Dossier Submitted Yay!

We are so excited to have submitted our dossier today. Yay! It took us 8 months to get in.
Later this week it will be sent to Washington DC to get authenticated again. Then, we will be what's called a "waiting family". We will be anxiously waiting for 8-10 months. The timeline with all adoptions is uncertain. 8-10 months is the timeline as of now. 8-10 months is kind of like the length of a pregnancy, which is kind of special to think about. In the adoption world they call it being "paper pregnant".

Then, we will get a referral. Here's how a referral works, as I understand it. The babies are placed for adoption by a family member or abandoned. They are then sent to a Ethiopia run orphanage. There are several orphanages in the country who do their best to take good care of the babies and children though many of these are overly crowded. The country of Ethiopia then gives the baby and children medical tests. Then if the baby is deemed adoptable they refer babies and children to the 4 adoption agencies that legally work in Ethiopia (CHI is one of them of course). The agencies then match those referrals to the waiting approved families. It tends to work that the next person on the list gets the next baby that meets their requests (you can request certain ages, gender, and special needs). The older the child and the more special needs you are okay with the sooner you will get a referral. Boys also get referred sooner because more people request girls. Our only requests are that we'd like a boy under 6 months of age, and there are certain special needs we're okay with.
After a family accepts a referral then the baby moves to the CHI House of Hope to be cared for a little better. A few weeks after we accept a referral we will travel for the first time to Ethiopia. This recently changed, when we first started the process you only had to make one trip to Ethiopia, but now you have to make two. During the first trip we will meet the baby and then go to court and meet with a judge to officially declare that we will adopt this child. Then we will have to leave him with the capable caretakers at the House of Hope for 6-8 weeks. During this time they arrange our visas and schedule our second court date. Then we will go back and bring him home forever! What a great day that will be!