ICPC – The Step Nobody Talks About

After the massively long wait for a referral, I promised that I wasn’t going to complain about the wait to travel.  And I’m still not going to complain about the wait to travel.  But the past few days, I was starting to be on edge about a few little letters – ICPC (the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children).  If you remember from this post, our criminal clearances had expired the week before the paperwork was to be sent off to ICPC, even though the homestudy was valid until the end of June.  We just needed to clear ICPC and then we could submit our I-800 and all those fun documents (We also have an I-800 supplement 3 going in as well as the I-864 and I-864A. Our family is trying so hard not to be confused as they follow along). 

It took three weeks to get our criminal clearances back.  I drove them to our agency’s office about 15 minutes after I pulled the last one out of the mailbox.  The next day, they put the information in the mail for ICPC. 

Let me tell you, I can be slightly obsessive these days when it comes to finding out exactly how long something should take to do.  I’ve been pretty on the ball.  I don’t want to lose any more time.  The one thing I couldn’t figure out?  How long ICPC was really taking in Pennsylvania.  I was told to expect two weeks.  I refused to believe it would take that long.  I was seeing online that domestic adoptions were clearing Pennsylvania within 48 hours – why would it take an international adoption two weeks?  I couldn’t find an answer.

My agitation rose yesterday, and hit its peak by noon today.  At 1:00, I finally called the program coordinator and told her I was panicking about ICPC.  I think she knew by the tone of my voice I wasn’t kidding, because she offered immediately to call and see what the holdup was.  I told her that wasn’t really why I was calling – I wanted to know if the homestudy couldn’t expire by the time it hit the desk at USCIS or if it had to be fully approved before it could expire.  She reassured me that since our fingerprints were good until November, the homestudy was fine with USCIS – ICPC was the only one that needed a timely homestudy, and we were fine with that.  I felt much more relaxed.

At 2:30, the mail came.  And in the mail?  Yup.  Our letter from ICPC.  Just in case you were wondering?  It took 48 hours to clear ICPC – and then 4 days from the date of the letter until the day we received it.  At the same time I got my letter, the program coordinator got her letter.  They put together the packet for USCIS, and that’s going out in tomorrow’s mail.

PHEW.  The step that nobody talks about has been the biggest paperwork pain in the @$$ so far.  One giant step forward to the day I get to hug my baby!

"Racing" Right Along

Knock on wood, things are moving along as they should in the process to bring Francis home.  His legals arrived yesterday, so the next step will be ICPC approval.  Unfortunately, our criminal background checks, child abuse clearances, and Pennsylvania fingerprints expired – ready for this?  Last week.  I did the criminal background checks online yesterday, mailed out the request for the child abuse clearance this morning, and we’ll go for fingerprinting Saturday morning.  I wonder if the people who do the fingerprinting at the UPS store know who we are yet, seeing as this will be the fourth time we’re being fingerprinted there.  Fortunately, our homestudy is still good until the end of June.

The package that we sent to Francis reached him at the end of April.  We were beyond blessed to receive a few pictures of him with his photo album and a few of the things that we put in the package.  He looks happy to have a family, and this lightens our hearts.  In one of the pictures he is holding the cars we sent him and the smile on his face is so big and so genuine he has dimples!  This is the first time we are seeing these dimples and such a genuine smile – we are so happy to know that he really is happy, and that maybe we helped put that smile on his face.

We are just about totally finished with Francis’ room.  We are going to replace the window in there, and then it will be all ready.  Hopefully he likes Cars, because that’s what we did.  He’s even got a genuine tire from one of Darrell Waltrip’s race cars from years gone by.  We’re not sure if it will be a table, chair, or toy box yet, but it works well in the room and is a pretty cool addition.  His ceiling is decked out with glow-in-the dark stars and planets.  Overall, we’re thrilled with how it came out.  Here are some pictures: