This morning, I finally got the email I have been anticipating for some time now. Our placing agency emailed me that they have received their copy of our I-800A Approval!!! YAY!!!! We're past the major hurdle and everything else *should* be smooth sailing! :-D
Our next step now is to mail all of our authenticated documents to the agency so they can translate them and forward them to Crescent Moon! We have most of our documents in hand, but we are still waiting on our certified translations of our local police reports to be "state" certified. (Certifying already certified documents doesn't really make sense to me, but when does bureaucracy ever make sense! lol!) I keep thinking those should get here any day, but I've been thinking that for a week now. :-\ I also noticed that the certified copies of our passports were missing from the rest of our stack of documents, so I called the notary and they found them and said they will TRY to have them done today. I'm assuming I will get them Monday or Tuesday, but either way it won't be long. Once we finally get those 2 things, we will be able to forward a HUGE stack of documents (an envelope is impossible and at this rate, our box might not be big enough either!) to Koln for them to be Authenticated by Germany. I need to call them this afternoon and see how long they are expecting that to take. The last time I talked to them, they said it would only take 2-3 days plus mail time, which isn't bad at all in Germany. If that's no longer the case, I might ask about the option of driving the documents there to be done the same day. D says that's a terrible option because Koln is at least 3-4 hours away, but the sooner those get done, the sooner we can get Z!! Once Koln does its thing, we then take the documents to the Crescent Moon embassy in Frankfurt in person! That will be done in person and then we carefully entrust our documents to the certified mail to be taken back to the placing agency. I still haven't figured out which carrier to use for that. Probably FedEx since that's what everyone seems to use stateside, but their presence is meager at best over here, so I might go with DHL. I still have a little time to figure that out though! ;-)
On a less technical note, L has REALLY been wanting Z to be here lately! When we went to pick up our documents, I tried to explain that these documents were things that we needed before we could get Z. L interpreted that as "We are going to pick up some documents, then get on an airplane and get Z". I did say many times that we would still have to wait before we could go get her, but L didn't pay attention to that part. When we came home after getting those papers, she broke down crying. She said she was just going to wait in the van until it was time to go to the airport. She spent the rest of that day sulking and crying about. At bedtime, she nearly cried herself to sleep because she didn't want to sleep alone anymore. She wanted to share her room with Z. :*( D & I were heartbroken! We agree with her 100%, but we still have to wait. At times, I don't even understand why we have to keep waiting, so it's no surprise that a 4-year-old can't understand either. DJ seems to understand much better, but he still retains keen insight that I wish he could tell Congress! He really gets the orphan's cry and thinks the sooner they can find a home and a family, the better everyone would be. He's been surprisingly good at keeping me grounded throughout this emotional roller coaster. Most of the time, he knows just what to say to cheer me up and remind me of the big picture as I get lost in the technicalities of the confusing legalization process. I always knew adoption would bring us a new child to love, but I never expected it to give me new ways to love the children we already have!
No comments:
Post a Comment