Dossier Part II

This paperwork list is longer than a day without food; actually, make it two days without food. The adoption agency told me that a court date is usually about 2 to 4 months after the first trip. No way Jose, I thought. I asked them, why so long? Their answer seemed simple: a month for me to gather the paperwork, another few weeks for the adoption agency to review it, get it to Moscow, translate it and then to Perm. The Ministry of Education in Moscow also has to send some sort of release to Perm. Once that's in Perm along with my translated dossier, a judge has to review all the docs. Upon his/her review, he/she will decide if I should provide additional docs or not. If not, we'll get a court date but I don't know yet how long it takes from that point. If we recall correctly Roma mentioned two weeks.

It all makes sense but there was no way I was going to take my time to gather documents. We got the list late Wednesday February 6th, I brought it home that night and Chris and I decided how we would split it. I would take care of employment, banks, deeds and doctor letters, etc, and Chris would be taking care of whatever requirements they needed from Mitch and Kelsey - although they don't live with us, we need to prove that both kids are healthy and doing well in school. They are so we thought that would be the easier part...but not so.

The forms we had to provide is not what our employers, banks, county/government and doctors were willing to do. Everyone here has their own form, legally scrutinized for fear of being sued I'm sure. Every call we made had to be accompanied by some long explanation of why, how and when it's needed. Not easy and it drove us nuts!!!

However, this is what I do for a living... documentation, and I was a persistent-pain-in-the-neck with everyone from whom I needed a form signed and notarized, so one week later we have just about everything. After Alex is here, I will redeem myself and apologize for being such a royal pain.

Monday we get the forms signed from our general MD and we are done. The 'infamaous' eight medicals we both have to get done will be happening in Perm. Why there? I am still waiting for an acceptable answer. I guess that will be okay; it's way cheaper to get it done there than it would here, that's for sure; the price tag here would be $1600 for each of us versus $400.00 in Perm. So, on the bright side it is a relief not having to beg each of these doctor's offices to see us. I did try to make a few appointments when we thought these visits had to happen here, and every single office I called would first tell me they could not see us unless we were sick or we were being referred by our MD. Augh!!!

Now that we are done chasing and gathering paperwork, the timeframe is looking great. We are sure our agency will expedite it and send it to Moscow and then to Roma. Once in his hands, I am sure it will go fast from there. He knows how anxious we are and I have no doubts he will do whatever he can to get us back there soon. We are praying for a trip before March is over.