woo-hoo part II

My last post was made in a bit of excitement and with a reasonable lack of sleep, so I wanted to give a better idea of what's going on as of now. As I said before, we've been approved for adoption, which means that we can proceed forward with our paperwork. Our social worker is sending us a humongous packet of forms and whatnot that we will have to fill out. This is our homestudy packet and once we get it completed, which will probably take us 6-12 weeks, we send it back and then we'll arrange for a formal homestudy. Our homestudy might be sooner because she is not based in St. Louis but is planning on coming to see us when she's in town next month. Once the homestudy is completed and everything is approved, the packet will be sent to the Korean government for their approval. Once that happens, we'll get our referral, which means we will be matched with a child. That is a MAJORLY BIG DEAL!!!! They will send us a picture and as much info about the child as they have. After we accept, we'll just have to wait for our "travel date", which in our case, is when the child will be brought to St. Louis. That's one of the nice parts of this program is that we can have the child escorted here instead of going there. We do plan to visit Korea, but more when he/she is older and can enjoy it. All of this stuff should take anywhere from 9 mos (on the VERY short end) to 18 mos. As she indicated, the adoptions are moving swiftly so we are hoping it isn't 18 mos. and more like 9-12.

whew. It seems like a long time but it'll be here before we know it. It's going to be a nerve-wracking wait for all of this to happen (for me anyway, Jeff is way chill about this stuff) but I plan to occupy my time with various baby projects like designing a nursery, super cool kid art for the room and whatever else I can find to keep me from chewing my nails. Oh yeah, I also have to graduate from college and finish remodeling my house. No biggie.