Required Reading

It has been over a month since my last post and we're STILL without a fence! It's amazing how difficult it is to find a dependable contractor after a hurricane when so many fences are knocked over. Hopefully we found someone willing to build it and should be getting an estimate shortly. Obviously I sketched some "custom" details as I'd rather not get a run-of-the-mill fence. We'll see what happens soon!

Over the past month we have not heard any new news but we've been busy enough not to worry too much about the silence. I also try to keep up with several adoption blogs to learn from other parents' experiences and was very lucky to stumble across this post. It sounds scary and Lori had mixed feelings about it, but I like the fact that it helped us "see" reality a bit more. I quickly hopped to Amazon.com and bought that entire list of books and am currently reading Toddler Adoption - The Weaver's Craft by Mary Hopkins-Best. All this reading will better prepare us for what lies ahead and at the same time, help to keep us occupied.

If our dossier is not accepted by the end of the year, we'll have to start redoing some paperwork. In Ukraine, on the day the dossier is submitted, most documents are required to not expire in the next 6 months. Since most carry a 12 month expiration, their useful life is just 6 months! We had our physical exams done in early July, so we actually need to redo them in December so they can be mailed on time. Since in that period the SDA is slow (processing speeds up again in February), we decided to wait it out and plan on making an appointment in the first week of the year. We'll also have time to prepare some other documents and have our dossier go on hold until the new paperwork ships to our translator. In the meantime, we'll keep on reading :)