Boring Adoption Details

Since technically this blog is about our adoption process, I should probably mention that we ARE working on our homestudy again, gathering papers, answering questions, and redoing all of our medical work.  Which means today I have a doctor's appointment, Oak has one tomorrow, and the kids have an appointment on Friday.  Some time this week Oak and I also have to be tested for HIV and have a urine drug test.  Then the whole family has be tested for TB--an annoying and possibly painful arm prick where you have to go back in at the exactly right time to be read, I think.

Of course, none of these things are recommended by our doctor so we get to pay ala carte (though I did suggest we lie to the doctor about being high risk so they'd pay for the HIV test, but Oak didn't think that was a good idea).  It didn't really bother me 5 years ago since it was part of the whole screening process and China wanted some medical assurance we would be healthy parents.  This time it is a little more annoying, mostly because getting the kids TB tested seems ridiculous AND none of this information will end up in China.  This is the medical report we need in order for our agency to do a new homestudy so we can apply for immigration status for our to be adopted child.

We also need to do 30 hours of adoption related training before we travel which I have no problem believing is good and necessary.  Unfortunately, every book read only counts for 2 hours, so while I have like 45 hours of training, my husband only has 12.  If we could just average them out we'd be almost there.  We do want to take the on-line class about conspicuous families, but since this doesn't has to happen before we do our homestudy we will work on our training hours after everything else is done--the homestudy and applying for USICIS or whatever the letters are now days.