Paperchasing. Simple, right?

When I first heard the word “paperchasing,” I assumed that I knew what that meant and that it would be simple.  Gathering paperwork for our adoption shouldn’t be that hard, right?  I’m a pretty organized person, so when our social worker showed us the list of items needed for our home study, I thought, “I’ve got this!” 

The problem is that a lot of the paperwork requires working with others…your employer, your doctor, your bank, etc.  It was more difficult than I thought working on the home study, but it went by fairly smoothly.  And then came the dossier…

Even though our home study documents were finished and the dossier required some of the same documents, we still had to get many of them redone on new forms and had to get them notarized.   Again, I thought, “Oh, this won’t be too bad.” 

BUT, what happens when your doctor’s office or employer doesn’t have a notary on site?  Just hire a traveling notary.  Simple, right?  Nope.  It’s just not that easy.  When you’re working with multiple organizations and people, it is maddeningly hard to coordinate something as simple as a traveling notary observing the signing of a document.  Sometimes you have to wait weeks, even months, for one piece of paper...And what if the notary makes a mistake and you don’t notice it?  Well, then you have to get it notarized again.  This is the process we’ve been stuck in for the past couple of months. 

I’d say the hardest thing was when I was working with our doctor’s office for a month and a half to try to get a traveling notary there and they suddenly closed!  Yes, closed…with no notice.  We had to find a new doctor, get new physicals, new blood-work, etc…Thankfully, our new doctor’s office is AMAZING and has several notaries on site!  We really lucked out with that one because our previous doctor’s office wasn't nearly as accommodating. 

Paperchasing has ended up being more difficult than I could have imagined.  Scott and I both have had days where we just wanted to pull our hair out, haha, but we know that it will be worth it!  For every new document that we complete, we feel one step closer to meeting our child.  And that thought is what keeps us going!  So. Stinking. Excited.

Despite all of the difficulties getting completed documents for our dossier, I’m pleased to say that we are only lacking THREE documents and each of these SHOULD be done by next week.  (Fingers crossed!)  The other good news is that, as I mentioned previously, we already have I-800A approval and FBI clearance.  Lots of people wait for months simply for these two items, so we’re doing pretty well!  Want some more good news?  Even though we’re still waiting for our dossier to be complete and sent to Colombia, we are already able to view children on the waitlist.  And we have!  This is all so exciting and makes it feel very real!  No, we haven’t actually been matched with a child yet, but we’re getting there.  And on this Valentine’s Day, it feels good to dream of the love that we hope to share with our child sooner rather than later.