FINALLY!!!

Today, we got the letter that we have been waiting for. After all the great e-mails and follow-up letters by Wynne, we finally got the approval for our I-600A extension. I went to the mailbox and saw that we had recieved a letter from USCIS and I started getting nervous and excited at the same time. As I'm coming into the house, I'm opening up the letter, fumbling nervously awaiting what new hoops the government was going to make us do now. I opened it and I read the magic words that we were waiting for: APPROVAL!! I ran right into our bedroom and showed it to Wynne with a big smile. She read it and we hugged and kissed. It's finally coming to fruition. Short of an act of God, we will be able to pick up our son in two months. Now we have to start getting his room and figure out things like what color to paint it, what furniture do we need, and how long it's going to take me to put together Ella's old crib for him. Oh well, it's all good because our family will be growing by one really soon.

He's at House of Hope Now!

So, we got an email today that our little one has been moved to the House of Hope. That's our agency's "carriage house" where the babies are moved from their orphanages for their "pick up" from thier new moms and dads. Most travelers from our agency also stay there at the HOH so they can bond 24/7 with their new babies. It's basically the meeting place that our agency runs. But kids don't get brought there unless "it's time"...which is exciting because it means he's officially in our agency's care now (which will mean better care), he's officially just hanging out and waiting for us :( and it also means we'll probably get more regular pics of him.

It's really exciting, b/c it's just another step in bringing us together. He's actually more ready than us now...since we're still waiting for the doggone CIS approval extension.

We also got updated medicals on him today. Our agency retested him for everything. His white blood cell counts are still slightly high, but like 16, when they should be like 8-12. Ella's are probably 20 this week as she hacks up who-knows-what, so we won't complain. And our doctor already told us that WBC are not correlated in any way with any chronic illnesses. They are basically elevated to ward off infections, which could be from anything from a bugbite to diaper rash. Who knows. We're just happy that he's at HOH now and that we got new medicals on him. :) He's perfect.

Cross Your Fingers for Us

So today we mailed back to CIS the addendum to the updated homestudy that we had to have our social worker do because she didn't write exactly what they wanted in the updated homestudy. Cross your fingers that we've now been so overly specific that they'll have no choice but to extend our original approval. At this point, it's just simply ridiculous.

We just really need them to send us an "okay, here's your updated approval to bring your son into the country" letter already. Is it really our fault that the process has taken so long that we even have to request the approval extension? This is just so emotionally fatiguing. It would be really nice to think about our son rather than the fact that our approval has now expired.

At this point, we just can't really emotionally invest in the fact that we'll soon have another child. It's sad because we now know who he is and he's sitting and waiting for us, and we still don't know if we're going to be able to bring him home...until we get the next letter from these gov't fools. We have three or four boxes of brand new stuff for his nursery sitting in the boxes in his room, but we haven't even opened the boxes because we just can't emotionally go there yet.

Jeez. Can we just be done already!? And it doesn't help when Radames jets out at 5 o'clock to make sure the paperwork gets out to the CIS office on Monday and the racist idiot who works at the post office says, "Oh, are you applying for your citizenship?" as Radames hands him the packet to overnight. Radames nicely said, "No, I'm not." I would have gone off on the guy. I'm still fuming just thinking about it. But then again, that's why Radames goes to do these things instead of me. These things infuriate me. Ditto on the trailor park bi-otch who said to Radames, "Uh, were you born in this country?" as we checked in at the local health department where we had to go to get our hepatitis and menengoccocul (sp?) vaccines. I almost went off on the chic. Hence Radames handles all local interactions... :)