Sandy

Schools were canceled today so no work for me. This is actually the second year in a row we have had a hurricane "snow day." I got some great video of the ocean, but unfortunately, it did not come through when I emailed it from my husband's phone. We went to the ocean at high tide and the waves were pretty big, but the wind was unbelievable and both of my ear drums actually hurt. The winds are definitely beginning to pick up now.

Printed

We have completed our fingerprinting requirement for U.S. immigration. Now we will wait to receive a document from the government which basically approves us to adopt internationally. This is the last document we need to complete our dossier. Once we receive it I will need to go to Boston to get 2 documents sealed by the state of MA. After that, our dossier will shipped to a courier service in D.C. who will bring our dossier to the embassy and state departments for more authentication. Our documents will be bundled into 2 packages, a power of attorney letter and everything else. Then it will shipped to our agency in Michigan who will then ship it off to Ethiopia. Realistically my goal is to have our dossier arrive in ET sometime in December. It will really depend on the turn around time of the document we are waiting on. 

I had been so worried about our fingerprints because I read a blog post by someone who had to redo fingerprints more than twice because they did not come out well. We have been using moisturizer and made sure not to use strong chemicals beforehand. It was definitely a good excuse not to clean the bathrooms last weekend! Anyway, the guy said I had nice prints. I also felt better when I saw that the whole thing is computerized and the computer screen read "reject" when the print was not good enough. So, hopefully, everything will turn out well and we will receive the document we are waiting for.

Waiting & Realizing

I am beginning to realize that this is just the beginning of the waiting. We are still at the beginning of this process, yet I am starting to understand the "adoption rollercoaster" phenomenon that other adoptive parents/prospective adoptive parents have talked about. Leading up to our application, there were months of excitement, just waiting until we could officially apply. Then we were let down when we were denied by the first agency we applied to. That was a complete blow but I quickly rebounded the next month when we were accepted into AAI's program. During the summer we were super busy gathering and preparing docs for our dossier, going to appts., etc. and the whole process began to feel real. Then we missed our first fingerprinting appt. when our appt. letter was mailed to our physical address instead of our mailing address. Just a bump in the road, I keep telling myself. Our rescheduled appts. are approaching so hopefully we will feel like we are back in the game after that. I am already to become impatient and the real waiting has not even begun...

As Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers said...

Every time I hear this song, I think about the little one we will meet someday...

Bump in the Road...

Well, my gut is always right! This is something I have learned especially as I have become older. I have had a bad feeling about how long we have waited for our fingerprinting appts, although the wait time is still considered to be within the normal time frame. We just got a phone call tonight from the scheduling center telling us we missed our fingerprinting appointment that was scheduled for this past Tuesday, the 2nd. Although we followed our agency's instructions exactly and on our cover letter we also stated that documents should be sent to our mailing address, they still sent the appt. letter to the physical address (which was listed on our application b/c it is our legal physical address that matches all of our other documents that are included in the dossier).  

The worst part was that the lady was kind of rude and short with me on the phone. Apparently they separate the I600A application from the other supporting documents (including the cover letter) when it is forwarded to the department that schedules appointments. So, anyway, our new appt. is scheduled for the end of the month. Chris has reminded me that this has really only set us back a few weeks. So, I am trying to be positive. If any other adoptive parents out there are reading this, how long did you have to wait between getting your fingerprints done and receiving the I171? She said current processing times were between 75-90 days and I am wondering if this was what she was referring to? From reading others' blogs it seems like the wait time was shorter than this so I am a bit curious.