While You Wait

The post below is taken from Jill Khaliqi's blog. Jill and her husband, Dave, adopted two boys, ages 2 and 3, from Ethiopia last year. You can check out their very informative blog at jkdcolorado.blogspot.com



While you are waiting for your referral or court date there are a lot of things to do like decorating, name decisions, preparing any other kids in the home for the new siblings, etc.....
I would like to propose two things that we feel are very very important for you to do while you are waiting.
The first is to read all you can on grief and attachment. It is very important NO MATTER the age of your child. Even infants grieve and need help with attachments. I would suggest these books:
Attaching in adoption by Deborah Grey and
Taming the Tiger while it is still a kitten by Nancy Thomas
Click on either and you will get more information.

The second thing I would suggest you do is find all the paper work for your validation. If you are in Colorado this is the link. Download it all. Fill in all you can and wait until you get home to fill in the name and date of birth for your child (things are often different on the adoption birth certificate than they were on the referral info). Get the fingerprint reports (FBI and state) and the child abuse record from your DHS from your adoption agency. When you get home all you have to do is fill the child's part in and send it.
Do the same for citizenship. If you want to change the name or date of birth you will need to do citizenship AFTER the validation on which you change these things.
You can also have the social security card papers ready to go too. (if you do not do the ss# right away you can do a temporary tax number if you have not completed the validation.