Looked Like We Made It

We thought we were ready.

We had gathered all of our paperwork. We had gone to all of the appropriate offices in Shanghai, and asked all of the appropriate people for help with translation and to please do these unexpected favors for us. We had gone to the American consulate at odd hours for rather expensive notarization. We had taken pictures and asked people to write letters. We had gone back and gathered extra paperwork, once we learned that we had to work with an agency rather than simply through our social worker (as per Hague requirements).

We sat down this evening to put all of our adoption paperwork together.

We thought we could submit to the agency tomorrow, and essentially be done with it for months.

We sat with the checklist in front of us. We really only used the checklist to make the whole thing feel dramatic; to mark a large X on each line with great flourish.

And then we reached this line:

"Birth Certificate (Husband) w/parents' names listed (extended version) - ORIGINAL"

...and Dave says, wait.

It seems that the state of Illinois isn't too concerned with who Dave's parents are, or what they are named. They are not listed anywhere on his birth certificate.

Apparently, we have NOT made it. It seems that we must request another birth certificate from the state of Illinois, immediately turn that document back to the state to have them verify it, and then send it on to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago for authentication. If it goes as smoothly as it did this summer, this process will only take about 8 weeks.

Eight weeks!