Waiting Game

What can go worng? Well, spell check for one. What happened last month. Snafu with The Agency. Due to certain things being added into the Home Study which we were told would not be put in, they were put in we have had to modify the Home Study and create a couple of more documents for the notary and apostille process. We have been informed that these new/modified documents are now on their way to India.

In the mail we got a Yellow folder that has , yep, more forms to fill out. One is the USCIS form I-864. No reason that we could not have gotten this earlier, I did not know about it from my earlier wandering through the USCIS Adoption Web pages. This form is a How much $$ do you make in a year form. You will bump this up against the I-864P which changes each year and is the poverty line. You need to make 125% of poverty or have other proof of your net worth. If you do your taxes jointly then you will want to get a copy of form I-864A. You can prefill them but unless you want to get another notary don't sign them until you are told to do so, which will be at the embassy consulate in… India for us. Now the forms are a bit twisted because they ask for your "total income…as reported on my Federal tax return" . Huh? Form I-864 is for the Sponsor of which it is limited to a single entity, either the husband or the wife. Form I‑864A is for Household Member, in our case either the husband or wife that is not mentioned on the previous form. Yes I am trying to write this as confusingly as the forms are. If you can get through this paragraph then you can get through the forms. I-864A also asks for the total income as reported. Duh ain't that smart? If you file a joint tax return then there is only one total income that is reported. here is my solution:

1. prefill the I-864 & I-864a as much as possible but leave these odd sections alone until we need to sign.

2. prefill the forms in total, as much as possible, and see if I did it right when we get there. If not then pull out forms from 1.

3. If all else fails bring a total blank form with us.

Read the instructions a few times as you may need to bring notarised copies of pay stubs, tax forms, W2's.

Finally I have a full up version of Adobe Acrobat 5.0, yeah it is a few years old and the latest version of the free Adobe Reader. I-864 will open in both programs. In the reader you can even fill in the form and save it. Form I-864A will only open in the reader and you cannot save. Weird. So why do bring this up? I have been working on an application for grant $$ to fund this adoption. One of the 30 page applications is a pdf file that you download, print out and then fill in. I have bad scripting and the wife's hand is like a surgeon, steady but you can't read a thing she writes. I took a couple of hours to create form fields in the pdf so that, at my leisure, I could fill it in and have it legible. In the full up Adobe I can type in my answers and save them. In the reader version I can only type it then print it but am unable to save what was typed. How do I get this document set up so that another applicants can save the data using the reader, like form I-864?

Visa application – haven’t started it yet but we were told to do so. This is done on-line and once the 39 plus questions are answered it loads up the application for you to print out and send to the consulate in San Francisco.

WEWO (pronounced We –Woe) – there are a few parenting classes that we have to take. We have done 2 so far. One was offered through our agency and the other is/was a collaboration with another. The wife has talked a few times with our social worker who suggested a few books. She has just about finished with one and whooo weee is it a doozie. It is basically a treatise on what happens to children that are abused, neglected and tortured.

Well that is odd, my wooden chair at work just squirted out a ball bearing. Dang, when I bought the chair the wheels had been removed. I went to the equivalent of the Big Orange Box and got 4 new wheels. I purposely purchased wheels that were made in the USA. What did I get for my efforts – 6 months use. Back to our story…

WEWO is not as bad but it is similar. It prepares you for what you may encounter with your child. It arms you with a resource of if your child is behaving in a particular way it may be due to acts from the past. Some creepy things may have happened to your child before you get her/him. They may manifest themselves early on or maybe when hey reach teen-hood.

Speaking of the wee one. Some new friends of ours just picked up their child form the orphanage that our child is in. They took a few pics of our child as she was opening up a book that we sent along with a picture book of us, her new phamily and home. She is a bit malnourished as she is almost as high as our 2 ½ year old but weighs as much as our 7 month old. I think she is undergoing a growth spurt her head is out of proportion to her body.

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