Dossier done (well, almost....)

This green binder has been my best friend and arch-nemesis for the past three months.  It contains all of our important adoption-related paperwork in various stages of completion.  Last Friday night, we were finally at the point where we could prepare our dossier to send to our adoption agency.  (We're still waiting for our I-800A immigration approval from USCIS to officially complete the dossier, but HOPEFULLY that will arrive soon!)

Our dossier is essentially the application packet we send to China that they review to decide if we meet their eligibility to adopt a child.  It contains employment verification letters, police background checks, medical evaluations, adoption home study, birth certificates, marriage license, family and home photos, reference letters, and a few other documents.  Each document has to be signed by its author, notarized, state certification of the notary, and then the state certification has to be authenticated by the Chinese Consulate. For. Each. Document.

Fortunately for us, we're in Chicago and the IL Secretary of State (office where they state certify notarization) and the Chinese Consulate have offices downtown, so we can courier our documents through all of these hoops ourselves and not have to pay for a professional service to do all of this running around.  Unfortunately for us, we are couriering our documents through all of these hoops!

My parents joined Adam for week 2's trip downtown.  Here are a couple of pictures:

Chinese Consulate's office

How excited does Adam look?!

Here's a small sample of the roadblocks my dear husband encountered during his three sequential Friday trips downtown:

• Secretary of State rejects one document because the notary's stamp only includes the month and year of the notary's term expiration (must have month, DAY, and year to be valid)
• Had to ask the author of that letter to rewrite, sign, and notarize the letter
• Secretary of State rejects one document because the notary didn't sign her full name as it appears on her stamp
• This notary did two documents for us - one she signed her full name, the other she didn't
• Had to ask the author of that document to re-sign and notarize
• Chinese Consulate rejects one document (that made it through the Secretary of State's screening) because the date on the letter was 1 day earlier than the date the author had it notarized, thus the letter date and notary date were different
• Had to ask the author of that letter to rewrite, sign, and notarize the letter
• Chinese Consulate calls me two days after we drop off documents saying, "The home study is no good."  After several attempts on my part to identify what the problem is, I gather that the gist of it is there was a problem with the printer on page 11.  
• Had to ask our social worker to reprint, sign, and notarize copies of our home study

You can imagine the celebration when Adam returned home with all 10, fully certified and authenticated documents in-hand last Friday afternoon!  I added those 10 documents to the 3 that had to be authenticated by the Chinese Consulate in San Fransisco (see this post for details) and set everything out on the coffee table to get the packet put together to send to Holt.

Intentionally blurred so I don't have to redact the heck out of this photo

I assembled the complete packet of originals and one complete set of photocopies, put it in its Express Mail envelope to Holt (along with a photo album and CD that they're going to send to Abbie), and sealed it up.

I redacted this one

Then, Saturday morning on the way to the zoo, we stopped at the post office to make the hand off.  Adam played paparazzi and snapped photos of me walking through the post office.

It was delivered Monday morning and we received notice Tuesday from Holt's dossier processor that our dossier was PERFECT!

As soon as we have our I-800A approval, we'll make one final trip downtown (HOPEFULLY!) to get it through the certification and authentication process same-day and overnighted to Holt so our entire dossier can be sent to China and logged in!