For Want of a Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

No go. Despite our best efforts to gather every required document and send them to Peru to arrive two days before the October consejo, another day slipped in somewhere between Alabama and Lima, and we missed it. Our application was not reviewed again in time for the consejo.

What now? It's looking like we will let things ride for now, hoping to get the referral in November or December, and then request an extension of travel until after Spring semester is over. At least that way, we might not have to pay to update our home study, medical exams, FBI clearances, and other forms. That would make approximately two full years from the time we decided to adopt until we have the children in the U.S. and their adoption re-affirmed here in Illinois.

This is very frustrating. Chrissy has tried to steel herself by just not believing that anything good is going to happen until it does. I generally try to avoid dealing with bureaucracy, because I don't have much patience for systems that don't work right. I can count a half-dozen things that could and should have happened differently such that we would have three more kids by now. But overall, we've gotten service as good as one could expect from all the professionals and agencies involved in the process. Sometimes, things just don't go the way they should. Most people who try to adopt internationally don't have large chunks of the year when they can't take off work, and there's just no way to speed up the process for exceptions.

Maybe one reason it's good that we got to write a letter of intent for specific children is that we now have them in mind as we make decisions. If the adoption were more abstract, we would be tempted to just give up at times. Instead, we can imagine that it might actually work out better for the children to arrive at the very start of the summer, and have a few months when Andrew is home from college and the rest of us are off school before they have to start a busy schedule. If our intended children were not in a good orphanage, we would be more upset, but they're in as good a situation as we could hope.

Reaction and Action

On Tuesday, we learned of the SNA's reaction to our dossier. They considered our application quickly after receiving the letter of intent. There are three committees that review each dossier and can ask questions about legal, psychological, and social issues.

On the legal side, they asked for certain medical reports. Our attorney was able to show them that the reports were in the file, so there might have just been a translation issue. The attorney's staff do not translate every document from English to Spanish, only the main ones.

Based on the experience of other recent applicants, we expected to get some questions on the psychological report. Indeed, they asked for more information from the psychologist. Mostly, this is descriptive information about Chrissy and me, things like "level of self-esteem" and "capacity to deal with challenging situations." The previous report had stayed fairly technical, drawing on the formal assessments we filled out. The new details will be more about our parenting skills.

On the social (home study) side, there were two issues. First, the new administration at SNA has decided on additional tests for communicable diseases. We will all have to have a chest x-ray and have blood drawn again (that's three times since December for most of us, four times for Drew because the lab did the wrong test on his once). Also, there were two forms used to indicate which special needs we would consider. We didn't mark "no" on many things, but the more extensive form was simply summarized into the home study, while the shorter form was included as part of the dossier. Unfortunately, on the shorter form, we marked "no" on something that it turns out the committee thinks may be an issue for the children we are trying to adopt. We don't read it that way, and are not concerned about it, but will resubmit the form with "yes" marked. At this point, we don't expect this will require any changes to the home study itself or review by any US government agency.

Our goal is to get all these reports done and notarized next week, and back to Peru by about Oct. 18. If the next "consejo" for referrals isn't until later in the month, as is typical, we could still get the referral in October. Otherwise, we will have to put a hold on things until after next semester, which would be very disappointing. In fact, we don't know for sure what would happen if we have to tell SNA that we can't move ahead for a while.

There's one other step we've taken to try to avoid further delays. Since Andrew turned 18 after our initial application to the US Customs and Immigration Service, he now needs to be fingerprinted by Homeland Security. We sent in the form a week ago, and expect he will be notified of his appointment (in Indianapolis) by the end of the month. Thanks to the folks on the Yahoo! group Peru-Adopt for a heads-up on this step.