And the renewal begins

Since it is taking much longer than we originally anticipated for us to complete our adoption there are things that we will have to re-do since a lot of our documents and things expire. One of the main things that expires is our approval from US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security (also called an I-797 in our case) that allows us to bring a foreign born child into the US. You wouldn't think that the process of obtaining that approval would be a big deal but it really is a long, drawn out and exhaustive experience. The USCIS requires a biometric fingerprinting of both Jeff and I, our completed home study (no more than 1 year old) and copies of our birth certificates and marriage license...along with some big bucks in order to decide that we will be fit parents to a child born in another country. Our fingerprints for our I-797 expire after 15 months and they are set to "sour" at the end of May so I am sending off our request to be re-fingerprinted today along with a check for $140 for them to put our fingers on a scanner and send them through their computer again - just to verify once more that we are not criminals. This is actually the easy part. Our actual I-797 will expire in November and to renew that we will have to have a home study update which means more medical exams, another clearance by the state, another financial statement and more along with another visit from our social worker and even more big bucks. We will start that process around June so that our approval doesn't lapse. I really hope and pray that this will be the last time we have to renew these documents...if not then it is fingerprinting again in 15 months and updating the home study and I-797 in another 18 months. Please, please let our baby be home by then.