We're now in phase two of the adoption process. At least, that's how I think of it.
We have more forms to send to the US government, more forms to send to the Bulgarian government, more forms to send to our agency (that will be needed for court)......and all of that means MORE WAITING.
Here is a break down of the steps for phase two:
1.) Forms for the US government - this is the I-800 application and all the supporting documents. Right now, I'm waiting on the mail to deliver the certified forms from our agency that will accompany the forms we received from the MOJ in Bulgaria and our I-800 application. Then, all of that will be sent to the Hague office for I-800 approval.
2.) Forms for the Bulgarian government - The first form is just one for court.....what Kullen's legal name will be and our agreement to raise him as our own, etc. I did have to shake my head at one statements on this document:
The child shall not be subjected to experimental treatment, neither part of his body or his organs shall be used for medical purposes of donorship under any circumstances. I mean, we were asked about this in Ukraine and I do know that people in Eastern Europe really do think that this is why people want to adopt children with special needs. But man, it's still a shock to see it actually in writing on a form.
Then, there is the other form. This is the hard one. It's a form stating that we accept the referral for Kullen and reject the referral for "R". On this form, I have to write out what happened with the referral of "R"....trying to diplomatically explain how the referral was a complete lie (because it's not very nice to just bluntly say that the referral was a lie) and to also explain to the MOJ about the aggression that we observed in the child and why we could not bring him into our family because of that. I want the MOJ to know about our experience, and I want them to be aware that this child's referral was completely inaccurate (because there are other children at that institution registered for adoption and what if their info is a lie too?) and I REALLY want them to understand how hard and devastating it was to come to the conclusion that we could not parent this child and that because of the false referral information, we're now unable to adopt 2 children with special needs like we'd originally desired to do. But, right now, in this moment, it's hard to just write it all out "professionally" because I'm still very emotionally attached to all of this.
3.)Forms for our agency - This is just the updated dossier forms that are "time sensitive". There are certain dossier forms that must be less than 6 months old on the day of court. So, to ensure that these forms (or the dates) won't in any way cause the judge to delay our adoption, our agency just has us redo them at this point so that there is no danger of being "close" on the dates and having the adoption proceedings delayed. The forms that we have to redo are the medical forms and the local back ground check. So, it's not anything difficult. We'll be doing these next week.
So, that's the status update.....MORE WAITING. Once the I-800 is in the mail (please pray with us that we get the info we're waiting on in the mail today or tomorrow), I'll explain the time line for each step.