Draft Homestudy Report is In!

Today we received the draft homestudy report from our social worker at the Datz Foundation! She emailed it to us, and we reviewed it for corrections tonight. I just sent an email to our placement agency, with the draft report and our suggested corrections attached. Stephanie, the social worker at CAWLI, will review the draft report. We will then send the complete list of suggested changes (both ours and CALWI's) to Datz, and then they will send out three final copies of the homestudy report. One will go to the USCIS/INS office, one will go to our placement agency for inclusion in our dossier, and we get to keep one copy. Our dossier is complete except for two precious documents: the final homestudy report and the INS I-171H approval form.

We are getting there, even if somedays it doesn't feel that way. I can't say enough good things about the email discussion lists I've joined - it's wonderful to connect with people who are all worried about these precious pieces of paperwork! We also discuss things like baby names and baby carriers, where the best places to eat and shop are in China, etc. Apparently umbrella strollers there are dirt cheap and well-made. Who knew? I've joined some general China adoption groups, as well as the July 2005 DTC group and the August 2005 DTC group. It's most likely we will be an August DTC couple. A lot of people consider the DTC date the date they officially become "paperwork pregnant", since right now the time from DTC date to Gotcha Day (the day your baby is handed to you) is about 7-8 months. Tim and I are ready to be paperwork pregnant!