Vacation

Yesterday I received an e-mail from the National Visa Center that our letter had been cabled to China and they kindly sent me my PDF of it which I immediately sent to CCAI. Beth notified me that my Article 5 would be dropped off today and I should expect pick up during the week of October 15th.  Our next step will be waiting for Travel Approval which can take 2-4 weeks. I guess you could say we are finally moving right along. I am really praying for a speedy TA because I have in my head when I would like to go to China but I guess we will see.  We are coming my sweet boy....
 Tonight I work my last night of 4 long 12 hour nights and we leave on our first beach vacation in a year.  Can you say so ready to go?  I guess we will be staying pretty close to the condo as we are saving every dime we have for bringing Dane home.  If my mother in law had not paid for the condo we wouldn't be going anywhere.  A vacation for me is being off more than 4 nights in a row and actually sleeping at night for 10 nights. This night shift is kicking my tail.....
  Keep the prayers coming that we continue along with no more problems and that we get our little man home soon.........

Finally!!!

Monday we received I-800 approval so now we wait for it to arrive in the mail. I don't think we would have gotten this without our Senator's involvement so lesson learned.  When your agency asks you not to involve your Senator, this is advice you should not take because USCIS has to respond to them when they ask questions. Keep praying that our process speeds by so we can possibly be headed to China by the end of November.  Thanks for all of the prayers and encouragement over the last 4 weeks.

And the wait continues.....

So no I-800 approval after my officer has had our paperwork for a week. We called on Thursday per our agencies suggestion after our Officer No Heart never returned any of my e-mails. He told my husband that it was on his desk and he would get to it in the order it came in. Excuse me!!  Our I-800 has been pending for a month thanks to his RFE and he is not in any rush. I decided to let CCAI know that he was sitting on it. Their advice.....call his supervisor. I also notified my Senator's office that USCIS was blowing us off.  On Friday while I was in class learning all there is to know about breastfeeding (insert sarcasm) my husband called twice to get in touch with a supervisor at the immigration office. What does my husband get in return?   A reaming out by two different employees....one was a woman who took it upon herself to let him know how busy they are to get to every case in a timely manner. Hey honey....It is your freakin job!!!!!!!  The second person was the acting supervisor who informed my hubby in an unkind manner that they are busy and that my husband calling to check on things is making things worse. Tom kept his cool (which is the reason he had to call) and explained how we had lost one son in a failed adoption and this was starting to feel like deja vu with all the delays and excuses.  This guy was extremely unsympathetic and basically said our agency should have never told us to call them.   Of course I am in class learning about boobies and he is texting me his experience on the phone. I of course lose it and e-mail my agency two different times letting them know how upset I am with them for putting us in this situation and how it is their job to fix this and that we will never call USCIS again but that they will because I expect answers and my husband did not deserve to be treated the way he was treated. Lets just say I got a voice mail and an e-mail pretty soon after that from my agency and how they were attempting to call the supervisor for us.  I think they can sense that I am about to snap. At the end of the day they finally called me back to say that they had heard nothing from the jerks at USCIS.  NADA!!
  One positive note in all of this...My Senator 's office did hear back from Officer No Heart on Friday where "he says" he is working on it but it is going to take longer than he expected so now we pray to hear something on Monday.  I should have listened to my many friends advice instead of my agencies advice and involved my Senator from the beginning because USCIS has to respond to them. Keep praying guys. We need all the prayers we can get.

Impatience

So we still wait for our jerk of an officer to approve our immigration paperwork. My agency can do nothing at this point. I am in limbo while everyone else who got their LOA's on the same day plus everyone after us has moved on. SICK is not the word for me right now. My head hurts, my stomach hurts and I am on edge every single minute of the day. This is unfair that I am at the mercy of an uncaring officer who is in no hurry whatsoever to approve me. He doesn't give a darn about these kids and needs to quit his job. Everyone talks about what a sweet officer they have and I have HIM. I am now expecting no travel this year because the holidays are coming up and I know that is going to jack EVERYTHING up!!!!!  I am screaming in my head everyday because I am so upset over this.  I am sorry for everyone around me because I am foul every freakin day!!!!  I am holding it together for the my babies at home but Lindze knows because every night after her prayer she says "mommy I am sorry you are upset".   Why the crap am I being held up by someone in our own dang country!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Waiting

Updated amended home study plus extra paperwork and more money off to USCIS as of Friday. My agency has explained it may take a month to find out if our Officer No Heart will approve us this time. If he does,  CCAI guesstimates we will travel mid to late November. I am at the point of I got to see it to believe it.  We have to remember the holiday in early October and the trade fair that month as well so things are going to get behind because of that. I am also worried because MANY LOA's have been coming in and I'm afraid they are going to have a hard time getting consulate appointments for so many people.  Nothing would be better than not being able to travel on time because our US Consulate couldn't get us an appointment. I'm starting to notice a trend where all the delays are coming from the US side. It is obvious China wants these kids in families but the US is causing all the problems. Can you tell I am a little bit bitter these days:/
 So cross all fingers and toes that we can get immigration approval at a speedy rate so we can move on to the next step. Keep praying!

Very Disappointing Week

This week has I have to admit been the worse in a while. I equal it to the days of despair over losing Alek.   We were so close to being at the end of our journey and then the brakes got slammed and we hit the proverbial brick wall. Our immigration officer decided to request more evidence for our I-800. This is a big step in our adoption and to get this from this guy has stopped everything. Our little man's initial diagnosis made his medical condition look serious but since then they have called him just delayed. My little peanut was a premie so of course he is going to be delayed.  We are now having to update our home study to include the word "serious". One word that is keeping us from going to get Dane in the next 8 weeks. I don't use the word heartless lightly when I refer to our immigration officer. He is subjecting our son to several more months without his family.  We can only pray that we see him before the end of the year. I spent the first part of the week crying and now I am just nervous and very angry with the situation.  I feel like an evil force does not want us to give another child a family. I feel like if it is going to happen, it will happen to us. My agency said they haven't had this happen before. There is that evil force I was talking about.  I guess so much for my little boy coming home before Thanksgiving or maybe even Christmas.  Are we ever going to get a break???  If I didn't love that little face so much, I would have quit Monday when I found out what we were not approved.  We got the above picture the day we got the RFE.  My heart cannot take much more.

Blessed

What is that?  That is China saying that we can get our little peanut in 2-3 months. We got this document in record timing of 48 days. I cannot believe that this is almost over and our little Dane will be in our arms by October at the earliest or November at the latest. I have God to thank for this miracle of all miracles. Now we are facing mountains of paperwork and prep work for that big trip to the country where our family first began. I am nervous, excited and scared to death but most of all I am blessed. Dane just like my other kiddos is a blessing to our family and I cannot wait to show him what it means to be in a family and give him all the love he deserves.

 So I guess you can tell by the picture that we have an excited little girl. She is flipping out about seeing China and being the first in the family to meet her baby brother.  I think it is great that Lindze can experience the trip, the Gotcha day and everything that goes along with adopting a child from China. She has asked many questions about how we got her so this will help her understand it a bit.  I also think she will be instrumental in helping Dane while he grieves from leaving his foster family. He has been with them since he was one month old so he is going to do some heavy grieving and I pray everyday that we can help with work through it. Imagine loving a family for over a year and then one day getting taken from them and put in strangers arms.  I could not imagine but I know with enough love we can get him through it.
  So for now just keep praying that everything goes smoothly and we can bring our little peanut home so very soon and also pray that he stays safe until he is in our arms forever.