Stahlke Adoption

Getting Ready for Another Trip to Ukraine

Last Friday, we submitted the dossier to adopt Mikola. He is the younger brother of our five children, Ruslan, Bogdan, Luda, Lena, and Misha. Now that our task of preparing paperwork is done, we wait for an appointment time in Ukraine.

It was late last summer that the whole process began. We received word on August 29 that Kola had recently been approved for international adoption. We had expected this news to come in the late fall, so it was a surprise to receive the word so early. Now we could move forward to get our homestudy updated and then assemble paperwork for the dossier.

While much easier than two years ago, the paperwork was still a big effort. All of our documents from the first adoption had expired, so we were starting over. That meant three separate fingerprintings, ordering new copies of our marriage certificate, new employer and doctor letters, etc., etc. But the good news was that we didn't have to choose an agency, take foster parent classes at DCFS, read lots of books, and make tons of decisions about what type of adoption to do. All those tasks were already done.

The document that takes the longest to process is the "Preapproval for a Visa" from the U.S. government. This is essentially a background check on us done before we travel to Ukraine. That way, if there's a problem, we're not waiting in Kiev for it to be worked out. Two years ago, this document came back to us fairly quickly, but we were told that now it takes 10-12 weeks. We submitted our application as soon as the homestudy was available (early December) and got fingerprinted at the first opportunity. Lo and behold, the approval letter arrived in our mailbox five weeks early (!) on Jan. 20. When I saw that envelope in our mail, my heart started pounding!

The following week was a rush of documents and appointments to pull the rest of the dossier together. We thought we had five more weeks, so while some documents were in process, others hadn't even begun. To give you an idea of the scope of a dossier, here's a list of what it includes:

Homestudy and Agency License
Copies of our Passports
Letters from Employers (job title, income)
Letters from Doctors (clean bill of health)
Marriage Certificate (recent copy)
Pre-Approval of Visa for the Child (from Dept. of Homeland Security)
Clearance from State Police (no criminal record)
Petition to Adopt
Commitment to Register Child Yearly
Power of Attorney forms for our facilitators in Ukraine

Each of these documents had to be notarized or certified, and then apostilled. An apostille is like a notary for the notary, and it's required for documents sent overseas. The Illinois Secretary of State's office gave us an apostille (gold seal and all!) for each document, which states that the notary we used is indeed on their list of current notaries. Compared to two years ago, we saved two weeks--last time, I tried to apostile our marriage certificate in Illinois. Because we were married in Texas, our marriage certificate must be apostilled in Austin, Texas. This time around we knew what to do. We had the county clerk in Houston mail the marriage certificate to Jonathan's family in Austin, and Jonathan's father helped us out by getting it apostilled for us.

We had to work fast to get the state police clearance. The Monday after our "Preapproval for a Visa" arrived, we decided that the normal process of getting fingerprinted at the local police station was too slow. So we drove across Chicago to the firm of a private investigator that submits fingerprints electronically to the state police. It's $35 per person and worth every penny. We received our notarized state police clearance in the mail the following Saturday.

The petition, commitment, and power of attorney forms are prepared by our adoption agency in Connecticut. By last Friday, we had everything else ready and were waiting with bated breath for an envelope from them. Anticipating that the dossier would be sent sometime last week, we had already planned the celebration for Friday night--ice cream with the kids, then our first night out together at the theater since Spring 2005, with two sets of wonderful friends caring for the children. (It takes several people to watch our bunch!) That morning, both Jonathan and I met at home around 10:00 am, and he tried to track down our postal carrier. He didn't succeed, but found out that the regular postman was not working that day, and that the substitute would do our route after her own. When she hadn't arrived by 12:30, he went out looking for her. After some searching, he saw her truck a few blocks from our house, and she gave him our mail. The documents had arrived, and the race was on!

We had to drive to Concordia to type Mikola's identifying information onto the petition. Then we went to a notary on campus, who notarized the remaining documents for us. We had the four youngest children in tow, because the elementary school only had a half-day of school that day. The children were responding to the stress in us by acting out themselves, so it was a challenging time. Jonathan anticipated that getting the documents apostilled would be difficult for me if all four children came along, so he offered to keep the two youngest ones while I made the trip. But that gave him his own challenge--finding daycare for them in ten minutes before his 2:00 theory class! He rounded up paper and markers and sat them on the front row of his class with strict instructions not to make a sound! They behaved like angels, although the markers were permanent and didn't stay on the paper the whole time. Oh well, it was an investment in Mikola's adoption. And now Lena and Misha have a better idea what Papa does at his job.

In the meantime, I was racing downtown with Bogdan and Luda. Being older, they were more aware of the import of our task. The Illinois Secretary of State's office is in the Loop, and being a Friday afternoon, I was apprehensive we'd hit a lot of traffic. In addition, we knew that the Secretary of State office shut down the line before their posted 4:30 closing time, so as not to have lots of documents to apostille after hours. We left Concordia at 1:50, and God blessed us because the traffic was remarkably light, and Bogdan saw a parking spot on the street only one block from the office. We walked into the building at 2:15! I was carrying our entire file box of adoption papers, just in case they needed something that I wasn't aware of. We found the office, and there was only one person ahead of me in line! I quickly filled out the necessary registration form and gave them 14 documents to apostille. Thirty minutes later they were done! Wow! And how exciting to have two of our children helping me. Two years ago, apostilling in this same building, I didn't even know who our children would be.

(A funny thing about the Secretary of State's office. They have signs everywhere telling you to submit only one registration form, no matter how many documents you need apostilled. They must have a lot of people misunderstanding this instruction, because the best sign of all had the following wording:

If you have one document, fill out one form.
If you have five documents, fill out one form.
If you have fifty documents, fill out one form.

Sure enough, while we waited, a woman asked at the desk if she should fill out two forms!)

By getting the documents apostilled that day, the critical step was completed. We drove back home, Jonathan ran out to get everything photocopied, and then we collected all the children to make the trip to the post office. In the lobby, Jonathan read the formal petition to them, explaining that we were requesting to adopt their brother. They quietly listened, which is unusual for them, and seemed to understand the gravity of the moment. Ruslan sealed the envelope and gave it to the postal desk clerk. Off it went! Jonathan and I shared a long kiss, and the children were embarassed: "Yuck! In the post office!" but we didn't care! After celebrating with ice cream (even though the temperature was only 9 degrees), we sped home and dropped the kids off with friends. We made it to the theater just in time, and enjoyed the play immensely. THEN, we had supper at 9:30 pm. WHAT A DAY!

posted by Stahlkes @ 10:13 AM