Fingerprint Approval (Updated-yay hand surgeon!)

Our immigration approval came today--phew!!  One more thing to check off our list.

Next? 

Tomorrow our dossier documents from Washington, including a "true and exact" copy of our immigration approval letter, go to the Secretary of State in Olympia to be "verified".  This means that they have the seal of the Secretary of State attached to prove their authenticity.

When those documents are received back, we send the WA and CA documents to the Emba.ssy of the PRC in San Francisco to be authenticated there. 

After this, the entire kit and kaboodle will go to China, where it will be (eventually) logged in, and a final decision about our case will be made (this also takes quite a while).

I was going to drive our docs down to Olympia myself, but my darling hubs had a bit of an incident at work wherein part of his ring finger got chopped off (well, it's dangling).  So he's off for a fairly disgusting surgery tomorrow wherein they will sew two fingers together for a while to try to save the ring finger--something about blood flow to the cut-off portion. (Note: When we got married, my father-in-law said to me, "Welcome to the family.  It'll never be dull."  He was absolutely, totally and completely correct!)  We have a lot of faith in the hand surgeon, so hopefully all will go well.

Happy Friday!

(Update:  Surprisingly, the hand surgeon was able to reassemble Cory's finger without using skin from another finger, and he is on the mend.  YAY!)

A Waiting Weekend

Thursday and Friday of last week I called to check on the status of our fingerprints.  Hey, I'm a taxpayer and those things are darned expensive, so I feel like I can give a little ringy-dingy now and again.  Also, our case manager is heading out to a well-deserved 2-week vacay, so I really wanted to give her an update and develop a plan before she left as a lot happens really quickly once the approval document is received.  So anyway, when I called on Thursday, the woman who answered the helpline said that our fingerprints were "under review" and to call back Friday.  I called back Friday, was transferred to the officer in charge of our case, who was surprised I was calling as we weren't scheduled to be fingerprinted until 3/27, right?  True, that was our original fingerprinting date, but we were able to get in early (like, over 2 weeks ago!), which he had not been informed of because I hadn't called to tell him.  Was I supposed to do that?  That seems like an internal process to me, but of course I am in absolutely NO position to question the powers-that-be, so just was a nice as humanly possible and got off the phone.  He said that maybe he could bump us up, but I'm not betting on it.  So I guess getting in early was fairly pointless in the end, but it is what it is.

So we decided to go into denial mode this weekend, and pretend we are a normal, not-waiting, not-watching-every-penny couple and actually have some fun.  Mother Nature smiled on the Pacific Northwest this weekend with blue skies and sunshine.  On Sunday we spent the day diving in Edmonds, which is just north of Seattle and which hosts an underwater dive park with sunken boats and such.  We did 2 dives and they were unbelievable--everything from 4-foot starfish, 5-foot ling cod, octos and beautiful anemones.  It was much more challenging than any other dive we've done, as the park starts quite a ways out from shore and swimming with an inflated vest is actually really hard.  Sunken boats screw up compasses, so we did get turned around a bit, but the entire park is marked by rope lines so we just followed those back.  The advantage was that it is really shallow, and we never got lower than 32 feet. 

So a really fun weekend in the midst of it all, which was very much needed.

It was also my sister's b-day so a shout out to her--Happy Birthday, Amy!

The SUN!  My eyes!  My eyes!

Such a beautiful day!

Answers

We got some short answers from our many, many, many questions today.  I can't write anything particularly identifying, but here are some highlights:

*His favorite food is "snakes". Mmmmm!
*He's seriously HUGE.  So quite possibly older than we thought?  I think I need to start doing pushups.
*He is "irritable", "restless", and "active".  Well, he is two....

We did not receive pictures, but maybe at some point some will come through. 

We also found out that his name was completely wrong. It was very close, but has been written in a variety of orders and spellings.  However, his nickname confirms (for now) what his name actually is.  It may change again, who knows? 

Happy (early) St. Paddy's Day!

Fingerprinted!

We got our fingerprinting appointment letter in the mail a few days ago and, although the appointment wasn’t for another 3 weeks, we scurried on down to US.CIS today to have them done.  They accommodated us after I shamelessly flashed Little Guy’s picture to everyone in sight, and we are finished with that step.

This was a much better experience than our last fingerprinting date, which took place March 1, 2011 (for the Ethiopia program).  The woman who was working with me casually asked, “Where are you adopting from?”  When I replied that we were applying for Ethiopia, she thought for a second, and then said “Didn’t they close that program this morning?”  My heart fell into my toes and I thought, You know what? They probably did.  And while the program wasn’t actually closed, we all know what happened next.

Anyway, onward and upward!

Sunday Yummy

While we wait on our fingerprinting appointment, I've decided to spend some time learning more about the Chinese culture, especially in the nom-nom-nom category.  This weekend I tried a new favorite, Chinese Beef (which I think is a take on Mongolian Beef).  It would be amazing with tofu, chicken or shrimp as well. 

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Ingredients:

Sauce

2 tsp. Hot chili sesame oil (I'm a spice wimp and this was right on the edge of being too spicy)

1 tbsp. Garlic, chopped (I doubled this)

1/2 tsp. Ginger, minced (I doubled this)

1/2 Cup Water

1/2 Cup Soy Sauce

3/4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar

Meat

3/4 Cup Vegetable Oil

1 lb. Flank Steak, cut into 1/4” thin strips

1/4 Cup Cornstarch

1 large Green Onions

Directions:

Over Medium/Low heat, add 2 tsp. of vegetable oil to the wok.  Add the garlic, ginger, water, and soy sauce.

Dissolve the brown sugar, and raise the heat to medium to boil for 3 minutes, or until the sauce thickens.  And remove from the heat.

Dip the steak into cornstarch, a thin dusting to coat the steak.  Let it sit for 10 minutes.  Heat up the vegetable oil in the wok, and add the beef and stir-fry for 2 minutes. 

With a slotted spoon, take out the meat, and lay it onto paper towels and pour the oil out of the wok.

Place the meat back into the wok, and let simmer for a minute, add the sauce and cook for a minute longer.

Then add the onions and cook for another minute.

Remove and serve with rice.

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We are both pretty in love with this recipe, and I think it will become a regular menu item.

Enjoy!

Questions

We were finally submitted for fingerprinting, and are planning on showing up at US.CIS before our fingerprinting appointment, just to see if they'll let us in a bit early.  We shall see.  I'm now somewhat obsessively checking our bank account to see when the check clears, which means the paperwork is moving along.

In the meantime, we are choosing 10 questions we get to send to the orphanage.  The information and picture we have of Little Guy is from last April, so pretty darned old. We may get a response and we may not.  It sounds like most people get one update, so we really want to make these questions count.  We are gathering input from doctors, other adoptive parents, social workers and those who have 2-3 year olds, to see what they think would be important information for the future and for the transitional time into our home (if any of you have ideas or things you wish you had known, please send them over!). 

Since we only get 10 questions, they are currently along the lines of:

Please provide any updated medical information, including height, weight, head circumference and imaging, along with known allergies, sleep schedules, favorite toys, transitional objects and favorite foods.  Plus names of favorite caretakers and things you will remember about him after he has transitioned.

That counts as one question, right?

General Update

Where we are:

1. Little Guy turns 28 months tomorrow.  We would really like to meet him before prom.
2. We have not yet been submitted to immigration, to begin the next step in this adoption.  We had been waiting on a clearance from Montana, which took far, far too long in my adopting parent’s (so, you know, totally rational) opinion.  It was received on Thursday, and today we found out they were missing a document that was not listed on the instructions.  So we turned it around in an hour and it's on its way to the agency.  Once it is received, we can be submitted. 
3. 2 months ago today we were preliminarily approved to pursue this adoption.   This gives us 4 more months to be submitted, fingerprinted and approved by immigration, authenticate everything in Olympia, authenticate everything at the Chinese Embassy, and get everything to China.  Immigration alone took almost 3 months last time.  In the past two months, we’ve had our homestudy update, and that is it.  Seems like a piddly amount to have completed when the clock is counting down
4.  Little Guy has a doctor’s appointment—here in the US!  Seattle Children’s is notoriously difficult to get into, so on the advice of a friend that waited for months to get her little guy seen by a specialist, I called and booked him an appointment in September—the docs were already booking into August.  Really, really hoping he’s here by then.  During the call, the scheduler asked for the name and birth dates of the parents.  So I launched into a big explanation about Chinese adoption and that we really don’t have information on birth relatives, and she gently interrupted me and said, “No, I mean you.  You’re the mom.”  Oh.  Huh.  And then, of course, I got all teary (and I absolutely realize that I’m not the mom.  But maybe someday will be).  Is anyone else sick of random crying jags at inappropriate times? She was really nice about the weirdness of the moment, and then proceeded to inform me that now I’ll get pregnant, you know, since I’ve stopped worrying about things.   Worry-free, that's me! IIIII'm breezy! (name that 90's sitcom)
5. We have finished our dossier, and have the Montana and California docs authenticated and ready to send.  We are ready to roll with the next step. 

Question:  Has anyone out there just shown up at US.CIS (once their info has been received, of course) and asked to be fingerprinted on the spot?  I’m willing to give it a shot, but not sure if there’s a point.  Just wanting to speed this process along. 

Things at stake

When you're adopting, everything in life seems magnified.  Everything.  Maybe I'm just an anxiety-ridden crazywoman, but every little thing that goes wrong (or can go wrong) is met in my increasingly insane mind with "What will this do to the adoption?".  Some folks at Cory's work got laid off--what will this do to the adoption?  Will his employer fill out a form saying that he has long-term prospects when half the work force is gone?  A snowstorm hits Seattle--what will this do to the adoption?  Will the social worker not approve of the salt used on the sidewalk, or think the ice on the trees is a hazard, or will our power go out and make our condo seem a dank, dark and lonely place? So yeah, I'm a nut.

Saturday morning was crazymaking in the extreme.  Cory had his physical last week, and the China program requires a pretty extensive workup.  So we were just hanging out, drinking some joe and enjoying the beautiful snowy scenery from inside our warm little home, and the doctor called.  And told us that he needed to see Cory soon to go over his labs. 

No, it couldn't be done over the phone. 

It had to be in person. 

And the soonest appointment was Wednesday at 5.

Huh? 

We had no idea what to think.  Cory called back and just laid it out--we are stressed and very worried--and just exactly how worried should we be?  An in-person appointment can only mean something bad, right?  A complete metabolic panel is a lot of tests.  It could be anything.  But it's gotta be bad, right?  All they would tell him is that they needed to see him in person. 

That's gotta mean something bad, really bad, right?

In the end, no, it doesn't mean that at all.  As it turns out (oh, how I wish I had known this over the last 3 days!) if you have an HIV test, as required by the China program, medical offices are legally required to give those results to you in person, negative or positive.  They cannot call you with results.  They can't even mail them.  Maybe this is just in the state of Washington, but that's what was explained to us.  As our paperwork for China was completed and notarized today, they canceled his appointment and said that as long as he picked the results up in person when he was picking up the adoption paperwork, they would count that as an in-person appointment.

Maybe tonight we will sleep.  And maybe I won't have recurring dreams that Cory is lost and I can't find him.

Getting a call like that is really, really scary.  Super, duper terrifying. 

The interesting thing to me is that right after the call came in, Cory turned to me and said, "What will this do to the adoption?"  Not "What is wrong?" or "Is it serious?" or "I'm so worried" but again, the ever-present worry in the back of our minds at all times--what will this do to the adoption? Years and years of working toward the goal of a family will do that to you, I guess.  It feels like every single little thing can potentially derail our dreams; maybe they've been derailed so many times we don't know any different.  I look forward to the day when a snowstorm is just a snowstorm. The day when a layoff is scary but won't mean we will never have children (how can those two things even possibly equate each other?).  When we aren't, in essence, asking (begging?) others (employers, doctors, social workers) for permission to build our family.

Relief, sweet relief.  But tomorrow will bring something else (hopefully not as dramatic!!) that will have us asking the ever-present question:  what will this do to the adoption? 

The Weather Outside is Frightful...

Call it what you will, this insane weather in The Emerald City:

Snowmageddon
Snowpocalypse
SnOMG!!

With the ice, spin-outs and fallen trees comes the wonderful, amazing

snow day!!

In anticipation of some cozy nights in front of the fire, I decided to learn some new Chinese dishes, specifically fried rice and gyoza, and they turned out pretty well.  For the gyoza, I just followed the instructions on the package, using both a pork and a veggie mixture, and they were excellent.  I have about 2 more full freezer meals of gyoza, so hopefully they will cook well later.

I also tried fried rice (from the Mayo Clinic website so not quite as much fat content as the traditional recipes--those post-holiday pounds aren't going to lose themselves, amirite?) and it was good, although a little gummy with the egg added.  I don't think my wok was hot enough.  Something to work on.

Mmmmmmm......

Checking off the boxes

Our social worker is a major rock star, and actually braved this crazazy weather to complete our new homestudy for China.  I think it was a bit of a formality, actually, but it's still nice to have it out of the way.  Our sweet, elderly dog acted like a maniac, barking and passing gas with the best of them.  Cory and I were looking at each other--who is this crazy mutt who has replaced our girl?  Our social worker seemed unperturbed by this, although I think her eyes watered at one point.  Darn dog.  She ended the visit by saying that she didn't have any concerns, so that's good enough for me.  Stressful, yes, but done.  Phew!