The Process

So, I have been getting a lot of questions about our next step, do we know what children we will be getting, timeline, etc.

International Adoption takes a long time. Like, a really long time. 

We are in the beginning. I am trying to organize all the paperwork, figuring out what has to be notarized, how many copies we need of each document, scheduling appointments, all those fun things.
When we decided to adopt, we had to figure out if we wanted to go domestic or  international. When we decided international, we had to pick a country and find an agency that worked in that country.
We applied to our agency's program. Once accepted, because our agency is located in Ohio, we had to find an agency in Washington to conduct our home study.

The Home Study
This is the phase we are in currently. We are collecting documents. We have physicals and psychological evaluations scheduled in a few weeks. Our home visit is set for March 9. This is where a social worker will come to our house, interview us and tour our home. Once the home study report is ready and finalized we will apply for I800A.

I800A
This is an application to determine suitably to adopt a child from a Hague Convention country with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This again is a lot more paperwork. Once our application is approved then we will be ready to submit our dossier.

The Dossier (pronounced doss-e-A)
This is the compilation of paperwork including our home study that we have been collecting. Most of these have to be notarized. Once everything is completed we will send our dossier to Haiti where it will be authenticated and translated. Then we will be "referral ready".

Referral
Once all of our paperwork has been sent and approved in Haiti we will wait for a referral. Currently our agency is seeing this process take about 8 months. If everything goes well we will hopefully have a referral by the end of the year. The referral includes pictures of the children, health history, and social history, including why they are eligible for adoption, either abandonment or death of parent(s).  Once we receive a referral we will have a certain amount of time to determine if we want to accept the referral and proceed with adopting the children or decline. We are requesting two boys ages 0-4. I recently heard a rumor that Haiti will no longer be giving referrals for unrelated children.  So if this is really the case, our children will be siblings. After we accept a referral then we will travel to Haiti for 2 weeks.

Bonding Period
This is a required mandatory bonding period. Part of the time will include a social worker observing us interacting with the children.  We will be there for 2 weeks and we are not planning on bringing Luke and Abram at this point. So hopefully we can work childcare out with the grandparents.

Waiting
Once we finish the bonding period and return home, we will have a waiting time of 7-12 months before the children can come home. This has also proven in the past to last longer for some families. I am sure this will be the hardest part. We potentially could visit the children during this time but that would depend on finances and logistics of childcare for Luke and Abram. When we are completely finished and can bring the children home it will only be a 3-5 day trip.

So, theoretically, if all goes well we will be bringing kids home in about 2 years. Because of the type of visa the children will enter the into the country with they will only be considered permanent residents. We will have to readopt them in the state of Washington for them to become "real" Shaptons.

"If all difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey,  most of us would never start out at all"  - Dan Rather