Thursday, December 6, 2007

Hastening the Day

There are very few things adoptive families can do to speed the day when they travel to pick up their child. Most of the time is spent waiting and wondering and learning the hard way to trust in God's wise timing. This week, however, Craig and I reached one of those rare points where the ball was back in our court, so to speak. Believe you me, we did everything in our power to hit that ball back as hard and as quickly as we could.

Last Friday, FFC FedExed us 12 documents. After numerous phone calls and emails with the agency and three other offices, we managed to piece together what we had to do with all the paperwork. (Each state has its own peculiar procedures and woe to you if you don't follow them down to the letter!) We spent the last four days dodging in and out of notary offices, two different county courthouses, the Taiwanese "embassy" (TECO) in New York City, and a bank. We drove a combined total of 10 hours beset by snow half of the time, missed one and a half days of work, spent over $8,000 in preliminary agency, notary, and authentication fees (gas and mileage not included), made photocopies until we were bleary-eyed, and wrangled a restless 4 year-old who was none too happy to be dragged along to many of the destinations.

Anyone who thinks that adopting a child is easier than giving birth has got it all wrong (and this coming from someone who delivered a child painkiller-free). Either way, at the end of the day, we're thankful to report that all of the paperwork was duly signed, sealed, and delivered. Yes, it was a very crazy week, but when we look at the picture of our baby's sweet face, we'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.

5 comments:

Sarah said...

Woah. That's a lot of papers. Not looking foward to that part when the ball's in our court. Your post has me singing that Stevie Wonder song... "Oo, baby, here I am, signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours!"

Tisra said...

Sounds exhausting, and yet you did just the right thing to speed up this process as much as you possibly could! Well done!

And, really?, harder than natural labor?! I did that three times. I kind of enjoyed that, though- seeing what my body could do. This time, there will be no hospital stay, but maybe we should line up a 'call list' of dear friends who will watch our kids so we can get all the TECO stuff done without dragging them along?

Rebecca Lily said...

And he is so worth it!!!! Great job you guys. Happy to hear things are moving along quickly!

Rebecca

mom2dyl said...

Hi Judy, we adopted a beautiful special needs boy from China in May. We decided Taiwan would be a good place to find a sibling for him and started our research about a month ago. We live outside of Quakertown, PA, and found your story especially interesting since you are local. We are thrilled for you and the news of your beautiful boy. We are also grateful for the opportunity to read about your journey. Good luck, I know what an emotional and rewarding experience this will be. Julie Farrell & family

Rebecca Lily said...

Judy,

Could you email me personally at rebecca30@comcast.net?

I have something I want to run past you.

Thanks!
Rebecca