The Latest: Part II - Dossier

The same day as the Homestudy, we received our dossier packet! Allow me to help you conjure up an image. Picture a nice navy blue AAI folder with a pretty silver logo on the front. Inside the folder, on the right side, is a stack of about 30 papers full of articles, references, and suggestions for someone adopting from Ethiopia (Hey, that's US!). It includes a culture gram, Ethiopia facts, Ethiopian names, tips, guidelines, and even information on how to estimate the unknown age of child. To quote Ross and Elaine's neighbor, "We're going to have his birthday be in September". I never knew planned parenthood could be retroactive!
On the left side of the folder is another stack of documents that is much more menacing, because instead of being helpful, it is a bunch of sample documents that we need to fill out, acquire, or otherwise create. Here's the list:
Dossier Cover Document, Notarized Homestudy, notarized birth certificates and marriage certificate, notarized police clearances, notarized medical statements, notarized bank statements, notarized copy of most recent tax return, notarized employment letters, notarized family letter to Ethiopia government, notarized reference letters (get ready for round three references!), two different notarized power of Attorneys, I-600 Petition, I-600A Application, Post Placement agreement, Passport photos, Statement of Understanding, Basic Information Sheet (because apparently all of the previously collected detailed information isn't enough), and, of course, as our reward for putting all of this together we get to enclose another $2000 check for the translation and processing of the dossier.
I. Am. So... Excited... in an I-am-so-overwhelmed kind of way. I don't even think they should bother asking us why we want to be parents. Anyone willing to go through this process clearly isn't thinking straight anyways.
To top it all off, I'm a skeptic who doesn't like to give anyone ANY information about me. If you call me and I don't recognize who you are, you can't even get me to tell you my name. Those annoying stores that ask for your phone number when you purchase something have my phone number listed as "No, Thanks". And I'm supposed to PAY to give all of this information...willingly, when I know that people have been ripped off in the past and this is enough information to do bad things with? Hmmmm. Time for a bit more research, just to put my mind at ease.
All of that said; if I had to give my baby to someone from another country, and I wanted to know as well as I could that the family would be able to care for ALL of my baby's needs, my list would likely be longer and even more invasive. sigh.
Well, here we go!