Processing Times

I was excited to open the mail today and see a letter from USCIS. I thought it would be our fingerprinting appointment. NO, it was the receipt for our application filed on January 16. It took them over a month to acknowledge that we sent in the I-600a form. Great. I guess it will be another month before they acknowledge receipt of our homestudy and give us a fingerprinting appointment. They state on the letter it is 10 weeks to process the I-600a. That's 10 weeks after they get around to looking at your documentation that has been in their office for a month.

Final Home Study Draft Received

It finally arrived. The biggest hurdle is complete! I am off to the post office to mail it off to USCIS.

So excited!

Checking In

Our adoption agency called yesterday to check in. Our China-only agency never calls (and this is our 2nd go-round with them). Made me wonder what was wrong. The lady at the agency just wanted to know how things were going and if I had any questions. Made me worry---are we taking too long to get this dossier done? I mean this is our 3rd (or 2nd) adoption---we don't ever just get a call to check in unless we call you! Right? Apparently not with our Ethiopian adoption agency.

During our conversation, we did uncover that we have to re-do the letter from Matt's employer. He got a pay increase and it needs to reflect his current salary since our homestudy will too. Not too hard to do. Matt is getting it done today.

In the meantime, we are waiting for our home study draft to be evaluated and then the final copy should be coming our way. In some good news, our adoption agency told us that the I-600a/I-171h process has been going relatively quickly since other international adoption nations have gone to the Hague and now require the I-800.

I so want the home study complete so we can move to the next phase....waiting for referral!

Homestudy Draft

We received the draft of our homestudy today. Matt and I read over it this evening and are sending it back to the homestudy agency for corrections. Not too much to correct, so we are very excited to have gotten through this milestone in the adoption journey.