Stage 1 Almost Done

There are three main stages to this whole process. The first is to complete the Home Study and agency recommendation to be adoptive parents. Second is the CIS (formerly INS) approval to bring a foreign-born child into the country. The final stage is the referral of a child by the Chinese government agency. We have completed Stage 1! Yay. All the agency paperwork is done, our home study visits are complete. We are just awaiting the package from our agency that we will forward to CIS. We should have our docs to them in the next week or so.

Timing. The first stage is the most variable because it is dependent upon so many different people (see all the previous posts). We started in mid-January and it's now late April. So, we did it in about 2 months. I understand that is pretty fast. The next two phases should be about 3-4 months at CIS and around 6 months for China. So, we are thinking our travel date should be in Jan or Feb 2006.