No criminals here!

I've lost track of how long we've been waiting on our background clearances. Who am I kidding? I've been counting the days: 14 weeks.
At first, it was supposed to take 4-6 weeks. At the 6 week mark, I contacted our social worker. She explained that the wait was now 2-3 months. At the 3 month mark, she contacted someone somewhere (I lose track of the acronyms) who said, "No, they aren't done. And, no, I have no idea when they will be done."
I "patiently" waited until this week before contacting our social worker again. "Is there someone I can call? We can wait, but it would be nice to know how long to expect."
She gave me a phone number.
I called Monday.
The DCFS Advocate called me back on Tuesday.
She was very nice, but our conversation went something like this: "I have no idea how long to tell you to expect to wait. I don't know what the holdup is. I don't know where the holdup is. It could be the FBI part, the state police part, etc. No, you can't call anyone else, because no one knows. And the State Police won't talk to you."
"There's nothing I can do?" I said. I tried to be assertive, yet unaggressive.
"Tell you what," she said. "When you get to the point that this is the only thing you're waiting on, give me a call back and I will see if I can make some phone calls."
Me: "Actually, that is the only thing we're waiting on." And that has been the only thing we've been waiting on for 3 months.
There were more "she said/i said" things, but the most important thing is the result which was...

A PHONE CALL TODAY FROM HER THAT SAID OUR CLEARANCES HAVE BEEN ENTERED INTO THE SYSTEM (today) and that our agency would get it sometime soon. She did not, however, tell me exactly what "soon" meant.

So I emailed our social worker and she said she will be looking for the clearances. Incidentally, our clearance were, well, clear :).

We're new at all this stuff, but I think that our homestudy (along with precious clearances) goes to the State of Illinois for approval. Then it goes to our adoption agency for approval (although that shouldn't take long as they've already seen it once). Sometime in there, we submit our I-800A form. Fortunately, it's mostly completed and documentation for that was gathered months ago.

We like progress, and this is a big step.