OMG, we have the 171H!

Our amended 171H arrived in the mail today!

I had checked the mail box earlier in the today thinking the mail carrier would have already come through. It was empty and I had proclaimed to dear Dave that I hated the mail box: I am just tired of opening it in anticipation every day only to be let down. But I was wrong. Our courier was running behind and the mail had not yet arrived.

When it did, Dave went out to check it. I looked up eagerly and he said “Just junk mail.” He let that sink in for a couple of seconds and then handled me an envelope from the Department of Homeland Security, Citizen and Immigration Services!!!! At which point, I called him a little Sh*^ and jumped into his arms. Shot, I couldn’t even open the envelope I was so darn excited.

Yes, my hubby has a wicked sense of humor.  (Post Edit:  I should add, I love him for it.  His ability to keep his sense of humor and make my laugh in the most difficult of times has kept me afloat through this.  The laughter made the moment so sweet.)

One more hurdle down!

Has It Really Been Two Years?

Indeed it has.

Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of when we officially began our adoption process. Two years ago, I put the face sheet of our application and our application fee into an envelope and watched the mailman carry it away and said to my boss, “There it goes, I’m watching the beginning of the rest of my life walk out the door. My hope is in that envelope.” (That might not be an exact quote but it was something close to that anyway.)

March 14, 2007 we took that leap of faith. March 14, 2007, we entered the time in between.

I really want to write an upbeat post about how much I have learned during these past two years because I really, really value this time and the things I have discovered about myself, my husband, our values and our relationship. However, I am having trouble finding the energy for that. I am having trouble not feeling discouraged right now. The past few days I have been prone to random outbursts of tears. I am frustrated and I am afraid.

Today marks one month that our request to have our visa approval switched from Vietnam to Nepal as been with Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS). I didn’t really expect to have the new 171H for Nepal quickly but it is still frustrating to be waiting on what feels like a simple enough request. We are already approved; it isn’t like they need to re-evaluate our suitability to adopt.

This week we also have to mail off another letter to CIS because our fingerprints are going to expire in May and we need to have them redone. Now, I am afraid they are going to end up connecting these two requests and hold off on approving our country switch until we have our fingerprints redone. And I have no idea when they will schedule the appointment for fingerprinting. I can only guess that it will be in May.

What all this means is that we are still one piece of paper shy of actually, finally completing our dossier. Our dossier is in Nepal and we are grateful for that. However, it is just sitting and is not registered with the Ministry. Before we can submit it to the Ministry and get in the line for a referral, we need a Guarantee Letter issued by the embassy in Kathmandu. And they can’t issue that until the National Visa Center tells them we have visa approval for Nepal and that is dependent on CIS approving our switch, issuing a new 171H, and notifying the National Visa Center.

You know what else is fun? While I was making a copy of our original 171H, I realized that the whole darn visa approval expires in November, ’09. It would be lovely to think we wouldn’t need to worry about that because we will have already traveled to meet our child but I don’t really think that will be the case. I don’t really expect to even have a referral by that time.

I remember when we first met with our social worker to learn more about the agency she was talking about how you really need to ask yourself who do you feel comfortable working with because you could be working with them for two years…at which point I interrupted her. “Two Years?” She said that yes, it could take that long, that it could take longer. We liked her honesty. We liked that no one from the agency was promising us that this would happen quickly. But even so, I couldn’t really imagine what two years in this process would feel like.

Now I know.

Codeine Induced Dreams

As it turns out, I am quite sick. I finally dragged myself to the doctor Wednesday where I learned that I do not have the flu but do have a strong bacterial infection, possibly pneumonia. Fun! So, I am on a course of antibiotics and some cough syrup that also fights nausea (good since I was having trouble keeping water down). And this cough syrup has codeine in it. And I’ve been sleeping ALOT. And having some wacky dreams.

Yesterday, I woke up from one dream where I was asking Dave to make me a football. Not too terribly wacky except that I do not like to play football. Not even tossing one back and forth. It has just never appealed to me. But part of that could be because my hands are small and I can’t control the darn thing.  I think that is why I wanted Dave to make me a custom football. I was unusually adamant about the need for this custom football. It had a lot of meaning to me. Why?

Well, the thing is, our son was in the dream. Not in a concrete form. I couldn’t see him but I felt him. And I think we were talking about going outside and tossing the ball around as a family. Nice. (Its little things like that which I simply can not wait to do.)

So, when I woke up, I got to thinking about family touch football, which made me think about backyards, which made me think about neighborhoods.

You see, I happen to believe that I grew up with just about the best yard ever, in the best neighborhood ever. I suppose many of us idealize our childhood (if it was happy) and thus the surrounds of our childhood take on a magical light. But truth is, our yard was great. We had several HUGE oak trees, dozens of dogwood trees, azalea bushes galore (some of which were huge and I could crawl around underneath) and plenty of flat grassy spaces where kids could play all sorts of games, including touch football. And the thing is, other yards in the neighborhood were also great places to be and there were sidewalks and kids could walk to/through each other’s houses and yards. And we did, all the time, and there was just this natural flow. People knew and cared about each other and looked out for each other and the neighborhood was strong, like a huge extended family.

I know that where we live now is so far from this ideal: both our backyard (which is a mud pit) and the neighborhood. So, I’d like to move. I’d like to try to get a little closer to what I had because it is something I really want to give to our son. Of course, this will not be happening anytime remotely soon given that the economy is in the toilet. But I just wanted to state it as a goal. In the meantime, I really do need to figure out what to do with the backyard. It does have potential. So I will tackle that just as soon as I get over this dang crud. For now, I am off to catch some more zzzz’s.