5-17-18
Fingerprints are done. Last document was authenticated at the embassy and consulate. Our dossier is now in China.
4-6-18
Our documents are notarized, sealed and on their way to be authenticated by the embassy and consulate in Chicago. We're currently waiting for our fingerprint appointment.
3-24-18
Our home study update is officially complete! Big Brother and I jumped into the car after school on Thursday and drove to Grand Rapids so we could have it in hand and get it into the mail to USCIS on Friday. This will allow us to get our finger prints complete. It's looking like we are currently on track to be in China in September or October.
Original post:
Hi friends,
We're the Schneider family, and we have BIG news! (It was news to us, too!)
Let me back up for a second. If you don't know our adoption story thus-far, here it is in a nutshell: My husband and I are high school sweethearts, though I actually had a crush on him in the first grade. (Yes, I DID give him a note asking him to check a box…) We knew before we were married that we would adopt, and we had always thought international adoption would be our route, but we decided to start with foster care. Even if we couldn't adopt from foster care (since that's not the actual goal of the program), we thought we could help at least one child on our road to adoption. This sounds like rainbows and roses, but it was terrifying. If others learned that we were foster parents, the first thing they would invariably say is that they could never do foster care due to fear of falling in love with a child. We felt the same, and I specifically feared having a child in my home for over a year that I couldn't keep. We had our foster son for two years and two months, from age 3.5-5.5. Foster care was one of the most difficult things we've ever done, but we're so glad we were able to parent such a special boy.
After foster care, we immediately started the process of adopting our son from China. We were there in May 2016, just after he turned four, and he has brought joy to our lives every day since.
In November of 2017, my husband and I had a conversation. We had just moved so that our son could be in a Chinese-immersion school and we now had an extra bedroom. However, we also had far more things needing fixing in this new home than we anticipated. We discussed whether we would ever adopt again and, in the face of pretty big barriers, we settled on being open to adoption and agreed to revisit the idea in five years. Then, we made a great mistake. As many regulations in Chinese adoption have been changing, we were curious as to what this looked like on the ground level. (How many kids were now up for adoption? How many were being placed compared to when we started the process in 2015?) And so, we looked at the waiting child page of our agency. (We were just curious, honest!) What we learned is that far fewer children are able to be placed right now. We also learned of a child two years younger than our son who has a medical need that, it turns out, can be met in our area. We got on the forums and tracked down emails of specialists who emailed or called us back within 24-48 hours, all during Thanksgiving weekend.
And so, friends, we are adopting again!
We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome a beautiful new life into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign. It may surprise you to hear that adoption-related costs can easily total up to $35,000 or more. (A breakdown of the fees is here.) This is why we have set a goal of $20,000 to help bring our child home, which we have 6ish months to raise. (This one is going to go more quickly. If this is any indication of that, it took us 19 days to receive provisional approval from China for our last adoption…we just received it for this one in just 2 days!) We are unable to do this alone and would appreciate your support if you are able. We would be honored if you would walk along-side us on this journey.
