Overwhelmed

I need to tell someone, so I'll just say it here. I'm totally overwhelmed by the adoption process. I think part of it is that we are trying to go fast. Since we are pre-approved for a specific child, there is an urgency to everything. Part of it is that it's very involved and complicated and I don't yet understand the whole process very well. And probably a big part of it is that we're trying to do it while homeschooling, while Mike is travelling internationally, at the holidays. . . in other words, I don't have the time to sit down and do things in a thorough way.

Today, I took an hour or so to work on a couple of items that are left to complete for our home study. I read more of our info from CWA and understood a part of the process that I had felt confused about. Here goes. Every document that we are sending to China has to be notarized. Then it has to be sent to the Secretary of State in the state where it was notarized to be authenticated. We're talking about a whole bunch of documents: birth and marriage certificates, police reports, physicals,financial statements, etc. Then the whole packet of notarized and authenicated documents has to go the Chinese consulate to be authenticated by them. Finally the whole thing goes to China.