might get to chuckle a little when I say these last 3 months have felt as agonizing as the entire wait to be matched with Amara. Now that we have been matched, I can chuckle a little bit too.
Adoption 2020 Started Process: 1/8/2020 Overall – Start to Match: 2 Full Years Match to travel: 10 months
Adoption 2025 Started Process: 8/4/2025 Overall – Start to Match: 8 months!! Match to travel: We shall see!
Beyond paperwork, we now get to truly prepare for the arrival of our daughter. Amara was older than her sister will be when we meet her, so there are a lot of new things that we need to buy and consider. The bedroom can finally be set-up! For my love-to-organize friends, I get to rearrange the pantry to fit food for a new age. I love organizing. And nesting kicks in too – I will absolutely be motivated to clean every little corner of our house.
But as we accomplish some of these things, the pain of waiting will return and we will wish each day that we could be with our daughter instead of preparing our home. So we are resting right now in joy and excitement and we are ready for the wait to become long once again.
This past week has been a flurry of work. Paperwork has been filled out. Documents have been signed. And a giant packet is arriving with the US side of immigration today! This side of the adoption has several “sprint and wait” moments. We rush to do our part and then wait for someone else to do theirs. Rush again and wait again. And I imagined you might be a little curious about what goes into this season of waiting to go meet this precious girl we are adopting.
Birds eye view: We are going through immigration approvals now that our daughter is known to us followed by court approvals to finalize the adoption in India. When that wraps up, our daughter’s travel documents will be prepared and then we get approved for travel. All of this takes 6 – 12 months. (Don’t be like me and get distracted by 6 months there because it can also go up to 12, ok guys? 😅)
For my detail people… Last week our rush was to deliver paperwork to US immigration. This is the first of two immigration dominos that need to fall in order for us to have our case filed with the Indian government. Our wait for the first approval is the longest, taking 2-3 months.
Once our immigration approvals come through, there are four dominos on the Indian government’s end. The longest wait in India will be when our documents are filed with the court. I’ll keep you updated on ETAs as we reach each of those steps, but it is all part of the overall 6 – 12 month wait.
The first part of our adoption was focused on a lot of work or wait within a few “steps.” Meanwhile the last part of the adoption has so many little steps along the way with work fitting right in to those time windows. My hands and body like doing a ton of work on very few steps, but my mind and heart like excitement of crossing off the many little steps along the way. 🥰
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Amara the artist standing with her art at her school’s art show.
Eeeekkk!!!!!! It happened!! We have been matched with our precious little girl! 😍💕
Last week was an incredible whirlwind of activity. After being matched, there is a formal process to go through in accepting your child. Medical reviews are required, training is required, and as always, more paperwork. We and our agency absolutely rushed through these steps so, so quickly and we are officially moving forward with the next stage of our adoption.
From this point forward, all of our work is focused on finalizing the adoption. Documents go back and forth between our family and India, immigration paperwork has to progress here in the US, and we have to go through the official court system in India. We have a very wide timeframe right now to expect for travel: anywhere from 6 – 12 months. However, as milestones are met along the way, we will see that travel estimate become more narrow.
I am incredibly excited to share our daughter’s name, age, and picture with you! However, while the adoption is in progress, we are asked to protect her privacy and cannot post her picture or share information about her. What I can tell you is that Amara cannot stop saying “She’s so cute!!!!!!” every time we mention her. And guys, she is SO cute!
I can also share with you that we have a baby registry started. Why am I sharing this? Well, although I cannot share information about her age with you, there may be some clues for you as you look at the registry items needed. 😏👍👍 Link: Baby Registry
As a promise for the future.. When we meet our baby girl and she joins our family in person, our blog will absolutely be the place to “meet” her. We cannot wait to introduce you all, officially!
In the meantime, I hope Amara’s excitement and joy fills your heart with joy too!
It seems like Amara’s first grade year is flying by us. Today she begins the last quarter of the school year! There has been so much to learn this year and Spring Break has definitely made us excited for Summer. We love the rhythm of the school year, but we also love spending more time together and finding ways to adventure.
We cherished every moment of Spring Break! With our extra time we got to visit parks with cousins, play games, and discovered Amara’s new favorite activity: shopping! We introduced her to Goodwill for the first time and had so much fun looking at everything (seriously tho). It was so fun to see her tastes as we filled in some closet gaps for the hot season.
As for the adoption, it is Monday again. And every Monday starts a new week of hope for news about our daughter. It is hard – we thought about her so much this week. We wished she could be here for these special moments and that we could know her precious face and age and size to imagine her in all the adorable little clothes we looked at. We are eager for the next stage to begin and for the day we will finally be together with her.
As we continue to wait for this precious phone call, we are starting a fun filled week. Friday officially launched Spring Break! We are excited to have extra time together and adventure as much as possible.
Thursday we got to enjoy visiting school while the kids participated in Field Day – an incredibly fun way to end the quarter and launch Spring Break. There were so many fun activities that the kids got to enjoy! We loved every moment of seeing Amara thrive in this space she usually gets to experience on her own. She is growing up and continues to fill our hearts with so much joy. 🥰
A new week begins and the steady pace of the school year continues for our family. We appreciate the fixed routine of the school year where everyone knows what each day holds. Between school hours and homework, we treasure closely the free time we have to play together, do art together, and explore nature together. As Amara grows, we find so much joy in hearing the details of her days apart from us and all that she is learning in class.
The steady pace also brings stability and comfort as we wait for the call matching us with our waiting daughter. It brings to mind the image of a newly sprouted flower. We can long for it to bloom, but it will bloom in its own time without being rushed or stopped in it’s cycle. Meanwhile the river flows ever by, steady, constant, and comforting. I love how nature teaches. Today it reminds me that I exist in these cycles too and somehow that brings me a great deal of peace. Though I may spend some time staring at my own little flower wishing for it to bloom today!
💕
Amara and Dad working on a school project together 🥰
Happy March everyone! Can you believe it is March?
When February started and we shared the privilege of receiving a matching gift, it was so hard to truly imagine achieving that goal, much less exceeding it. But here we are, a month later and your generosity has blown us away.
Thanks to you, we raised $3,490 in a single month! Combined with our $2,500 match, that is just under $6,000 to help us bring our daughter home. Thank you, thank you for this incredible gift to our family!
As we look ahead, the next expense and a half are covered which lightens our hearts and the financial burden on us. It is hard to put into words how much that means to us, so I’ll just say once more, thank you! Our hearts begin a new month incredibly full.
Reflecting back on our winter season, we have been able to celebrate and experience so much excitement. Part of that is thanks to you btw. 😁 Getting approved for a match also created bonus anticipation beyond the holiday season and now, here we are, getting ready for Spring! A season of new beginnings and fresh starts as fresh life returns to our outdoor spaces. 🥰 I love the changing of the seasons.
We are also hoping for the next season of our adoption to begin. It has officially been 2 months of waiting to be matched with our little girl. While the call could come any day now, it could still be several months more to wait.
By contrast to adopting in the pandemic, 2 months is really nothing. Back in 2020 the expected wait time for a match was up to 9 months. Our wait was 13 months before we saw our little girl’s face for the first time. That moment was pure magic. I remember with full clarity who I was on the phone with while our agency’s number popped up. I know exactly where we were and vividly remember the colors and smells and things surrounding us. I grabbed Sam and we rushed out of the store. I even remember the color and texture of the pavement as we hurried to sit in the privacy of our car. Then the news. Then the first picture we ever saw of our little girl! Imagine the culmination of 13 months of waiting!
Thankfully we anticipate the wait to be much, much shorter than 13 months this time around. 😅 And amazingly there are days when 2 months feels like 13. We miss the little girl we have never met, whose face we have yet to see. We can’t wait to know who she is and to welcome her into our family. 💕
Wishing you a happy beginning to Spring!
Stephanie, for the family
Another new winter experience is Amara adventuring into the world of Lego. We love seeing her determination and joy at the end result!
This is it everybody! The last week of our Fundraising February is here. With $20,000 in expenses behind us, there is still between $25,000-$30,000 ahead of us. It is daunting! With your help, $5,000 of that has been covered and we are hoping to cover a bonus goal of $2,000 to help us send our paperwork to India. As of now, we have raised $990 with $1,010 left to go!
Thank you for helping us make amazing things happen! If you want to be part of supporting us through this last week, you can click here: Link to Give
Now. Shall we go down memory lane, just a little bit? How many of you remember malls? (I actually hear they still exist 😉). When I was a kid, I have fond memories of visiting the mall with my bestie and walking around to window shop at all the stores. Living in FL, this was an ideal alternative to window shopping in adorable downtowns as we avoided heat and worse – humidity (I really hate humidity guys).
I still love window shopping. But driving to malls or downtowns is not exactly within my time budget and is quite a bit less fun for my young kiddo. Today, I window shop on my phone. It is perfect for a small break in my day and I still get to enjoy sharing (funny/absurd/cool/shocking/amazing) things with my friends (screenshots yo!).
This month, window shopping got me. Although we do have an Amazon wish list, it is pretty limited and small while we wait to learn our daughter’s age and more specific needs. But we can wish for some things, like what we want to decorate her space. So imagine my surprise when the very exact curtains I wished to put up in her room appeared in my window shopping feed. To add surprise on surprise, they were selling for only $10 and pick-up was within two miles of our house! 😱
We know that being creative in our constraints means that we work with what we have and adjust our imagination to the items that are available to us. There is so much joy to be found in that! And this week, we are holding so much joy in finding exactly what we wished for at an incredible deal and in incredible condition! Window shopping for the win!
How precious are these, guys???
And can you even handle how perfectly these colors matched? Because I cannot. I’m so happy!
And an extra special treat, Big Sister got some curtain upgrades herself, mixing up what she already had with what I already had. She loves her space!
