This has not been a very good couple of weeks for us. Last week, everything I tried to accomplish, did not want to be accomplished. If possible, things worked backwards and my to do list grew longer. Not to mention, USCIS took FOREVER to even open the envelope that I worked SO hard to overnight to them (from the Podunk FedEx office). Seriously, they took two full weeks to send me a confirmation text (should only take 2-3 days). I also lost a piece of my tooth last week. It just broke off. Add that to the to do list. And my rooster decided that he wants to kill me. He has gotten so cocky! It really is time to introduce him to the stew pot. Except none of us can figure out how to catch him. Here are some more highlights of the last week....
We went to get our last few agency forms notarized and instead of our normal notary, we got the SLOWEST, nosiest notary ever. She was actually reading my forms! (A few of them were contract forms that had prices and agency practices.) She kept telling me how to sign - like I have not already done this 20 times! She asked nosy questions about what the forms were for. She took over 30 minutes. I gave her very clipped answers to her questions. My husband could tell I was very unhappy and busied himself with the one child we took along. She probably took 30 minutes because she kept talking to Child #3 and asking her questions. Finally, finally we paid, took our forms and got out. Keep this in mind when you read about what I did next.
I had been trying to get our applications finished for the Chinese visas, but the new photo requirements totally had me stressing out. We went to Walgreens right after that awful notary to get new photos that would fit their requirements (no smiling, no jewelry, no accessories, no logos, must show ears, no glasses, etc.). We took up a good chunk of the poor Walgreens photo lady's time as we had her make them just a little smaller so they would fall within the required millimeters (which are NOT the same measurements as a passport photo, they are just slightly smaller so as to make you go just slightly crazy). Still a two by two photo, but your face and shoulders have to fit in it. Anyway, there was a couple waiting behind us - we'll call them Chip and Buffy. Chip was waiting to get a passport photo and they decided to make small talk with us, a decision I'm pretty sure they came to regret. "Are you moving to China?" he asked.
"No, no. We're adopting." My husband walked away to put away the ruler we were borrowing to measure the faces in the photos.
"Is it a little girl?" he guessed. "No actually, a boy. Our second adoption, fifth child..." I proceeded to unload my pent up frustration on them with a verbal tirade about paperwork and how this was three times as hard as our first adoption with all the minutiae and requirements and notarizing, etc. My husband returned around the end of that and gave me a funny look. Chip got his photo taken and smiled very wide. The Walgreens lady told Chip to have a neutral expression.
"No smiling. You're not allowed to smile." I contributed. He finished and came to stand by Buffy, smiling again.
"Well, it's a real good thing you're doing." Poor guy. He was trying. I looked at Buffy as we left the store. She was a deer caught in headlights, total shell shock. I looked at myself and started giggling as we drove away - no makeup, sweat pants, tennis shoes and an attitude. Oh dear, I don't think I have been this effective as a birth control advertisement since my last trip to Victoria's Secret with young children (was that seven years ago, mom?).
I finally started to cross a few things off my to do list on Monday, so I decided the tide had finally turned in my favor and went to FedEx. I had carefully organized each Visa application according to the six pages of instructions from the courier along with our payment check and actual passports (yes, the ACTUAL passports). I put all of that with a cover letter inside an envelope which I then put inside a Ziploc bag. Once again, I did not get my normal FedEx person. She can't make it fit in the normal envelope. "Could we just take it out of this to make it fit better?"
"No. Definitely no. Don't you have a slightly larger envelope? I've used one before."
Oh yes, look at that, she found a larger envelope. I told her I also needed an airbill to put inside for it to be shipped back to me. "We don't do those anymore. FedEx is going totally paperless now." After a lot of back and forth and actually calling the courier it was going to, we settled on me creating one online later and emailing it to the courier.
"I need a piece of tape across the top also." I told her. Twice.
"I will." She went back to entering the information in the computer.
I had to call FedEx customer service to have help creating an online label without a specific date that I could email. I asked about them going paperless and doing away with airbills. They had not heard anything of the sort. "Maybe it's just that location." Of course. Of course it is. And I never saw her put tape on it! So I had a minor panic attack that she later opened the envelope and stole our passports.
I have been an emotional basketcase this week. Anxious to bring our son home, excited to travel, impatient to get through all these steps, fear of being in a foreign country and having an emergency, fear of anything going wrong. I cried yesterday and I don't remember which reason it was. I cried Friday when I finally received our text from USCIS. I'm really trying not to think about the I800. So much of our timeline rides on when we get approval. I have heard horror stories of lost paperwork and weeks of delay but also most others have approval within two weeks (obviously not this month because of all the holidays). I want to make packing lists and shopping lists, but I feel like I can't get excited or start planning until we have approval. If you have a moment, please pray it would come miraculously soon and take that stress away. Anyway, that's where I am right now. I'm hoping January gets better and better. At least my husband finally seems to be over the pneumonia and bronchitis so that's something!
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Thursday, January 12, 2017
January Already?!
Let's face it. I am not a natural blogger. My apologies.
So what did you miss during the last month?
During December, my niece got into a sweet routine with our family and my girls loved spending every day with her. It took all the squabbles away. The hectic month peaked in mid-December when we hosted a Christmas party for our adoption group. It was the first time I ever hosted anything, so I was really nervous. I remember vacuuming and dusting and sitting on my island filling a giant crack with wood putty. I remember windex-ing the light fixtures on the ceiling and wiping the dust of the pot rack as my mom hand painted the wood putty to match the wood grain. I don't actually remember much else from that day. I think it went well. People showed up and they laughed a lot and stayed longer than an hour, so I'm going to take that as a success. I even got compliments on the food and punch. I told my husband I might consider doing it again next Christmas. Maybe. Definitely not sooner. Of course, I was planning so well that I coordinated that my brother and his family would come stay with us the next day. As it happened, my husband, who had been traveling during the week and developing a flu, got very sick Saturday. He had a fever that went on all day and he stayed in bed for about 24 hours. He briefly got up Sunday morning then went back to bed. My brother and his family had a good visit, short but good. I only got marginally angry at him and had a very hard time saying goodbye to my niece.
My husband started to improve a bit once they left (coincidence?) but still had a nagging cough. We had a little bit of breathing space in the week before Christmas, and we received a phone call and an email an hour apart from two grants. I was stunned. Just a couple weeks before we had gotten approved for a matching grant and I was filled with gratitude for that. I really wasn't expecting any direct grants. We had already been denied by 3 or 4. I cried on the phone call. I don't know if she was expecting that or not. Hopefully she was. On the 22nd, we found out our dossier had moved to matching. That was as good a Christmas gift as I could hope for. I had been praying for LOA before Christmas, but matching was the next best thing.
Christmas Eve we all did stockings then I stayed up way too late staging the photos for the great Elf Present Scavenger Hunt. Every year some wily plush villain steals the presents and gets chased around the house by our elf leaving a present for each kid and a photo clue at every spot. This is the problem with creativity. You do it ONE year, then your kids expect it the next year and the next and the next... Then it is tradition and legend and lore that the kids discuss before Christmas morning. Secretly, I have a ton of fun but every year I think, "Couldn't I have planned this earlier so I'm not up at 1am Christmas morning?" To be fair to our heroic elf, he is pretty lazy the rest of December. He didn't show up until the 16th then he only moved TWICE. He doesn't bake cookies or decorate or anything that other crazy people's elves do. No wonder he gets so active on Christmas Eve.
So the day after Christmas we packed everyone in the minivan and drove to my dad and stepmom's house in Oklahoma. Now Oklahoma doesn't normally excite me and there are whole stretches where I get NO cell phone reception, but where they live is like a little paradise with green hills, giant trees, peaceful breezes, a big lake and lots and lots of birds. It is lovely and I always oversleep when I am there. The second day we were there I received an email that we had soft LOA from China. I called for details and found out they actually issued it right before Christmas. That meant the hard copy would be arriving at the agency anyday. We had to make some plans about where they could FedEx it. That was fun. As it turned out, my husband along with my dad and son had to drive about an hour and a half to a place where it could be overnighted to. Thankfully it came around lunch, so they had time to hotfoot it back to meet me in the little town we were in. There in the tiniest, strangest FedEx outpost I've ever been in, we had fifteen minutes to sign and date the LOA, photocopy it, and send the photocopy with our I800 application overnighted to USCIS. We did it though! BUT we forgot to take a photo of us signing it!!! Admittedly, it was hard to remember much of anything in that little shipping office. I had four kids in various states of obedience and volume, "Stop touching that!" I was trying to remember what I needed copies of to send with the I800, "Don't hit your sister!" I was not allowed to use the copier so I had to have the young lady working there copy all those precious documents, "Don't touch anything!" I kept correcting my kids while keeping half an eye on my papers. It occurred to me fifteen minutes after we drove away that I hadn't even read the LOA or checked it for errors. This is SO not like me! My middle name is Preparation and my other middle name is Research. I read through it and finally felt the import of what that paper said. (Thankfully everything was totally correct on it and as I triple checked all my papers, I had included all the correct docs for immigration.) There were our names at the top. There was his name and birthdate with the title "foundling". We check marked the box that says we accept. AAAAHHH! The original is on it's way back to China while the copy and bulk of the paperwork is back with USCIS waiting for their stamp of approval once again. The time we weren't running after documents, we spent with my dad and stepmom doing puzzles, playing board games, going in his new Jacuzzi, riding horses and going for a brisk walk to see the area. Also there was a lot of eating too. We headed back home and my husband's pesky cough seemed to worsen a bit. Three days later, his side was hurting so bad he couldn't take in breaths. So I drove him to a doctor. She listened to his lungs and frowned deeply. She quickly wrote off five different prescriptions, had a nurse bring in a nebulizer and put it on him and as soon as he finished the breathing treatment, he got a steroid shot in the butt. She listened to his lungs again and sent him straight to get chest x-rays. Turned out he had pneumonia and bronchitis. It really knocked him down. He kept working though. Of course. He seems to be improving now.
While we wait for I800 approval, I will leave you with the adventures of our elf...
So what did you miss during the last month?
During December, my niece got into a sweet routine with our family and my girls loved spending every day with her. It took all the squabbles away. The hectic month peaked in mid-December when we hosted a Christmas party for our adoption group. It was the first time I ever hosted anything, so I was really nervous. I remember vacuuming and dusting and sitting on my island filling a giant crack with wood putty. I remember windex-ing the light fixtures on the ceiling and wiping the dust of the pot rack as my mom hand painted the wood putty to match the wood grain. I don't actually remember much else from that day. I think it went well. People showed up and they laughed a lot and stayed longer than an hour, so I'm going to take that as a success. I even got compliments on the food and punch. I told my husband I might consider doing it again next Christmas. Maybe. Definitely not sooner. Of course, I was planning so well that I coordinated that my brother and his family would come stay with us the next day. As it happened, my husband, who had been traveling during the week and developing a flu, got very sick Saturday. He had a fever that went on all day and he stayed in bed for about 24 hours. He briefly got up Sunday morning then went back to bed. My brother and his family had a good visit, short but good. I only got marginally angry at him and had a very hard time saying goodbye to my niece.
My husband started to improve a bit once they left (coincidence?) but still had a nagging cough. We had a little bit of breathing space in the week before Christmas, and we received a phone call and an email an hour apart from two grants. I was stunned. Just a couple weeks before we had gotten approved for a matching grant and I was filled with gratitude for that. I really wasn't expecting any direct grants. We had already been denied by 3 or 4. I cried on the phone call. I don't know if she was expecting that or not. Hopefully she was. On the 22nd, we found out our dossier had moved to matching. That was as good a Christmas gift as I could hope for. I had been praying for LOA before Christmas, but matching was the next best thing.
Christmas Eve we all did stockings then I stayed up way too late staging the photos for the great Elf Present Scavenger Hunt. Every year some wily plush villain steals the presents and gets chased around the house by our elf leaving a present for each kid and a photo clue at every spot. This is the problem with creativity. You do it ONE year, then your kids expect it the next year and the next and the next... Then it is tradition and legend and lore that the kids discuss before Christmas morning. Secretly, I have a ton of fun but every year I think, "Couldn't I have planned this earlier so I'm not up at 1am Christmas morning?" To be fair to our heroic elf, he is pretty lazy the rest of December. He didn't show up until the 16th then he only moved TWICE. He doesn't bake cookies or decorate or anything that other crazy people's elves do. No wonder he gets so active on Christmas Eve.
So the day after Christmas we packed everyone in the minivan and drove to my dad and stepmom's house in Oklahoma. Now Oklahoma doesn't normally excite me and there are whole stretches where I get NO cell phone reception, but where they live is like a little paradise with green hills, giant trees, peaceful breezes, a big lake and lots and lots of birds. It is lovely and I always oversleep when I am there. The second day we were there I received an email that we had soft LOA from China. I called for details and found out they actually issued it right before Christmas. That meant the hard copy would be arriving at the agency anyday. We had to make some plans about where they could FedEx it. That was fun. As it turned out, my husband along with my dad and son had to drive about an hour and a half to a place where it could be overnighted to. Thankfully it came around lunch, so they had time to hotfoot it back to meet me in the little town we were in. There in the tiniest, strangest FedEx outpost I've ever been in, we had fifteen minutes to sign and date the LOA, photocopy it, and send the photocopy with our I800 application overnighted to USCIS. We did it though! BUT we forgot to take a photo of us signing it!!! Admittedly, it was hard to remember much of anything in that little shipping office. I had four kids in various states of obedience and volume, "Stop touching that!" I was trying to remember what I needed copies of to send with the I800, "Don't hit your sister!" I was not allowed to use the copier so I had to have the young lady working there copy all those precious documents, "Don't touch anything!" I kept correcting my kids while keeping half an eye on my papers. It occurred to me fifteen minutes after we drove away that I hadn't even read the LOA or checked it for errors. This is SO not like me! My middle name is Preparation and my other middle name is Research. I read through it and finally felt the import of what that paper said. (Thankfully everything was totally correct on it and as I triple checked all my papers, I had included all the correct docs for immigration.) There were our names at the top. There was his name and birthdate with the title "foundling". We check marked the box that says we accept. AAAAHHH! The original is on it's way back to China while the copy and bulk of the paperwork is back with USCIS waiting for their stamp of approval once again. The time we weren't running after documents, we spent with my dad and stepmom doing puzzles, playing board games, going in his new Jacuzzi, riding horses and going for a brisk walk to see the area. Also there was a lot of eating too. We headed back home and my husband's pesky cough seemed to worsen a bit. Three days later, his side was hurting so bad he couldn't take in breaths. So I drove him to a doctor. She listened to his lungs and frowned deeply. She quickly wrote off five different prescriptions, had a nurse bring in a nebulizer and put it on him and as soon as he finished the breathing treatment, he got a steroid shot in the butt. She listened to his lungs again and sent him straight to get chest x-rays. Turned out he had pneumonia and bronchitis. It really knocked him down. He kept working though. Of course. He seems to be improving now.
While we wait for I800 approval, I will leave you with the adventures of our elf...
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