Unsettled

Our little spitfire came into the living room about a week or so ago, clearly furious. Pinched eyebrows, pursed lips, little clenched fists – straight mad. She stomped her foot on the ground and said, “I want to see little brother!!”

Me too baby girl, me too.

I have no idea where this outburst of hers came from, but I can one hundred percent relate. This waiting business is no joke. It messes with your head and plays with your heart in very cruel ways.

The last bit of information we have for our little guy was from last September. We don’t know how he’s doing aside from the words on that paper and even that, we don’t know how much is accurate.

The last photos we’ve seen of him are from 2019. COVID has kept agencies out of the orphanages for updates. I wonder if his dark hair is still as long, if his cheeks are as full, if there’s light in his eyes.

And here we sit. Doing absolutely nothing. It’s maddening!

I know there is a process, and I know God has a plan, and we ARE busy. We’re making memories and enjoying our family and we’re smiling and laughing and feeling joy and being thankful and living life to the fullest we can.

But in all that our hearts feel a little tug, because a piece of our family is across the Atlantic more than five thousand miles away and we don’t know how he is. It’s a very unsettled place to exist.

Today, I thought I’d break down the process somewhat for those of you who are interested in why we are stuck right now, and why we will be stuck several more times in the near future. (Plus you all know how I love a list!)

HOME STUDY-

~ Currently, we are waiting for the rough draft of our HOME STUDY. Today D had to go for a psych eval, which is very frustrating to me because our boy’s country does not require this, and our family doctor already made a statement about his anxiety being well managed and in no way impending his ability to parent, but our social worker felt she could not complete it without this documentation.

~ Once we get the rough draft, we will proof it and make any corrections on our information that need to be made and then a NEW rough draft will be sent to our case worker at our adoption agency. She will ensure no changes need to be made to the HOME STUDY per our boy’s country’s requirements.

~ Finally, we will wait for our notarized final copies of our HOME STUDY to arrive via mail, along with two other documents our social worker must fill out, sign, and have notarized.

USCIS-

~ One copy of home study will then be added to the paperwork we already have completed to be sent to immigration.

~ Once this paperwork is received, we will get confirmation and then get dates for our USCIS fingerprints. D, Mom, and I all have to get these.

~ Then we wait for immigration to process our application and send back the final document we need for our dossier. (This is currently taking a very long time, I’ve seen people reporting 75-100+ days)

DOSSIER

~ When we finally get our immigration papers, we can send all our DOSSIER documents to our state government to be apostilled, basically checking all of our notary seals to make sure they are legit.

~ Once completed, they will send these documents to our adoption agency. The agency will compile all our DOSSIER documents, and send them to the government in our boy’s country to be translated and then reviewed.

I do believe there are circumstances that some of these steps have been accomplished out of order, COVID and immigration backups are causing a lot of issues right now. After this is complete we would do Trip 1 to meet our little guy, either in person or virtual depending on how they are handling that at the time, then await a court date, and then wait for PICK UP travel dates.

So that’s our process, you can see how there is so much wait time, and why I might be a complete nut job by the time this is all over! I know as we get to the end of this process we will have a lot more to do in the waiting periods.

But for now, we’re just working on our Rummage Sale fundraiser (April 30-May 1 – Mark your calendar!!) and doing bits and pieces to try and alleviate some of the stress we know will come later. We have a meet & greet with a pediatrician early next month to review his medical file and get some advice on that front. And we are slowly making plans (but not too many because we are unsure of his needs) and progress in his bedroom.

And we’re soaking up these all these beautiful moments as a family of four, because the very last thing I want to do is waste any amount of time with my family.