A good place to be

Lately I've been catching myself thinking of how great I have it! This is by no means a bad thing, don't get me wrong. I've just been appreciating everyday of this "paper pregnancy". I have a couple of friends who are pregnant and look oh-so-adorable with their bumps. There is a little twinge inside me thinking of being pregnant with Carter, but it quickly disappears as they talk about discomfort, morning sickness, sleeplessness, etc.

Carter was an easy baby from the get-go. No morning sickness, in fact, the only way I knew I was pregnant was that I was exhausted. The same went for the following two pregnancies. The first couple of months, all I wanted to do was sleep. This "pregnancy" is such a nice change! Almost 2 1/2 months in and I'm full of energy. With Carter down to one nap each day, I'm able to workout every morning. He is at such a great age! It's like I just have a little buddy to hang with now. He understands everything I say and responds to me. Up until a couple of months ago, it sometimes felt like I was talking to myself: "do you want a PBJ sandwich?"

I'm looking forward to the next 12 months or so. Even though the waiting will be hard, everyday without our new little person is another day that I get to spend giving Carter all my attention. I'm going to try hard to keep this my focus and not worry away this valuable time with Carter. 

 

This is funny. No really, it is.

The fingerprints were done on Wednesday so, why does the UPS tracking number say they haven't been sent yet? Another call to the FBI confirms that it could take them up to a week to mail them once completed. Yep, even with a prepaid envelope, it takes them a week after they clear you to do God knows what and mail your results.

Hip Hip Hooray!

Our fingerprints are on their way to our social worker!!!! I called to check and was told that they were processed yesterday, but when I checked the UPS tracking number, it didn't show that they have moved yet so, I'm crossing my fingers that someone forgot to scan the package and they will arrive tomorrow :)

Rescued

Sweet Diana at the FBI called today to say they found our prints and are going to process them! They searched and have rescued them! All other paperwork is ready in a paid UPS envelope to go out the day they arrive!

GREAT news!!!

I just got a call from the FBI. Normally, a person would not consider this a great thing, but today, today it was truly GREAT!  Sweet, kind, nice Diana called to let me now that they will be expediting our fingerprint requests thanks to Patty Murray, our senator, making the request.

Diana thought we didn't have a tracking number so, she was going to ask me to redo the prints and FedEx them straight to her, but I DID have a tracking number. So, we are now in what she called "search and rescue" which means that she will send our information to a person who handles congressional requests and will use our tracking number to locate our file and get the prints processed!

Just as we thought, the process itself doesn't take long, but they are so backlogged that they have 8-10 weeks of mail waiting in line to be processed. So, now they can get our file out of the line and take it to the front!

I'm just so excited that the end of this wait is in sight! Depending on when we actually get the results back (and you know I sent a prepaid overnight UPS return envelope), we just cut the wait by 3-6 weeks.

Did you just hear my huge sigh of relief?

Wow. I need to go back through our paperwork AGAIN to make sure the day we get the finalized hardcopy home study with the fingerprints, the next batch of paperwork goes in the mail!

We're still here

The home study is pretty much done at this point and we are just waiting on the fingerprints. I called the FBI again this week and was told it's taking 8-10 weeks. This would be GREAT as we are closing in on the 8 week mark, but the guy last week told me 12 so.... I'm not getting my hopes up.

I also wrote to our senator and asked her to expedite the process for us. She (or someone who works for her) responded and said that they sent in a request on my behalf. Honestly, I think even if they got the request,  they wouldn't be able to process it. They don't even have record of us yet which means, our envelope is in a pile somewhere and won't be "in the system" until the day they process the request.

It's so disappointing that it is the US government that holds up this process.

That said, we were reminded the other day that while we are going through all of this, our child's mother is likely already expecting. She and our child need any extra prayers you may have that God watches over and protects them during this difficult time.

A bit frustrated

It started with the home study which went fine and our social worker actually got her part done the very same day. This excitement was damped when I confirmed that we do have to wait for the national fingerprinting while almost everyone else gets to just do a state clearance which takes 1-2 weeks. I called the FBI to check the status and was told that instead of the 8-10 long weeks we had planned, it is now 12 weeks. So, the soonest we would get our results will be the first week of December.

I was fine with the waiting that we would have to do in this adoption process, but I'm not OK with THIS waiting. It just isn't fair that because of the agency doing our home study in Washington has decided they want the national clearance, we are being punished with an additional 2 months more than anyone else would be waiting.  Other agencies in Washington have confirmed that they would only do the state clearance for the home study. Even worse, the USCIS fees goes up by about $150 for us November 23rd so, we can look forward to paying that increase now too.

I get nauseous just thinking about it.

If that wasn't bad enough, I recently had Chris mail a package of documents to our agency in Michigan to have them review prior to our filing. Of course, I used FedEx. I wanted to be sure it could be tracked since it has duplicated of very important personal information (birth certificates, marriage certificate, social security, you name it, it was in there). I got online to track the package today and it shows that it has not shipped. I call Chris and he confirms that it was sent.

I call FedEx and the guy says: "it looks like you haven't sent it yet."

Me: "Ummm. yeah.. that's why I'm calling you freaking out right now."

Longer story shorter, they did find my package about 20 minutes later. It was delivered and FedEx just decided to give it a completely random new tracking number. I started to ask the lady on the phone how to avoid this in the future, but stopped myself. I'll avoid it by NOT using FedEx.

I'm calming down a bit now. I just have this vision of God up in the clouds with puppet strings laughing his head off.  I'm sure he's thinking "At some point, all my lessons for her will pay off and this one will finally learn to have some patience and a bit more faith."

Not funny, God.

We're going to have 2 children

Common sense statement, I realize, but it really hit me the other night.

Carter was pretty sick with a cold and had a horrible time sleeping. He woke up a bit before midnight, hot & sweaty, unable to breath through his nose, and just needing to be held.  I felt so badly for him imagining how it feels to have the worst cold and then not be able to blow your nose or take more than Tylenol. The poor guy felt so horribly that he let me just rock him in the dark of his room (if you know Carter, this NEVER happens).

We finally got him back to sleep, but I was left awake thinking about our soon-to-be baby. The way the process works, once you get a referral (being matched with a child), you have to wait a month or two for your court date. You then travel to Ethiopia and go to court and then, fly home and await your Embassy date. The wait could be another month or two or it could be a couple of weeks, you never know.

The first bit of waiting, knowing who our child is and just having to wait for court, will be hard enough, but after you pass court, the child is yours in the eyes of the Ethiopia government. So basically, OUR child will be waiting for us in an orphanage just because we are not there to take him/her out of the orphanage.

I'm not worried about his/her safely really. The orphanages are well run and the children are well cared for as best they can be with the number of staff they have. I just kept thinking the other night, who will hold and comfort our child when he/she has a bad cold while we are in our nice warm home waiting for our Embassy date? Shouldn't that be me? The child will be OURS by then, shouldn't it be mommy holding them in the middle of the night?

But what about Carter? I couldn't possibly leave Carter for weeks!

That's when it hit me. We will have 2 children. Our lives will no longer be about just Carter. They will be about our children.  I can't leave Carter will family who love him for a few weeks, but I can leave our infant alone in another country where food, electricity, clean water and medical attention are scarce?

Obviously there are some things to work out to see if this is even a possibility, but if the possibility exists for one of us to stay with our baby while we wait for the Embassy clearance, we may need a bit more help from all of you then we had anticipated.

Homestudy done - sort of...

We had our 2nd and final meeting with our social worker today to answer the remaining questions needed to complete the homestudy report. From here, she will complete the report (about a week), email it to our agency for review and feedback (maybe a week?), and then give it to her agency for review, feedback and printing of the 7 final copies (probably a week)!

Very exciting, but we will likely still be waiting on our FBI fingerprinting results to come back even after all of this is done. I'm a bit frustrated by this as our agency has told us that most states do not do the full FBI fingerprinting for the homestudy as we have to do it for immigration at the next stage. So, we're being held up just because our social worker thinks we need the fingerprints. We haven't been able to find anything that states that we actually need them..