We are extremely excited that the biggest paperwork hurdle – the “dossier” – is finally complete! Our dossier is basically a thick stack of paperwork that gives the Nigerian adoption organization a look into our lives. It includes:

• Original copy of our home study (we will do a more detailed post later about what is all involved in a home study)
• Both of our birth certificates
• Our marriage certificate
• A health statement for each of us from our doctors certifying we are healthy enough to adopt
• A letter from our employers that give details about our jobs
• 3 months of utility statements
• 3 months of pay stubs
• 6 months of bank statements
• 3 years of tax returns
• Color copies of our passports
• Passport-sized photos of both of us
• Photos of our family and home

All of these documents need to be either official copies with seals and signatures or be notarized. We need at least two sets of originals and two copies – this equals a lot of paper! None of these documents were actually hard to get – it was just very tedious and time-consuming. Just the sorting alone took hours!

Barring any mistakes (which there may very well be a few), we are hoping that our adoption agency can get our dossier off to Nigeria by the end of next week. Then we wait for a match…and keep ourselves busy applying for grants. 🙂