It's been a busy year and so far I haven't had a lot of time to blog. I thought I would catch you up on our adoption plans. After a rough year, we took some time off from the adoption roller coaster to heal our hearts and figure out what we want in life. We still want to have a family, we still want to adopt. So we are gearing up for the next ride.
This time, we pursuing an adoption with an attorney versus with an agency. What this basically means is that we will look for a match on our own and do a lot of the leg work ourselves. If you hear of a situation, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. After this past year, we think the best advocate for us is us. We have a great attorney and she'll hold our hand throughout this process.
Since we moved, left the agency and another year has passed, we had to do another homestudy. Ay yi yi. Please enter homestudy #3. We were able to use the information from the previous ones and just have this one updated. It was definitely less paperwork and hoops. Third time's a charm, right? We got this. The social worker came and visited our new apartment four days after we moved. Nothing was unpacked, boxes were under sheets because the painters were coming and it was my 40th birthday. Those of you sweating about the home visit, please don't. I cleaned up, bought some pastries and that was it. We chatted around the kitchen table for an hour, gave her a quick tour pointing out the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and the fire extinguisher and briefly told her about our decorating plans. The painters rang the bell and she was gone. We spent the rest of the afternoon in City Island celebrating my birthday with renewed hope for the future.
Our homestudy was submitted to family court by our attorney to be approved by a judge. We had to be fingerprinted again for another background check. I've been fingerprinted quite a few times now to have never been in trouble with the law. I thought I was going to get into some trouble when I got a little huffy with an officer after waiting 1 1/2 hours to get through courthouse security only to be told he was the only one who could fingerprint us and didn't have someone to cover his post until all of the people got in the building. Really? I waited just like everyone else, everyone else who got through were off to take care of their business and we had to wait. I asked him if he thought he could call and get someone to cover his post for the 5 minutes it took to fingerprint us. It didn't seem hardly fair. He said, no and told us to wait against the wall. I was really trying to be patient. After about 15 minutes, someone did come to cover his post and the officer fingerprinted us. I thanked him for calling someone. We now have to wait for a judge to review our file and approve us. Again. At this point, we can start "advertising".
The other important piece to us being able to adopt again was filing for the adoption tax credit on our taxes this year. We spent ALL of our adoption savings on the attorney fees for the disrupted adoption. We didn't have the babies and we lost all of our money. Talk about a sock in the gut. I spoke to a tax attorney for advice and then decided to file our taxes claiming the credit using TurboTax. TurboTax was fairly easy to use. For a failed adoption, you skip the part where you enter the child's name and social security number. That part wasn't really clear, but we figured it out. I didn't need to submit any receipts, but I have them. I also have a letter from the adoption agency stating that it was a disrupted adoption. I also splurged for the audit protection just in case. We received a large refund within a month. We didn't get everything that we spent back, but our monetary loss is significantly less.
We're refreshed, armed with life experience and we are ready to be parents. WE ARE SO READY!
If you know someone interested in making an adoption plan, please share our website, marlonandjenniferadoption.com.
BREAKING NEWS! We were certified by family court and are officially approved to adopt!
